Zach Anthony – Equipo Vision project RCF HDL6-A

When Equipo Vision schedules training and marketing meeting, they don’t use a conference room or classroom, they book a stadium.

A subsidiary of Amway products, Equipo Vision set out to schedule their 10th anniversary of training and marketing sessions, hiring Dallas-based NZ Events in cooperation with DH Systems for total AV production needs for a four date tour.

With venues ranging from 6,000-12,000, this became a concert-style production. As the primary purpose of the events is for training and education, intelligibility to every seat was of the highest importance. Additionally video playback and high impact music playback are elements of the show.

When it came to consider a system to meet the sound specifications required, with ease of handling, cartage and set up, DH Systems Senior Engineer Zachary Anthony found the new RCF small format HDL6-A an ideal solution.

Anthony had attended a demonstration of the RCF system, and found it to be the solution he needed. “I was really blown away how the system responds,” noted Anthony of the demo he attended. “The tuning of the box is so precise, I could hear one-half dB changes, which demonstrates the strength of the linearity and phase response of the cabinets.”

Anthony had attended a demonstration of the RCF system, and found it to be the solution he needed. “I was really blown away how the system responds,” noted Anthony of the demo he attended. “The tuning of the box is so precise, I could hear one-half dB changes, which demonstrates the strength of the linearity and phase response of the cabinets.”

RCF calls the new HDL6-A line array module “the tiniest little monster.” And Anthony concurs in every way.

While the number one priority was sound reproduction, Anthony also describes how the system functionality allowed the client to save money on production costs. The HDL6-A is an active, 1400-watt two-way line array module with two 6” woofers and a 1.7” high frequency compression driver weighing only 26 pounds.

“I was really blown away how the system responds”

The system was comprised of two hangs of 16 HDL6-A, with another six HDL6-A on the lip of the stage deck for front fill plus four NXL44-A for side fills, along with six SUB9006-AS dual 18” subwoofers.

Regarding sound performance, as these were Spanish language programs, “with the speed in which they enunciate, we had to be sure to have a system to respond,” says Anthony. “That’s not easy to do with the reverb in the larger venues of the tour. The intelligibility of the RCF system was astounding.”

Measurements at the venues showed they were able to achieve 104 dB all the way to the back of the upper level of the venue, all seats within 2 dB. “So many people showed up for these events there was seating needed to be added on the sides outside the primary coverage angle of the system,” says Anthony. “As the off-axis control of the RCF cabinets tapered off gently, we were able to cover those areas effectively.”

The intelligibility of the RCF system was astounding

As this was one of the first deployments of a large format event for the RCF cabinets, Anthony had some initial trepidation. “I was nervous, but confident knowing of the RCF heritage,” he says. Once he started modeling with the RCF prediction software, he was quickly convinced this was the right system.

When it came to the production aspects of the system, “The PA was incredibly fast to deploy,” says Anthony. “The mechanics of the speakers are designed to go together very easily. The pin point would line up effortlessly allowing for quick and precise deployment of the array cabinets,” continuing, “The lightweight composite boxes could easily be adjusted by just one person, reducing our labor required to fly the array,” saving both time and labor.

“The combination of all self-powered speakers and really slick signal distribution thanks to Rat Sound “sound tools” CAT snakes, we were able to zone the arrays for easy shading via external processing. When it came time to tune the system we found that minimal amplitude and EQ shading was required to achieve minimal variance from the front row to the furthest seat, this in part due to accurate array focus prediction with EASE Focus.”

Compared to other tour-type systems, cartage was also reduced. “The entire system took up less than six-feet of truck space,” Anthony notes.

It was noted by all during the tour that the RCF system, while smaller, was far superior to larger systems used in previous events.

In the end, “we met every performance metric with the HDL6-A from RCF including budget, ease of deployment, quality and intelligibility and minimal truck space,” says Anthony. “All said this is the most impressive little big PA we have ever worked with.”

The PA was incredibly fast to deploy