NEW YORK — For most, New Year’s Eve is an event lasting a few hours, culminating in a 10-second countdown. For more than 45,000 club-goers at New York’s Pier 94, it was a three-day extravaganza put on by the four-story, 30,000 square foot night club Pacha, with a roster of DJs headlined by Avicii heard via a Martin Audio system from Advanced Audio Technology.
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Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling, had a Top 20 hit in 2010 with his debut single, “Bromance.” He followed that in 2011 with “Levels” which became a Top 10 single throughout Europe, Australia, and the UK. That same year, he was ranked 6th in the Top 100 DJs list by DJ Magazine.
Held at Pier 94, the event was attended by over 45,000 club goers dancing to over 60 straight hours of non-stop earth-shaking house/electronic music from Avicii, Victor Calderone, Cazzette, Boris Benassi and others without a break.
Asked to describe specific audio challenges during the event, Advanced Audio’s Jason Ojeda responded, “I designed the system with Mark Ramsay to be played at 125dB for a 60 hour run with very little stress on drivers and amplifiers. We’re happy to report that there were no failures. If we needed to get a little more out of the W8LCs at certain points, we had no problems doing that. All of the artists walked into the space and couldn’t believe the Martin Audio rig they were hearing because the detail in the upper frequency range was outstanding.”
Based on a DISPLAY modeling software design, the mammoth Martin Audio system was comprised of 48 W8LC enclosures, 10 flown WLX subs, 28 ground-stacked WSX subs, 12 WS218X subs and six W8DVQ differential diversity loudspeakers, all driven by Lab.gruppen PLM 20,000Q and PLM 10,000Qs. The Advanced Audio crew included Jason Ojeda (FOH), Angelo Poulos (Monitors) and system techs Craig Allen, Aaron Kovachik and Jonathan Snyder.
Summing up his reactions about how the system worked for the event, Ojeda said, “We chose Martin Audio because of its amazing audio detail and rock solid bass. With electronic music playback, you need a ton of bottom end. Between the WSX And flown WLX the street was vibrating all the way down to 42nd St And 11th Avenues. Since the event was on the pier of the West Wide highway and 58th St., I think Martin accomplished that goal for us!”
