Eastern Europe’s first ‘elite’ football stadium hosted its first major concert production recently when The Hits of the 80s tour rolled into Ukraine.

Opened in the latter half of 2009, Donbass Arena made its musical debut when it rang to the sounds of The Gypsy Kings, Demis Roussos, British R&B/dance band London Beat and Spanish vocal duo Baccara among others. To deliver the music to the 40,000-strong crowd, Dnepropetrovsk-based Indigo Music Company set up a system based Yamaha M-7CL digital consoles at FOH and monitors, and DAS Audio Aero line arrays.

‘One of the biggest obstacles we faced on this concert was the relatively short amount of time between the performances of the different artists,’ explains Dmitry Lokshin, Indigo Music president. ‘There really wasn’t time to make major system changes between each act. For this reason, we needed a versatile sound system that had the long throw and broad horizontal dispersion characteristics required to cover a crowd this large that was capable of handling a wide range of musical styles. The DAS system we assembled, which used Aero 48 line array elements as the centrepiece, was the ideal choice for this concert.’

The main system used 32 Aero 48 cabinets flown 16 modules per side at a height of 12.5m. Of particular note, Lokshin says that his company installed the DAS high-frequency upgrade kit which included M-75N drivers in all of the Aero 48 systems. Designed for use in applications where high SPL and low distortion are required, the new drivers had quite an impact on the sound. ‘The upgraded Aero 48s sounded terrific,’ Lokshin reports. ‘The sound was clean and powerful – and both the spectators and the various sound engineers quickly took notice.’

Low-frequency support was provided by 24 DAS LX-218 subwoofers positioned across the front of the stage. Twelve Aero CA-28A powered mid-high line array modules (six per side) were used as an outfield system for supplemental coverage. For side fill, the set-up included four DAS Audio Compact 2 mid-high enclosures, four Compact 218 Sub 2K powered subwoofers, four of DAS Audio’s new Sub 18G passive subwoofers featuring a bass reflex enclosure and an 18-inch driver, and two Rf-15.64 two-way enclosures.

Stage monitoring systems were assigned according to the technical rider from the individual artists. There were eight available monitor lines for use with various combinations drawn from six DAS SML-15 2-way stage monitors and six SML-12A powered monitor systems.

‘We see more and more artists requesting DAS on their technical riders, and I’m confident this trend will continue because the equipment sounds terrific and is very reliable,’ Indigo reports. ‘After this concert, our client was extremely happy and has since contracted with us for a few events this coming August and September. When one project leads to repeat business, that’s as good as it gets.’