In order to secure the show with the producers of Korean star Rain, the Taiwanese promoter Brokers Brothers had to guarantee that the high-performance sound specifications, sophisticated lighting and video and large staging requirements of the production could be met by local partners. All the more important was the selection of suppliers who could deliver on a scale never attempted before in Taiwan.
Seoul Sound from Korea is the official sound production company for the Rain shows; Bornfree Inc. is a long-established Taiwanese rental and sound production company, as well as NEXO’s rental partner and distributor in Taiwan. Although Seoul Sound is a long-time user of another high end sound reinforcement brand, Mr Cho (aka Boss), the charismatic owner of Seoul Sound, announced that he was happy to work with Bornfree and with NEXO.
Bornfree turned to NEXO’s Asia Sales Manager Nicolas Kirsch for advise on how to design a system with the performance for Taiwan’s first stadium concert with NEXO. With long experience in this type of application, and after reviewing some of the stadium regulations that, for example, prevented the set-up of delay towers on the grass field, Nicolas modified the design to use long-throw GEO T characteristics to handle the complete field from the FOH, and point-source Alpha systems as wide-angle delays for the corners and end-seating.
Nicolas and Bornfree proposed a GEO T system using 32 cabinets per side, with 12x flown GEO SUBs handling bass reinforcement 85-250Hz. For sub bass below 85Hz, the 24x CD18s were laid on the floor in their typical fan-out configuration. The engineers first tried to position the subs stacked at stage level to get more projection, but the huge power caused the whole stage to vibrate, raising serious concerns about the integrity of the large LED walls located just above. Moving them back to the floor, the CD18s performed well, easily covering the whole 100m field with punchy sub-lows, prompting Seoul Sound’s Mr Cho to remark, “these subs are very powerful, they can give very even sub coverage from right near the stage and all the way to end of the field. The design works like a sound-beam.” (For an event this size, Bornfree subhired in extra GEO T cabinets from Korean rental partner Way Audio in Seoul.)
The rest of the system included 12x GEO D for side-hangs, shooting at 60deg off axis, and 4x Alpha E-F with 2x Alpha S2 for the stage front fills. All systems were processed by NEXO NX242-ES4 with EtherSound facility, and powered by CAMCO V6 amplifiers. For the delay systems, clusters of 3x Alpha M3, 3x Alpha B1 and 3x Alpha S2 were used for the main delay tower covering the stands corners, with a central cluster of 3x Alpha e-F for the centre fill delay tower.
According to Nicolas Kirsch, “the sound quality was very good all the way to the stage sightline limits, and even slightly further. There was no area of seating which didn’t have a decent full-range and clear sound. Every seat could be sold.”
For more information on this event please contact:Born Free
