Downtown Napa’s Oxbow RiverStage was looking to take the outdoor festival-style venue’s sound quality to the next level for the 2022 season, and knew that their PA system was key. With top touring acts gracing its stage, the Oxbow RiverStage organisers looked to Sound Image Productions to devise a complete audio, lighting and staging package for the concert series, and choosing a PA system from the EAW ADAPTive line of Anya loudspeakers and Otto subwoofers.

This year’s event featured some Brandi Carlile, Lovers and Strangers, a-ha, Trombone Shorty’s Voodoo Threauxdown, Third Eye Blind, Robert Plant and Allison Krauss and Widespread Panic among others. Serving them were nine Anya systems flown inside, and three Otto subs on each side of the stage.

‘We worked with the City of Napa this year to deal with concerns we’d had in past seasons with bleed into neighbouring communities,’ says Sound Image Productions Head of Audio, Mike Brown. ‘Turning the stage around and moving it to the other side of the venue helped, but EAW’s Anya ADAPTive PA system was amazing. The flexibility of Anya allowed us to control our sound and place the audio where we wanted it and keep it away from where we didn’t want it.’

With a new stage orientation, the landscape included a train bridge almost 400ft in front of the stage. ‘This long, perpendicular concrete structure creates a very pronounced slap back into the audience,’ Brown says. ‘With the Anyas and Ottos, we were able to reject a lot of the low end behind the hang, and focus energy into audience areas, reducing transmission into surrounding neighbourhoods. We were also able to reduce the delayed reflection of the train bridge by limiting the coverage back into the lawn.’

EAW’s Anya is a self-contained sound reinforcement system that adapts performance parameters electronically, allowing it to be used in virtually any application. Arrays of Anya modules hang straight, without any vertical splay, and Resolution 2 software adapts total system performance to produce asymmetrical output that delivers coherent, full-frequency range response across the entire coverage area as defined by the user. It is extremely powerful and immensely scalable, making it suitable for anything from small venues to the largest stadiums.

The new Anya system at Oxbow Riverstage was well received by those who used it: ‘James, the FOH engineer for Third Eye Blind, was enamoured with the system after he finished mixing the show and wanted to learn more,’ reports audio FOH tech, Winston Damme.After I showed him the system, he was really impressed. The EAW ADAPTive system is really a great PA, and it exceeded our expectations for this event.’

More: www.eaw.com