Line up for the RCF line array

Some mathematicians say, “A line if an infinite path traced by a moving point. It has length but no breadth or substance.” Some say, “If you follow a line long enough you end up where you started”. There’s a new line for RCF and this line could turn into a profit line when you (ground) stack up all the advantages. Open any audio magazine these days and one thing you will see is a lot of speaker box advertisements. The next thing you will notice is the number of point source array boxes that have been replaced by Line Array speaker adverts. Line arrays have become all pervading to a point where you could be excused for throwing up your hands and saying, “not another one! The Line Arrays started off as arena and very big gig boxes, and have now snuck down venue to everything from houses of worship to museum foyers. Production companies have been justifiably slower to take them up due to the fact that majority of gigs in Australia are really more practically suited to the ugly ground-stack, and rigging line arrays correctly will take too much time. Mid-sized production companies need a Lego-style PA; send a pile boxes to the gig and just keep puling them out of the truck and start stacking ‘till it looks like enough. For a line array to work for a general non-rider driven PA company it would need to be easily flyable and work just as well as a ground stack, be very compact and loud, work in a variety of configurations and sizes, be self-powered and self-processing, and last of all, be very light weight. A powered lightweight super-loud sub-bass would be cool as well, and the whole PA must be cheap enough for an over committed PA operation to pay off in a year or less. Maybe we will have to wait for 2012 for this fantasy system to arrive or just maybe it is here and now. Remember the marriage of RCF and Mackie a few years ago? Well the marriage may have been short-lived but one thing Mackie left behind was a lot of money – millions of dollars, in fact. This money was put to good use with a new research and production facility and accounts for all the new and innovative products RCF has been producing in the last year or so. Get ready for some really outstanding speaker systems that are really going to get it happening in the performance and value department. So in May we saw a new product range from RCF marketed as the TT+ High Definition range (as in Theatre and Touring). Now before we drown in a chorus of “but it’s not on the rider (yet)!”, it’s not just a specialised line array system. Keep in mind most PA systems sold into Australia are not rider promoted, they are purchased because they will do the job and they are within the budget.

The brand new RCF TTL33a in a line array. Turn it on and stand back. The new TTL33a array system is a 15 x 100 degree per element (depending on configuration) self powered full range box that can be arrayed vertically or horizontally. It contains seven neodymium drivers in horn loading and per box has a max output of 134 dB. This obviously increases depending on the array configuration. Best of all each box is powered with three high-powered class D amplifiers and each element weighs 32 Kg including rigging. No processors are required as the system is self-processing. The onboard floating point DSP processors calculate crossover and EQ for the six transducers and make corrections for air absorption and cluster size corrections. A row of buttons on the back can be used to set EQ and output for array shading.

Close up of the TTL33a minus the front grille. A typical outdoor or reasonably big indoor venue PA would be 4-6 elements per side and perhaps two of the accompanying 2,000 watt dual 18 compact subs (139 dB each). So the TTL33a line array system is super flexible, fast to assemble, multi purpose and best of all, the price is very competitive against all the conventional array systems even before you count the fact that it is self-powered. Perhaps the bottom line is drawn. Stay tuned for further developments; we will surely be keeping you up to speed on this one.