The original sound system was ultimately felt to be insufficient, prompting head of production Karsten Tinapp, Laban’s in-house production department and external consultant Mark Hornsby to investigate a replacement. A trio of leading full-range compact speaker brands was auditioned, with Electro-Voice deemed to be the winner.
According to Tinapp, “the Electro-Voice ZX1 units satisfied on every level. High output, with full-bandwidth overload protection capability – much harder to blow up! They have really good low frequency performance, sounding nicer and more rounded than our previous system; much more our thing. And they were easy to install – with the same footprint and dimensions as the old cabinets, we could make use of the existing infrastructure.”
EV distributor Shuttlesound worked closely with Laban on the project, supplying two pairs of the ZX1s for each of the 13 dance studios, along with larger ZX3 cabinets to act as a production PA in the facility’s Studio Theatre.