ES2 Rig for hire from Durham Events

We have this system currently available for hire, and are looking at getting another set of the same soon:

2 x KV2 ES1.0

4 x KV2 ES 1.8

2 x KV2 EPAK2500R

1 x 4 + 1 x 6 meter set of audio cables (for stack near to amp rack)

1 x 20 + 1 x 22 meter set of audio cables for right stack (across stage from amps)

4×4.0mm 20m Van Damme tour grade cable for outstanding bass reproduction.

Prices for this system start from £300 per day plus delivery & install.

This system is ideal for bands and DJ’s looking to cover crowds up to 800 people indoors and about 500 outdoors. It projects vocals and other midrange sounds with incredible fidelity, and is very easy to set up to get a pronounced ‘lead vocal’ sound. Ballrooms, large marquees and even medium size theatres are ideal spaces to use this system in.

Install of this system will take around 45 minutes depending on access/ load in times.

Here’s a graphic breakdown of one stack:

The large DJ/ PA sound system from www.DurhamEvents.co.uk

This system, when built with 2 towers of the above, is an 8000 watt groundstacked system comprising 2 x 18″ db technologies DVAs10 subs, 4 15″ db technologies DVAs09 subs & 2 Flexsys F315 tops. It is suitable for events which required long term high sound pressure levels and solid bass reproduction coupled to medium throw/ dispersion high end reproduction (ie the sound needs to travel over a crowd for 15 – 30 meters). Although intended as a full range design, the F315 makes a very capable high end unit thanks to it being very powerful and having the dedicated 6.5 inch/ 1 inch horn loaded design.

There are many advantage to this system, such as the overall low weight (the 8 boxes weigh in at only 231 kilos) and the digital switch mode amps which provide the system with extremely efficient high power whilst requiring a fraction of the mains electricity supply older analogue power amps required. This efficiency means that the amps create little heat which in turn means better performance over longer periods of time and no fans required to keep the amps cool. We feel that it is great to have no moving parts like fans in these kinds of pieces of equipment as it reduces the amount of dust/ smoke/ moisture which is drawn through the sensitive amplifier, and so can only mean longer life and less failures when in use- reliability is a top concern for us here at Durham Events!

The excellent design of the subs means they interlock which prevents the stack shaking itself apart, and the groundstack configuration means a relatively small system footprint for an overall huge sound.

Head sound engineer and resident DJ James has made a short video about this system which you can check out here:

Here’s the brief description of the point of this test: to highlight the difference between groundstacked arrays of DB’s 2 flagship single transducer 1kW subwoofer speakers, the 15″ DVA S09 and the 18″ DVA S10 . Sometimes we don’t get much of a chance to critically listen to our rigs when they’re actually installed, and so to just set them up next to each other is useful to highlight key differences between the speakers ‘natural’ sound

For reference we placed a single Felxsys F10 on top of the boxes to add some high end so the sound wasn’t all bass, but these are obviously way out of their depth as 150 watt tops against 2 killowatt bass bin setups.

Sound sources were Pioneer CDJ1000mk3 digitally connected to a DJM800 desk, which in turn was connected with single neutrik van damme XLR cables to the input stage of the subs crossover networks. The decks were around 15- 20 feet away from the two stacks, as seen here:

DB technologies DVAS09 vs DVAS10 sound test

On paper these 4 subs produce 140dB (2 x DVA S09) and 142dB (2 x DVA S10) at one meter distance from the front of the speaker as a result of groundstacking them as shown above. Anyone involved in pro audio would testify that 140dB at 1 meter is officially the threshold of ‘pro’ audio. The point is not to run your system at this level all the time, but having this kind of power gives systems ‘headroom’ to operate for longer periods of time at high output levels without either sounding strained or breaking down.

Without getting too technical with this review, we’ll just leave it as this: both of these boxes produce excellent results without the need for any additional EQ or crossovers. They sound strong, defined and musical in equal measure with the obvious trade off being that the 15″ sub produces a more ‘punchy’ sound versus the slightly more weighty sound of the 18″ unit.

