UK - When techno icon Frazi.er and house kingpin Ewan McVicar came together late last year at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, the two titans of the Scottish electronic music scene staged a spectacular. Placing themselves in the centre of the venue in a 360° setup, the two delivered "a performance masterclass which received excellent reviews in every quarter".
The show’s audio was provided by East Anglia-based Audio Plus, who have supplied systems for touring, festivals, special events, and installation for more than 30 years. Audio Plus deployed a Funktion-One Vero system for the event, driven by XTA amplification. Audio Plus has used XTA amplifiers since the 1990s and in recent years has transitioned to using the XTA DPA100 unit for all its work.
Project manager Tino Reschke comments: “The loudspeaker arrangement was planned in collaboration with Funktion-One Research and the signal infrastructure was designed by Audio Plus. We used a total of 18 of our XTA DPA100 amplifiers, all fitted with Dante modules, to have full control of every single row of the bass stack which comprised 12 rows in total.
“The Funktion-One Vero main hangs only needed two of the DPA100s per side, showing how powerful and efficient the combination of XTA and Funktion-One’s product range can be. Even with just one FOH desk present we used an XTA MX36 console switcher in line between the desk and the PA system, receiving the external word clock signal and transmitting it into the Dante network.”
For Tino Reschke, who was both system tech and FOH engineer for the show, a good amplifier is one that no-one needs to think about during the performance. Reliable, powerful sound must be a given and the Hydro show met the criteria:
“They are great sounding amplifiers which offer, to my knowledge, unmatched flexibility in terms of signal routing and grouping options. The competition tends to offer fewer options to design a complex but easy-to-use system ‘on the go’, limiting the user to pre-defined crossover and routing schemes. Thanks to the four auxiliary outputs, we can use our XTA amplifiers as system drive units with analogue fallback as well.”
The combination of Funktion-One Vero and XTA DPA100 proved a great success - alongside universally positive comments about the show, many reviewers also paid glowing tributes to the production.
Reschke concludes: “We literally just connected everything as planned in advance and it all worked straightaway. The Vero system gets me every time with its strength and clarity, and the XTA amplifiers do not compromise these qualities at all; they just deliver clean, controlled power. We have some large events coming up next year which will continue to use our entire inventory of XTA amps.”
Richard Fleming of XTA adds: “It’s great to see our amplifiers performing great work for Audio Plus at this ambitious show. Funktion-One’s Vero system with our XTA DPA100 is quickly establishing itself as a formidable combination in the hands of a number of our partners around the world.”
