Pub rock never had it so good! Entertainment has long been a cornerstone of the Torquay Hotel. The band room isn’t huge but it’s been a beloved pitstop for many touring acts, with the likes of Boy & Bear, the Beddy Rays, Slowly Slowly, and Pete Murray on the 2022 roster.
That said, the hotel operators wanted more from the sound. Traditionally, it was a bit of a coin toss — sometimes a band could sound fine, while on other occasions it could be a train wreck. There are a contributing few factors. The ceiling is low. The room is L-shaped. The stage is in a corner. And there’s a bulkhead halfway up the room that lowers the possible trim height of the PA.
Contributing to the installation challenge, there’s not a lot between the ceiling and the roof, so you can’t mount loudspeakers in a standard way, and weight soon becomes an issue.
Front of House Productions (FOHP) became part of a conversation with the owners and offered to put in a temporary PA to demonstrate how they might attack the problem.
The owners were delighted with the results and gave FOHP director, Ryan McCann, carte blanche to get the room sounding that good — ‘whatever it takes’.
Even with ArrayCalc, the geometry of the room presented a challenge. A d&b Vi10P point source loudspeaker aside does much of the work (“the output you get from one 35kg point source box is outrageous”). A Y-Series Yi7P loudspeaker takes care of fill in and around the bar, while four E8 loudspeakers act as delay fill on the other side of the bulkhead.
Subs aren’t normally the star of the show, but these d&b subs are a bit special: “We’ve got the first KSL-SUBs in the country,” mentions Jesse Mahoney. “They’re hugely impressive. They sit in the same performance space as the J Sub but these are about two-thirds of the size and only weigh 82kg.”
The low-profile KSL-SUB is slim enough to fit under the Torquay Hotel stage. Three subs are used in total, which represents the maximum the stage design would accommodate given its unusual geometry.
The KSL-SUB employs a cardioid design, each requiring two amplifier channels to get the cancellation required. This keeps the worst of the rumble away from the restaurant and accommodation behind the stage. But Jesse Mahoney reckons the biggest beneficiary of the cardioid design is the FOH mix engineer:
“We’ve all stood on stages where the subs are activating the stage and the drums are wrapped around it in a 90° fan. There was only enough room under the stage to fit three KSLSUBs and evenly spacing them wasn’t an option because of the odd geometry of the stage. So I had to do some interesting things in ArrayCalc to work out the optimum spacing, and also the best way to do an electronic arc, taking the shape of the audience area into account. In my experience, I can’t imagine doing that in any other piece of software.”
Six d&b MAX2 stage monitors handle foldback, along with a drum fill.
“The MAX2 power-to-weight ratio is off the charts. You can carry two of them from the back room and they fill the stage. They’re formidable… maybe a bit too formidable for the size of the venue! We opted to go above and beyond with the stage monitoring. Most pubs would have four sends, while we’ve got six plus a drum fill. It might be rare to have all seven sends used but for that one night when a ska band arrives and everyone in the horn section wants their own send… we’ve got them covered!”
A combination of five D30 and D40 multichannel amps power the system. All 28 available channels are employed.
FOHP also supplied a Digico SD11 for front of house (“a popular choice… it seems like just about everyone has show files for it”) and lighting from Event Lighting.
Ryan McCann remains resolute that as his installation business develops, the kind of work he’s done for the Torquay Hotel is the level at which he wants FOHP to operate. You can see why. It’s a formidable and classy pub installation.
“The audio just melts away as a factor or an issue,” explains Ryan McCann. “It becomes invisible. That’s what you want. You’re not fighting the PA; you’re not fighting the room; you’re enjoying the show.”
