Nexo’s STM supports Jessica Mauboy
Published: ASIA
AUSTRALIA: A Nexo STM rig has been used to provide reinforcement for Jessica Mauboy’s recent Australian tour. Monitor City, which was placed in charge of production for the event, also recruited experienced Nexo system designer and engineer, Mark Bollenberg, to help modify the system for the different venue types.
Jessica Mauboy has been a rising star into the Australian pop scene, and after winning the Aria 2013 Best Female Artist Award, she quickly embarked on a summer tour across the country. Serving up a selection of R&B, Dance, Soul and Electro music throughout the concert, this provided plenty of differing considerations for the engineers. With several big entertainment centres in Melbourne, Townsville, Brisbane, Newcastle, Mackay and the like being chosen for the tour, various modifications were made to each design in order to maximise performance with the space available; a task well-suited to the Scale Through Modularity concept.
‘The System sounded and behaved amazing and precise at every show,’ said Mr Bollenberg. ‘I have been using Nexo's NS-1 to plot every show/venue well in advance and managed to get a great comparison/result from theory that translated itself perfectly into the live environment of each venue. The 'Scale Through Modularity' philosophy behind STM's design is one of so many advantages that are particularly great for this kind of touring as we have the flexibility to build up or down as we need.’
Not wanting to limit himself to merely moving ground stacks through to three wide line arrays, Mr Bollenberg decided to fly S118 subs above the array in varying dual configurations. An additional run of S118 subs were spaced out along the foot of the stage, all time aligned to match.
‘I wanted to ensure the sub could throw further back into the upper ranks of the bigger venues, without smearing the lower frequencies, so it made more sense to fly a few of them above the STM B112 and M46 modules,’ Mr Bollenberg explained. ‘It worked really well and with the correct alignment to the rest of the system, it sounded excellent, clean and punchy.’
Additionally, he used six PS8 for front-fill and two Geo S1230 turned 90-degrees as L/R in-fills. ‘A lot of local sound technicians actually raised one of their Eyebrows in pure disbelief when I started laying out my six Nexo PS8's.’
Mr Bollenberg, however, insisted that this approach works. ‘Yes this is all I need to cover the 3m of front space between the stage and VIP Seats on an 18m wide stage. The beauty of the STM is that I have such a controlled front pattern with my main hang, which enabled me to precisely predict the system's coverage from start to finish.’
Monitor City supplied two DiGiCo SD8 consoles for FOH and monitoring for the entire tour. The power requirements for running a system of this size also impressed Mr Bollenberg.
‘We did the tour with a 125A power distribution system, but the overall power consumption never exceeded more than 12A per phase, even when we accumulated 106 - 108dbA for the encore songs,’ he stated. ‘In a nutshell, we could have delivered the whole show on one 32A if we needed to.’