Kings of Leon Front of House Engineer, Brent Rawlings

UK: Kings of Leon's eclectic mix of Southern American rock/punk-funk is perfectly complemented on their current tour by a Turbosound Aspect system that, says Front of House engineer Brent Rawlings, is a much better solution than line array for the job in hand.

Rawlings' decision to use Aspect, supplied by UK-based rental company Britannia Row, was based in large part upon the fact that he knew the venues they had on the itinerary for the UK leg of the tour were going to require a system that would work well and sound good ground stacked.

The system comprised 12 TA-890H three-way mid/high enclosures, stacked three wide by four high, plus six TSW-218 subs, with four TQ-440SP for infill. Stage monitoring was covered with TFM-450 and TQ-440SP, with TQ-425s for drum fill. "The way Aspect locks together for the ground stack is really nice. You can angle it beautifully to point down at people," says Rawlings. "It's not too big and yet it's still a point source style box-which are normally humungous—but these are nice and small and pack fairly easily: they're easy to put up and easy to stack in the trailer."

Rawlings has been impressed with both the ability and range of the Aspect system. "I find there's a kind of hole in the middle of a line array, but that doesnt happen with Aspect," he explains. "The lo middle is so present that the drums have more impact and the bass guitar is really nice. You might have to filter your channels a little more, but that's OK. The sound is very thick and heavy, which I like, it's a very good rock 'n roll speaker.

"Also, Aspect's starting point is very good: it comes out of the box sounding nice and it's easy to operate. You need to do some small touch ups here and there depending on the room you are in, but for the most part it's really nice right out of the box and that's important. With some PAs you have to dial too much on and then things start getting weird with phasing. It's better not to have to filter things too much, so that doesn't happen. It makes it simpler and truer to the source. The less times the signal has to be messed with on the way through, the better!"

This is Rawlings first use of Aspect. "We had the system in rehearsals for four days," he continues. "This is a very difficult band to please on stage and monitors were a problem for a long time. But the Turbosound wedges have made them be quiet. They don't say anything now."

In fact, Rawlings took the monitors to Olympic Studios for an aol recording session the band was involved in. "And they got the band very happy," he smiles. "I even trimmed things, cutting down on the amount of wedges and the system still did very good work."

Back on the road, the three UK shows followed in quick succession, meaning that Rawlings had a chance to listen to Aspect in three different rooms early on in the tour. "It did really well," he says. "I wish I had more of it because I like operating things in the nominal range. But then I guess any sound engineer likes to have twice as much as they really need…"

However, Rawlings found that the amount of cabinets he had more than adequately accounted for the venues they visited in the UK and wants to carry on using the system for the US leg of the tour. "I want to use Turbosound for the next part, just more of it and flying it," he says. "I've heard that it flies really nicely. I'm liking it a lot!"