Fabric: 3D Sound & Vision
Lower Case Letters, Higher Profile Production
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If fabric owner Keith Reilly and Most Technical’s Dave Parry (see
Photo #1), share a common dream for the new London underground —
it is to have their club DJs as studio engineers, sculpting three-dimensional
sound up there in the club’s oxygen. |
VENUE SPECIFIC
Voted Club Of The Year at the recent Muzik Awards, fabric, inhabits a
state-of-the-art venue in the English capital’s famous old Smithfield
Meat Market. In an attempt to bottle that New York legacy and move it
forward inside the exposed brick and chrome subterranea, Keith Reilly
decided to raise the stakes at his landmark club.
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The outcome was that their original two-year-old sound reinforcement system was replaced by a Martin Audio system in its two main rooms (including the manic Room Two) and shortly the more intimate Room Three will fall into line. “We’re looking at moving the sound in fabric to the next dimension with the Martin Audio system,” Keith Reilly commented after announcing his decision. |
With an evolving Pro Tools production studio linked to the DJ station,
as well as a Bodysonic dancefloor, it already had the means of inducting
visceral pulses through its clientele. Add to that an Out Board Electronics
TiMax spatializing effect, taking the output on a zigzag excursion through
space, and you understand why DJs like Sasha, Terry Francis and James
Lavelle strive to create sound from this processing resource rather than
simply play music.
The Room One system has also been redesigned by Dave Parry, who is also
fabric’s resident technical manager, in conjunction with Martin Audio’s
product manager, Richie Rowley and the fabric sound team (see Photo #2).
Eight Martin Audio W8C compact enclosures were specified and formatted
in a quad array around the dancefloor.
The system was underpinned by eight of Martin’s WSX monster sub bass units,
which feature a single 18in drive unit on a 7ft(2.1m) S-shaped folded
horn. Earlier, the sound design for Room Two, which augments into a multi-channel
spatial zoning arrangement with the TiMax system, had received Martin
Audio’s H2 and H3 Blackline enclosures.
A MARQUEE INSTALLATION
The Martin order was placed through south-of-England pro audio distributors,
Marquee Audio. Yet the whole remarkable adventure had been predicated
on nothing greater than a demonstration of Martin Audio Blackline F12
DJ monitors, which were starting to become something of a reference monitor
amongst a number of the country’s finest DJs.
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Rowley was starting to experience a ground-swell of positive feedback from leading club DJs such as Lisa Lashes, Judge Jules, Carl Cox and Anne Savage, who were finding it produced a more open inoffensive foldback sound used in conjunction with their subs. Rowley already had a relationship with Dave Parry and set up a demonstration of the F12 monitors in fabric’s Room One. The quality of the produced sound — as well as the speakers themselves — was such that the monitoring system was immediately requisitioned for fabric’s flagship dance area. |
Within ten minutes of giving the DJ monitors the thumbs-up, Keith Reilly
was asking ‘What do you suggest for Room Two?’ But what encouraged Richie
Rowley to bid, in particular, was the club’s plans to incorporate a TiMax
system.
Richie Rowley emphasized, “Before any decision was made, Keith Reilly
arrived with his record bag and spent four hours listening to track after
track through the Blackline system — walking around the club and hearing
the system and its effects in all the different areas. Right up to the
end money was never discussed — and only when he was satisfied did he
shake my hand and say ‘OK, let’s do it.”’
Rowley reflects on the historical aspects of the deal: “I had worked with
Dave Parry at the Coliseum and the Ministry of Sound. When Dave joined
fabric he called me and asked me for a quote. I designed a state of the
art system with Wavefront 8 but we were way over budget, yet the spec
I wrote three and a half years ago now forms part of Room One. I never
thought in a million years I would convince them to change the core system.”
LANDSCAPE & PORTRAIT
While the Room One dimensions are landscape, Room Two is portrait shaped
and ideal territory for TiMax’s back-panning characteristics. Rowley advanced
a design concept for Room Two using Blackline. The four tri-amped horn-loaded
H3’s (15in/10in/1in) are placed in a quad array format around the dance
floor and supplemented by four bi-amped H2 cabinets (single 10in driver
w/1in horn) to provide satellite fill down the length of the dance floor.
