The Orkney Islands, off the coast of Scotland, might be considered as one of the least likely locations for a high-profile dance club and live music venue — but that is precisely what Neil Stevenson, who runs Groove Records and promotes bands on the island, has established in the capital of Kirkwall.

‘Fusion’, as he has called it, is literally that. To serve bands’ and DJs’ interests alike he was determined to enlist top-quality project management and leading pro audio brands to obviate the need for acts to carry production other than backline.

He turned to LMC Audio (Birmingham) where the experienced Mark Bromfield set about putting together a cutting-edge sound and vision spec, based around Martin Audio Blackline loudspeakers and BSS Audio’s proprietary Soundweb DSP platform.

Neil Stevenson has established a two-room venue in a converted fish smoking factory — with respective capacities of 600 and 200 on the ground and first floor. Each space has the capability of staging DJ’s and bands and via Soundweb the sound signal from each zone is routable to either space.

While Fusion has been equipped with a separate mixing desk and outboard rack, for use when bands appear, the Blackline system will be in use full time.

In the three-sectioned main room a pair of Blackline H3/S218’s are groundstacked on either side of the stage, while flown Blackline H2’s fire back from the rear of the room and there is an intermediate delay position, with further left/right H2’s.
To the right of the entrance is a ‘chillout’ area, which is served by a pair of Martin Audio EM15’s, with an EM120 articulating the low frequencies, while elsewhere other EM15’s are used as infills.

In the upstairs room a single, a portable stack of
Blackline H3/S218’s is positioned either side of
the stage.

Martin Audio have also provided all the monitoring — with six F12’s deployed as conventional floor wedges, and an additional pair of F12’s providing the downstairs DJ monitoring and a pair of F10’s upstairs. While the main system EQ is provided by Soundweb, the floor monitors are processed by BSS Opal EQ’s.

The entire sound reinforcement is time-aligned in the three Soundweb 9088LL units and powered by Crown Pulse amplifiers. Soundweb will automatically switch the input source selection and signal routing, as well as contain the processing parameters for the EM15’s.

In addition, a BSS 9010 ‘Jellyfish’, used for master control, resides in the manager’s office and is mounted in a specially-configured desktop box, linked by CAT5 cable and RS232 serial connection straight into the box. DJ’s will also have local control via a BSS 9011 ‘Shrimp’ — with one positioned in the ground and first floor booths and one at the main bar.

Outside Soundweb’s control scope are the H3/S218 stacks, to which are assigned Martin Audio’s dedicated M3 system controller.

Thus bands visiting the Orkneys will now be able to rely on a recognisable stage rig and audio infrastructure to plug into — and Neil Stevenson will no longer have to deal with the hire logistics he had to in the past.