Coppell, TX (June 26, 2026)—To handle choreographed live music, synchronized drones and immersive sound design, together with diverse and unpredictable venues, Mercury Sound & Lighting turned to EAW for the traveling DroneArt Show, produced by Fever.
The show moves from open fields to baseball stadiums and cricket arenas, each with drastically different acoustics, reflective surfaces and audience configurations. No two venues are the same, and the audio must be flawless at every one of them. To meet this show’s demanding challenges, Mercury turned to Eastern Acoustic Works, a brand that founder Dave Johnson has trusted for years. The company is now touring with a full EAW rig, including 16 Anna ADAPTive arrays, four Otto subs and 28 NT206L loudspeakers, 24 of which are active at any given show.
Jonathan Ball, the A1 who oversees system deployment and tuning on the tour, sees ADAPTive as a gamechanger. The team typically flies eight Anna modules per side, deploying NT206Ls as out-fills or front-fills depending on the venue width.
We’re seeing excellent coverage with them,” Ball says. “The more we tweak, the more we build out the file within Resolution, the better results we’re seeing. It’s like magic. You see reflections and then you hit that ADAPTive button and things go away. You start hearing things more clearly.”
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While the Anna arrays handle the primary coverage, the NT206Ls play a crucial role in shaping the show’s impact. “The NT206s have a bite to them,” Ball explains. “When you add them in, it gives the system that definition that just drives and hits you in the gut.” Mercury travels with 28 NT206Ls, using 24 at each show and keeping four as spares, giving the team the flexibility to adapt quickly to each venue’s geometry and audience layout.
Four Otto subs, deployed two per side, extend the system’s reach during the show’s most visceral moments. “We have a four-string quartet, so we have a cello player and a viola player that are really hitting down there,” Ball says. “The Anna boxes have an incredible amount of low end already, but then you add the Ottos in and you can feel it all the way back into the stands.”