Which is how the company became familiar with the BSS FDS-334 and FDS-336 Minidrives. Adlib have long been devotees of BSS’ famous Omnidrive family and so when they won the contract to fit out a series of Living Room bar/restaurants for fast-expanding Living Ventures Ltd, the proprietary digital loudspeaker management system went straight into the specification.
As the latest Living Room opened on Birmingham’s burgeoning Broad Street leisure strip this month, Adlib managing director, Andy Dockerty, told us that their first Living Ventures project had been on their own doorstep at the up tempo Mosquito Bar and The Vampire Suite, a private members bar in Liverpool six months ago. "We’d previously done a lot of hires for the owners," said Dockerty. "But this was the first place we used an FDS-334 and FDS-336 - and it was on the strength of this that we won the contract to fit out the Living Rooms."
The 10 outputs afforded by the combination of a 334 and 336 fits the model perfectly for a multiple sourced system offering, sequentially, hard-disk delivered background music system, a blues pianist and a full-on DJ session. In Birmingham this services three zones - conservatory, restaurant and bar - but in Liverpool and the newly-converted Manchester, the units are multi-floor/multi-zone.
"All the internal programming is set up for the hard drive machine," said Dockerty. "I have a separate EQ and compression in line one for the DJ system and one for the live artists system, which are run independently into the zoner, and then into the Minidrives. The Minidrive is absolutely ideal for this kind of application as it gives 70% of a Soundweb’s capacity but at around 50% of the cost." In Birmingham three outputs are assigned to running various Adlib Audio AA15 SBP subs, with different crossover settings applied to the three zones. "We’ll set the crossovers accordingly because we have different boxes for different programmes for different areas," says Dockerty. "The whole design is carefully split up and thought about, and sound mixers are provided for DJ and band use respectively."The Adlib AA81 - a 1in compression driver on an 8in horn flare - has been custom-designed for The Living Room by Adlib’s Dave Fletcher, who believes that it is the passive networks in this style of cabinet that are so critical.
(Ruth Rossington)
