“Big Night Chicago,” a New Year’s Eve celebration held at the Grand Ballroom of the historic Palmer House Hilton with more than 3,000 in attendance, featured audio production by Sound Works Productions (Frankfort, IL), which deployed a range of NEXO loudspeakers joined by a Yamaha Commercial Audio digital console.
“The Grand Ballroom at the Historic Palmer House Hilton Chicago is a unique space,” states Daniel Nickleski, owner/director of Operations, Sound Works Productions. For this event, we couldn’t hang anything from the ceiling and needed to have a system that was light enough to be supported by ground lifts.
“The shape of the room is special as well; a large oval room with very high ceilings and a deep rectangular room off the back half,” he adds.
Performances included DJ duo Brody Jenner and William Lifestyle among others. “With DJs on New Year’s Eve, we also needed a rig that has high SPL. The NEXO GEO S12 boxes gave us the lightweight footprint and pattern control, and the RS18 Ray Subs made sure everyone felt the lows,” Nickleski says, adding that additional coverage was achieved with NEXO PS10s as front fills and delays.
A Yamaha LS9 digital console was stationed at front of house, with NEXO NX amplifiers delivering all power and processing to the loudspeakers. “The rig was the obvious choice for this event,” Nickleski concludes.