News

We’re very pleased to report on a highly successful trip to Croatia, hosting Arena 6 ‘Outside the Fort’ at Outlook Festival 2011.

Outlook 2011 Outside The Fort

Set in an old naval sea fort just outside the city of Pula on the west coast of Croatia, Outlook Festival boasts the biggest line up of pure bass music and sound system culture in Europe. With headline acts such as Skream, Benga, Pharoahe Monch, DMZ, Mungos Hi-Fi, Dawn Penn, David Rodigan and another 300+ acts featured over four days, across fourteen stages, this surely is a Mecca for any self respecting dubstep, drum and bass, dub, reggae, garage or electronic music fan.

The team at Whole Nine Yards Productions tasked Neuron with providing sound reinforcement, monitoring and technical crew for the open air Arena 6 ‘Outside the Fort’, which at 1500 capacity is one of the largest on site. We took the opportunity to showcase one of our most powerful systems, and put it through its paces outdoors on a site with minimal noise limits.

“I was given the brief of re-invigorating Outlook with the best audio systems out there and was delighted to be able to bring Neuron Pro Audio on board to provide sound reinforcement for one of the festival’s principal stages. From start to finish they were a pleasure to work with, completely hassle free and achieved superlative results. Undoubtedly their system was one of the highlights of the festival. I would have no hesitation in working with them again or indeed recommending their services to any client wanting a no nonsense, results orientated audio company capable of achieving the very best.”

Ben Price – Technical Director / OUTLOOK Festival

The main front of house PA system consisted of two monstrous stacks of 8 Void Psyco Subs, each with 3 Void Stasys Prime on top. An additional Void Stasys Prime was deployed each side on stage risers to provide in-fill coverage, with an additional Arcline 6 placed centre stage to ensure even mid and high coverage across the entire crowd. The whole system was powered by our new stock of Powersoft Digam K10 ultra-lightweight Class D bass amplfiiers, with Void Infinite, and PKN Controls XE Series covering the mid and high frequencies respectively. Combined with an XTA DP548, the latest digital system processor with an inbuilt dynamic EQ platform, the results were nothing short of astounding.

Arena 6 During Setup

“We were slightly concerned upon arrival about certain geographical factors on the site affecting the performance of the system. In particular, the nature of the site meant there was a large amount of dust around the air in-takes on the amplifiers even during sound check, and the constant 38°C heat caused the cooling panels on the subs to be nearly too hot to touch before the event started. Despite these adverse conditions the system performed fantastically, with exceptionally clear mid-high coverage from front to back with considerable low end pressure up to 60m away from the stacks. We feel that this is a real testament to the system’s capability.”

Jonathan Wharton - FOH Engineer / Neuron Pro Audio

Musical highlights Outside the Fort included bastions of London’s Night Slugs label L-Vis 1990 vs. Bok Bok, Detroit techno prodigy Kyle Hall, Floating Points, Space Dimension Controller, Broke’n'£nglish and Ras Kwame as well as several unannounced special guest appearances including Jehst, Newham Generals and a last-minute Sunday set by personal request from Skream and Hatcha.

BROKE'N'£NGLISH on stage at Outlook 2011

The crowd at Arena 6

We would like to thank everyone at Outlook Festival and Whole Nine Yards for making us feel welcome, and for all the support they gave us over the week. Special thanks go to all of the festival goers for giving our arena one of the best atmospheres across the whole site, and the numerous compliments that were received about the sound.

Here’s looking forward to next year!

Photography courtesy of  www.expertphotography.com and Gary Brown at www.gbmultimedia.co.uk

Category : News

We’ve kept this one under our hats for far too long, but are pleased to announce that we’re taking an absolute monster of a soundsystem across Europe and deep into the Adriatic, for Outlook Festival – the largest bass music and soundsystem culture festival in the world. No less than 16 Psyco Subs and 8 Stasys Primes will be in deployed for a dancefloor area that is just 60m by 15m; these guys aren’t kidding when they say bass music!

All of our staff are looking to working with hotly tipped and well recognised artists such as MJ Cole, Kyle Hall, Floating Points, Teebs, Ras Kwame and Jeremiah Jae, amidst the lush Croatian countryside around the city of Pula on the west coast.

