Leading
Mexican sound rental company Tecno Son Espectáculos has deployed its new NEXO
STM modular line array system for the Corona Capital Festival, sponsored by
Corona beer. Held over two days in
October at the Rodriguez Brothers Racetrack in Mexico City. The 2013 festival
attracted a larger than ever crowd of 85,000, eager to witness the
international line-up of rock and dance acts.
Tecno
Son Espectáculos had previously handled one of the festival’s smaller stages
using NEXO GEO D and CD18 systems. The arrival of the new NEXO STM system in
early summer 2013 caught the interest of Eduardo Gonzalez, audio technical
manager from production and booking company OCESA. Gonzalez took the decision
to debut STM on the Corona stage, one of two main stages, along with other
components from Tecno Son Espectáculos’ existing NEXO inventory.
Acts
performing on the Corona stage included Deadmau5, Queens of the Stone Age, The
XX, White Lies, The Breeders and Miles Kane.
Main
PA: 18x M46 + 18x B112 , 30x S118 subs
per side
Outfill:
12x M46 + 12x B112 per side
Delays:
3 towers, each with 18x GEO T + 6x CD18
Monitoring:
18x PS15
Side/front
fill: Alpha and Alpha-E
The
system consisted of a total of 180 STM units. The main L/R arrays consisted of
18x M46 main cabinets with 18x B112 bass units flown alongside; a L/R outfill
side array of 12x M46s and 12x B112s and a total of 30x S118 subs per side.
There were also three delay towers of 16x GEO T4805s with 2x GEO T2815s and 6x
CD18 subs in each tower.
On
stage, monitoring was provided by 18x Nexo PS15s, with 2x PS15s for drum fills
and 2x LS1200 subs each, a side fill rig of 4x Alpha EMs, 2x Alpha B1-18s, and 2x
ground-stacked CD18s per side. Front fill was 4x Alpha E-Fs. Zenteno called in
two neighbouring NEXO owners with whom he works, Star and Roa, to provide some
extra boxes for the delay towers and outfills.
“We’d
already used STM on the Ceremony festival, and this gave us confidence when it
came to designing the system for this festival along with system engineer
Ignacio Sanchez and technical manager Eduardo Gonzalez,” says Tecno Son
Espectáculos owner Sergio Zenteno. “The main STM system was angled to
provide coverage from the front row to a depth of 120 metres, overlapping with GEO
T delay towers at 100 metres.”
During
the Corona festival, Zenteno doubled up as FOH Engineer for some of the
artists, mixing for jazz funk band Quadron as well as DJ Chris Lake and
headliner Deadmau5. “The result was wonderful, full of power and headroom and
rich and balanced across the frequency spectrum,” he says. “I had never in my
life heard a sound with this level of performance. This view was reiterated by
the artists’ engineers as well as the organisers.”
Zenteno
is enjoying getting to grips with STM and the flexibility and efficiency it
offers. “I had already used the STM on two separate occasions, including at an
outdoor amphitheater with a depth of 85 metres and a height of 30 meters at the
last tier of the audience,” he says. “The second time we didn’t even use the
S118 subs as we had 2,000 musicians using part of the audience area, so we used
a wide range B112, which gave us an excellent bass response.”
Zenteno
has been a dedicated NEXO fan from the moment he encountered the company during
an AES seminar on line array technology in 2002. “I immediately understood that
NEXO is very different from the other brands, employing a superior technology,”
he says.
He
started his company the following year with a GEO S System, building up his
NEXO inventory from there. In May he took delivery of 108 STM cabinets
following a factory visit to France, which left him suitably impressed by the
new system.
“All
of the audio industry is working on solutions to implement more SPL, but the
difference with NEXO STM is that they’ve improved on the volume with very high
fidelity and a homogeneous response across the whole audience area,” says
Zenteno. “No other system can reproduce the high frequencies over a great
distance like NEXO, and with the STM in particular, across the extended range.”
STM
has given Tecno Son Espectáculos a new lease of life as well as expanding the
capabilties of its existing NEXO inventory.
