AV MATTERS FINDS SOUND PHYSICS LABS RUNTS A WIN-WIN LOUDSPEAKER

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ORLANDO, FLORIDA: For the typical sound contractor, obtaining new audio equipment often is an involved and, yes, expensive process.

Many can only wish it was as easy as dropping a business card in a hopper.

Yet, that's essentially all it took for Mike Evans, the owner of AV Matters, an Orlando, Florida, production company to get his hands on a couple of loudspeakers that have proven to be a panacea for a host of live 'sound-job' challenges.

Evans won the speakers - two cutting-edge SPL-runts from Sound Physics Labs - in a drawing he reluctantly entered at the National Systems Contractors Association 2005 show earlier this year. After visiting the Sound Physics Labs booth on the convention floor he was urged to take a chance. "An SPL rep asked me to enter, I said 'no thanks,' and he said to just throw a card in," Evans says. "A week later I got a call informing me that I had won the drawing and that the prize was two SPL-runt loudspeakers."

Since good fortune was visited upon him, Evans' business fortunes have turned up as well. One reason: the SPL-runts have turned out to be every bit the versatile and powerful loudspeaker they were touted to be by a fellow sound contractor, who urged him to take a look at SPL.

Using SPL-runts, Evans is able to expand room coverage, improve intelligibility and be more flexible with speaker deployment in his corporate event AV-oriented business. Now, virtually no matter what the environment, the two SPL-runts form the backbone of high-quality live sound solutions increasingly in demand by clients.

"We needed a high-quality, portable speaker that was flexible enough to be flown or placed on a speaker stand, but that also sounded great and had the projection needed to handle venues of many different sizes," Evans says.

Indeed, the coverage capabilities of the SPL-runt have caught Evans' eye. Whereas the vast majority of similarly sized speakers have trouble maintaining intelligibility to the far back reaches of a room, the SPL-runt picks up where others leave off, he says.

"Because these are one big, horn-loaded speaker they do a better job of getting low-mid-frequencies to the very back of a room, where the sound typically tends to get muddy with traditional speakers on a stick. Twenty-five feet back from the front they're great, but at 75 feet they start sounding too bright because the low-mids end has fallen off. The runts sound much smoother and maintain the sound a bit further back."

In several applications since he acquired them, the SPL-runts have shown their mettle, Evans says. At a recent convention at the Miami Intercontinental Hotel the speakers were deployed in a long and narrow room seating about 450 people. With no budget to fly speakers, Evans deployed the SPL-runts at the front of the room, and with the help of delay speakers for the back, was able to maintain speech tonality in the far rear of the room.

In another event at the Marriott World Center in Orlando, the SPL-runts did double duty, serving as front fills for speech needs in a large meeting room by day and for music by Hootie and the Blowfish in the evening.

In use several times as monitors, the speakers have proven themselves. "With the band's lead singer they worked well because they have high feedback tolerance, plus they're passive, meaning we can save an amp channel," he says.

Setting up the SPL-runts has proven highly manageable, as well. Evans says they require minimal EQ. "You just throw them up there and they work in multiple applications, from delays, to the main speaker in a small setting, to front fills and even monitors," he says. "They're very flexible."

Having worked with them in several applications, Evans says he's planning to acquire two more. But this time, he'll likely have to pay for them. Given their outstanding performance he's likely more than willing to do so.

Sound Physics Labs is the parent company of ServoDrive, Inc. ServoDrive manufactures the industry benchmark BassTech7 and ContraBass subwoofers. Sound Physics Labs is responsible for the complete line of Unity loudspeakers.

Mike Evans, owner of AV Matters, Orlando, with one of the Sound Physics Labs SPL-runt loudspeakers he won at NSCA 2005.