The UK leg of the tour Level 42’s 40th anniversary tour in support of their The World Machine breakthrough album has been extended to cover 32 venues with sound support from Safe Hands Audio – described by audience members as ‘the best gig sound’ they’ve ever heard. Key to the tour’s sound are Electro-Voice loudspeaker systems.
‘We’ve gone with a standard set-up which we are using in each venue,’ says Neal Allen from Safe Hands. ‘We designed it to fit the points in the venue with either nine or 12 or X2 loudspeaker elements per side with cardioid subs. That’s what you need for this kind of touring.’
For this leg of the tour, Safe Hands Audio supplied 30 X2-212 loudspeakers with six XLE181 cabinets for lip fill, and X12-128 subs – run in a cardioid configuration – to provide punch and dynamics. Portable Evolve 90 column loudspeaker systems have also been used as balcony fills in certain venues, with the entire system driven by Dynacord TGX20 amplifiers.
‘The X2 line array is compact and easy to fly, because a lot of these venues don’t have good weight loading on the points,’ says FOH engineer Mark Clements. ‘It’s great to put it up, you can still get a good hang on a on a lightweight point. And most of all, the sound is beautiful.’
Level 42 has relied on Electro-Voice for a number of tours and, for Clement,s this is due simply to sound quality: ‘I’ve used everything over the years but this is great,’ he says. ‘I just don’t think any other smaller PA has the high-end clarity that the X2 have. Vocally, it’s in your face and it sounds really nice. I’ve found that you can’t use a horn-loaded loudspeaker or a folded horn. The attack is not quick enough. With the X2, the attack is very fast, even though it’s a large driver.’
This performance is down to Electro-Voice’s Pin Diffraction Hydra controlled linear high-frequency management. ‘The X2 is an acoustically engineered box with all loudspeaker components engineered from the ground up in our US headquarters,’ says Electro-Voice’s Arthur Achard. ‘We’re not just colouring the sound and putting those drivers in a box, we’re actually making the sound as good as possible and the cabinets as time aligned with each other as possible.’
One of the common challenges of the tour typically came at venues like Stoke-on-Trent where areas on the balcony couldn’t be covered by the main PA. To overcome this, the team used Evolve 90 active column systems. ‘It’s full range sound so we can set them up and can fire down the balcony,’ Allen explains. ‘It’s brilliant and everyone gets the same experience.’
Alongside the E-V loudspeakers are Dynacord electronics and software powered. SoniCue Sound System Software has been used for set-up and control in every venue, while the high power density of the TGX20 four-channel amplifiers has been called on to drive the system. Added to the 20kW available from a single amp, TGX20 offers tour-grade 96kHz DSP resolution with multi-band PEQs, crossovers, limiters and delay-per-channel functions. FIR-Drive and dedicated loudspeaker presets ensure the audio quality, while Dante audio and stability down to 2Ω make them a popular choice for touring professionals.
‘Mark King gets feedback from fans after every gig and he has been sharing emails from people saying it that the sound was amazing and the best they have heard,’ Clements reports. ‘He is ecstatic with the sound. The reports he’s getting is it sounds just like the record and that is exactly what we’re going for.’