Miami and the surrounding South Florida area has long been one of the most competitive markets in the country, and one of the broadest – few can match its stimulating mix of big arena shows, clubs, large niches (Latin and dance/electronic) and, of course, parties.
Add to that a vibrant business community (much of it with an international flavor), numerous tourist haunts and non-stop convention traffic, and you have a market with serious sound reinforcement needs. Not surprisingly, then, the area is peppered with SR companies large and small.
15 Years and Counting
One of the most successful is Andre Serafini's Beachsound, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. "So far, every year's been a growth year for us," Serafini says, of his Miami Gardens-based company. "Last year was… interesting… but it was still a growth year. Now I think the economy has picked up, so we're really keeping busy these days."
Before starting Beachsound in the mid-1990s, Serafini cut his teeth locally as a drummer/songwriter in the Alternative/punk band Quit, which amassed a sizable following in the late 1980s (and made the college radio charts with tracks from their 1990 album, Earlier Thoughts).
However, after enrolling in the recording program at Miami Dade Community College (and taking some courses at the University of Miami), Serafini increasingly gravitated toward the technical side of music. He was a partner with five others at Miami's Tapeworm Studios, "and along the way I started to accumulate some odds and ends of gear," he says. "Then, once people know you've got some gear, it turns into, ‘Hey, can you mix my band at this bar? We'll give you some beers,'" he laughs. "I had a bunch of friends and contacts and kept doing that, because I was somewhat successful at not blowing people's ears out and making it sound pretty good for how small the systems were back then.
"It really blossomed from there," Serafini continues. "I'm definitely a gear-head in every aspect, and I kept accumulating equipment – I've always been very interested in both the old stuff and the new. So I was excited about building inventory and very into what I did. I always liked helping musicians feel good about not worrying about the production end of it, even at that small scale. I had a lot of bad production experiences as a musician, so I learned what not to do before I learned what to do, and I've tried to translate that experience and that knowledge over to what we do now."
Today, Beachsound is a multifaceted company offering a full range of sound reinforcement services – including rentals, installations, mixing, support for smaller SR companies, and more – and the company also has a lighting division which now accounts for about 30 percent of their total business. Serafini has 14 full-time employees who work a wide range of jobs, including FOH, monitor and systems engineers, lighting technicians, repair experts, and "and another 14 or 15 that we call for freelance work, many on a weekly basis, who work as A1s or A2s, or do other jobs."
A Broad Client List
Beachsound's client list is incredibly broad, spanning everything from college graduations (a large market, not be sneezed at!) to music shows at venues of every size and every genre, to glitzy South Beach parties. Serafini adds, "Another very good market for us is high-end electronic music – the bigger DJs – not only festivals, but when they have a showcase. A lot of those DJs are doing really well, especially in this town. We also do quite a lot of the larger South American and Latin American acts.
"Corporate dried up a bit last year," he adds, "but Miami's a little different, because there are a lot of parties that will be corporate-backed, and those have not gone away that much. We also do a lot of work for the city [of Miami] and a lot of industrial stuff as well – openings of art centers and that kind of thing.
"We've also gotten into the touring market – that's something that's been developing in the last couple of years for us. We're providing audio support for a Mixed Martial Arts series called Bellator – and it's a pretty big tour. It's 6,000-seat arenas, it's in the round, and they want it loud, in-your-face and they want perfect coverage. It's also televised, so if the audience is portrayed as not having a really good time in their seats because it's not pumping enough or loud enough, that's going to reflect on the camera. Everybody in that arena needs to be moving. We're looking to expand more into the touring side of things because we certainly have the staff and the equipment to do it."
The company's inventory of equipment continues to evolve and expand. In the all-important category of house loudspeakers, Serafini has increasingly turned to d&b audiotechnik lines, including the Q Series and J Series. "What I like most about the d&b stuff," Serafini offers, "is its weight to its output and the way the whole system is integrated – it's really well thought-out and it works incredibly well. For general in-and-out operations, it really is a good system, and everybody that gets on it absolutely loves it in terms of the sound quality." Beachsound also continues to be a heavy user of L-Acoustics speakers, as well, including the V-DOSC, dV-DOSC and ARCS series. On the monitor end, d&b is represented with their M4 and Max 12s, and L'Acoustics with the 115xt Hi Q.
In the console realm, Beachsound features the Avid VENUE Profile, an exhaustive line of Yamaha boards, including the digital PM5D and PM5DRH, the M7CL, and the LS 932, "and then we have several Midas Heritages as analog options," Serafini says. "Probably 90 percent of our console work is Yamaha or Digidesign, but those Midas boards are still incredible-sounding consoles."
Among the amps offered are Crown I-Techs, d&b D12s and Lab.gruppen fP 6400s. Processing comes from the likes of Summit, Avalon, TC Electronic, dbx, Drawmer, Dolby and BSS, but Serafini notes that the trend towards digital everything has meant more people are using plug-ins than ever before. "Some people still want the boutique pieces, like the tube compressors and the high-end reverbs, but a lot of the older analog stuff is just sitting on the shelf now."
A Shift in the Mix
Serafini hasn't completely left the world of studio recording – he still has a loft studio where he records his own music. "I know by still being somewhat involved in studio work that the analog [outboard gear] sounds better, but the ease of recallability, and having one control surface that only weighs a couple of hundred pounds and has the processing you need in it, outweighs the sound quality a little bit. If you look at some of the bigger studios around the world that are recording all this music that's going to eventually go on tour, most of it's still being done on analog processing, and there's a reason for that.
"But don't get me wrong," he adds. "The new stuff gets better by the day – with the new clocking – and the way I look at it, I have to give my customers what they want, and most of them want digital. Every time there's a new plug-in you have to look at it, or as the consoles are changing we'll have to be changing with that technology."
What does Serafini think is the secret of Beachsound's success ? "A lot of experience between myself and the wonderful crew that I put together; treating everybody the way I'd want them to treat me; just going above and beyond, doing what it takes – all the buzz catch phrases! You're as good as your last show, so if you're constantly doing good work, that's going to get out there."
Oh, and then there's this tantalizing offer: "If there are any production managers coming down here and they want first shot at some world-class fishing, have them call me. I do some fishing charters on the side for special people."
