We rolled in and had a word with the sound guy who is apparently now lecturing about sound engineering yet didn't know what RTA or a measurement mic was. Sweet. Anyway we'd previously asked if we could move their kit out because a) it looks awful and b) physics or something... They denied us the pleasure due to their wiring being shoddy as hell and various connections on the speakers being damaged. So we left the 2 huge bass bins, 2 broken mid/highs and 2 powered tops in situ.
We found a spot on the wall to the right of the stage to put the subs which seemed to work quite nicely, there was a minor null towards the opposite far corner but it was nothing major. The room is basically a brick box with a curved ceiling. During testing we found that the church pews(!!) on the opposite wall just concentrated the bass which was a nice little trick.
So setup was 2xOT12s with melded arrays and the cheapest drivers and a pair of T60s@18" wide with Lab12s. I brought in my 22" wide Lab12 T39s to see what I could do with them but on the night they were little more than a projector stand... Oh how the mighty have fallen.
After running the room RTA the subs were being pulled wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy down. Music sounded nice but of course we needed some chest thumping going on so PEQ was tweaked to give what can only be described as a wall of low end.
Basically the system ran rampant all evening (9-2) and received many compliments including constant night long praise from a guy who came over from another city because he runs similar kinda nights. He said they had multiple large rigs which sounded pretty good, his sound guy knew the score yet he'd never heard anything which sounded so effortless in the production of the low end. He sat there in the room just listening intently following the bassline of various songs just nodding his head occasionally turning to me and saying "these are so good". It's fair to say he was impressed because he just wouldn't shut up about the sound... He couldn't believe there was only a 12" in each sub, nor could he fathom how the tops sounded so clean. I liked this guy, impressing people is always nice.

So yeah the pre-party had a nice buzz about it, people enjoyed themselves and many compliments on the sound being great meant we were all happy despite having to pack up and unload everything at 3am into my house.
I'm actually looking forward to the next event now we've got that place dialled in.
THANKS BILL!
