For a crowd of roughly 80,000 people, the sound reinforcement system had to be a solid performer. That's why Medellin-based Grupo HANGAR - the firm contracted to produce the concert and provide sound - deployed a sizeable loudspeaker setup consisting of components from the D.A.S. Audio catalogue.
Alvaro Alzate, general manager for Grupo HANGAR, reports: "As in the previous five years, Festival Altavoz was a free outdoor rock music concert that featured different musical genres on each of its three days. The performers were chosen by a panel of judges that had previously observed their performances, so all these bands are all solid acts. The festival ran 12 hours each day and, during that time, the crowd was treated to a little bit of everything, including reggae, ska-punk, electronic, hip hop, rock, and metal."
This year's event took place on a soccer field that was roughly 70m by 100m in size. To ensure the long throw and broad horizontal coverage required for the huge crowds, the Grupo HANGAR crew deployed 28 D.A.S. Audio Aero 38A self-powered, three-way line array elements - 14 modules per side - suspended from scaffolds as the main mid-high PA setup. Low frequency support was provided by 16 D.A.S. Audio LX218 high performance subwoofers (positioned eight per side) driven by Lab Gruppen power amplifiers.
Eight D.A.S. Aero 12A self-powered, two-way, mid high line array elements - four per side - were flown on Genie lifts to reinforce sound dispersion at the extreme sides of the setup. The Aero 12A and LX218 enclosures are members of D.A.S. Audio's recently introduced Aero Series 2 line. A Dolby Lake processor handled loudspeaker management tasks.
Stage monitoring was handled by 12 D.A.S. Audio SML-15A self-powered, two-way stage monitors. For side-fills, two systems, each consisting of four Aero 12A line array elements and two Aero 182A powered, arrayable subwoofers, were hung from the stage roof.
"This was a huge setup," Alzate said. "In addition to all this, we also had two FOH reinforcement speaker arrays with four Aero 50 3-way line array enclosures and four Aero 182A subwoofers per side. This system was positioned 35 meters from the stage. For loudspeaker management, we used a dbx 4800 processor."
(Jim Evans)
