JBL VRX in action with the Duffys

One of my favourite local outdoor venues is Garth Park in the Oxfordshire town of Bicester, and providing the sound for a summer event featuring Irish party band the Duffys seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out JBL's recently introduced powered, portable VRX system. It promised to be an interesting gig because, although I was familiar with the venue, I hadn't worked with this band before or used these types of vertical array cabinets. I would otherwise have used a JBL SRX700 rig, which is more than adequate for this park, so I was keen to find out what the VRX had to offer.

The VRX range of cabinets includes two full-range units — the extremely compact VRX928LA, which uses an eight-inch mid-range driver, and the VRX932LA, which has a 12-inch mid driver — and two subwoofers in either single 15-inch or single 18-inch format, called the VRX915S and VRX918S, respectively. The VRX 932LAP and VRX918SP are 'active' versions that incorporate digital signal processing and built-in power amplifier modules, which are designed in conjunction with Crown, and indeed bear the Crown logo alongside the familiar JBL badge.

For those familiar with JBL's high-end boxes, the VRX cabs take their technology straight from their flagship VerTec series. For example, the VRX932LA's waveguide design is taken from the VT4889, its HF transducer from the VT4887A, and the 12-inch LF driver from the VT4888. On the hardware side, the rigging components are based on the established VerTec principles of keeping it simple and keeping it all 'with the box'.

The system, which was delivered about a week before the gig, consisted of four VRX918SP subwoofers and four VRX932LAP mid/top units. The guys in the know at Sound Technology (the UK distributors of JBL products) had worked out that we would cover the required audience area with two ground-stacked subs per side, with two of the VRX932LAPs mounted each side on poles above the subs.

The eight powered speakers arrived (brand spanking new) on two pallets, together with a pair of JBL's own mounting poles and a box containing all the required mains and signal leads. I was grateful that someone at Sound Technology had sent these along, as the VRX powered units use Powercon connectors instead of the traditional IEC inlets for mains power, and I don't yet have a plentiful supply of these in the leads trunk...

I didn't have time to play about with the VRX system before the event itself, but I did at least remove the units from their cartons before loading the van (terribly uncool to arrive with your gear in cardboard boxes). The first thing I noticed about these speakers was their weight, or relative lack of it. The VRX932LAPs are very manageable at 24kg, and are an easy shape to pick up and move around. And the VRX918 subs are only 38.5kg, which is incredibly light when you consider that there's a very high-power 18-inch driver, a powerful amp and signal processing circuits inside the box.

The VRX918SP subwoofer contains a single 18-inch driver, which is a JBL model 2268FF. This is one of JBL's latest designs, featuring dual voice coils and a neodymium magnet structure for high efficiency, vastly improved heat management and very low overall weight. Instead of the traditional single voice coil, these drivers have two (hence the 'FF' suffix, which means it has two separate 2Ω voice coils), wound on the same former, but each operating in its own independent magnetic gap, and with two sets of lead-out wires and connection terminals. Each voice coil is directly driven by a separate power amp channel (that's two amps connected to one single speaker!), and this results in very efficient power transfer into the driver unit because each amp/voice coil/magnetic gap is contributing to the movement of a single cone — a bit like having two speakers in the space of one. The neodymium construction not only reduces weight (you really do have to pick up one of these speakers to realise how light they are), but because the magnet itself is built right into the chassis casting, heat is transferred away from the coil area very effectively, which reduces the effects of power compression (ie. reduced efficiency and therefore acoustic output as temperature increases).

The power amp module is called a DrivePack DPC-2, and according to the specification table has an output capability of 750W (continuous) and 1500W peak. All the necessary signal processing is handled by the VRX918SP's internal electronics board, and includes band-pass limiting and fully automatic protection functions.

The control panel itself is extremely simple. There's a single XLR input and a corresponding XLR output, which can be switched to Bypass so that the full-range signal applied to the input appears at the output, or the output can be routed through an internal 80Hz high-pass filter for linking on to mid/high cabs. A second switch allows the sub's internal low-pass filter to operate at either 80Hz or 120Hz. The normal setting would be 80Hz, but 120Hz could be used if, say, an external crossover was being used to force a crossover point at any other frequency up to 120Hz, or if the sub was being used with mid/high speakers that couldn't extend as low as 80Hz. Input sensitivity is adjusted by means of a rotary control, which has a range of 16dB. When the control is all the way down, the sensitivity is matched to a nominal +4dBu operating level with a maximum input before clipping point of +20dBu, and this is the recommended starting point when the sub is fed from a standard balanced line source — note that turning this knob right down doesn't mean that no signal will get through! Three small LED indicators show the presence of AC power, the presence of an input signal greater than -70dB and input peak signal level. There's no on/off switch, so the only way to properly 'kill' the unit is to unplug it, which we did several times during our setting up, and I'm pleased to report that there was no snap, crackle or pop as a result.