When groundstacked like this the 4 subs produce very professional output levels, and as both subs have 4″ voicecoils inside it is no surprise to hear that they continue to produce the solid sounds for hours without sounding tired or losing definition.

We switched them around into a few different configurations to hear what different tones we could produce, including trying them in the same sort of setup as you found in the Forty & Fifty line configs- dB tech’s previous flagship line of PA gear. With an 18″ on the bottom end, the 15″ producing a naturally more punchy middle weighted sound & the Flexsys F315 (15″ 6″ 1″) in a proper horn on top and crossed over at 120hz we get a very high power, clear and versatile sound system which can handle everything from Jazz to dancemusic for crowds up to 400 outdoors and maybe even up to 800 indoors.

Overall we are very impressed with the versatility this equipment offers us, and until we find ourselves offering playback to crowds over 1000 strong we don’t see any need for larger, heavier or more expensive gear than this kit.

Highlights were undoubtedly the Wedding we catered for on New Years Eve where we supplied 2 separate systems: a live sound setup for a band to play as well as a full DJ rig made up of a 4000 watt sound system & lights for the 250 guests.

Northumberland’s Doxford Hall has a very large ballroom which is a spectacular setting for any event, but also demands an adequate sound system to provide the right ambience for the guests.

Other than this hallmark event we also supplied sound systems to 3 private parties in the Durham area, to the Pitcher & Piano (Newcastle), and in both the Riverside Restaurant & Six at Gateshead’s Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, and finally Piccolino Restaurant in Newcastle on New Years Eve’ itself.

We also fitted a large par can wash lighting system in Piccolino to turn the interior red as well as sourcing their DJ for the party.

A busy few days!

Firework display at Doxford Hall from New Year's eve 2011/12

We do a few different packages of kit based around a combination of American DJ, Chauvet & Martin lights. Our basic package is a pair of American DJ Quad Phase lights which are enough for some events in brighter rooms. These come supplied with a T Bar tripod stand and suit weddings and similar smaller events. We also have 3 American DJ pro grade wash light (Theatrix Pro 48) which are extremely powerful and can bathe very large areas in rich, even colours. These can also transform their output through the full 7 colour range in a slow sequence which lets them create subtle atmospheres at your event. Their party piece includes a strobe function and also multi coloured flashing modes for when things are really getting excited. The American DJ equipment list is growing thanks to their excellent new products, but currently we also have 2 Quad Phase LED, 2 x Revo 4 LED, 1 x Nucleus PRO centrepiece scanner and all the requisite remote controllers for easy operation for inexperienced users.
We have 2 Lasers in stock- a Laser UK Blue Accord & also a KAM StarCluster 3D. Both of these Lasers produce dramatic effects which can fill an entire Marquee with moving light if required.
A combination of these products is enough for most events with crowds up to 300 people, but for when things get bigger than this our final collection of lighting can make a big difference. Martin Mania LED scanners are some of the best on the market and look fantastic when used as a set. We have invested in a total of 4 of these outstanding units, and they provide a final visual impact to a show to really wow a crowd, but without looking anything other than smooth & classy.
Add one of our smoke machine to these pieces of kit to get the best visuals.
In a DJ scenario we use our Kam 8 foot DJ stand with integrated lighting bar to assemble our light show. This makes for a compact, small footprint DJ stand which looks the business but doesn’t take over the entire room.
Here’s a few example shots of a setup for a wedding featuring 3 x Theatrix Pro LED 48s, 2 x Quad Phase LED, 1 x LaserUK Blue Accord & a 900watt QTX smoke machine. This is a premium light package comprising over £2400 of kit, and as you can see it is capable of a surprising array of different looks and routines.

DMX Controlled Event Lights from Durham events

James Cummings DJing for Durham Events during Durham University Freshers week

Our resident DJ James Cummings had an awesome night playing to a room full of Durham’s newest students at Varsity Durham during Freshers week. Supported by legendary percussionist Paris Katsinas, long serving regular at Newcastle’s Floritas bar, the tunes went down brilliantly thanks to the provision of an extra 2.5 kilowatts of sound kit and a big light rig- we used 2 of our American DJ Quad Phase lights alongside 1 Laser UK bright blue laser and one American DJ Theatrix Pro 48 wash light. All of that coupled with the in house Martin Audio sound system and a smoke machine made for an amazing show, and the reviews on the night were nothing short of excellent.