Outlook 2010 Crowd

You can find us on Arena 6, outside the main fort complex, running from Thursday the 1st Sep right through until Sunday the 4th Sep. Don’t forget your earplugs!

Category : News

Set in the grandiose confines of St George’s Hall in Liverpool, a seemingly unlikely location for a rock concert, Neuron Pro Audio in association with GSS Pro Audio played host to some of the most exciting and highly anticipated headline acts at this year’s Liverpool Sound City Festival.

Psycos and Primes at SoundCity - St George's stage

We arrived in the concert room at St George’s on Thursday the 19th and were greeted by an awe inspiring four hundred capacity circular hall from the Victorian era complete with chandeliers, white marble statuettes and cream and gold wood panelling throughout. The front of house system consisted of six Void Acoustics Psyco Subs as well as four Stasys Primes powered by our new stock of Powersoft K10 (1U switch mode 12,000 watt amplifiers) alongside Void Infinite 8 Mk2 and Chevin A2000 amps to cover the mid and high frequencies. A 48 channel Soundcraft MH4 was provided for a series of touring engineers and our own staff to operate at front of house over two days of the event, with an Allen and Heath GL4000 specified for monitor mixes.

The system was put through its paces in an acoustically challenging space that in previous years had left system techs and engineers scratching their heads. The narrow dispersion of the Primes was key in controlling the sound in this highly reverberant space, designed in the 1800s as an orchestral hall, with the Psyco and K10 combination providing ample headroom and cleanliness across the low end.

Friday the 20th and Saturday the 21st of May saw the likes of Morning Parade and Fly With Vampires supporting headliners Miles Kane and local legends Sound Of Guns to a full capacity hall. The atmosphere was transformed in St Georges with the influx of the crowd of all ages, One of our engineers, Jonathan Wharton was tucked away on stage throughout for both days on monitor duties and said “I had the pleasure of working with all of the bands featured on the bill who all came off stage with all round smiles, thanking and complimenting the technical crew on a job well done.”

Category : News

Just in time for this year’s festival season, we have added 10,000w of Void Acoustics Arcline system to our hire stock. This compromises of four Void Arcline 6 mid-high packs and four Void Arcline X bass cabinet. The Arcline system is Void’s first step into line array systems, and is compact but extremely powerful for its size. Most importantly however, it sounds brilliantly hi-fidelity, with comments from our trial bookings such as “It sounds like a giant pair of headphones”.

We can also offer three different options for arraying the Void Arcline 6; ground stacking, pole mounting or flying larger hangs of cabinets from truss, load lifter or similar are not only possible but easy, ensuring that there is a solution for every gig’s needs.

All of the integral rigging hardware has been specially developed to enable incredibly quick array builds and offers simple solutions to setting cabinet angles. Each component in the cabinet is placed along a virtual arc, giving a highly-uniform polar pattern across the whole 120 degree wide dispersion, which means that all of the audience members will experience a the same high level of sound quality.

Flown hang of 4 Arcline 6 cabinets

Void’s reputation for having some of the best understanding of bass in the industry is upheld too, with the Arcline X offering -3dB points of 38Hz and right up to 250Hz. This allows for a high crossover frequency into the Arcline 6, which ensures great phase coherence and excellent time-accurate reproduction of the upper bass and lower mid ranges.
The Arcline X is also one of the smallest physical enclosures we have seen, which combined with the high sensitivity means we are able to create a bass array capable of peaks of 150dB with a frontal area of only 3 square metres. This means less space and weight is taken up in trucks and vans, and fewer crew are needed to setup the system – for example, once the kit was loaded into the venue, we timed 2 people getting a pair of pole mounted 5kw stacks ready to use in under 30 minutes.

Further details are available on the product pages for each of the cabinets:
http://neuronproaudio.co.uk/hire-stock/loudspeakers/mid-high-enclosures/arcline-6/
http://neuronproaudio.co.uk/hire-stock/loudspeakers/bass-enclosures/arcline-x/

As with any of our equipment, you’re also welcome to arrange a demo at our unit or an event local to you by calling us on 0161 408 1545.

