Engineer Fernando Garcia of the AVS Production Group, the Bronx, NY-based production company contracted to handle sound at the Paradise Theatre, was instrumental in both specifying and erecting the massive sound system that consists of 20 D.A.S. Audio Aero 50 large format, three-way line array modules plus another four Aero 12A 2-way, compact, mid-high line array elements.
"Prior to the theatre's new management," Garcia explained, "I worked this theatre with another sound system. We constantly had problems with inconsistent sound coverage and poor speech intelligibility. The upper balcony and the rear area of the main floor, in particular, had spotty sound. The only means of even marginally addressing these issues was to increase the level of the system, but then we received complaints about the volume.
"The challenge of correcting the sound system was further complicated by the ornate nature of the hall," he continued. "We originally envisioned a line array system where all the elements were flown and the individual boxes were pinned to provide coverage both in the balcony and on the main floor. We were limited, however, in terms of the weight we could hang without modifications to the ceiling area, which was ruled out because of aesthetic considerations. As a result, the solution to provide the most uniform coverage was a combination of flown and ground stacked loudspeakers."
The Paradise Theatre's loudspeaker setup consists of ten D.A.S. Audio Aero 50 enclosures on each side of the stage - with six enclosures flown and the remaining four ground stacked on the stage edges and vertically aligned with the overhead clusters. These enclosures are driven by 10 Lab Gruppen FP1000Q four-channel amplifiers - five amps per side. For front-fill, four D.A.S. Audio Aero 12A self-powered, compact line array elements are evenly distributed across the front centre of the stage area. Loudspeaker management tasks are handled by a D.A.S. Audio DSP-4080 4-in / 8-out digital processor. Subwoofers and stage monitors are proprietary.
During the installation of the new sound reinforcement system, which occurred last November, Garcia was impressed not just with the sonic performance of the D.A.S. Audio equipment, but also with the company's technical support services and the hardware. "Right from the start," Garcia reports, "the D.A.S. team was extremely helpful. They assisted with the modeling of the loudspeakers, which was performed with EASE Focus, and were of great help responding to the various questions I had."
(Jim Evans)
