The entire sound contract was won by Martin’s Dutch distributor, TM Audio, who put together a high specification of leading brands. Sales manager Jeroen van Keeken had known sound engineer Arne de Wit from a previous venue - the Hotel Arena in Amsterdam. De Wit was asked to investigate the market for PA systems and four companies were invited to demo systems sequentially, and Martin Audio came out on top. Aside from its sonic superiority, the venue’s administrators were also aware of the huge profile Martin Audio has in Amsterdam’s leading clubs, the Milky Way and Paradiso. Jeroen van Keeken commented: "The venue is true multimedia, staging comedy (spoken word), rock concerts and dance events; thus they needed a versatile system." Van Keeken himself was responsible for the sound design. "I have a lot of experience selling these systems and I was at there at the construction stage, when it was a hard hat site. So I had a good idea what I was going to do."
His original concept had been to ground-stack a Crest-powered Wavefront WSX and W8C either side of the stage - with a further W8C flown above to project to the balcony. But the imposition of a curtain rail - in the exact spot designated for the W8C - put paid to that. This was amended to a pair of WSXs and W8Cs - run four-way active and controlled by an FDS-388 BSS Omnidrive - ground-stacked on either side of the stage, without compromise to the sound. "In fact it was a perfect combination, providing the best sounding solution by far," said van Keeken. "The coverage was even wherever you stood in the auditorium and was consistent at both floor and balcony level."
Other sound equipment on the installation spec includes: Two Crest CA9s; two Crest CA 12s; 40-channel Midas Heritage 1000 at front-of-house; Yamaha SPX 990, Lexicon MPX 500, TC M-one, TC D-two FX; two BSS DPR 422 dual compressors and two BSS DPR 522 dual noise gates; Mindprint T-comp, stereo tube compressor; XTA GQ 600 Equaliser; five Crest CA6s and five XTA GQ-600s (monitors); assortment of Shure, Beyer, Sennheiser and AKG mics. In the DJ booth are five Technics SL 1210 decks; two Stanton S 700 dual CD players and a Rodec MX180 DJ mixer.
The venue director is said to be delighted with the quality of the sound - in fact the band Mirror 99 have specifically asked to launch their new CD at the club - purely on sampling the sound quality. P60 now hopes to become a satellite club to the imposing Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, to stage after-show parties for touring bands.
(Lee Baldock)