Thanks to the efforts of Durham Events Varsity Durham doubled their turnover from the same event last year.

Event Supplies for Durham University freshers week

The project for the Laser show started with some well thought out photography work on the behalf of the gallery owners, who took the concept of graffiti poetry and beamed some essential tag lines on to famous landmarks around Newcastle. You can read the blog article on how they did this through their site, but this is probably the most striking image from the pre show promo…

Angel of the North with a Laser 3.14 motif as created by Unit 44

The brief was simple in terms of the sound system required: it needs to sound massive when it’s playing in the background. The bottom line is that to get a good mix between coverage and big sound you need some muscle in your system, so this is what we went with.

Medium Conference Sound System

A total of 4.6 kilowatts of power in 6 boxes, all controlled through a Pioneer DJM800 (in the flight case on top of the Vinyl shelves in the left hand shot, we supplied this along with 2 x CDJ1000s) and EQ’d with a DBX Driverack PX (behind the stack in the right shot). As the system was being used for nothing more than background music, and knowing that most of it was going to be from a computer playing MP3′s, we set the EQ up to be very hyped in the low & high end. The overall sound was exactly as you would expect- warm and powerful but totally unobtrusive to conversation.

Small lightweight conference speakers

With this particular venue being long and thin we used the lightweight properties of the Flexsys F10 speakers to add coverage to the main display area (right hand side of the right hand shot- exposed brick wall). Thanks to them being only 12kg they sat unsupported on the bookshelves. These speakers have a great neutral sound and wide dispersion so are perfect for this kind of job. Using these speakers like this also meant we could keep maximum floor space for people visiting the show, and important factor in the increasingly popular Unit44 shows.

The main stack was 2 x DB technologies DVA S09 with one Flexsys F315 on top, with a crossover point of 150hz. The other Flexsys F315 was placed on top of the dark room at the other end of the room and ran full frequency. These 315′s are pretty versatile as well as they are capable of running high SPL while retaining full frequency response thanks to their 3 way design, one 15 inch bass driver, then a 6 inch mid driver coupled to a 1 inch compression driver. With the gallery owners looking for an authoritative sound stacking the 2 x 1 kilowatt subwoofers was a good way to go- instantly adding 3dB of bass just through acoustic coupling.

We also supplied a set of 3 American DJ Theatrix Pro 48 LED wash lights which were used to apply colour wash across the entire roof of the venue. Photos of this coming soon, apparently it looked stunning! These wash lights can really throw out some colour and have all of the advantages of being LED- lightweight, low power consumption, relatively small. They are a very useful set of lights!

The show itself was a big success, the team sold large quantities of their limited run prints and even managed to shift a few of the more expensive works which included, appropriately, laser cut offerings.

Laser 3.14 Hoults Yard Newcastle Show

A big success for all parties involved!

Here’s the feature on the limited run invites to the event.

http://www.unit-44.com/blog/Invites/

This show is the largest sound and light show for the pro audio market in the UK, so given that Durham Events are always looking for ways to improve the services we can offer our clients it was an important fixture for us to check out in 2011. We are planning on expanding several parts of our business and are aiming to be able to move into new markets in live sound, lighting and straight up PA supply.

After the success of our Crastonbury event we sat down and evaluated areas where we could have done better. We have been scrutinising our front of house PA & our monitoring solutions & discussing ways of improving feedback prevention, as well as analysing the performance of our wireless microphone systems. Finally, staging and lighting have been one of the areas we are most keen to try and improve.

With these thoughts in mind it is no surprise to find us at Plasa with a few burning questions for the big boys like Martin, Funktion One, Chauvet, Mackie, EAW, JBL, EV, DBX, Klark Technic, Ohm, APG, RCF and friends.

Here’s a brief outline of a few things which impressed us the most, starting with main man Tony Andrews (& his wife) + his number 2 John from Funktion One.

