A Barking Dog

Back in the cramped spaces of the Orange Umbrella was a neat little addition to the Vertec family. The ability to add power amp and controller modules to the Vertecs you already own to turn them into self powered boxes. The module is basically an iTech that was roughly the same size as the rear panel. The panel is removed exposing a preinstalled molex connector to which the module attaches. Because the Vertec rigging is a stiff pivot point, the change in center gravity effects only the weight dispersion at the bumper at the top of the hang. It’s a pretty slick retrofit. I’m not a JBL dealer so I wasn’t able to get prices and the pics I snapped are aweful, not useable. I thought JBL might have info and pics on the site by now but they don’t. They’ll be ready to ship soon I was told by a rep so I’d reckon the info will be posted soon. I’ve always liked the Vertec and thought is was a great box and this is a dandy addition.

The modules come in a couple of configurations of both power amps and signal processing. Each type of module has a pair of Powercons to provide AC power. They say two modules can be powered from a single Powercon circuit. There is a Powercon in and out on each module. The amps are based on the Crown iTech line. There is a module for the three way boxes (VT4889, VT4888), the two way box (the little guy VT4887) and the subs (VT4880, VT4881). Independent of the amp modules is the control module and it comes in two flavors. The first is a sort of no frills input module based on the dbx DriveRack series of processors and accepts analog input only. Except for a horn shading control, there are no changable parameters on the controller. The second option made me sport a little chub. It’s based on the iTech DSP and will accept a Cobranet input. The digital sample piece was crowded and I didn’t get as good a look at it as I would have liked. Harman has taken the Crown IQ system, added some devices and rebranded it HiQNet. It basically ties all the Harman product together using what once was IQ. I wasn’t able to make it back to get a better demo. Hopefully they’ll post something soon with some details. I asked how interoperable the protocol was and open it would be and the rep giving me the tour wasn’t sure. I never made it back to the booth to follow up on it.

The module will change both the weight and geometry of the hang so if you have preexisiting configurations you’ll need to recalculate. According to the rep giving me the demo, under the watchful ear fo the factory guy, they couldn’t tell me how many inputs one could chain together before the system suffered impedance mismatch problems though both guys picked up right away and understood what I was talking about. Obvisouly that won’t be a factor with Cobranet inputs. There didn’t seem to be any provision for distributed power or signal along the lines of what Meyer has been doing but it’s not that difficult to fab something for the task.

The concept of curvelinear or line array has made it to MI now in the form of the JBL SRX 932 LA. Also not yet listed on the site. The first thing that struck me was they looked like small Clair I-4 arrays. They’re little bitty guys, about 24″ x 18″ though I didn’t write down the component sizes. They’re passive but have a shading control on the back and have the ability to be stand mounted. There are actually two stand mounts, one allowing a down tilt while they other is more toward a traditional flat deployment. The demo had two stacked on each other on a stand. A self powered version of that might make a killer little box for industrials, TV shows and corporates.

Community was showing, among other things, the M12 stage monitor. That could be something of interest to regionals that can’t afford the big name stage mons but still need something that can move some air and not sound like ass at higher SPL. I think Community is still perhaps the most underrated manufacturer in the space. That’s too bad because not only do they offer a great price/performance, much of the product line outperforms the often higher priced options from manufacturers with much larger marketing budgets. If you need some mons they would be worth checking out. Also of interest could be the Radian Micro Wedge designed by the original punk rock sound dude, Dave Rat.

Electro-Voice is the latest, and one of the last, to jump into what I call the mini line array concept. Hung next to the new Siena and the Helix was a cluster of EV XS 212 with XLE 181 and XLD 281 subs. It’s nice and small, the rigging package looks nice. The subs can hang as well on the bumper. Based on the XLC rigs I’ve used and the X-Line it should be a pretty good little rig. No word of it on the EV site as of yet.

