Turbosound FlexArray for Elite Sound and Lighting by Hills SVL

Elite Sound and Lighting has taken delivery of a Turbosound FlexArray system with Lab.gruppen PLM amplifiers.

The Canberra based production company has been looking for an additional new line array system for some time, trying a number of brands before selecting FlexArray.

Elite provide a complete audiovisual service for a wide range of events, from corporate functions in some of the best hotels and venues in Canberra, to full production for concerts and festivals all over NSW. The team at Elite were keen to put Flex through its paces and tried the system at both outdoor festivals and indoor shows, including the Coaster festival in Gosford, Dusty Days festival in Wagga Wagga and a Daryl Braithwaite show at Canberra's Royal Theatre. The performance of the system in these large applications impressed all, but one of the attractions for Elite is the ability to break the system down for smaller events. Each speaker can be switched from a line array to a point source cabinet within minutes so Elite are able to use the system in ground stack mode for small corporate events or pub gigs, and fly the system as a line array for larger shows. Darren Russell (Managing Director of Elite) explains: "We ideally needed a system that could cover the large outdoor festivals and large scale indoor shows that we do, but also be a corporate PA. The Flex boxes are compact, easy to rig and incredibly efficient. They don't look out of place in hotels and function rooms, yet can easily cover a crowd of 5000 or more for outdoor rock shows."

The Dusty Days festival in Wagga Wagga featured a number of top bands including Grinspoon, Faker, Operator Please, Something with Numbers and Dukes of Windsor amongst others. The system was ground stacked with 6 x TFA-600H FlexArray elements and four Turbosound TSW-218 (double 18") subwoofers per side. An additional Flex cabinet (switched to point source mode) was used per side as in-fill. Over 4000 people attended Dusty Days which (due to a lot of rain) was anything but dusty. Elite received very positive comments from many of the band engineers about the system.

Jim Scott (FOH Engineer for Grinspoon at Dusty Days), who has also used Flex with The Living End at the Coaster festival, commented: "Previously, I had never really been much of a Turbo fan, but would happily use this system again. I found it warm, clean and loud and like the fact that it is a small box that does not sound small".

Elite also used FlexArray for a show at Canberra's Royal Theatre featuring Daryl Braithwaite and band. Seven Flex elements were flown per side with one on the stage as front-fill. Four TSW-218 subs were ground stacked per side. Brad Parker-Black (FOH Engineer for Daryl Braithwaite) commented: "The Turbosound FlexArray sounded great! The coverage was very good and I liked the way the mid range threw. The vocal intelligibility was very clean and smooth. The Labs gave it great head room and the boxes responded very well. A great system, happy to use it again anytime."

Elite's system is powered by Lab.gruppen PLM series amplifiers, including the PLM10000Q (4x2300w at 4 ohms) for the Flex elements and the PLM14000 (2x7000w at 2 ohms) for the subs. The Lab PLM's feature integrated Lake processing per amplifier allowing the system engineer full control and monitoring via a tablet PC.

Darren concludes: "There are a lot of decent line arrays on the market these days but FlexArray was quite simply the one that suited our requirements the best and performed to and beyond our expectations in every venue and for every application we threw at it. The other part of our decision to go with Flex was the fantastic versatility that this system will provide us in our inventory".