Tony Andrews, Funktion One designer

We spent about an hour and a half in the F1 demo room and were lucky to get away with asking Tony a few straight up questions about configurations, performance and the competition. Anyone who has ever encountered Tony will know the sort of response we got- full of expletives and full of the soul of a man who is completely immersed in his business. Tony tells you answers which are based on years and years of research, field testing and no compromise design, but fortunately does not come across like some of the “greater than thou” salesmen you might encounter on other company stands.

Suffice to say we’ve added 2 Resolution 2 and 2 F218 bass bins to our wishlist, closely followed by some of the new Lab Gruppen amplifiers like these:

Lab Gruppen 2011 amps

Another chance encounter saw us in conversation with APG speakers, a relatively little known French manufacturer with a similar no compromise approach to speaker design to F1, minus all the ‘dance music only’ reputation F1 seem to get.

APG stand at Plasa 2011

We knew about APG thanks to having worked with DACS audio in Jarrow a few times who have specified their systems in numerous installations throughout the Apartment Group in and around Newcastle. We have also used an 4 kilowatt APG rig at an dance music event for over 1000 people around 5 years ago. Now they have several newer designs on the market and were very keen to tell me how many improvements had been made to the Electro Acoustic performance of their latest designs- which makes them likely to be sensational pieces of kit.

Chauvet make numerous lights which are cross application suitable, but also make a lot of kit for the DJ market. It was good to be able to see a little more of their larger touring grade kit in person, and their stand looked pretty awesome.

Chauvet & Phillips at Plasa 2011

Other products which caught our attention included the RCF dual 15” TT series subs and a monster speaker made by EAW with a dual 10” design coupled to a coaxial compression driver design capable of over 140dB peaks! That is loud on a massive scale. It seems that several manufacturers are also looking to give gigging DJs and medium band 4 box configurations a massive amount of power, we saw designs from Ohm, Tannoy, EV, JBL, QSC & FBT which looked like very serious pieces of kit on paper. We will be arranging demo session with several of these manufacturers to assess their real world capabilities.

Allen and Heath have made many pieces of kit which we have bought, sold,  hired and used personally over the years, so no surprises we spent a while on their stand. Interesting products include the Live X and the lovely GSR24 mixer. This last mixer would be our top choice for studio use as it is perfectly designed for fusing analog and digital in an affordable way. It has two valves built in to the desk (which run hot) directly under the large VU meters- too cool for school and sounded brilliant.

Allen & Heath GS R24 mixer at Plasa 2011

The best light show we saw at Plasa was the demo carried out by Clay Paky. Their touring specific lights were nothing short of amazing, but were beyond anything we have planned in the medium term, and frankly were so bright that they gave us a headache! Still cool to check them out though.

Clay Paky demo at Plasa 2011

Finally, one more gadget which caught our eye was the audio and DMX wireless transmitters made by Tri Wi. These things transmit 2 channels of HD audio and DMX instructions over distances of up to 2 kilometres with only 11ms of delay, requiring only line of sight to work. A real problem solving piece of kit to avoid cable runs through crowds.

Tri Wi at Plasa 2011

It is always pretty amazing to visit events in Earls Court as they are always on a massive scale, take for example London Fashion week which is the next major event to move in to the venue, or various photography led shows. It is always pretty mind blowing to think about the people who are hanging around at these shows, and amazing to consider how many of them are making so many people have ‘once in a lifetime experiences’ at events and festivals around the world.

Stands at Plasa 2011

All in all this was a really useful knowledge building exercise for Durham Events and we look forward to expanding our portfolio with some of the excellent kit on display.

Plasa Show 2011

The Cuban Brothers Rock Crastonbury 2011

Los Hermanos Cubanos, aka The Cuban Brothers were the headline act at this year’s Crastonbury festival and blew away the audience with Kengo, Miguel & Archerio’s dance routines and massive tunes.

