The outdoor demonstration was at the Plaza de Toros de Algeciras - a circular, 50m diameter bullfighting ring with a capacity of 12,500. Here, a customer of Adagio, Sonilprof PA rental company, helped provide a system of 12 Cohedra mid/high cabinets per side - six CDR 208 Ts and CDR 208 Ss - were flown on aluminium trusses. These were supplemented with a stack of 12 Cohedra CDR 210 Sub subwoofers per side. The system was powered with two PR 16 and two PR 8 amp racks.
After putting this system through its paces, the upper four mid/high units on each side were muted and the filter settings in the Digital Field Controllers (DFCs) changed to a 2x8 setup. The resulting system of four CDR 208 Ss, four CDR 208 Ts and eight CDR 210 Subs per side was then demonstrated. Also, at the request of an interested rental company, a system of 12 mid/high units with just eight subs per side was tried out, and found to be adequate for the bull ring. Different types of CD music ranging from flamenco to metal was played through the system to demonstrate Cohedra's versatility, Adagio reports.
The indoor demonstration was held at the Razmatazz Club in Barcelona, one of the city's best-known live music venues, a rectangular room 40m long by 30m wide with a capacity of 2,500. Here, Adagio was assisted by the Autonomia de l'Espectacle rental company. A system of eight mid/high units - four CDR 208 Ss and four CDR 208 Ts - with eight CDR 210 Subs per side was used, powered by two PR 16 amp racks. The mid/highs were suspended from the venue's flying points, with subs ground-stacked. This time, in addition to CD music, local band Ojos de Brujo, a flamenco/rock/hip-hop fusion band played live. As an experiment, some hardcore rave music was played from CD, for which four SL 218A active subwoofers with integrated active electronics were called into action. These were controlled by a separate DFC and assigned to an Aux channel of the console. Although the addition of these subs was felt to add a boost to the rave music, it was generally considered that the Cohedra CDR 210 Subs do a great job for live music.
According to Martinez, the response to Cohedra was extremely good. "Everyone was impressed at how much air the 10" subs push," he says. "Overall, the reaction to this first-time hearing of Cohedra in Spain was very positive. There's definitely a market for this system here, and already we're talking seriously to a number of different rental companies."
(Lee Baldock)
