NEW YORK — The Colombian Independence Day Festival had its 25th anniversary outing at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens this summer. To help ensure a festive mood, AVS Production Group provided a sizeable setup with components from D.A.S. Audio. Sponsored by the Colombian Civic Center (CCC), the annual gathering is geared to promote Colombian culture, values, and traditions, as well as uniting Colombian people throughout the greater New York metropolitan area. For one day, the area was transformed into Colombian kiosks with vendors selling their wares while live music provided entertainment with the invigorating sounds of Cumbia, Vallenato, Salsa, and other Colombian musical rhythms.
“The Colombian Independence Day Festival attracts a big crowd,” said Abraham Viera, AVS President. “While various conditions such as the economy, weather, and concerns about a flu epidemic curtailed some aspects of this year’s event, it nonetheless attracted roughly 50,000 people. That’s a huge crowd and a sound system for a group this large needs to have a lot of power, long throw, and broad, even coverage across a wide area.”
To address these issues, the AVS crew deployed a large sound system drawn primarily from new models belonging to D.A.S. Audio’s recently introduced Aero 2 Series product line. The main loudspeaker system consisted of 24 D.A.S. Audio Aero 50 large format, 3-way line array enclosures—flown 12 per side at a height of 32 feet for the top enclosure.
These loudspeakers were driven by Lab.gruppen PLM 10,000Q Series power amplifiers with Lake processing technology. In addition to the main left-right speaker clusters, the AVS team also erected two delay towers for supplemental coverage on the extreme sides of the area. Flown with Genie lifts, each tower consisted of six D.A.S. Audio Aero 12A self-powered, 2-way, mid high line array modules.
For low frequency support, the AVS crew ground stacked 24 D.A.S. Audio LX-218A powered subwoofers. These sub bass enclosures were positioned 12 enclosures per side, arranged three enclosures wide and stacked four rows high. “These subwoofers pack quite a punch,” said Viera. “The LX-218s move a lot of air.”
While pleasant weather prevailed on the day of the festival, the days leading up to the event were not so cooperative. “The Aero 50 is a big enclosure,” Viera notes. “Fortunately, D.A.S. Audio’s rigging hardware is very well designed. Because of this, we were able to fly the system quickly and easily, and make the necessary adjustments to provide the proper coverage for the area.”
With the Aero 2 system new to AVS, D.A.S. Audio provided some technical support. “Fernando Garcia, one of our lead technicians, was in regular touch with D.A.S. Audio’s Ramon Franco,” said Viera. “I’m pleased to say that Fernando found the D.A.S. team very supportive. They listened to our concerns and responded politely and quickly. It’s been a very good experience.”
The D.A.S. loudspeakers, he added, provided “a good, clear high end for impressive speech intelligibility and solid midrange performance. The subs were very impressive and, combined, the system delivered exactly as we hoped it would. This system has a lot of headroom, it’s very musical sounding, and numerous techs that mixed for the various artists were very complimentary of the sound quality. There’s real value in D.A.S. Audio’s equipment. This new generation system delivers solid performance and I’m certain more and more artists will include D.A.S. in their riders.”
For more information, please visit www.avspg.com and www.dasaudio.com.
