Dedicated to building community through events staged in unique settings to celebrate fashion, music and entertainment in New York, Miami and beyond, the We Belong Here organisation hosted a third electronic dance festival in Miami, Florida, with 65 artists appearing on four stages. Headliners including UK-based DJ and producer Duke Dumont, Bob Moses, Gordo, Tchami and Wax Motif.
DAS Audio teamed up with Fort Lauderdale-based Light Up The Night Productions for the event at Miami’s renowned Virginia Key Beach Park. The main 360 Experience stage used new ARA Series loudspeakers from DAS Audio. A total of 16 Lara self-powered cardioid systems with 12 Lara-Sub dual 18-in cardioid subwoofers covered the stage’s front area, while 16 Sara systems and 8 Sara-Sub cardioid subwoofers covered the rear VIP area.
Front fill was provided by four Aero-20A two-way systems, and out fill was supplemented by a combination of Aero-20A systems and UX-218A subwoofers. The main stage had left and right stacks of three Sara-100 and one Sara-Sub that covered monitoring for the DJ booth.
‘The concept was not to create a full 360° system, but rather to create almost a figure-eight set-up, with a stereo PA in the front for the main audience, a stereo PA in the rear to cover the VIP area, and out fills on the sides,’ DAS Audio Senior Pro Audio Sales Engineer, Jeff Taylor, explains. ‘Besides being compact and easy to deploy, we were able to create a fully active cardioid rig, building a subwoofer arc across the stage rather than your typical left and right stacks. That enabled us to really focus the low frequency energy toward the crowd, without huge build-up on the stage area itself.’
DAS Audio also proved essential on the smaller stages. ‘We had two stages essentially facing each other,’ reports Light Up The Night Productions Technical Director, Matthew Corrigan. ‘With DAS Audio Speakers and DAS Audio’s Alma software, we were able to control each system to achieve consistent sound and performance from every stage, everywhere on the festival grounds. And the DAS support team were so great to work with. These guys are total professionals, and they really know their stuff.’
Glenn Wexo of South Florida Real Sound was head audio engineer for the festival, and says that the ARA systems were the perfect fit for the festival. ‘The ARA systems are easy to deploy, they go up quickly, the Alma software makes tuning and configuring the system really simple and intuitive, and the sound is fantastic – clean and clear in the top end, crisp and powerful low-frequency performance, really just a great sounding system.’
More: www.dasaudio.com
