Can't Stop The Beat

Celebrating ten successful years in business, Dublin-based EQ Audio and Events was established in 2000 by Shay Hannon, with the aim of providing high-end audio to the DJ, live music and corporate markets. Since then it has gone on become one of the leading suppliers of audio, AV and lighting technologies and event production to a wide range of events, including fashion and awards shows, conferences, cultural festivals, music festivals and shows. Services offered include: design conception, visual representations of the event using their in-house design team, manufacture of one-off pieces, venue mapping, and pre-production planning through to the installation/organisation of all aspects of the event. As well as working on one-off concerts and shows, the company provides audio services to high-profile events such as Arthur’s Day, Castlepalooza and Electric Picnic among many others.

Hannon, who has been involved in the music business for over 25 years, started out his career as a DJ and ended up playing some of the biggest clubs in town. “I’ve been doing it since I was about 12 or 13,” he says. “I did my very first gig in Howth Sea Scout Den – I remember renting a set of twin-decks for the occasion.”
Bitten by the dance bug, he went on to run club nights on the Dublin dance scene that exploded in the early ‘90s: “I’d heard a couple of really good underground tracks that were coming out of London and by then I was completely gone. I kicked off in Sides in the early ‘90s and from there moved across to The Kitchen in the Clarence Hotel. Myself and a good friend, Hugh Scully, started promoting and running a club night there which we did for seven brilliant years. Then, Spirit opened and they head-hunted Hugh for their Saturday nights while POD head-hunted me for their Friday nights.”
Despite his success as a DJ, he found himself becoming increasingly frustrated with the quality of the equipment available to DJs in Ireland at the time. In fact, it was his quest for the best possible audio gear that led him to set up his own audio hire outfit, as he explains: “The quality of the kit you were getting at the time was pretty poor, the bottom of the barrel, in fact. It was almost like if you were a DJ looking for gear in a hire shop they’d go into a back room and dust down a speaker and say, ‘there you go – that’ll do you fine’. I soon realised the only way to get decent production stuff was to buy it myself and that’s how it all kicked off for me.”
Initially, he used the equipment for his own gigs, parties and events. But he soon impressed other DJs with the quality of the gear he was using and started renting it out. “As time went on with my knowledge of production and running events, the production side came into the picture and that’s how it became a production company. That’s when we tagged ‘and events’ onto the name of the company.”
EQ would soon expand their operations to encompass supplying PA systems to bands and any events where live sound production was required: “We had moved into The Factory for a period between about 1992 to 1996 when a lot of bands were coming in rehearsing, so that’s how I developed the live side of things.”
Such is the reputation of the company in recent years, that several big international acts have chosen EQ Audio and Events to supply their audio requirements when touring the UK and Europe. As Hannon explains “As far as I’m aware, we’re the only Irish PA company who tour with non-Irish acts across Europe,” he says. “For example, we’ve done the last three Eels European tours, and we’ve done the audio production on the last two Lucinda Williams European tours, which was amazing. We worked on Elaine Paige’s 40th Anniversary tour across the UK, bringing it into venues like the Royal Albert Hall. It’s down to the reputation of the company, our crew and the quality of the equipment we use. I go out as a Production Manager on a lot of these shows.”
Hannon explains some of the complexities of getting it right, when it comes to sound, whether it’s a DJ set-up or a live band. “There is so much involved in room acoustics,” he elaborates. “There’s the size of the room itself, the shape of the room and the amount of reflective surfaces within it. Placement of speakers is very important. If I go into a club and there is bad sound I go ballistic, especially if there are speakers stuck in the corner with inadequate dispersion for the size of the room. What happens is they blare out the volume to reach everywhere but it just leads to an uncomfortable experience.”
When it comes to live music events, Hannon says that new technology has made life easier, especially when it comes to advance planning. “With digital processing and digital analysing, if you’ve got a good enough system and you’ve done your homework in advance, you shouldn’t have to do too much tweaking to do on the night. For example, for the Crosby, Stills & Nash show which we did in the 02 recently, we put that whole venue into our computer modelling software. We’ve CAD drawings of all the main venues. We input our speaker systems, worked out alignments and placements, played around with it, checking the coverage and spread within the venue at every single frequency.”
The growth of the business into what it is today was, he says, a gradual, organic process, and is down to a genuine love for the music industry. “We’re not just in it for the money, you have to love what you’re doing. We’ve a good eye for quality – I don’t tolerate anything that is badly done or of bad quality. We made a conscious decision to get the best kit we could right from the start, even if it meant stretching the finances. We use DiGiCo consoles for live work. But we’ve a strip of valve pre-amps which we put our vocals through, which warms them up nicely.
With the summer festival season coming to a close, EQ Audio and Events are in for a busy autumn. They will be at Electric Picnic providing sound for various stages including the unique Body & Soul area, and are heavily involved with Arthur’s Day. Hannon’s role is production manager for venues such as Vicar Street, The Academy, and Whelan’s as well as production manager and supplier for the pub and studio venues. “Thankfully, we’re busier than ever despite the downturn,” Hannon concludes. “People these days still want high quality, but they also require value for money, which is only to be expected in the current climate.”