This is the Manics' first tour with SSE Audio, although the band and its front-of-house engineer Dave Cooper made use of Nexo Geo T array systems at a large radio show at Christmas (XFM's Winter Wonderland). However, recent developments have transformed the PA system they last used. The implementation of NXStream, an all-new suite of loudspeaker processing software for Nexo's loudspeakers, has proved so successful that John Penn of SSE Audio reckons "I've got a new PA system."
SSE is currently upgrading all its Nexo NX242 TDcontrollers, the second-generation digital processors which just need the addition of an ES4 expansion card in order to run the new (free) NXStream load. Tom Wiggans, system tech for Manic Street Preachers, describes the day he first heard the effects of the NXStream software in a searching A/B comparison test in Redditch.
"It's quite a long drive from my place to SSE; frankly, they could have saved me the journey and demonstrated the NXStream difference by holding the phone up to some Geo T cabinets. The improvement is quite pronounced. I don't think the HF has changed very much; all the different is in the low-mids. The low end is more extended and there's a lot more warmth in the bass. The system sounds very musical now. I find I am dipping 125 on Geo T which I've never done before. We're not EQ'ing the system at all, because we generally don't with Geo T."
Tom Wiggans has a great deal of experience with Nexo's flagship tangent array. As front-of-house engineer for UB40, he has toured the system extensively. He notes that the improvements extend beyond audio performance, to the way in which Geo T physically handles.
"We couldn't really ground-stack the Geo T cabinets before, but there's been a big improvement here. In many of the venues we're playing, there aren't adequate points for us to fly our systems, so we've been stacking four Geo T cabinets on top of three CD18 subs, and it's sounded fantastic." In venues where the crew was able to fly the system, it has typically been configured with eight T4805s plus two T2815s, with four CD18s in 2,000-3,000 capacity halls.
Wiggans points to another upside of NXStream. "Time alignment used to take quite a long time, but I'm finding that much easier with the NXStream software." His enthusiasm and confidence in the system is such that he has updated the UB40 worldwide spec to include NXStream on Geo T, notably for the band's arena tour in the UK at the end of this year.
(Jim Evans)
