Making his debut solo tour, former Westlife front man Shane Filan is sharing the moment with Flare Audio as it is the first major tour to use the X5 line array.

Comprising six X5As and four Q18 bass units aside, the rig is powered by Lab.gruppen PLM20000Q four-channel DSP amplifiers and finds industry veteran Steve Levitt at FOH.

Supported by Orbital Sound, the Flare Audio rig is an extremely compact system that is capable of handling the tour’s diverse venues: ‘Not only is the system just about as pure a sound as you can get, but it also delivers outrageous pressure levels and clarity,’ says Levitt after putting the X5A/Q18 rig through its paces.

‘Davies Roberts has created something exceptional, based on good science – removing the sound distortion associated with the conventional wooden box approach and letting you hear the speakers for themselves. We have worked this system hard during this tour, and after some tweaking with the electronic pre-sets, it lets me do exactly what I want. If I use equalisation now, it’s to correct the room, not the box, and the imaging is amazing – move the pan pot a notch or two and you can really hear it. It’s a very clever sound, with loads of power, and I wouldn’t hesitate to tour it again.’

The X5 Series has been designed for scalability, and can be used as a single unit for point-source applications, as groundstacked small arrays, or large-scale hangs of up to 22 cabinets. With it, Flare Audio has pioneered a new approach to line array design, applying the theory of Waveform Integrity through its Space enclosure structure, and its Vortex exhaust technology. The Q18 bass units also use proprietary Nanoflow driver alignment to achieve efficient coupling for the minimum amount of wave damage for low frequencies.

Filan is taking in 18 cities around the UK and Eire, finishing in the star’s home city of Dublin in March.

See also:
Orbital Sound takes on Flare Audio distribution

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