EAW arrays cover Napa’s Oxbow RiverStage
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This year’s event featured Brandi Carlile, Lovers and Strangers, a-ha, Trombone Shorty’s Voodoo Threauxdown, Third Eye Blind, Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, and Widespread Panic. In all, Oxbow RiverStage utilised nine Anya’s flown inside and three Otto subs on each side of the stage.
“We worked with the City of Napa this year to deal with concerns we’d had in past seasons with bleed into neighbouring communities,” says Mike Brown, head of audio, Sound Image Productions. “Turning the stage around and moving it to the other side of the venue helped, but EAW’s Anya ADAPTive PA system was amazing. The flexibility of Anya allowed us to control our sound and place the audio where we wanted it and keep it away from where we didn’t want it.”
With the new stage orientation, the landscape featured a train bridge almost 400ft in front of the stage. “This long, perpendicular concrete structure creates a very pronounced slap back into the audience,” adds Brown. “With the Anya’s and Otto’s, we were able to reject a lot of the low end behind the hang, and focus energy into audience areas, reducing transmission into surrounding neighbourhoods. We were also able to reduce the delayed reflection of the train bridge by limiting the coverage back into the lawn.”
The Anya system that Oxbow Riverstage utilised this year was well received by those who used it. “James, the FOH engineer for Third Eye Blind, was enamoured with the system after he finished mixing the show and wanted to learn more. After I showed him the system, he was really impressed. The EAW ADAPTive system is really a great PA, and it exceeded our expectations for this event,” concludes Winston Damme, audio FOH technician.
