d&b's E-Series at Brighton Dome

The foyer and bar area immediately adjacent to the main concert hall at Brighton Dome, the performance arts situated on the south coast of England has many virtues, not least a light airy atmosphere that makes it rather conducive to the occasional sherbet. Hard to leave at the best of times, The Dome's management recognized a virtual captive audience, took the logical step, and made the area an integral part of the entertainment complex by installing a PA system. It's just received its first trial, being used repeatedly for events during the Brighton Festival May 7-29.

"We designed the system installation in house," explained production manager Kevin 'Kenny' Taylor. "We have three venues here, the Pavilion Theatre, Corn Exchange, and the Dome concert hall; and effectively we're a d&b audiotechnik house having our own selection of C4s, C7s, and some MAX cabinets. For the foyer, the d&b E-Series looked ideal and so it has proved."

Occupying the concert hall frontage, the foyer bar is a wide but shallow room, 82' across, 33', with a 39' ceiling height. "The roof is glass, hence the light airy feel," said Taylor, "and has quite a bouncy feel audio wise. My house sound engineers Jeremy Noble and Nick Pitcher wanted the system to keep as close as possible to the natural sound of the room. Between the three of us we came up with a pair of E12s flown above the stage, a small platform two meters by six at one end, with E6s paired along the walls at 6,m [19.5'] intervals for delay. That enables us to keep the levels down yet having the system clearly audible at all points in the room. Since the festival opened we've received nothing but praise for the sound."

The system was supplied by Entec Sound and Light, the company's audio sales manager Peter Codron handling the project. "The dome installed the system themselves, so the job was straight forward for us except for one important criteria; they wanted all the loudspeakers to be color matched to the white interior of the room, and the cabling and fixings." Needless to say the time from placement of order to delivery was short, "not quite three weeks," said Taylor. "Entec and d&b did a great job and the service has been impeccable. We've already used the room for acoustic acts, DJ performances by elements of the Asian Dub Foundation, and a choir. There's no limitation to what we can do; for a room that can comfortably hold four hundred people it's a delight."