dBTechnologies VIO-X205-100

Australian Parliament House (APH) is one of the few Parliament buildings in the world with function spaces available for private use. Elite were previously long-term partners, but in December 2019, we became sole AV supplier for APH. To celebrate this, we invested in 12 dBTechnologies VIO X205-100 point source cabinets.

Background

Because we already knew the spaces and client needs, we knew the brief was ‘bread & butter corporate work’. The Great Hall has a permanent PA installation, which is suitable for speech and playback, but all of the other spaces have no AV installed. Some are wide and shallow and some are quite small.

So, we needed a flexible solution to cover multiple room configurations. We looked at passive boxes but didn’t want the mess and hassle of amps in sleeve racks, so went with self-powered. After testing a few options, the VIO X205-100 series came out on top. They are good on speech enhancement, easy to deploy and look very sleek. All at a price point considerably lower than competing options that were trialled.

With people ending up quite close to the boxes in some rooms, the 100 by 100-degree dispersion pattern is perfect. It has enough spread to cover all the odd spaces with even coverage across each area.

We A-B tested alongside some 60 and 75-degree boxes but went with the wider coverage of the X205-100. I tested with background music onsite, sat in a chair under a box mounted at 1.5m and it was ‘all there’. It definitely feels like 100 by 100.

Tonality & Tech

We knew that most of the venue’s requirements are just speech and playback, so we needed a box with good vocal clarity. At Elite, we’re fans of dipole speaker boxes. We know that the concept and technology works.

These ones are pretty HiFi and the response is quite linear, yet they still have good fidelity. They are really good for speech reproduction – it just comes out of the box in the right way. These are very sweet-sounding units.

They have a 1” horn for HF and two 5” woofers for LF. Crossover is pretty high at 1500Hz but it works well in this design. The 400W RMS amp has the grunt required and we can get to DSP presets on the back for quick tweaks. The boxes seem to have enough range for cocktail duos and background music but we are looking at adding some subs for more punch on DJ sets and the like.

Flexibility

When parliament is sitting the turnover is full on. Pre-COVID, as sole provider, we were doing between 20 and 30 events per day in sitting weeks! Often turning the same room over three or four times a day.

It’s not unusual during these weeks to have 10-15 techs in the building going all day during that time. Consequently, anything that we can do during setup, pack down, and deployment to make things more efficient – it all counts. And the onboard DSP made this box even more attractive for that reason.

They are really good for speech reproduction – it just comes out of the box in the right way

EET have set up an onsite warehouse, purchasing enough APH-exclusive stock to cover all rooms simultaneously. We’ve made pairs of boxes dedicated to particular rooms and saved the room tuning in the box. We set up a system in each room, SMAART’d it, then saved that to the boxes.

If a tech is going to cover the Senate Alcove, they take the Senate Alcove boxes. Then the crew can throw a system together with lapels, lectern mic, etc, setup the gain stage on the console, push up the fader and do the gig. They’re 95% there just by plugging in. This way there is no need for ringing out, EQ-ing etc on each call.

The VIOs have a few mounting options – different brackets allow the speakers to be installed or mounted vertically or horizontally. For APH we permanently bolted on pole brackets and mount them on K&M round base stands. It looks neat and corporate friendly.

We configured all units with dBTechnologies Aurora Net software, which was a piece of cake. It’s reasonably powerful but quite intuitive and does everything that we need for jobs like this. It’s mainly used for EQ and limiting. The plug and play networking works a treat too.

Bang for buck

High finish and build quality is a must for jobs like these. We needed a timber cabinet and the metal grill on these units enhances the slick look. We could have gone with bigger name, more premium gear, but that comes at a premium cost and our business is all about maximising ROI.

For what they are, the X205 do the job really well. For any serious music reproduction, they’d need a companion sub but they are totally fine for what we use them for. We couldn’t be happier with these sweet little boxes.

Product Info: www.dbtechnologies.com/en/products/vio-x/vio-x205

Distributor Australia: nas.solutions

Distributor New Zealand: directimports.co.nz

Writer’s Bio From its humble beginnings as Elite Event Technology over three decades ago, EET is still today wholly Australian family owned and run by its founder, Darren Russell. They provide hire and install equipment, technical services, event management and styling to Canberra and surrounds.

The Specs

Max SPL126 dB

HF1x 1”, 1.4 v.c., LF2x 5”, 1” v.c

VIO X205-100 Directivity 100° x 100°

Amplifier: 400 W RMS Class-D Digipro G3

DSP: 28/56 bit

AD/DA Converter: 24 bit/48 kHz

Signal Input: 1 x XLR balanced, 1 x RJ45 Link (RDNet), 1x USB (Data Service)

Signal Output: 1x XLR balanced, 1 x RJ45 Link (RDNet)

Power: PowerCON TRUE1 In, 1x PowerCON TRUE1 Out

Dimensions: WxHxD 150 mm x 485 mm x 240 mm

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CX Magazine – August 2020   

LIGHTING  |  AUDIO  |  VIDEO  |  STAGING  |  INTEGRATION

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