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Each box has its own individual amplification and control — processed initially by TiMax and then by a BSS 9088 Soundweb digital network device. Providing the bass extension are eight Blackline S218’s. Four are
recessed under the stage (primarily for live performance). (see
Photo #3) Two more are at the rear and one at each side. |
The TiMax ImageMaker 8 SOR Virtual Surround processor is the central element
to Room Two’s processing and performance infrastructure. The Rowley-developed
system allows distribution of the Blackline system over eight discrete
channels, with appropriate coverage patterns to allow multiple TiMax virtual
‘Image Definitions’ to be established around the room.
As Dave Parry comments “In this way we are encouraging the DJ’s to expand
their sessions beyond just the playing of records to establish a unique,
live gig type of performance. Once we’d evaluated TiMax we all knew it
had to be part of the new system.”
The versatility of the club’s existing BSS Soundweb audio processing and
network infrastructure made it simple to re-configure for the new application.
(see Figure #1) For performance, the TiMax is MIDI-linked to Yamaha SU700
samplers with a Roland MIDI keyboard for control so that DJ’s can trigger
samples and simultaneously (or independently) drive cues in the TiMax
system’s show control PlayList to initiate complex Virtual Surround panning
moves.
TRICKERY & TECHNIQUE
The psycho-acoustic trickery employed by TiMax creates an intimate surround
experience for everyone in the crowd as opposed to just one sweet spot
in the middle of the dance floor. These same techniques are also used
to enhance the basic stereo imaging for the whole arena, as well as allowing
synthetic ‘wide’, ‘distant’ and ‘random scatter’ sound images to be programmed,
amongst others.
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Out Board Electronics’ Dave Haydon explains: “There’s the ability
to move the basic DJ mix around the room between wide and and narrow
stereo images, and rotate. There’s also a zigzag formation — hit
a cue and for ten seconds the sound will dance around the room.”
As an experienced touring and dance club designer, Dave Parry particularly relishes what can be achieved through TiMax in this area, enthusing that “the possibilities we’re opening up are endless as yet we haven’t even touched on other multimedia elements, like video projection and computer graphics.” |
Parry acknowledges that the supply companies they work with, and the support
received “has been fantastic.” By the time Room Two was completed in late
February this year fabric was beginning to smell like team spirit, and
suddenly, out of the blue, Keith Reilly asked Richie Rowley if he fancied
a crack at Room One.
For Rowley to eventually fulfill his dream of getting Martin’s Signature
system into the flagship room at Smithfield depended on a high degree
of trust. Reilly was prepared to invest that trust.
SIGNATURE SOUND
The fabric Signature system was to comprise a pair of W8C’s with the spacing
wedge of the fabric logo (see Photo #4) cut in. Rowley explains: “We had
to create the optimum angle for the W8’s because they are more generally
hung on chains from their flypoints on a rock ’n’ roll gig. 30°-35° is
the optimum splay between acoustic centers so I was able to design a wedge
to maximize this spacing.”
The fabric logo was cut into the wedge, which the club is considering
backlighting with birdies (compact display luminaries containing Par 16
lamps — smaller than a Parcan, and hence ‘one under Par’).
The W8 system is designed in a quad array with two boxes in each corner
and eight WSX’s under the stage providing a single point source. When
touring bands play, fabric has the option of hiring in two W8C’s, (from
Capital Sound Hire), which can be ground stacked on stage.
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Dave Parry believes the Bodysonic floor makes a huge difference when run quad. This is the first european installation of a Bodysonic dancefloor. In conjunction with Human Induction technology (HIT), Parry quickly overcame notions of gimmicky when he realized how effectively the 600X bass transducers vibrating underfloor travelled up through the spine and into the inner ear. As for Rowley, he says it was a bonus going into a room that had a fairly good system in it before. |
The previous JBL design had double 15ins in the air and double 18ins on
the ground. Rowley realized that having bass firing from all directions
sounded muddled because it could not be time aligned correctly. As such,
a single row of 18in drivers was mounted on 7ft(2.1m) horns under the
complete width of the stage to create a single wavefront of sub bass and
was the better option.
“It’s purely based on acoustic principles,” says Rowley. “I could squeeze
all the WSX’s in perfectly. The dance floor stretches only 7m(22.9ft)
(from DJ box to stage front) and it’s 16m(52.4ft) wide. I suppose it’s
excessive to have eight W8C’s filling that space, but the rear boxes act
as more of a fill and are turned down in level, otherwise you will have
a lot of weird things happening in the time domain.
“We believe in true horn design which needs little in the way of external
processing — there’s no need for deconstructive EQ which destroys the
amount of headroom in the system. If you put a huge boost of EQ in you
are eating up valuable headroom in the amplifiers.”
