MIAMI — The House Depot and We Love Industries teamed with Congo De Oro Productions for the first annual Carnaval Electronic Music Festival at Miami’s Bayfront Park. Celebrating one of Colombia's oldest carnivals, Carnaval is the 2009 Miami rebirth of that event.
Featuring a variety of music, the event drew approximately 2,000 spectators. The sound system needed to be clear, potent and offer considerable control of the sound dispersion characteristics. For Franco Sound, the company tasked with providing sound reinforcement for the event, the solution was to deploy a loudspeaker system from D.A.S. Audio.
Based in Miami, Franco Sound is owned and operated by Ramon Franco, who also serves as FOH engineer for many of the projects his company services. In addition to concerts, festivals, and other special events such as the annual Medellin Jazz Festival, Franco Sound also services the installation market, and has completed a number of club installs in the Medellin, Colombia area.
“This festival had two stages running, with each offering completely different types of music,” Franco said. On one stage, there were several Florida DJs, including Edgar V, Armand Pena, Ivan D and Tony Puccio. “For this, we needed a sound system that was capable of addressing a 2,000-plus sized crowd with lots of low end for the electronic music,” Franco said.
A high level of directional control was also important, Franco added. “The second stage offered traditional Colombian music and we couldn’t interfere with the activities taking place there. For this reason, we knew the D.A.S. Audio Aero CA-28A would be a great choice for the main line arrays because the system gives us the ability to focus the acoustic energy where it needed to be.”
The system Franco deployed for the Carnaval consisted of 10 D.A.S. Audio Aero CA-28A self-powered line array elements—ground stacked five per side for the left-right mains, with each cluster including an Aero CA-215A powered subwoofer at the bottom of the stack. Adding additional low end reinforcement, each cluster sat on top of D.A.S. Audio’s new and considerably larger LX-218 self-powered bass-reflex subwoofer system incorporating dual D.A.S. 18LX long excursion transducers.
Augmenting the left-right mains, Franco and his crew placed two additional center stacks—each consisting of a D.A.S. Audio CA-215A subwoofer sitting atop an LX-218. Signal processing chores were handled by a D.A.S. Audio DSP-48 loudspeaker management system and a Yamaha LS9-16 compact digital live sound reinforcement console that resided at FOH.
D.A.S. Audio loudspeakers were also used for the DJ monitoring setup. This system included two SML-12A powered stage monitors and a single Compact 18 Sub. The SML-12A stage monitor incorporates D.A.S. Audio’s M-10N neodymium compression driver with a 1.5-inch exit, a 3-inch titanium diaphragm, and EFW (edge-wound flat wire) voice coil in a low profile design. The Compact 18 Sub is a high-performance, self-powered vented subwoofer system that utilizes an 18-inch low frequency transducer.
“Being entirely self-powered, this system is easy to transport, since we don’t have to be concerned about hauling racks of heavy power amps,” Franco noted. “This also makes the system considerably easier to setup and calibrate.
“D.A.S. Audio’s sound quality is exceptional and the captive rigging hardware makes it much easier to position each element and control the dispersion,”Franco said. “And for this event, the addition of the LX-218 subwoofers provided an incredible amount of low end punch.”
Franco noted that the festival’s sponsors were happy with both the D.A.S. sound system and his company’s handling of the event. “After the festival ended, the promoter offered to make our company the exclusive sound provider for all of their upcoming events,” said Franco. “They were just blown away by the system’s performance and they made us an offer right after the show. This is a tremendous compliment because they’ve always worked with two independent sound providers for each stage but have now decided to go with us exclusively.”
For more information, please visit www.dasaudio.com.
