KV2 Audio powers The Powerstation
UK- The world's first installation of KV2 Audio equipment was unveiled in May at a night club in Livingston, Scotland. Robin Johnson went along to have a look.
Situated in prime commuter belt west of Edinburgh, Livingston is a classic New Town. A myriad of housing cul-de-sacs, roundabouts by the dozen and cut-through footpaths arranged around a central retail/leisure hub, its acres of concrete and tarmac sit between literally thousands of semi-mature trees, giving it that unique, slightly surreal New Town atmosphere of 'greenhouse' artificiality.
However, at the heart of this one is a very successful football team, based at an impressively modern stadium, providing a focus for the sprawling community. These days sitting pretty in the Scottish Premier league, the club was formerly Meadowbank Thistle, based in Edinburgh itself. Inevitably it sat in a shadow of the capital's higher-profile clubs, Hearts and Hibernian, so in 1995 it was relocated to the purpose-built Almondvale Stadium in Livingston by then-chairman Bill Hunter, being renamed after its new hometown in the process.
Like most football clubs, Livingston FC is well aware that non-football activities are an essential source of revenue and so in May this year it opened the Power Station nightclub, situated under one of the ground's stands and featuring the very first permanent installation of an audio system by KV2 Audio, the new international sound reinforcement manufacturer profiled by L&SI in January 2003.
The Power Station's audio, DJ equipment and lighting was installed by London-based Scan Warehouse. Interestingly, the underlying reason why the company became the first to do a permanent install of KV2 equipment was a simple, old-fashioned one - trust. Having enjoyed a business relationship with KV2 Audio Europe's Phil Price and Andy Austin-Brown for more than 15 years via RCF UK, the trust shown by Scan's John Bowman Daniels was so complete that he specified KV2 without even hearing it: "I spec'd it because Andy said I'd like it," he says. "That's the truth of the matter. It was like your best friend coming to you and saying 'Look, trust me, you'll like it.' I have total respect for Andy as a sound engineer and a person, so although I was going out on a limb, it didn't feel like I was doing so. Before I took delivery, they took me out to the Czech Republic to hear the system and it surpassed my expectations."
Being housed underneath a football ground stand, the Power Station's acoustic space is basically rectangular, but with a long, sloping ceiling meaning a headroom of just over two metres along one of the 'long' sides, rising to four metres at the other.
"I usually have a fairly good idea of how a space will sound, but with this one I didn't have a clue," says Bowman Daniels. "It's like a cupboard under the stairs on a much bigger scale and the acoustics really concerned me."
The difference in ceiling height on each side meant that the speaker placement options were relatively limited. The DJ booth is positioned mid-way along the side with the lowest headroom, so a stack went in each corner of that wall, comprising two ES 1.0 mid/high cabinets, two ES 2.5 (2 x 15") and four ES 1.8 (1 x 18") bass bins.
Because of the limited two metre headroom, the mid and high cabinets couldn't be positioned as high as Bowman Daniels would have liked. So to compensate, two more ES 1.0 mid/highs were positioned in the opposite corners, placed higher and angled down because of the increased headroom on that side. Two Logic System IS8 full-range drivers and eight PL81 ceiling speakers were also added to provide a subtle peripheral reinforcement.
"We positioned the stacks very carefully to ensure the sound was focused on to the dancefloor, protecting the bars and entrance from some of the volume," says Bowman Daniels. "I'm very concerned about that because I think nightclubs are meeting places and people want to communicate. Because of that, you should keep the sound concentrated on the dance floor. As long as you can allow it to escape in its full glory, it naturally gets quieter as you move away. I also think the result is a lot better with the inherent clarity of KV2."
The sound quality of the KV2 product is something to which Bowman Daniels returns regularly during our conversation and he's in no doubt as to the reason for it: "The major advantage of this system is that no third-party products are used," he says.
"Every component is specifically designed and built to work with every other component, so you have the amplifiers in the EPAK modules being tailor-made for the speakers they are going to drive; crossover and limiter networks which are designed purely to work with the other system components and so on."
One potential drawback was the lack of a 19" rackmount option for the amplifiers. Word is that a rackmount version is in development, but in the meantime engineers have had to cast aside some of their preconceptions. "Because the amps aren't rackmounted, at the moment it's different," the man from Scannotes. "Engineers are so used to just chucking things in 19" racks, when you can't do that your immediate reaction is 'Oh my God. Can't put it in a rack? What's wrong with it?'
"But once you get over that initial culture shock it's fine. The EPAK modules house four amps each, the crossovers and limiters are built in and the cabling is straight forward. In that respect it made the installation a breeze. Because of the purpose-built components, we also found that there was very little need to EQ it. Trying to alter it in any way only made the sound worse, it worked best just straight out of the box, plugging it in and letting it go."
After a highly successful opening night at the Power Station and (at the time of writing) with two more KV2-based nightclub projects on the go, Bowman Daniels is happy to espouse the qualities of the system. He pauses, before summing up his thoughts with typical 'noiseboy' succinctness: "It's the best sound system in a nightclub I've ever heard."
