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Hellfest is not as frightening as it sounds! For three days, 40,000 rock and metal fans gather in the French western countryside (Clisson, just outside of Nantes) for this annual festival.
Headlined by Def Leppard, Kiss, and Volbeat, this year’s event saw Nexo’s new STM system make its Hellfest debut on the two main stages.
French rental company Melpomen provided the audio kit for Hellfest since its inception in 2006, and, as Melpo has been a big Nexo user for nearly 20 years. The festival has always been Nexo-centric. With STM onboard this year, that meant more headroom and more control than ever before, according to Thierry Tranchant, Melpo’s president.
“We have a very good relationship with the festival organisers, so when we explained that we needed STM because it is such a fantastic, powerful system, and it’s so easy to rig, they just took our word for it,” he says, backstage
During day one of the event.”We’ve designed it so that the maximum level of the system is 118 dB, so we have a serious amount of headroom to play with.” And evidently so: the headliners were coming through loud and clear at just 104 dB from FOH – some 55 m back from the stage. Tranchant says the throw from stage was actually 70 m to the end of the audience area.
“We’ve always had a great sound from GEO-T at Hellfest, but I have to say working with STM is quite a step up. Sonically, the HF and the mid frequencies are just perfect, and we now have an extremely solid and powerful low-end”.
Tranchant insists. “The additional power, in fact, is so evident that we only need to use two-thirds of the amount of STM cabinets in comparison to what we would need if we were using GEO – that is really impressive.”
As usual at Hellfest, there are two main stages located next to each other and the bands ‘flip-flop’ between the two to ensure that the festival soundtrack is uninterrupted. “There is no silence at Hellfest,” jokes Tranchant.
The two PA systems effectively run as one, continuously. When a band was playing on main stage A, the B stage system dropped 6 dB in level, and vice-versa. Both stages were equipped with identical STM systems with crossover frequencies set to 180 Hz (Bass to Main) and 60 Hz (S118 Subbass to B112 Bass). Each stage had a dedicated L/R main hang of 15 x STM M46 Main Modules and 15 x STM B112 Bass Modules per side; and two stacks of 15 x S118 Sub Modules in a cardioïd configuration on the floor. Amplification was handled by 20 x units of Nexo Universal Amp Racks, each containing two NXAMP 4x4s.
Melpomen’s team was led by crew chief David Prevost, with Cedric Bernard and Christophe Rousseau supervising FOH on Main Stage 1, and Samuel Biraies and Wilfrid Hubert on Main Stage 2.
Contact : nexo-sa.com
