Doug Fowler, of Fowler Audio Service (St. Louis), was recently hired by the Dutch pop orchestra to handle system engineering for the U.S. leg of the tour. In addition to Fowler, the audio team consisted of Renè Scholing, Production Factory (Arnhem, NL) serving as production manager, Wilfrid Evenblij and Ron Peeters of Da Capo Orchestral Audio (Utrecht, NL) mixing front of house and monitors, respectively. Tour support was provided by Logic Systems Sound and Lighting, Saint Louis.
For the 1,700-seat Detroit Music Hall, Fowler chose 24x NEXO Alpha M3/B1s as the main speaker system, provided by Thunder Audio of Detroit. Using Logic System’s NEXO PS8s for front and outfills on all the dates, the rig also consisted of 4x NEXO CD18 cardioid subs and NEXO 242 controllers.
“I knew a 2-wide hang of Alpha M3/B1 would provide nominally 70 degrees of horizontal coverage, and we didn’t need the wider coverage of a line array,” states Fowler. “Both Wilfrid and I have used Alpha enough in the past to know what it can do, and that it would accurately reproduce the orchestra.”
Fowler said that having a world-class company like Thunder Audio as the system provider for the Detroit date also made the NEXO decision easy. “The system did not disappoint,” he adds. “It was great fun using a traditional system rather than a line array. I had almost (but not quite) forgotten how capable the better point and shoot systems are!»