The annual event is one of the five biggest festivals in Quebec, a nine-day fiesta themed around the hot air balloon, and including diverse music, comedy and animation programming for its 400,000 visitors.
Omnison has a long history with Nexo products, with stock inventory of Geo T and Geo D Series systems, and over 60 cabinets of Geo S8. The company was an early adopter of the new STM Series line array in 2014, but has lately made a substantial investment in the system, supplied by Yamaha Corporation of America, adding STM mains, bass and sub modules, as well as additional RS subs, Geo S12 cabinets and many NXAMP 4x4 amplifiers.
The Montgolfieres Festival is held at an ex-military airfield near Montreal, and the first stage of the project involved Pierre DuBerger, Omnison system engineer, validating a system design on Nexo's NS-1 proprietary modelling software with Nexo's Engineering Support Team.
The STM modular line array was rigged for the main Loto-Quebec stage, with 18x sets of STM M46 main + B112 bass modules per side. Nine STM subs were flown per side, with an additional 24x RS18 subs groundstacked. All the RS18 subs were configured in cardioid mode to reduce low-frequency levels on stage.
To provide even coverage over the wide listening area, two out-fill hands of three B112 bass plus six M28 'omni' modules were flown each side, with the addition of four GeoO S12 cabinets across the stage for front-fills.
On stage, two groundstacks of STM (each with one M46, one B112 and one S118)) provided a compact but powerful side fill system on each side. Sixteen 45°N-12 line monitors were on stage.
The impressive all-Nexo system was driven by NXAMP amplifiers over a redundant Dante network, with a Yamaha DME64 as system processor. Yamaha CL5 consoles were deployed at front-of-house and monitor positions.
Michel Trepanier from YCA and Val Gilbert from the Nexo Engineering Support Team were on hand for the first show, with artists Metric and Half Moon Run. "Both mix engineers were extremely pleased with the system, applying only minor EQ to the system for taste," reported Gilbert.
With 40,000-strong audiences for the evening entertainment, The Montgolfieres event was a worthy debut for the large-format STM system in Canada. Now with a substantial inventory of modular line array and a variety of flyware options, Omnison is looking ahead to a busy future with leading Canadian artists and events.
(Jim Evans)
