MIAMI – This year’s Orange Bowl football game between the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Kansas Jayhawks was a spectacular event in and of itself, but the real action came during the much anticipated halftime show. Headlining this year’s event was “That Little Ol' Band from Texas,” ZZ Top. Playing to a capacity crowd of better than 75,000 — not to mention a national TV audience — ZZ Top’s spirited performances were brought to life by the audio team at Interface Sound — using a collection of loudspeakers from the D.A.S. Audio catalog.
Based in Miami, Interface Sound has grown from a modest start in 1985 into one of the leading audio/visual, staging and lighting companies in the Southeastern United States. Spearheaded by Owner/Operator Ralph Alvarez, the firm handles a wide variety of live sound and corporate/industrial events, and is the logistics organizer and equipment provider of audio and staging for Carnival Miami, an annual event in Miami’s Little Havana district that attracts upwards of one million people.
For this year’s Orange Bowl halftime show, Interface Sound constructed an audio system consisting of 60 D.A.S. Audio Aero 38A powered, three-way line arrays and 12 Aero 182A 2k powered subwoofers that surrounded the playing field and faced out toward the stands.
Moving the equipment onto the field at halftime was no small accomplishment in and of itself, as Alvarez explains, “From the moment the whistle blew signaling halftime, we had exactly three minutes to get everything into position. This included two 32 x 16-foot stage platforms, which were on casters, as well as the dozen custom-made carts for the loudspeakers. Like last year’s show, we had 200 volunteers helping us with this task.”
The actual sound reinforcement system on the field consisted of 12 mobile carts that were pulled into place at halftime by a dozen golf carts. Each cart consisted of five Aero 38A line array elements and one 182A 2K subwoofer. There were four carts on each side of the playing field, along with two carts at each of the end zones. Connections were accomplished by two cables between carts (one each for subs and highs) plus a single phase, 60-amp Hubbell connector plate. To maintain signal strength and integrity, twenty-four channels of RDL line amplification were placed into service.
“This configuration worked really well for us in the past, so it made sense to repeat it again this year,” notes Alvarez. “We were able to reach all the way up into Level 400 — known to the audio crew as the ‘nosebleed’ section. Using D.A.S. Audio’s version of EASE Focus, we configured our system’s coverage quite easily and it all worked out exceptionally well. Frank Martinez, our company’s chief engineer, handled all programming and signal routing for the project.”
FOH (front of house) responsibilities were handled by Danny Fernandez. For this event, a Yamaha PM5D digital mixing console was deployed for redundancy while two Digidesign Venue consoles were used to mix FOH and monitors. Mixing live to the FOX TV feed was Joel Someillan.
“The biggest challenge of this project was signal routing and power consumption,” says Alvarez. “D.A.S. Audio’s self-powered products use Class D power amplification, so they don’t require a lot of amperage. They’re highly efficient. Combine this with the fact that the Aeros are very predictable in terms of their dispersion patterns, and you have a great system that ends up being easy to work with and provides great coverage throughout the entire arena. Everyone was really pleased with the system’s performance.”
Reflecting on the Orange Bowl halftime activities, Alvarez was particularly appreciative of the support he received from D.A.S. Audio and the show’s producers. “D.A.S. Audio’s Miami support crew was fully behind us,” said Alvarez. “The company’s customer and technical support groups are really responsive, and when you’re on the front line, this is exactly what you need. I’d also like to offer my thanks to the folks at ACT Productions — Bruce Orosz, Nick Boushehri and Carlos Henao — for all their support. By pooling our resources, I believe DAS Audio, ACT Productions and Interface Sound made this year’s Orange Bowl event a really memorable occasion.”
For information, please visit www.dasaudio.com.
