Funktion-One Meets B3 in Melbourne

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FUNKTION-ONE MEETS B3 IN MELBOURNE

Sheltered in the concrete underground of the Etihad Stadium carpark in Melbourne’s central business district, B3 arrived on the city’s clubbing map in late-2018 with the promise of three special events per year, each one welcoming around 7,000 people.

B3 is the brainchild of Daniel Teuma, Director of Novel Tours & Events. In the lead up to its launch, Teuma explained the rationale behind the pop-up nightclub: “One aspect sorely lacking in Melbourne’s nightlife is an inner-city location suitable for largescale, indoor events,” he said. “To ensure each occasion is truly special, B3 will only host three events per year and feature artists who have transcended their respective niches to become full-blown scene icons.”

The first of those events featured DJ Koze, Charlotte De Witte and Gerd Janson, as well as a Funktion-One Vero sound system from Full Throttle Entertainment. Full Throttle’s Managing Director, Adam Ward, explained: “We’ve been providing audio to Novel for over five years now and we are always happy to support them in their projects. B3 was one of the most interesting events yet. The concept was to hold a dance party in an underground car park. We needed to take a unique approach to the sound in order to deal with the acoustic properties of the space as well as the

extremely low ceiling while at the same time delivering high fidelity audio to the 7,000-plus patrons.”

Before the sound system went in, Full Throttle highlighted how important acoustic treatment would be to the audio quality. Ward said: “The ceiling went up and down in waves from 3.8m at the lowest point to 4.3m the highest and oscillated between these two heights all the way down the room. Needless to say, the reflections were atrocious and would have been a nightmare if left untreated.

We sought out the help of Greenspec Solutions with a new acoustic product. Thankfully the promoter was gracious enough to give us the latitude with the budget to do the job properly. Greenspec Solutions hung almost 4,000 linear metres of acoustic panelling that ranged in a depth from 300mm to 1200mm. It was a massive undertaking but completely worth it in the end - the deadness of the space was astounding and the final response from the crowd made it all worth it.”

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B3

Full Throttle devised a ground stacked Vero system, in order to get in under the ceiling with a traditional left/right stack either side of the stage. Ward and his team configured the Funktion-One ground stacks with two Vero V60 at the top, then a V315, four BR218 and two V132 super subs. The stacks reached up to around 4.2m, just 100mm below the ceiling.

“We wanted to build a dance stack like no one had built before,” said Ward. “It was somewhat of a homage to the New York Club stacks of the early ‘90s using the latest technology from Funktion-One.”

With the front covered by the Vero stacks and some Evo 6EH speakers on top of F215 Mk2 enclosures for infill, Full Throttle addressed the challenge of getting even coverage further down the space by using four positions of two upgraded Resolution 5s on top of two F218 Mk2 bass enclosures.

Ward continued: “It was a very unusual setup. I think this was the first and, so far, only time it has been set up like this - the performance was mind-blowing. The sub bass foundation created by the V132s coupled with the transient response of the BR218 front loaded boxes was something beyond words. Once everything was correctly time aligned and time aligned with the Vero boxes on top, I realised we had kind of created a monster.”

Over the last two years, Funktion-One founder Tony Andrews has pioneered the asymmetric bass configuration, which he was able to do thanks to breakthrough products like the F132 and F124. While FTE would normally look to use this technique, the restrictions of the space demanded otherwise.

“With the limitations of the space we really couldn’t do an asymmetric sub bass set up and needed to do a more traditional stereo sub bass array.

We put the left and right boxes out very wide and used the power alley as tool to drive the sub bass down the room. The F132 subs were doing 20Hz to 45Hz. We were worried that the bass reflex speakers wouldn’t have the dynamic to project down the room, so we set up four V221 subs behind the main array in an end fire array.

“We time aligned the F132 to the BR218s and then time aligned that whole stack back to the V221s behind. Driving this bass down the room like this meant we only had the delay stacks working down to 80Hz. It took a lot of time to get everything aligned correctly yet the end result was really something.”

Full Throttle acquired its Vero system in late-2017 and has deployed it on a wide range of events over the last year or so. As the company gears up for another busy summer season, Ward reflects. “The reaction to Vero has been great,” he said. “We still get people carrying on about Funktion-One and live music, yet when you put Vero in front of them they quickly quieten down. We love it in that it gives us the ability to go after jobs that have traditionally been for the black line brigade. We’ve also seen our corporate market open up lately and we believe we’ll see even more growth here in the next year.

“My opinion of the system… wow, where do I start? We have taken on major stadium shows, through to intimate club events and now an underground car park… Vero’s versatility is incredible - it deploys very quickly, which assists in keeping the labour costs down and, above all, it sounds amazing. I just need to now buy more of it to support the growth of the company.” TPi Photos: Funktion-One www.funktion-one.com

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