The Engine Shed is part of the Lincoln University complex. The venue comprises of three areas: The Engine Shed, which is the main hall; The Platform, which is a smaller floor overlooking the main hall; and Towers, which is a sports bar serving food and drink split over two floors. It’s so called because of the locomotive shed that used to be situated here.
The Installation Brief
The main Engine Shed Hall has a capacity of around 1500. The main front of house system works well and this wasn’t part of our brief. Often the venue is split into 2 halves, with the rear bar side half catering for corporate events, careers fairs, summer balls, proms, etc. Because this section has no dedicated PA system, it had to be hired in and parts of the main hall flown PA had to be removed and re-sighted in this area. This is neither practical nor cost affective. Once the PA has been re-installed, it is then a question of control for speech, DJ’s conference etc. There is also no lighting in this section either. What was required is a totally independent sound and light solution
The Solution
The main front of house (FOH) is of extremely high quality, being used to accommodate a good level of touring bands, such as The Stereophonics, Kings Of Leon, The Zutons, to name but a few. The new PA installation did not require being of that level, however a good quality was required. We opted for a solution featuring Electro-Voice speaker enclosures and Dynacord amplification and system control. The centre of this area housed a lighting trussing square of approximately 12 meters. This only carried various lighting fixtures. Because the new PA system didn’t particularly need to be seen, wall mounting or ground stacking was out of the question. We decided to use the truss to fly all of the speakers including the 2 sub bass enclosures, weighing around 96kg’s each! Along with these we flew 8 EV full range speaker enclosures, 2 on each section.
It was important that the system was simply plug and play, being mainly used for speech, DJ and the occasional live artist. A number of Input points were required and apart from a fixed point to one wall, the other had to be a removable solution due to often being in the middle of the hall, with a draped backdrop. Our solution here was to enable this input plate to be lowered from the truss when required. Control was via a simple Dynacord wall plate, situated behind the bar into which we programmed several settings, depending on what was being used. So, a member of staff could easily switch over to either wall input or radio microphone. The whole system was Dante enabled via the software in the amplification control, meaning if required at some point, any input can be assigned to any output.
Lighting and control also needed to be simple and intuitive. For this, we installed a quantity of moving heads and par cans, down to a Stick CW4 wall mounted DMX controller, which again, we programmed a variety of settings which the staff could easily use.
A Word from the Client
”The Music Gear team made several visits, which included the manufactures operations an sales managers, which was comforting. We demonstrated great knowledge, so much so that more work from the main stage required doing, which they were happy to help with at the same time. They’ve since done another bar for us, and soon will be carrying out refurbishing another venue requiring sound and lighting in the near future
Elizabeth RansomCommercial Operations Manager