QSC seemed to be making a statement as they only had two amps on display in the booth. They were all about speakers this year. I had stopped to get a look at the Basis QSCControl/Cobranet box. I’ve been wanting to build another touring rig with full remote control and wanted to spec out a couple of pieces first hand. No such luck. The presenation in the booth was a video of the manufacturing process for both the amps and the speakers.

On the system controller/crossover front dbx rolled out the Driverack 4800. It’s a four in, eight out DSP box. It operates and looks like the rest of the Driverack line, though I had a difficult time manuvering through the demo unit and gave up after a couple of minutes. While it appears to be a capable box, what interests me is not the product so much but what Harman seems to be doing with the dbx and BSS brands. We haven’t heard a peep out of BSS and the Omnidrive line in quite sometime. Most of what is coming from BSS these days is in the form of Soundweb products. What appears to me to be happening is that dbx is now taking the role of providing the controllers for most portable applications. i don’t know that it’s just a coincidence or a plan but it looks to me that before too long, dbx could replace BSS as the contoller system of choice not only among the Harman brands but in the industry in general. Though there is too much about the product to get into it here, Soundweb London looks pretty good though to configure it for most portable SR apps might not make sense for many operators.

Another thing that interested me in the dbx corner of the booth, and it was a cramped corner, was the dbx 162SL comp. I’ve used the 160SL comp quite a bit and like it a great deal. I put the 160SL right up there with Summits and Distressors. The 160SL had a street price of about US$3000 while the 162SL has a street price about a grand less. I’d be interested to try one and see what the difference might be and why it’s a grand cheaper than the original. Could be a good value for those looking for a box for mission critical apps.

They didn’t have a booth but Lake was at the show in the form of a suite at the Hilton showing latest version of the Lake software used in the Contour and Mesa boxes. I got to get much deeper inside the box than I have on my limited experience with them. It’s quite the box and I’m more convinced than ever that at this point it’s the pinicle of system controllers for portable apps. Though some have tried, for example KT/Telex, no one has yet to reach the integration with wireless based pen tablets. There are a couple of downsides though. The system is expensive compared to other solutions though they might not posess the same sort of integration as the Contour. It’s also not easy for less experienced operators to configure. You can’t just hand a blank tablet to someone and expect them to take right to it if they have no prior experience. To deal with this, vendors using the Contour or Mesa have defined presets and once those screens are defined, using the device is as easy as using any other device. it’s the same sort of issue that most mixing control surfaces have, if you haven’t been on them before, the learning curve could be steep. If you are serious about system controllers and remote operation, this is the box to have.

Whirlwind was showing a nifty little device called the E-Snake. It’s been out for a while, but there is now a direct interface to PM5Ds and DM2000s. You use Yamaha MY 16C Cobranet cards to interface Esnake to the console. I’d have to hear it and work with it for a while before I speced it for anything but it at least looks promising.

I was hoping Shure would launch the long rumored upgrade to the PSM700 ear mon rig and they did launch an upgraded PSM700. I was somewhat disappointed that it retained the same packaging but offered some new features. They did announce upgrades in the audio quality, a different companding scheme, an easier to read frequency selector on the transmitter, a frequency locator feature and two more banks of frequencies. They did have a big ass paddle antenna on display which is good news for those of use that use multiple rigs in multiple locations. The new bands are in the 524-554 MHZ and 632-662 MHz while the original PSM700 series were all in the 700 Mhz band. I would have liked to have seen a more robust rack mount method, for example a full sized chassis with two units per chassis. An LED readout of the frequencies would be nice as well as the ability to store multiple presets or name the devices in plain english. Shure did a nice job of taking the ear mon market from niche using the non mainstream Garwood units to mass market where even musos in tavern bands could afford them but in the upper end Shure has not been able to best the effort by Sennheiser with the Evolution series.

Next up, final thoughts and muso stuff.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 at 12:00 am and is filed under Winter NAMM 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.