Headlined by Europe and the Black Star Riders (former Thin Lizzy band members), the Steelhouse Festival has substantial rock credentials. Claiming to be the biggest and the highest heavy metal festival in Wales, Steelhouse was also the debut appearance in the UK for NEXO’s new STM M28 compact line array cabinets.
The M28 omnipurpose cabinet completes the line up of NEXO’s STM Series modular line array. At Steelhouse, it was being used as the Main cabinet with the B112 Bass and S118 Subbass cabinets, in a system designed by rental company SMS-PA together with NEXO Concert Sound specialist Val Gilbert.
In its stunning rural location on a Welsh mountain peak, the Steelhouse Festival was attended by 5000+ people over two nights, enjoying a busy schedule of national and international bands. Last year, the festival used a NEXO GEO S12/RS18 system and SMS-PA owner Ian Smith was eager to take a pioneering role with the new M28, launched this summer.
The system was designed to provide even coverage over a 65 meter audience area, using a traditional L/R omnidirectional sub set-up. Either side of stage, the main PA was 9x M28 compact cabinets, with 8x STM S118 subs. A single M28 per side was used to provide front row coverage up to 10 meters.
System control and signal transport was all done over Dante with a Yamaha CL5 console at FOH, and another CL5 on monitor duty, both provided by SMS-PA. Dante was setup in a primary/secondary network, ensuring a flawless network topology.
NEXO’s Val Gilbert reported that “the system required very little tuning, and provided extremely smooth coverage on both horizontal and vertical planes, from 65 meters all the way to the front of the stage thanks to M28’s 15º inter-cabinet angle and the 120º Configurable Directivity Device (CDD™) on the last cabinet of the array. Setting up the system was a piece of cake – rigged, flown, stacked and ready to play in about one hour!”
The M28 can be teamed with other loudspeaker elements in the STM Series to create a wide variety of systems for different applications. It can deploy as a downfill for the STM M46 main cabinet, or as a primary line array module. It can fly in line with STM B112 bass cabinets when extra headroom and LF response is required. The wide operating frequency range means that many speech or light music events can be run effectively with M28 alone, thereby removing the need for any extra cabinets. If programme material calls for low frequency extension, the 25-120Hz range of the STM S118 sub and the 55-200Hz range of the STM B112 bass offer configuration options to achieve the desired frequency response or power.
