A sound reinforcement upgrade earlier this year at the Oxbow RiverStage, an outdoor-style festival venue in downtown Napa, CA that hosts performances by major touring artists that this year included Brandi Carlile, Third Eye Blind, Alison Krauss and many others, saw the Heyward, CA offices of Sound Image implement a new main system headed by Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) ADAPTive components, including Anya loudspeakers and Otto subwoofers.
Specifically, Sound Image incorporated arrays of nine Anya elements flown per side joined by three Otto subs per side. “We worked with the city of Napa this year to deal with concerns we’d had in past seasons with bleed into neighboring communities,” explains Mike Brown, head of audio for Sound Image, which also provided upgraded lighting and staging. “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 now has a train bridge almost 400 feet in front of the stage. “This long, perpendicular concrete structure creates a very pronounced slap back into the audience,” notes 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 neighborhoods. We were also able to reduce the delayed reflection of the train bridge by limiting the coverage back into the lawn.”
Arrays of Anya modules hang straight, without any vertical splay, and Resolution 2 software adapts system performance to produce asymmetrical output that is designed to deliver coherent, full-frequency range response across the entire coverage area.
The system that Oxbow Riverstage utilized this year was well received by those who used it, concludes front of house tech Winston Damme. “James, the front of house engineer for Third Eye Blind, was enamored with the system after he finished mixing the show and wanted to learn more,” Damme says. “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.”
