Also known as the Worker’s Stadium, GongTi is a multi-purpose stadium mostly used for soccer matches, including those of the 2008 Olympic Games. It is one of the Ten Great Buildings constructed in 1959 for the 10th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
For the show, the FOH system comprised 24x modules of GEO D10 on each side, with side fill hangs of 16x GEO D10s. At 80 metres out, 6-a-side delay units were set up using Alpha M3/M8 and B1-15. Everything was driven by NXAMP 4×4 amplifiers fitted with ES-104 cards, and mixed on a Yamaha PM5D with an Auvitran AVY16-ES100 EtherSound card running the system from console to power amps, entirely in the digital domain.
Subbass was the subject of great interest to all the engineers. 24x RS18s were set up in omni mode, front-facing in a sub wall stack, 25m apart and 4 wide/3 high. Additionally, the system used 6x GEO SUBs and 6x CD18s per side.
Sub output covered the entire football pitch 70 m wide/105 m long although engineers from NEXO and its China distributor Top Plot report that the RS18s were still going nicely at 80 m width and 110m length, and if stacked 4 high, would have gone even further.
“The subs sounded very good,” reports mix engineer Scott Mason. “They have the soft VLF typical of front-loaded subs that engineers like, and also the punch of the last octave 63Hz-125Hz like the RS15. They did not need any tuning outdoors, and, when I analysed them, they had a nice pattern and were very efficient at 125Hz. It was a nice rounded sub sound, very easy to mix with no distinctive box sound or LF booming. Coupling effect was smooth with no single frequency jumping out too much.
“Most impressive for me was the lack of cancellation at the front and centre of stage. The RS18s were pushing good air and wave form almost right to the front of stage (up to 8m from the stage edge), between the stacks and way past the drop off point of the line array.”
For more information:TOP PLOT INTERNATIONAL
