INSTALLATION EUROPE - ISSUE 3 AUG/SEPT 1999

WORLD EXCLUSIVE
MILLENNIUM DOME'S SONIC CENTREPIECE GOES TO FUNKTION ONE

The Funktion One Research design team, creators of the enormously successful TMS, Flashlight and original Floodlight series of loudspeakers, returns to the public eye this Autumn with its latest generation 'Resolution' Series, set to debut on December 31 at the New Millennium Experience's Central Show in North Greenwich.

Surrey-based Funktion One Research is headed by Tony Andrews, John Newsham and Toby Hunt, who were responsible for founding Turbosound in the mid 1970s. Funktion One Research was established in the early 1990s following the sale of the Edge Technology Group (Turbosound, BSS and Precision Devices) to AKG Acoustics.

The all-new Resolution Series was the preferred choice of sound designer Chris Hey for the prestigious Millennium Dome Central - with design by Mark Fisher and music by Peter Gabriel.

The sound design, by Hey, incorporates a central cluster, delay system and surround system. The central cluster consists of a ground supported ring of 16 stadium units. This is augmented by a ring of 12 delay positions consisting of two medium dispersion units on an 80m diameter circle. An additional system of 12 inward facing clusters on a diameter of approximately 160 metres provides surround sound capability, each of which comprises six of the stadium units. The system is completed with a ring of 12 hi-mid stadium units in the apex of the Dome. With the exception of the central cluster the rest of the system had to be flown from the Dome structure making ultra light weight an essential factor of the product specification.

The speakers are set to be installed during the Autumn and will have their first public hearing at the Dome's opening show, with the Queen as guest of honour, on the night of december 31. The system will be controlled by the Dome-wide BSS Soundweb-based digital audio and data network.

Funktion One's radical design embraces several ideas never before combined in a professional PA loudspeaker, to create a high power, long throw, ultra lightweight four-way system with a level of sound quality and transparency that Funktion One promises is better than that of a studio monitor. Andrews and his partners were willing only to reveal the conceptual aspects of its design to IE as we closed for press.

The Resolution Series includes installation and touring versions, both of which employ rigid hi-tech materials in key areas to reduce weight and structural resonance. The waveguides and acoustical devices were established during Funktion One's painstaking six-year research programme and brought to production rapidly using the company's in-house solid modelling system, allowing direct output to the toolmakers' milling machines.

All drivers are new and unique to the Funktion One Resolution Series and represent significant progress in the 'Andrews' approach to driver technology. Help and collaboration given by Fane Acoustics' engineer Clive West in the development of these new drivers marks a move up-market for the management of this Yorkshire-based speaker company, The new high-tech magnets further reduce the system's overall weight whilst improving efficiency. The system will also be self-powered using radical new amplifier technology with full remote control. The combination of these techniques, says Funktion One, gives an average weight reduction of 50%.

Chris Hey, sound designer for the Central Show, comments: "I feel that the new system represents a significant improvement over all previous PA systems. This, coupled with the weight and amplification technology, creates a system that enables the design to maximise sound quality and level whilst minimising extraneous spill." Spill is an issue for the designers. The Central Show's sound system will, explains Hey, be programmed using an Ambisonics system. "We're treating it, effectively, like a giant 5.1 cinema sound system on a sector-by-sector basis, with the music running on DAR hard disk recorders. We went for an Ambisonics controller to programme the sound because it's a very musical sounding system. We can superimpose an Ambisonics field over the 12 effect positions, each of which carries an L-C-R mix. It all sounds very complicated - and it is - but it works out quite straightforwardly with Soundweb in practice. But if you had to do it with conventional control gear, you probably wouldn't even try." Some preliminary programming will be performed at Gabriel's Real World Studios this Autumn but the majority will be carried out on site within the building: "It's essential given the nature of the space and the size of it; you wouldn't get the sense of timing in a studio, when in real life the speakers will be 160m apart."

Funktion One's Andrews added: "We are very proud to have been chosen to play an important rolw in the National focus for the British Millennium Celebrations and I feel it is a fitting landmark in my 30 year mission".