Returning to Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Latino Heritage Festival took its anula opportunity to celebrate Hispanic culture and its musical traditions. The event featured performances by Hector Tricoche, Sammy De Leon y su Orquesta and the Latin Soul Ballroom Dance Company among others.
With music so high on the bill, the event called in a potent sound system consisting of Aero 12A line array enclosures from DAS Audio from local company, Vertical Sound.
‘Event planners were expecting somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 people, so we wanted to ensure the system we ran would have plenty of juice to properly cover the area without being undermined by the surrounding city noise,’ says Richard Masarik, owner/operator and one of the firm’s chief engineers. ‘This was the last of back-to-back-to-back shows for our company that weekend, so it was a very challenging time for our crew. By going with our self-powered DAS Audio Aero 12A loudspeakers and their excellent flyware, we were able to get the system up and running and break it down–quickly and easily. The Aero flyware is really well-designed and intuitive. I’m not kidding when I say the entire rig went up and came down faster and easier than our monitor system.’
The loudspeaker system consisted of 12 DAS Audio Aero 12A line array elements, flown six enclosures (via Genie lifts) per each side of the plaza’s stage area. Part of DAS Audio’s Aero Series 2 line-up, the Aero 12A is a powered two-way, mid-high line array module driven by a class-D power amplifier. The subwoofers and stage monitoring equipment used for this event is proprietary to Vertical Sound.
Power at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is rather limited and presented its own set of challenges: ‘The power is odd in that it’s all [domestic] 110V circuits, which can easily present difficulties when you’re trying to run a big sound system,’ Masarik confirms. ‘In this case, the problems were almost entirely eliminated because the DAS system has surprisingly low power draw – roughly 2A per loudspeaker – so I could run all six enclosures per side off of a single circuit. I know of no other rig that draws such surprisingly little power.’
The Aero 12A’s low power consumption is only one of attributes that makes it a favorite with the Vertical Sound crew: ‘The sound quality is really, really good,’ Masarik offers. ‘The system is extremely musical and speech intelligibility is first rate. I’m also very fond of the included Ease Focus acoustic modeling software. This software is very easy to operate and is a tremendous tool for properly positioning the loudspeakers for optimum coverage. The sound quality was so good that our mix engineer – who was situated about 80 feet from the stage (and right in front of the Johnny Cash tour bus) – found himself routinely distracted by people coming over and paying him compliments.
‘I also love the fact that stage volume from main PA is very low compared to many competing systems,’ Masarik adds. ‘That makes running the monitor system so much easier – there’s very little bleed from the sides and rear of the enclosures. The sound is well focused and goes where it’s supposed to. Since the monitor engineer doesn’t have to compete with the main house PA, his job becomes less stressful. This design characteristic makes every aspect of running sound for an event that much easier.
‘Our DAS gear dramatically impacted our summer season in a really positive way and I believe it will influence how we go about our projects next summer season,’ he closes. ‘The sound quality is exceptional and that translates to better value for our customers. For the Latino Heritage Festival, our client was ecstatic and has since approached us about a number of new projects. When one project leads to another, it doesn’t get any better than that.’