Category : News

After much deliberation and testing, we have purchased stock of the industry leading Powersoft K10 amplifier.

The K10 is capable of producing an astonishing 6000 watts RMS into each channel when operating a load of 2 ohms, all from a unit that takes up 1U rack space and weighs just 12kg. This allows us to easily drive up to 4 Void Psyco cabinets per channel whilst maintaing the same effortless, accurate sound provided by the Void Infinite 8 v2, and reducing space and weight consumed in amplifier racks and truck packs.

Kyle Marriott, our Managing Director says “We test drove a variety of amplifiers before making the decision to move our bass section over to modern lightweights, to ensure that we weren’t sacrificing anything sound-wise. Sound quality is our primary focus, and the K10 has excellent cone control, tonality and raw power beyond many of it’s competitors. This has been proven time and time again over several recent events. In the near future we also plan to upgrade our stock to include the new Powersoft DSP unit, which provides additional control and monitoring via software and a standard CAT5 Ethernet connection.”

You can find out further details on the amp’s product page here: http://neuronproaudio.co.uk/hire-stock/amplifiers-processing/powersoft-digam-k10/

If you would like to know more about this product, or arrange a demo, please call us on 0161 408 1545 or drop us an email on [email protected]

Category : News

We would like to congratulate Chase & Status for getting to the number 5 spot this week in the official UK singles chart with their new release “Blind Faith”. We were very pleased to be asked by the production company Somesuch & Co to provide the sound equipment necessary for the production of this video.

The director, Daniel Wolfe who has also directed videos for Take That, Plan B and Ms Dynamite, was adamant that nothing post-1991 could be used on set. This meant that we had the task of sourcing sound equipment from that period. Although you can’t actually see it in the video, there was a gigantic stack of authentic speakers, whilst not plugged in, they provided a nice addition to the set.

Whilst not strictly fitting with the rest of the set, the front of house system consisted of our state of the art Void Impulse X package (2 x Void Impulse 4ts & 1 Void Stasys X) and full DJ package of Technics 1210 vinyl decks and a pair of Pioneer CDJ1000Mk3s, which provided ample volume to allow the 400 or so extras to rave on until the early hours of the morning while the filming was carried out.

If you are interested in any of the products mentioned, or any other products that we stock, please do not hesitate to contact us. We’re happy with either email ([email protected]) or phone (0161 408 1545). For the latest updates on events that we will be providing for, why not follow us on our Facebook page. (http://www.facebook.com/NeuronProAudio)

Category : News

Happy new year from all of us at Neuron!

This January, we’ve changed our contact telephone number to 0161 408 1545 and have moved to a new, larger premises near to the Apollo venue in Manchester, which allows us to offer customers on site parking and room for demonstrations of the systems we offer. You can see a map of our new location below:

To reach us, head out of the city centre of Manchester towards Stockport, following signs for the A6, until you reach the O2 Apollo on a roundabout. Take the exit to follow the A6, and continue past Booker and the Post Office on your left. When you reach McDonald’s, take the next left at the lights onto Devonshire Street, and then left again onto Hellidon Close.

Cariocca Business Park is through the electronic gates; if they are closed, please ring the buzzer and report that you are to visit Neuron at Unit 34. Once inside, take the immediate right and follow the road around the edge of the business park. Our unit is located on your left hand side as you approach the corner nearest to the Stagecoach bus station.

Category : News

Season’s greetings from all here at Neuron!

We understand that around this time of year everybody wants to join in celebrating the festivities with their friends and work colleagues, and often the drink and food flows freely which can leave you a little worse for wear the following morning.

For this reason, during December we are offering all customers booking one of our carefully selected Party Packages for a Christmas party an extra day’s dry hire absolutely free! This means that should you enjoy yourself a little too much, you can either return the items when you’ve fully recovered the following day, or we will be happy to collect from your chosen venue for no charge within 5 miles of central Manchester (for events taking place further than this you will only be charged for fuel costs at our standard rate) should we have an additional booking for the equipment sooner than you are able to return it.

Please note that this offer is available from  01/12/10 up to and including 30/12/10 – it does not include New Year’s Eve events.

