When Dolby called a halt on the Dolby Lake Processor (DLP) three years ago, it seemed to some that a product on the cusp of great achievements in the industry had been nipped in the bud. On the other hand, by that time Swedish power pioneer Lab.gruppen had already established its Powered Loudspeaker Management (PLM) series under an OEM agreement with Dolby that fused much of the technology available at the time: DLP’s system processing, EQ and networking, powered by Lab.
PLM went from 10000Q strength to 20000Q strength, and yet the industry continued to pine for a standalone speaker optimisation tool with Lake’s aboriginal stamp on it – a mood that seemed only to deepen with the mourning of co-founder Bruce Jackson’s passing in a flying accident at the beginning of this year.
Lab.gruppen responded with the LM 26, a 2-input, 6-output processor based on Lake processing. That product, Lab.gruppen insiders acknowledge, made a significant impression despite a global recession, and high hopes are now pinned on its bigger sister, the LM 44. This version incorporates further feedback from those users who remembered Jackson, his ideas and his legacy, and who had already embraced the LM 26 with enthusiasm. Most of all, it consolidates the resurrection of Lake as a standalone brand under the auspices of Lab.gruppen and, ultimately, the TC Group.
Lab’s Product Engineering Manager Håkan Gustafsson oversaw all the beta-testing in the community of LM followers, and confirms how Britannia Row, Ad Lib, Outline, SSE and others at the very top of European touring have contributed to the current Lake gestalt. “All of these companies have had the opportunity to field test the LM 44 this summer,” he says, “having been on board for its development from very early on. They’ve been using it at a lot of festivals, alongside other jobs, and all in all they’re very happy to bring a new Lake product back to the FOH position – for mix-matrixing, zoning and EQing and a lot of different applications.
“The market has been wanting a new Lake product with Mesa-mode processing – this is the system EQ and mix-matrix processing configuration within Lake – and also a hardware specification that matches a one-input, one-output processing mode. Accordingly, the LM 44 is four by four device, both in analogue and in Mesa mode.” LM 44 adds further capability: the input routing has been expanded for better mix-matrixing, as has the AES3 I/O, to 8 × 8. The interfaces are dual-Gigabit Ethernet; for audio, the DANTE protocol comes as standard while control protocol is dedicated for use with the Lake Controller software. “Third-party control protocol is also possible,” adds Gustafsson, “for custom installs and a range of other options.”
Just as Take That lost Robbie Williams, and then regained Robbie Williams, the reinstatement of Lake among the visible brands on the TC Group stage is bound to be a crowd pleaser. “Lake has one of the biggest fan bases of all our brands,” confirms Miguel Hadelich, VP of Sales, Touring at TC Group International. “Both TC Electronic and TC Helicon have amazing followings, but Lake is a unique offering and, although it somewhat disappeared from view into the Lab.gruppen products, it still does things that other processors simply cannot achieve. People have committed to the platform, and they needed it with the new features that LM 44 brings to the table. We’re now convinced that we need to develop more and more products for that platform, and build it up into a really strong brand in its own right.”
This is for all branches of installation and live, touring sound, Hadelich says, with the exception of cinema, for which Dolby continues to have a direct interest in matters Lake. During the development of the PLM series, interaction was intense between Sweden and Sydney. “We spent a lot of time with Bruce,” continues Hadelich, “and his legacy is still very much alive within Lab.gruppen. The whole vision of the controller, and how to attack a live sound system and a stage with a different user interface, that came from Bruce and it’s something we want to continue exploring. He had some very interesting ideas about how three-dimensional control could be, the whole manipulation of the sound sources and the monitoring of the stage. Bruce’s mission was to make it easy to use and easy to understand, to make access really fast by remote control methods. Lake was the first product to do this wirelessly, and his ability to design a user interface was phenomenal – from the early consoles at Clair Brothers right through to the Lake Controller. He was very innovative. What we see today with iPad control and so on… he was envisioning this 20 years ago.”
A version of this article appeared in PSNE October 2011. Reproduced by kind permission.