Tonepacer - Sound for art's sake. Art for sound's sake...

James Clark - technical director of boutique Brisbane production company Tonepacer chatting about his commitment to touring sound art artists, engineering as an artform and why his entire fleet of loudspeakers are AT Professional products...

Acoustic Technologies' General Manager of Sales - Pascal Bonnet with James Clark, Harry Lloyd-Williams and James' business partner - Nicky Perry standing with a brand new set of AT Professional HD7 Amplifiers.

Tonepacer is a Brisbane based production company with an inventory consisting of entirely AT Professional speakers. James Clark, Technical Manager, has a personal interest in live sound art and while engineering within this art form, he shows commitment and expresses great dedication towards the production process.

Amongst the company's regular live sound production work James also finds the time to focus on a niche market that is close to his expressive heart - live sound for sound artists.

Tonepacer’s high quality sound systems are able to faithfully replicate the sound artist’s work to a live audience to insure that its depth and “in the moment” perceptions can be preserved. It is art after all, and you want the result to render all of its profound qualities without limitations.  If you couldn’t see a painting well because you left your glasses at home, then the visual perception and impact of the art piece may be diminished. The same with the production for sound art, and a high quality system ensures true translation of sound for art’s sake.

Sound artists tour their art internationally and Room40 facilitate a flow of artists into the UK, Australia, NZ and Japan and rely on production companies like Tonepacer to make the experience worth while and to parallel the artists native experimental audio communities in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

The need for high quality, “true to form”, flat response sound reinforcement came about when the artists’ sounds were being compromised by the use of lower volume plastic boxes.  As the artist wanted more dynamic range and volume, the boxes would go into limit and would then effectively reshape the sound. As a result, the dynamics would be lost and the art would be diminished.

Sound art is as much about the sublime quiet moments as it is about the brutal pulsing movement of air around you. The more sublime, quiet pieces are so low in volume that the meters on the system hardly register and sometimes the air conditioning needs to be  turned off.  At low volumes we find that the AT SS24 loudspeakers are exceptional, being quite flat in response so that you still hear it all. Your hearing starts to habituate to the low level and a whole new experience of sound moves to the fore. You can feel as though the room is awash with sound as the works slowly gain volume over a period of time of up to forty minutes or so.

During the more intense performances, it is as though you could reach out and feel the air shimmering and dancing around in your hands, or the sensation of bass pummeling your body. These pieces are not flippant ego driven races for volume, rather they are excursions into the world of sound and environmental effects on the listener and performer alike.

The AT Professional SS24’s have a unique advantage with sound art at any intensity in that you do not hear the box, that is the resonance of the enclosure the drivers are in.  An almost transparent delivery which is perfect for sound art. The AT Professional CLAF2000 which are a close cousin of the AT Professional BB07, push air with out a hiccup, the tones are solid and deep.

We do extensive sound checks with the artists and find that we never equalize or pre-shape the system. Many times Tonepacer have asked various artists “What do you need to hear?”, “Are you hearing everything?” and the responses have been more than positive, allowing the artist to not think about the limits of the system and to feel like there are no boundaries or compromises with volume or tone, allowing them to perform and keep their mind focused on their art. 

The sound check instead turns into an exploration of the space by the performer who at times has found the resonance of the room and exploited it to best effect with mountains of bottom end. We often have to clean the dust off of the gear after it has been shaken lose from the roof by the audio.

Tonepacer have engaged artists performances with acoustic, mono, stereo, 2.1, quad, 4.2, 6.2, octal and many other convolutions as far as panning and intensity of subsonic’s etc. Audiences have experienced this in the round as with Francisco Lopez or sitting in the sound field with the performer, and at times also actively being involved in guiding the course of the piece through interactive devices laid out by the artist.

One typical system that we supply to Lawrence English of Room40 is a quad and subs configuration. This system has four AT Professional SS24 (100 degree HF) speakers set up in the four corners of a room and are supported by the addition of two AT Professional CLAF2000 dual 18 inch subs. The setup is matrixed out by a Yamaha LS9-16 on six discrete channels, allowing us to place any of the audio inputs at any corner of the room and save a scene on the desk for each part of the night. 

Surround sound performers such as Chris Watson (well known for his sound recordings for BBC documentaries) have two sets of field recordings in quad and he layers and blends them to create/recall the feeling of the environment. One particular performance was so convincing that, along with the cool air-conditioning in the room, you had the experience of being cold and wet in a rain storm.

We run about 1000 watts into the AT SS24s at 8 ohms and 2400 watts into the AT CLAF2000s at 4 ohms. The subs are on their sides tucked in nicely against the cement walls at either end of the room. In mono, the audience are treated to an even spread of the audio and is a nice dynamic when the next artist exploits panning or quad, each performer being unique. 

Psycho acoustic results of level, tone, position and selective hearing all come in to play and Acoustic Technologies have made this possible through proper voicing of their products. The AT SS24s may soon become a new standard in sound re-enforcement for sound art in Australia and internationally.  Tonepacer will be purchasing more AT SS24 cabinets in the near future, as our service grows with demand in this burgeoning field of sound art.

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Designed for high end touring and production, the SS24 employs an extremely efficient 12” neodymium low frequency transducer and an advanced 2” exit neodymium H.F. compression driver coupled to a H.F. waveguide developed specifically for this cabinet. 

The dual 18” transducer CLA LF2000 Sub Bass System is tailored to perfectly compliment the CLA 1000. Power handling is 4,000 Watts Program with a frequency response from 35Hz to 200Hz.

Check out the details of the SS24 here.
Check out the details of the CLAF2000 here.

For more information on tonepacer - head to www.tonepacer.com