The Classic Open-Air Music Festival in Nuremberg saw German rental company In Phase Event put its Nexo’s STM Series modular line array system into action recently. Running alongside Nexo Geo-S and M6 systems, the STM extended coverage to the ‘enchanted’ event’s 280m audience area.
The Classic Open-Air Music Festival is one of the largest of its kind in Europe – a series of free outdoor concerts organised by the city that features the Nuremberg state orchestras performing live in the Luitpoldhain park. As a mark of respect to the tragic events in Munich this summer, two July dates were cancelled, but an enthusiastic crowd of 60,000 people gathered for the next scheduled concert, with the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Shelley and featuring organ soloist Cameron Carpenter.
Among the primary rental suppliers of Nexo systems in Germany, In Phase Event CEO Ernst Sieber and his team chose STM for the main PA at the large Luitpoldhain park venue, augmenting the system with a variety of other Nexo loudspeaker types for the delay lines. On each side of the stage, the main hangs comprised 16 STM M28 compact ‘omni’ modules, flown underneath three STM M46 main modules. Eight RS18 subbass cabinets were ground-stacked centrally in cardioid mode.
Thirteen delay towers were required to cover the audience area – six carried ten Geo-S8 cabinets, five were equipped with nine Geo-M6 modules plus an RS15 sub running in cardioid mode, and two contained five STM M28 cabinets and an RS18 sub also in cardioid mode.
All of the PA was run on optical fibre over a Dante network, fully controlled by Nexo/Yamaha amplifiers and mixing consoles, alongside AuviTran’s AVS Monitor. Yamaha digital desks were used, with experienced classical engineer Florian Denzler on a CL5 at front-of-house, and system technician Sven Kallenbach handling audio distribution via a CL1.
System specialist David Hochstenbach from Nexo’s Engineering Support Team was on hand to help set up the system, and was himself impressed by the results from the HF coupling between STM M46 and M28 modules over the long throw: ‘By the end of our tuning day, the sound was clear and pure,’ he says. ‘It felt like a gigantic hi-fi. It was a great pleasure to work with such a positive crew as the In Phase team, who loved the phase coherence of our systems as much as the super-fast rigging of the hardware.’
