[ 4th August 2009 - 12:33:10 PM ] Norway

Despite horrible weather, 90,000 of Oslo’s pop faithful turned out for Scandinavia’s largest outdoor concert, a free one-day event sponsored by the country’s largest newspaper. The VG-Lista Topp 20 is staged in the heart of the city, a site picturesquely adjacent to the harbour but bounded on the other side by the civic centres and office blocks of downtown Oslo. Show day is a Friday so sound spillage is a top priority.

With Frontlite AS providing the sound systems for this huge show, it falls to experienced engineer Stuart Kerrison to tailor the design of the substantial NEXO GEO T line-array system so as to minimise disruption for anyone still clinging onto their office desk at the end of the week.

A regular NEXO user when he is mixing FOH for Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Kerrison works as a consultant with Frontlite, particularly on the large-scale events like VG-Lista and the Hove Festivalen, Norway’s largest weekender festival. When the company made a substantial investment in high-end audio inventory in 2006, buying one of the largest stadium systems ever supplied by NEXO, Kerrison was a keen advocate of GEO T technology and CAMCO Vortex amplification to power it. “It is perfect for Frontlite, so small, light and flexible, and the full-range cardioid characteristics really appealed to us,” he explains. “They needed high-output loudspeakers for our arena and stadia projects, but not cabinets so heavy that the roof structures can’t take it. One of the features of the PA market in Norway is the huge variation in size of venues. A lot of venues we work in can't handle the dimensions of larger line-array systems, so we need something really versatile, because our audiences can range from 50 people to 20,000 people to 100,000.” Within a short 4-week window, Frontlite demonstrates this versatility on the highest-profile shows in Norway. 26-cabinet L/R GEO T arrays frame the festival stage in Hove, where The Killers, Faith No More, Slipknot and The Prodigy headline. In an old fort in Halden, just 22 GEO T cabinets provide all the sound reinforcement needed for a remarkable outdoor production of ‘Turandot’ by the Opera Ostfold.

In Radhusplassen, for A-Ha and the VG-Lista Topp 20 popsters, Stuart Kerrison has brought just a small part of Frontlite’s inventory. Arrays of 17x GEO T cabinets are flown left and right of the stage. Going out to a full 80-metre width, two towers carry the side hangs, each with 16x GEO T boxes. In this urban scene, with trees and buildings, the slender profile of the silver GEO cabinets renders them almost invisible. Equally discreet are the 3x3 groupings of NEXO’s CD18 subs on either side of the stage, supplemented by 6 more at either sidefill position and another 5 subs under the relay screen. Some 120 metres from the stage, front-of-house sound engineer Dag Stephen Solberg presides over events from behind his Soundcraft Vi6 digital console. Behind him, a large relay screen with another 16-box hang of GEO T takes care of the rear section of the crowd. Coverage is impressively clear, full-range and consistent across this large area, but step outside the crowd barriers and SPLs drop dramatically. Kerrison explains that, "In Norway, we’ve only had official restrictions imposed on us for a few years, but the trend is towards lower levels anyway, so that people can actually hear things when they leave the show!”

Dag Stephen Solberg at FOH is in full agreement. “I’m aiming for 103dB (weighted) at the mixer, which is still a good level. We try to make it sound ‘fat’, so that the audience can feel it without it tearing their heads off.” To help them achieve that goal, the system contains 40x CAMCO Vortex 6 amps for the main PA and sidefill, and 18x V200 models for the subs.

Solberg’s colleague Espen Andersen works the monitor mixes from another Vi6 stage-side, a partnership that was repeated for the Ostfold Opera’s season of ‘Turandot’. Staged in the Fredriksten Fortress in Halden, near the Swedish border an hour from Oslo, this year’s production featured 350 people on stage, in addition to an 80-piece orchestra. Solberg's system design for this lavish event used 11-a-side GEO T arrays, with another 6x GEO T for frontfills, and 6x CD18 subs. "I hung the PA in two 10 meter high ALC-towers; because of sight lines, we have a very wide stretch between the clusters so it was a big challenge to get good coverage. However, this is what the GEO T is so good at- because of the sound quality of the system, and the control we have, it is the ideal solution for such a situation."

Frontlite AS was established at the end of 2004 taking over the rental department of Norsk Sceneteknikk AS in January 2005. In May, the employees and equipment from Audio One were absorbed into the company and, later that year, Frontlie acquired Atech AS in Tønsberg. From being one of Norway’s most important companies on lighting productions, TV, concerts and other cultural events, Frontlite AS has now extended its role on sound and stage to include premium-quality production of lighting, audio, staging and roofing services.

Press contacts: Frontlite Oslo office Tlf: 23400070 Faks: 23400071