Red Square Audio

Red Square Audio takes Apex Intelli-X 2 to FOMFest

Friday, May 13th, 2011

Two Intelli-X2 48 audio system management devices graced the main stage of the latest festival to come out of the Manchester music scene, FOMFest (Friends of Mine Festival).

With its routes in Manchester’s club land, where it began as a club night for new bands and singersongwriters, FOM’s cult following has grown to such an extent that a festival was the next logical step, which has launched FOM firmly into the mainstream. Held in the beautiful grounds of stately home Capesthorne Hall, just south of Manchester, it attracted an eclectic selection of local talent including Bad Lieutenant, The Cribs, The Lightening Seeds, Buzzcocks and The Charlatans.

Audio was specified by Paul Nicholson of Red Square Audio. Paul’s company also distributes a number of well-known brands including Apex Audio, APG and Innovason, which also formed a part of FOMFest’s main stage audio system.

The decision to use Apex’s new Intelli- X2 units was made by Paul Nicholson who was audio manager for the event’s four main stages.

“The Intelli- X2 is a fantastic product, its plug and play architecture and great sound quality making it streets ahead of the competition,” says Nicholson. “We decided to use a pair of units on the main stage because that’s where all the big bands were playing and where we wanted to concentrated our efforts.

“We positioned two Innovason Eclipse consoles at main stage Front of House, flip flopping between bands, with one Intelli- X2 on one console and one on the other, linking them out through Word Clock. We utilised AES and analogue connections; you can do three layers of linking, so if one fails another takes over, which is a unique function of the unit.”

Featuring internal processing up to 192 kHz as standard, high-end studio-grade analogue circuit designs and mastering-grade compressors, the Intelli-series sets the new benchmark in system management and speaker processing design. Designed to be Plug-and-Play, the Intelli-X² is simple to configure and integrate into any network. The Intelli-series consists of two system management devices, Intelli-X² 26 (2 in, 6 out) and Intelli-X² 48 (4in, 8 out), providing all the system management tools necessary for comprehensive system alignment and EQ, through to the provision of IIR and FIR based crossovers.

Red Square Audio took the opportunity to showcase the units to visiting engineers, demonstrating the capabilities and exceptional sonic quality of the units.

“The engineers thought the units were really cool. They like the iPod style integration on the front display, which is very contemporary and stylish, and they like the fact that you don’t have to use a computer with it, so you can take it out as a standalone unit,” Nicholson continues.

“Intelli- X2 has fantastic EQ and you can balance, mix, matrix, whatever you want. It’s streets ahead of the competition and has been universally praised. The units are also very easy to understand; anyone who’s used a DSP unit before will be able to use them within just a few minutes.