09/08/2018 » Axiom Surprises Frankenthal Festival in Germany with Slim and Powerful AX12C Column Array
The Strandbad Festival is an open air music event held every year in the South-Western German town of Frankenthal. The large park area with its pools and lake is transformed into a party mile, while its green areas become an ideal setting for events with its multitude of grand mature trees, and attract large numbers of music fans, whether enjoying a picnic or dancing in front of the stages.
The festival features two stages, one under the chestnut trees and the other on “Monte Scherbelino”, creating a fantastic atmosphere. Local bands including “anonyme Giddarischde”, (who are well known in the Rhineland-Palatinate region), “Cool Breeze”, and “Die Nachtigallen” entertained over the two-day weekend. As in the previous 20 years or so, veteran Frankenthal-based PA company MEXIA Eventservice provided planning and technical implementation for both of the stages, and fielded systems from the Italian manufacturer of professional loudspeakers, Axiom Pro Audio.
This year's festival presented an opportunity for MEXIA Eventservice to set up the new 12 x 3.5-inch AX12C column array system on the chestnuts-stage, which although having a deceptively small footprint with a width of less than 11cm, is none the less capable of impressive (130dB peak) SPL and wide horizontal coverage, making it an ideal solution for a trailer-stage event such as Strandbadfest. Its natural cardioid behaviour, thanks to the proprietary transmission line back loading technology, means that bass frequencies are much reduced behind the PA and on the stage, making a more comfortable environment for the musicians.
Mirko Lo Porto, owner of MEXIA Eventservice, explains the reason for the choice of PA: "After the AX12C system had already attracted many fascinated visitors on the outdoor demonstration at Prolight & Sound 2018, it was really valuable for us to be able to experience for ourselves such an extraordinarily compact, and yet powerful speaker system. We flew only two AX12C tops per side from the stage roof outriggers, and combined these with just one SW2100A powered 21-inch sub ground stacked each side. The simplicity of the rigging made the set up very fast and very efficient.”
Daniel Mertsch, MEXIA Eventservice's supervising audio technician, was very surprised at the Axiom system's performance. "The Axiom PA gave us very dry and precise low frequencies, and the tops reproduced cleanly. The system played very coherently, and the dispersion of the tops was amazingly good for such an incredibly compact speaker. Nobody is going to believe this unless they hear it for themselves!"