Marked by a week of demos, GT’s STM launch was attended by decision makers from the production, touring, consultancy, higher education and government sectors.. Representatives from NEXO’s Malaysian distributor, Concept Audio, were also in attendance, along with their client Right Vision, which has already purchased an STM touring system of 108 STM cabinets.
NEXO’s new STM system represents a groundbreaking mission for the company: to help its customers change their business models by re-imagining the essential toolkit of their trade, the PA system. A two-year project, involving several leading international figures from the touring and rental markets, has produced a system with the versatility to handle anything from a small corporate AV assignment to a large festival stage. STM draws on NEXO’s much-loved, classic Alpha Series of point source cabinets, sharing the basic principles of scale through modularity. The initial touring range incorporates the M46 Main cabinet, B112 Bass cabinet, and S118 Sub-bass cabinet, allowing users to build systems for audiences from 1,000 to 100,000.
Flying the NEXO flag down under and assisting Group Technologies with the demos were sales director Denis Baudier, head of R&D Francois Deffarges, NEXO concert sound specialist Stuart Kerrison and Asia sales manager Nicolas Kirsch.
The STM system was demonstrated in several configurations each day, illustrating just how scalable and easy to rig it is. First up was a typical outdoor festival setup of 12x STM M46 Main cabinets and 12x B112 Bass cabinets per left/right cluster.
‘This system was throwing extremely even sound across the entire horizontal plane’ says Anthony Touma from Group Technologies. ‘We had guests who walked out to over 100m from the system and were still impressed with what they were hearing.’
This system was then taken down and re-rigged into the next configuration, three rows of 1x M46 and 2x B112s, taking less than 20 minutes and just two riggers to complete the changeover. ‘This kind of flexibility and speed is unheard of in the industry and is yet another of the major advantages of the system,’ says Touma.
Finally, a ground-stacked system of 2x M46s, 2x B112s and 2x S118 per side was demonstrated. ‘Many of our guests were convinced that part of the flown system was still turned on, given the amount of sheer crystal clear output the system was delivering,’ says Touma. ‘Really unbelievable.’
One of the attendees to be won over by STM was Chris Kennedy, group sales director of Norwest Productions. ‘Thank you for inviting me to what was clearly the most outstanding event of its type that I have experienced in all the 25 years I have been in the audio business,’ Kennedy told Group Technologies after the event. ‘The product is really impressive; it would suit our business model down to the ground and I would love to find a way to own some in the not too distant future.’
Group Technologies also announced its first STM partner for Australia, Monitor City. The Melbourne-based PA company is gradually building up its STM system to an arena-sized rig which can be broken down into many smaller PAs. ‘I always really liked the sound of Nexo’s Alpha and when I first heard of STM I liked the concept from the start,’ says Monitor City’s Matt Dufty. ‘The fact that it is modular and scalable is brilliant. We will have a big pile of STM cabinets and will be able do various jobs by adding more or less to the order.’
Anthony Touma @ GROUP TECHNOLOGIES AUSTRALASIA PTY LTD
Tel: +61 3 9354 9133
Email: [email protected]