The mains connector is the increasingly popular Powercon type, and a hard-wired output is provided so that a special loop-through cable can be used to feed power to a second cabinet. You can't go wrong with this system, as blue connectors are used for feeding power into the unit and grey ones represent the outlets, and thankfully it's not possible to mate blue with grey. This is an extremely useful feature, as it reduces the number of 13-amp outlets required to run multiple speakers (which I think is just about the biggest headache with portable active boxes), and JBL even supply a spare grey connector with each speaker so that you can make up a loop cable if you need one.

Outside, the cabinet is finished in a water-resistant black coating, which seems pretty tough, and the full-face steel grille is backed by black foam, which I think looks good and should offer additional protection to the speaker cone. The box looks almost the same as an SRX subwoofer, but it has rigging hardware built into the sides to enable cabinets to be vertically stacked and locked together with a neat and easy-to-operate captive pin arrangement. The locking pins are permanently attached to the cabinet by little lanyards, and when in place — either locked to another cabinet or not in use — they are flush with the cabinet sides and don't snag or present any lifting hazard.

The mid/high component of this VRX system is the VRX932LAP, which is where the 'line array' part really comes in. This cabinet is a very compact unit containing a single JBL 2262FF 12-inch driver for the mid-band and three waveguide-mounted compression drivers (model JBL 2408J) in an arc, to look after the top end. As for the 2268FF used in the VRX918SP sub, the 12-inch driver used here has the same dual voice-coil design, with a pair of power amps providing the drive. The HF mounting configuration results in a very wide (100-degree) horizontal dispersion, but a very narrow (15-degree) vertical one, which means that multiple cabinets can be stacked vertically, with each providing precise coverage over its target area, but not interfering or overlapping with its neighbours. Up to five of these cabinets can be used together to create a 75-degree vertical angle, and the boxes are designed so that the spacing of the HF drivers remains equal between adjacent cabinets — so five of these boxes used together would provide 15 high-frequency drivers, all spaced equally on the same arc.

Although the VRX932LAP uses the same DrivePack DPC-2 amp module as the VRX918SP sub, the input panel and onboard processing is a little more involved. Just like the sub, there's a pair of XLR connectors for signal input and output, and the same useful power input and loop output sockets. The input sensitivity control has the same 16dB range (detented in 0.5dB steps), and the three LED indicators show power, signal and overload, just as before. On the VRX932LAP, however, the crossover and loop output filter switches are replaced by three buttons that make up the Array Configuration Selector. By using different combinations of the three buttons, the HF output of the particular cabinet can be adjusted by ±3dB to enable preset amplitude shading of the array as a whole. The idea is that the horns that are aimed at the back of the venue should be operating at a higher level than those covering the area nearer to the stage, and this should result in an apparently even coverage throughout the target area.

The user manual goes into some detail about this, and there is a neat array tool on JBL's web site, http://jblpro.com/products/portablesound/vrx/arraytool.html, that illustrates the coverage and the effects of setting these switches, which provide a choice of three settings, namely -3dB, 0dB and +3dB. As we were using two of these cabs per side, we used -3dB for the 'front' speaker and 0dB for the other, which was covering the rear of the venue. For larger or more complicated setups, the preset 3dB increments should provide enough control, but they could, of course, be used in conjunction with the input sensitivity control to provide a finer degree of tuning. I'd recommend having a play with the array tool to see what the coverage is — if nothing else, it's a good visual representation of the effects of amplitude shading with different combinations of cabinets.

Having arrived at the venue to begin setting up, I let the guys unload the gear while I had a quick look at the VRX user manual. There's some interesting info in there about what's in the cabinets and so on, but there's not much about how to set them up. The reason for this is that there's nothing much to say — you simply connect the XLR source lead into the input, set the shading switches to whatever suits the gig and plug them in. In common with their high-end heritage, these VRX units don't have an on/off switch (I think it's to avoid having to climb up to flown arrays when you've forgotten to switch them on), but a neat way is to turn the Powercon connector round and break the contact. I didn't notice any noise when powering any of the VRX cabs up or down, but I would guard against the temptation to kill all the PA power from a single switch by making sure that the VRX gear was switched independently of the rest of the rig.

During the setup, the weather was looking very uncertain. This was particularly worrying as the same event last year was cancelled at the last moment due to the underwater conditions, but we went ahead with the rigging and decided that the whole system would be placed under the large stage canopy. With a pessimistic forecast and space to spare under the canopy but no ideal front-of-house mix position, I opted to put the mix position at the side of the stage, provided that the band were OK with that. First out of the van were the VRX cabs, so we placed a sub directly on the grass either side and about a metre in front of the stage, and put them as close together as we could get away with without affecting the audience sightlines, and also making sure that we left enough width for the band.