Crastonbury festival 2011 flyer

This event saw Durham events supply a 4 kilowatt soundsystem, 40 channels of front of house remote mixing (via a 45 meter loom) using Yamaha O1V, three stage monitors, 2 Pioneer CDJ 1000 mk3s & DJM800 mixer plus 2 Technics SL1210 mk2 Vinyl turntables with Concorde needles, full band microphones, cables and other assorted things including 2 Martin MAC 250 moving head lights and two American DJ Theatrix LED wash lights, which can be seen working in full affect in the photo above.

Main PA was 2 x DB Technologies Flexsys F315 on top of 2 x DB Technologies DVAS09 bass bins (1K per box), all of which ran through DBX driverack on Van Damme cables. The monitors on stage were 3 x DB Flexsys F10 and then an additional DB Opra Live 405 for the dedicated DJ monitor. Shure wireless microphones and Shure SM58, AKG C1000s, AKG d112, AKG C418, Sennheiser E845 and Shure SM57 microphones took care of all other tasks from vocals to guitar cabinets. Beyer Dynamic mic stands ensured all mics stayed where they were wanted and a Zoom H4N provided 1st class audio recording.

The event was a huge success with a lot of money being raised for the main charity, the RNLI. The profile of the event was raised significantly thanks to the help of numerous social media outlets and also through conventional press, for example with this article on Crastonbury appearing in the Journal. This piece was organised by DurhamEvents, as was a great deal of the promo to do with the event.  This event is now planned to be a regular event taking place every year on this busy weekend. Durham Events is responsible for curating the event as well as running it, and the acts booked were carefully considered before they were included in the running order. The atmosphere is a very important part of this event and our brief was to keep the music interesting but diverse, hence visitors heard everything from Reggae to Funk and rock with some genuine Hip Hop thrown in to the equation. The second day of the event saw a serious lineup of top class DJs play back to back sets, one of which you can hear at the bottom of this page.

Here’s a few more shots showing some of the things we provided which made the event such a success:

Crastonbury 2011

For more photographs you can visit the Craster Arms website, or visit the Craster Arms Hotel Flickr group

This is the largest undertaking Durham Events are currently responsible for and demonstrates our ability to provide everything for professional bands and DJs in a single day, as well as catering to high spec riders from serious international artists (in the shape of the Cuban Brothers). The total number of people to visit Crastonbury in 2011 was around 1500+.

Durham Events also provided audio recordings of several of the acts who appeared at Crastonbury using a high quality Zoom H4N, which also provided the audio for the forthcoming Cuban Brothers Video footage shot on the night of the event (coming soon). Some of these recordings can be heard here:

Live acts:

Atlantic B3

Livewire Featuring Karen Harding

DJ Matty Forster

What an event, what an atmosphere!

Crastonbury 2011 crowd scene

Hire professional speakers from Durham Events for you party or event.

At Durham Events we understand that different clients have different requirements. That’s why we carry a wide selection of different equipment to be able to cater for a number of different sound stages. In the above image you can see some of our inventory, including DB Technologies Flexsys F10 and F12 speakers alongside DB Technologies Opera Live 402 speakers. We also have RCF TT series speakers, RCF ART series speakers and a few Mackie boxes. We have big systems capable of providing coverage for audiences up to 1000 people outdoors, but can also supply systems with a small footprint suitable for wide coverage- perfect for conferencing and corporate events. For more information please get in touch and we will see if we can meet your requirements.

Our largest system is a 10,000 watt groundstacked system comprising 4 x 18″ db technologies DVAs10 subs, 4 x 15″ db technologies DVAs09 subs & the RCF 4PRO 7001A system as mid/ high frequency. It is suitable for events which required long term high sound pressure levels and solid bass reproduction coupled to medium- long throw dispersion high end reproduction (ie the sound needs to travel over a crowd for 20- 50 meters).  This combination of flagship products from RCF & DB Technologies creates a very powerful & efficient system which is ideal for indoor dance music events up to 1000 people and outdoor band/ live music events for similar numbers depending on the venue.

One key thing we do offer is versatility, and combinations of our kit can cater for a wide range of different kinds of event.

Speaker inventory from Durham Events

From small band gigs and parties right through to large scale corporate hospitality work we have what is needed to get your message across.