London's Heaven Nightclub
UK - Heaven, described as the most famous gay nightclub in the world, has taken delivery of a new high-powered 4-way sound system. Inspired by its new owners, David Inches (who has been involved with the club since its beginning), Jeremy Millins and Paul Savory - who recently bought out Virgin Clubs' interest in the venue - the contract was entrusted to experienced installation contractors, Blue Box Company.

Headed by Mark Metcalf - who has a long association with Millins - Blue Box specified a QSC PowerLight system to drive the component parts of a carefully thought-out Funktion One system design. Resident production manager, Rob Barton said that the venue, situated under vaulted arches at London's Charing Cross, had recently benefited from £50,000 of sound screening and acoustic treatment, which had prevented sound leakage and enabled Heaven to raise the power rating from the previous cap of 96dB(A).

Mark Metcalf took the opportunity to optimize the sound coverage in the hard rectangular main room by designing a quad system, with two clusters of three Funktion One Skeletal Resolution 5s (12", 8" and 2 x 1" compression drivers), flown on truss either side of the stage at one end, facing two pairs at the other end. Further mid-highs form four stacks with Funktion One F218 (2 x 18) bass cabinets.

Using the highly controlled dispersion pattern of the speakers (25° horizontal, 20° vertical), correctly arrayed, Metcalf has achieved the desired projection and solved the cancellation problems previously experienced. Coverage, which previously required six speaker positions, has been comfortably achieved with four of the new system.

The 48k rig will now comfortably deliver the new maximum cap of 106dB(A) on the dancefloor, and has delighted the new owners, engineers and customers alike. Mark Metcalf carefully calculated a power assignment to optimize the system, commissioning four powerful QSC PowerLight PL6.0s to drive the lows, a pair of PL4.0s running the low mids and PL2.0s to drive the high mids and tops. All were supplied by HW International.

(Lee Baldock)


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