Tecno Son Espectáculos had previously handled one of the festival's smaller stages using Nexo Geo D and CD18 systems. The arrival of the new STM system in early summer 2013 caught the interest of Eduardo Gonzalez, audio technical manager from production and booking company OCESA. Gonzalez took the decision to debut STM on the Corona stage, one of two main stages, along with other components from Tecno Son Espectáculos' existing NEXO inventory.
Acts performing on the Corona stage included Deadmau5, Queens of the Stone Age, The XX, White Lies, The Breeders and Miles Kane.
The system consisted of a total of 180 STM units. The main L/R arrays consisted of 18x M46 main cabinets with 18x B112 bass units flown alongside; a L/R out-fill side array of 12x M46s and 12x B112s and a total of 30x S118 subs per side. There were also three delay towers of 16x Geo T4805s with two Geo T2815s and six CD18 subs in each tower.
On stage, monitoring was provided by 18x Nexo PS15s, with two PS15s for drum-fills and two LS1200 subs each, a side-fill rig of four Alpha EMs, 2x Alpha B1-18s, and two ground-stacked CD18s per side. Front-fill was fur Alpha E-Fs. Zenteno called in two neighbouring Nexo owners with whom he works, Star and Roa, to provide some extra boxes for the delay towers and out-fills.
"We'd already used STM on the Ceremony festival, and this gave us confidence when it came to designing the system for this festival along with system engineer Ignacio Sanchez and technical manager Eduardo Gonzalez," says Tecno Son Espectáculos owner Sergio Zenteno. "The main STM system was angled to provide coverage from the front row to a depth of 120m, overlapping with Geo T delay towers at 100m."
During the Corona festival, Zenteno doubled up as FOH Engineer for some of the artists, mixing for jazz funk band Quadron as well as DJ Chris Lake and headliner Deadmau5. "The result was wonderful, full of power and headroom and rich and balanced across the frequency spectrum," he says. "I had never in my life heard a sound with this level of performance. This view was reiterated by the artists' engineers as well as the organisers."
(Jim Evans)
