satis&fy worked closely with Nexo to design the system, which required maximum cardioid sub efficiency to minimise spill to the second stage. It also needed to provide even coverage while controlling spill outside of the audience area.
The site itself came with a number of challenges for the team. The truss wasn't designed to support a flown sub system, and, because of video and photography sight lines, the subs could only be groundstacked 2-high.
System design was for main PA hangs of 15 sets of STM, using M46 Main cabinets and B112 Bass cabinets with 2xM28s as down-fill. The right outfill hang used 12 sets of STM with 3xM28s for down-fill, covering a distance of 80m. As the left side of the audience was bordered by a VIP area, left out-fill comprised 12x M28 to improve SPL and coverage control in that zone.
Three delay towers around 80m from the stage flew 9x M28s, each covering around 60m, while two sets of 2x M28s at 120º were locked onto the subs to provide front row coverage.
Another challenge was the off-centre FOH mixing position. The team addressed this by using a side-to-side cardioid sub design, with digital steering to open the horizontal coverage close to 110º. Positioned well within the PA-right coverage area, the engineers were able to hear what the majority of the audience were listening to.
"For us it was a great premiere," commented satis&fy head of audio Martin Ramrath. "The first really large job with a new sound system is always an important and thrilling event. We had big expectations and have not been disappointed."
Festival monitoring was an all-Nexo setup, including three deep, two wide, flown STM side-fills per side, and three S118 subs on the stage deck below. 26x 45N-12 stage monitors were used as floor wedges and, depending on requirements, were reconfigured throughout the event into single, double and triple wedge setups. The monitor system was driven by 8x NXAMP4 4x4 Powered TDcontrollers.
Nexo's technology was supported by a dedicated team of techs: Val Gilbert, Norbert Bund and Reinhard Steger. Nexo'S Joseph Carcopino was also onsite to ensure a smooth implementation of the Dante Network through the 50x NXAMP 4x4 powered controllers. Interface to all FOH consoles was via an Auvitran Toolbox AVBX7 into the Dante network cards in the NXAMPS. Lake LM44 controllers, also all in the Dante network, were used to tune the system.
(Jim Evans)