He continued: “Martin Audio approaches things differently; we remove the
typical 2in compression driver and replace this with a 6.5in cone driver
and 1in compression driver, so splitting the frequencies is usually handled
by one driver across two.
“The 6.5in cone driver has its high pass filter at 850Hz and this crosses
into the 1in at 3.5K. The 1” takes care of the fairy dust while the 6.5in
is almost the dedicated vocal driver.” From this they were able to generate
127dB on the floor, with just the first show of red lights on the amps.
So the system went in, and Rowley spent four hours doing the final tuning.
“We called Keith down when it was complete, and two and a half hours later
we were ready to go home and he kept saying ‘let me try this record’.
All different styles of music were being played, and when I asked what
he thought, he just gasped and said ‘I’m absolutely speechless.’”
ONGOING SUCCESS
The ongoing operational success of fabric has been down to its engineers
— Dave Fly in Room One, Sanj Bhardwar in Rooms Two and Three, as well
as head of live sound Roberto Peroni (and Jai Hauchu in Room Two) who
constantly babysit the DJs, and make adjustments from 22:00-06:00 three
nights a week.
If DJs are being over zealous they will start to back the system off using
the BSS 9010 Jellyfish remotes, located at the DJ booth (see Photo #5).
These guys work flat out and Dave Parry confesses he is more worried about
potential crew burn-out rather than the system hardware.
Before heading off to spec another high-power system in Paris, Dave brought
LSMAG! up to date with other ongoing technical developments. He is currently
finalizing the Pro Tools suite, enabling DJs to create multi channel mixes.
As well as the output of the DJ mix they can have up to six samples, and
with tie lines up to the studio, they will be able to mix between the
two. The new studio will also include an ISDN line so that the club can
offer webcasting facilities, with their growing corporate base in mind.
There is a dedicated space so that people can bring their videos in and
fabric works with new creative companies like Artthrob. While video, per
se, is not a major part of the club’s dynamic, there are plans in place
to promote computer artwork of ‘Directors Shorts’ on plasma screens.
There are other exceptions. For instance in August Austria’s Peter Kruder
and Richard Dorfmeister staged a fully audio/visual performance using
twenty Carousel projectors, the VJ and DJs being MIDI-linked to provide
a perfectly aligned merger of music and film.
Up in the DJ box, fabric uses industry-standard Vestax decks, Vestax and
Allen & Heath mixers, Pioneer CDJ-500’s and now the new RED Cyclops, which
Dave Parry describes as a “little loop sampler for DJs which is really
great.”
LOOPS, LASERS & CYCLIC SAMPLING
Combining RED Sound’s V2 BPM engine with a new invention ‘cyclic sampling’
Cyclops creates instant loops that cycle continuously in synchronization
with each other and the original music source. Available in pre-defined
sample lengths, all loops can be recorded ‘on-the-fly’ and played back
at the press of a button.
Multiple loops can be automatically recorded and played back in sync with
the original track, allowing spontaneous remixes during live performances
or in the studio, and monitoring via a four-digit BPM display and headphone
output.
The lighting truss is basic, consisting of Trilite up in the roof supporting
Futurelight 980 moving mirror fixtures, with patchable Lightfactor dimmers.
But once each month the lighting is entirely reconfigured.
The club also employs Martin Professional MAC 600’s to provide huge colour
washes, eight MAC 500’s, sixteen Technobeams, some Martin PRO 400’s for
colour change and several Dataflash strobes from High End Systems. There
is also a 1W air-cooled laser in Room Two.
Dave Parry constantly emphasizes: “No-one comes here just to play records
anymore — the sounds DJs play here are unique to fabric and the facilities
we offer are now starting to really get used.
“We’re really targeting people like Terry Francis, because he brings his
drum machine, while a couple of others are also bringing in G4’s. You
will only hear what Tom Middleton plays at fabric here; Sasha goes on
about ‘the fabric sound’ and he’s right. Anyone can come here and play
records, but Cuebase and Pro Tools have become de rigueur for DJs.”
The second time he played fabric Roger Sanchez played a five-hour set
— and when he celebrated his birthday there he insisted on playing right
through the night. “The (fabric) sound is tight, the bass is phat and
the energy is off the meter,” was his testimonial.
Oswald Reed is a MIDIwizard/muscian/composer/performer who lives and works in London. His fixed whereabouts remain a mystery to us.
September/October 2001 Live Sound International