Road Test: Adamson S7

Simon Widdowson is the Director of Sound House, a supplier of professional sound, lighting, staging, and vision services for events. Based in Launceston, Tasmania and operating state-wide, Sound House’s experienced team takes pride in providing exceptional customer service, and has the technical capacity to assist with all event sizes. The Sound House team believe there is no better feeling than putting on a perfect live show.

The S7 is our second major line array. Our first was great, but the elements were large and heavy. It was difficult to transport, handle, and rig. It turned out we didn’t use it a lot of the time because many of the spaces we work in couldn’t handle the weight or size.

We work on a lot of high-end corporate gigs, mid-sized outdoor events, sport, and gala balls. We’ll often find ourselves outside somewhere, using our own hydraulic stage trailer with the PA flown on it, running live bands and DJs in front of 3,000 punters.

Knowing we were in the market for something more suited to our regular venues, Adamson distributor CMI Music & Audio invited us to come and have a listen to an S7 system. We were already evaluating new line arrays, and kept finding most products were a little too big and heavy.

In the end, the S7 system fitted our market perfectly. We felt that the S7 has noticeably more punch, clarity, and output compared to its nearest competitors for the size. It really is a phenomenal box.

In Use

After using Adamson’s Blueprint software to model the S7s performance, coverage, and rigging angles, we roll out the system in roadcases of four elements each. The flybar setup and rigging system is excellent. Its integrated nature means no more losing pins. Everything is colour-coded and numbered. It’s an absolutely bullet-proof set up.

Because of the S7s size and weight, you could rig a system by yourself if absolutely necessary. With eight elements and rigging coming in at roughly 150 kg a side, we can hang our system in almost any venue, including of course our own stage trailer.

The build quality is fantastic, and we love the look of the system. It’s stylish and minimal, which is great for corporate gigs.

Sonics

Another thing we love about the S7 is that once we load the processing presets into the Lab Gruppen amps, there’s never very much in the way of EQ that needs doing. It just sounds great out of the box.  The rear rejection is excellent, which means heaps of gain before feedback. And the vocal intelligibility is phenomenal.

While it is hard to articulate exactly why the vocal intelligibility is so impressive, I’ll give it a go. To my ear, I find that the vocals aren’t necessarily louder, it’s that their frequency range just keeps pushing. It’s extremely accurate and travels past the point where other systems lose coherence. The S7s throw long and don’t drop off, meaning coverage stays strong and consistent throughout the venue.

We’ve had a lot of engineers point out that the output and quality is incredible for the S7’s size, and we’re definitely seeing Adamson becoming a big player in the high-end market. Many engineers who were totally devoted to other brands are really liking the system. We had some great reactions the first time we took it out. It had rain covers over it, so no-one knew what it was, and the visiting engineers were blown away!

Service & Support

The service and support from CMI has been great, particularly the way they keep us updated with what’s going on with Adamson in terms of product upgrades and new firmware. We’re excited by the imminent release of the new Adamson software, and we’ve purchased CS Series amp modules to upgrade our S10ps to be powered and networkable.

We’ve run powered systems in the past and like the flexibility and control. We’re aiming to run hybrid distributed systems, with a mixture of CS Series point source boxes on AVB, our line array, and subs. We’re leaving our S7s as passive at the moment, but like the fact we can upgrade to CS when we’re ready.

Product Info: www.adamsonsystems.com

Distributor Australia: cmi.com.au

Distributor New Zealand: directimports.co.nz

Adamson S7 – The Specs

Frequency Range (+/-3 dB): 80 Hz – 18 kHz

Nominal Directivity (-6 dB) H x V: 100° x 12.5°

Maximum Peak SPL: 138 dB

Components LF: 2x ND7-LM16 7” Kevlar Neodymium Driver

Components HF: 1x NH3-8 3” Diaphragm / 1.4” Exit Compression Driver

Power Handling (AES / Peak) LF: 500 / 2000 W

Power Handling (AES / Peak) HF: 110 / 440 W

Rigging: Slidelock Rigging System

Connection: 2x Speakon NL4

Dimensions HxWxD: 203mm x 122mm x 411mm

Weight: 15kg