As we were going to stack another sub and two VRX932LAPs (on a pole) above each bottom cabinet, we took care to get them level using my patent Speaker Levelling Devices (plastic shims made by cutting up a couple of kitchen chopping boards from the 'everything's a pound' shop — excellent and essential items for small-scale outdoor work). Lifting the second sub was dead easy between two crew, but then all these VRX cabs can be lifted without much trouble by one person, as they have well-designed and sensibly placed handles. The pole mount receptacle on the subs is a screw-thread type, rather than the basic 35mm 'pole hole', and when we had hand-tightened the SS4-BK adjustable mounting poles they were rock solid. The VRX932LAP cabinets are provided with a double pole socket, which allows a choice of angle (either 15 or 2.5 degrees). We were using two cabs per side in a mini-array (the maximum number you can use on a pole), so the lower cab was angled down to cover the nearer audience area and the top one was pointing more or less straight out towards the rear of the target field. The built-in hardware was a joy to use — the locking pins fitted well and clicked into place without any effort, and when all four boxes were in place the whole thing felt very solid and stable.

Having watched the guys put one stack together, I went off to sort out electrical power while they built the other one, and then we set about rigging the rest of the gear. As this was a completely new (to me, anyway) and untried system, I had allowed a bit of extra time for troubleshooting and so on, but everything was rigged very quickly, and so it was time to wire up the VRX kit and have a play. I had been using my passive rig on recent gigs, and hooking up these speakers served as a pleasant reminder of just how quick and easy active boxes are to set up — in its basic form, you just plug a full-range line signal in using a single XLR lead and link all the cabs together. There were, of course, mains leads to contend with, but the provision of the loop-through power sockets made life easier when powering up the pole-mounted 932s. The only issue here was that we didn't have any leads long enough to reach the floor from the height of the mid/top boxes, so we ended up with a 13A distribution board sitting on top of each sub, which did look a bit amateurish. So if I owned a set of these cabs, I would make up some extra-long leads to get around this.

I lined up the level on the desk and set the speaker input controls using the desk's internal pink-noise source, and then we enjoyed a few favourite CD tracks and checked out the coverage, quality and consistency of the sound. I paced out the distance from the speakers to the rear edge of the park at around 40m, and the top end was very even from about 5m all the way to the back. We all took turns trying to spot the overlap point between the two mid/top speakers, but none of us could, so in the end I switched off the upper box (the pointy-straighty-outy one) and then it became clear (a) just where the coverage ended and (b) how sharp it was — everything full and lovely at one spot, take a step backwards and the top end just wasn't there anymore. I spent more time balancing the output from the subs (which I think we had placed too far apart), but in a matter of minutes we had achieved a great sound that filled the target area very nicely. Unfortunately, it also filled much of the town centre across the road, and we had a few complaints from traders but it's easier to turn down than up, I always say. I played a couple of orchestral tracks to see how the VRX rig would handle something a little more complex, and I was more than happy with the 'giant hi-fi' results. It was easy to get a warm, lush string sound ('The Abyss') and the brass at the end of Berlioz's 'Roman Carnival' was enough to make anyone want to take up the trombone.

When the band were ready to check, we got through everything quickly and without any drama, and I had a good listen out front to balance my ears, as I would be spending the performance at the side of the stage. We sorted out a couple of whistling monitors (some fool had inserted a compressor instead of a gate somewhere along the line) and took a few pictures of the VRX boxes. When the band started their first set, I was happy to leave everything set as per the soundcheck, and went out front to listen again — no problems, and the VRX gear sounded sweet and clear.

The Duffys are an exciting band (it's a long time since I saw anyone with this amount of wow factor — the fiddle and accordion playing within a mega-tight rock band context knocked me out), and they seemed quite happy to have me stageside, especially as any changes needed could be made as discreet requests with nothing much more than a raised eyebrow, rather than the normal 'more monitor' thing over the FOH!

I enjoyed the band, and I enjoyed getting my hands on the VRX system. The gig was successful and easy — always a good sign — and packing away was as straightforward as the setting up had been. We had several comments about the sound quality — positive ones, I'm happy to say — and I didn't see anything remotely like a limit LED on any of the speakers all night. The sound level was more than enough for this outdoor space (plus a bit of the town centre, it would seem), and the rig sounded as if it wasn't even trying. The thing that really impressed me, though, was the clarity and projection of these VRX speakers, and the even balance right across the target area. The bass end was impressively clean and the preset 80Hz crossover frequency worked well for me. What's great about the VRX cabs is that you can just add more if you want a bigger rig, and you won't run into coverage or power-versus-cancellation issues because these are real array boxes and that's exactly what they're designed to do.

The VRX speakers are excellent performers and they also look good. The rigging hardware is beautifully engineered and finished, and the DrivePack modules are securely and thoughtfully mounted within the enclosures. If I owned this system, I would definitely invest in cases or at least good-quality road bags to keep it smart and protect my investment. Which brings me to the big question: would I part with my own cash to buy some of these? If I had the money, unhesitatingly yes. The VRX system is the closest thing I've ever come across that would be perfect for just about everything in my diary, and I wouldn't keep thinking, 'Have I bought the right thing?' because it's completely scalable, from garden fêtes to outdoor rock.

JBL VRX in action with the Duffys

VRX portable line-array system