Nexo Geo M line arrays for Alpine auditorium
- Details
Savoie Expo is located in Chambéry, in the Alpine heart of France’s second tourist region. Strategically placed to take advantage of close links to Lyon and Geneva, as well as both winter sports and summer recreation, the venue organises a range of trade fairs and exhibitions and hosts major seminar and conference events.
Hall E was opened earlier this year, a substantial and versatile auditorium which can offer 2000sq.m of exhibition area, conference facilities for 1000 people, or accommodate 1200 people for a formal dinner. Equipped with retractable seating, the auditorium required an audio system that would adapt to its different configurations, looking to Nexo for system design input and to the Chambéry-based Elypse Group for installation and integration services.
Nexo engineering support specialist Christophe Girres visited Chambéry to fine-tune the finished system. “We are asking the system to work in three different ways, so the final tuning session went through these settings. In the first configuration, we had the stage immediately in front of the seating stands: in the second configuration, the stage is set up further away, but the audience are still seated in the stands. In the third configuration, there are no seating stands so the audience is standing around in a large free area.
“In order to achieve these three iterations, all elements of the PA system are mobile, with a special square truss to hold the sub clusters and suspend the point-source P8 outfill and centre fill cabinets. The Geo M10 line array is rigged on points in front of the truss, and these are mobile too.”
Each array of Nexo’s mid-size Geo M10 is set up with five M1012 plus a single M1025 module with 120° flange. The L/R clusters are completed by left/right pairs of MSUB15s, which fly behind the main arrays, presenting a very tidy aesthetic. A pair of Nexo’s new compact point source P8 cabinets with 100 degrees x 100 degrees dispersion are used for the out-fill, with a single P8 (110 x 60° dispersion) handles the centre-fill. The whole system is powered by two NXAMP4x2Mk2 amplifiers.
“We listened to a lot of different tracks, including EDM at high levels, and the Savoiexpo engineers were surprised that the system was not at all aggressive, even at such high SPLs. The system is very clear in the mid-range, and the low end is perfectly suited to the applications, mainly conference and video, and small concerts.”
