Vanguard opens with biggest Turbosound system in Asia
Published: ASIA
KOREA: Mega-club Vanguard has recently opened its doors, allowing itself the opportunity to unveil what is reported to be one of the largest Turbosound club systems ever to be installed in Asia. Following discussions with the manufacturer, its senior technical specialist, Howard Smart, was handed responsibility, along with installers Di Au Tech, for the set up and commissioning of all of the audio systems at the venue.
The venue is situated inside the Ramada Hotel in the heart of Seoul's Samsung District. Run as an entirely separate business, the owners of the Vanguard Club were looking to create an ‘elite high-end clubbing experience that would rival some of the world's best nightclubs’, taking inspiration along the way from a similar venue on the other side of the world.
The nearly 1,000 sq-m Las Vegas-situated Hakkasan nightclub occupies multiple floors of the Strip’s MGM Grand Hotel, and has also been equipped entirely with the manufacturer’s Flex Array loudspeakers. Vanguard's owners were reportedly impressed by the concept at Hakkasan and, following a meeting with the manufacturer’s Korean distributor, decided that the Flex Array was the right choice.
‘The selection of the three-way Flex Array line array system was two-fold,’ explained Di Au Tech’s CEO Mr Ahm, ‘not only for purely audio quality reasons but also because it was appropriate to Vanguard's future business direction in Korea's very active and competitive club market. Although the basic technical specification for the main system was modelled closely on the Hakkasan rig, Flex Array proved itself crucially adaptable to the slightly different taste in Korean musical culture, particularly in the bass frequencies.’
Each of the four dance floor main speaker hangs consists of two TFA-600L single 18-inch flown bass cabinets, four TFA-600H 75-degree dispersion three-way line arrays and four TFA-600HW 100-degree dispersion line arrays, supported by FB-600 flybars and CF-600 conversion frames.
Ground stacked directly underneath the speaker hangs are eight TFA-600B bass cabinets, arranged two wide by four high. A mono ultra-bass stack made up of eight TFS-900B double 18-inch Flashline subwoofers has been positioned in front of the DJ, and on top of these are four Flex Array TFA-600H front fills.
‘As the main system is configured over five discrete frequency bands I designed custom five-way presets for the LMS-D26 controllers,’ explained Mr Smart. ‘In fact a total of 13 Turbosound LMS series controllers are used throughout the installation so that every group of speakers has its own individual DSP capability.’
The side and VIP areas are catered for by TCS-122/96 12-inch two-way cabinets, with the HF components rotated for a landscape orientation, and TCX-12 12-inch passive two-way enclosures. There are also ‘ultra-VIP' rooms equipped with Milan M10 powered two-way cabinets. Turbosound T-series amplifiers power the entire system.
‘The final positioning and tuning of the system was basically carried out in one evening,’ continued Mr Smart. ‘In terms of coverage it's very even, with not a blind spot anywhere on the dance floor. Being five-way it's got plenty of frequency extension, and it's certainly pulling its weight when it comes to SPL - without a trace of distortion when cranked. The low and sub-bass frequencies pressurise the whole room beautifully, and on the opening night DJ/producer Sven Vath summed it up in just one word: “Amazing”.
‘It's probably one of the best sounding clubs in all of Asia, if not the world, and puts the South Korean capital firmly on the map with a super-club status venue and a sound system to match.’