So if you’d like Neuron to help spread a little Christmas cheer through this offer, for a sound system that you can setup and operate yourself then please give us a call on 0161 408 1545 or email [email protected] today.

Category : News

Notice issued 10th Nov 2010 – Due to unforeseen circumstances, LUSU has been forced to close the venue on the evening of the Pete Tong show and the event has had to be cancelled. Paradox Events are issuing full refunds, please contact your ticket retailer for details. We here at Neuron are disheartened by this news but will provide details of similar events soon, should you wish to experience our systems.

Just another day at the office – but November 18th won’t be any ordinary day. We’re very pleased to announce that we will be providing a full front of house rig for Pete Tong when he plays for Lancaster Loves at the Sugarhouse. Pete is a world renowned DJ with more than 30 years of experience under his belt and currently hosts one of the most popular radio shows in the UK today, which attracts a worldwide audience.

For this event D.O.D (Dan O’Donnell), of Paradox Events and Mixmag/Blackberry resident DJ fame, has asked us to pull out all the stops. We will be rolling up to Lancaster with a kit list that includes 8 Void Psyco cabinets for bass and 6 Void Stasys Prime cabinets to run from the midrange and up. To top this off, the DJs will be provided with a pair of Void Impulse 4ts for exceptionally clear monitoring. This system is sure to compliment one of the world’s best DJs and provide plenty of grunt to cover the 1300 capacity venue, at which we have impressed in the past when Chase & Status and TC hosted a previous Lancaster Loves event.

In order to power this setup, we will be running a stock of Void’s latest development – the Infinite X8 switch mode amplifier. These will replace our bulkier Infinite 8 v2 toroidal amplifiers with one that weighs over 20kgs less per unit, whilst maintaining the same levels of output power and clarity. With this change leading to lighter work for when it comes to loading in and out of venues, and with no loss in sound quality, we’re looking forward to making the switch. We will also be running Infinite X7 and X6 amps for the Stasys Primes, which are currently one of the most efficient and hi-fidelity cabinets on the market, and have most recently excelled at Notting Hill carnival and the Red Bull Music Academy Culture Clash events.

Dan has also opted for one of our experienced technicians who will make sure the whole night runs smoothly.

Tickets are currently on sale for the event here – it’s certainly not one to be missed!
You can also purchase a joint ticket here for Pete Tong and the 28th October event with High Contrast and Shy FX, where we will also be providing a similar system.

Flyer for Pete Tong at Lancaster Loves, Nov 18th

If you are interested in learning more about our products, or hiring the above system, you can email us at [email protected] or call us on 0161 660 6157. As an authorised main dealer for Void Acoustics we have one of the largest hire stocks of Void cabinets in the UK and are also capable of providing full installs for your venue, whether this be permanent, long term or short term.

Category : News

Neuron Pro Audio are proud to announce that we have taken delivery of our first batch of Void Acoustics Stasys Prime loudspeakers. These are primarily designed for large scale touring, although we have already found them particularly useful in smaller venues where controlled dispersion is often required to counter unwanted reflections and ‘slap back’.

Using 2 x 15” LF drivers and a 1 x 1.5” neodymium HF driver creates a super efficient cabinet with a continuous output of up to 142dB for a single enclosure, which raises the bar in terms of arrayable point source speakers. Combine this with the ability to extend down to 90Hz, negating the need for separate upper bass enclosures to produce the vital attack, depth and tightness of drums in all music. In terms of performance, the Prime is leagues ahead of its competition.

Due to a simple 2 way design and brilliant efficiency, each unit requires fewer amplifiers to run. Having the same footprint as its smaller brother, the Stasys 3 Mk2, also allows for it to be easily truck packed and with well placed handles it makes light work for the crew. The cabinet’s green credentials don’t stop there; products that come out of Void’s factory use environmentally friendly materials making this an altogether enviable package for any touring company or venue.

Through testing and experience out in the field, we have found that the Primes work perfectly with the Void Psyco cabinet that was added to our hire stock earlier on in the year. Together they create a truly formidable package for live music.

If you are interested in this product or any other product that we offer for purchase or hire, please do not hesitate to get in contact for a competitive rate.

Category : News