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Press Home
Ultra Music Festival - from Live Sound International June 2009 (News Link)
UMF Audio Chief Terry McNeil ("Dr. Bassenstein") brought me in this year for alignment work on a couple of stages. Particularly, a lot of attention gets paid to the subwoofer systems. This is Ultra, there are a lot of content below 50 Hz, and the subwoofer systems need to be as right as they can be. Unfortunately, the tech time was cut on the schedule and I would be restricted to a fairly tight window, with the ability to obtain any SPL after 5 p.m. on Thursday, with shows running Friday and Saturday. Advance Work |
D.A.S. Audio Tours with Bellator - from Live Sound International June 2009
"Because this system is constantly traveling from one location to another," stated Beach Sound Owner Andre Serafini, "size, weight and efficient truck pack were all critical considerations with this purchase. Since, in may cases. the loudspeakers must share the support beams with an extensive amount of lighting hardware, weight assumed an entirely new perspective. Further, we were looking for loudspeakers that offered broad horizontal dispersion and high SPL characteristics. For its compact form factor, D.A.S. Aero CA-28A was spot on." |
Television Shoot a Beautiful Experience (News Link)
“I’ve been using MAC 2K profiles and washes - both the 500 and 600 range and the 250s and 300s - for quite awhile now,” Tom commented. “I find their color temperature and focusing superb for the type of TV lighting I do.” For the Hard Rock show Tom also had MAC 2000 Washes at his disposal. “I chose MAC fixtures for the James Blunt PBS special purely because of their reliability on large TV shoots I’ve done in the past. It also helped that Paul Normandale and Glen Johnson had specified a MAC rig for the tour so I gladly used my usual MAC wash and profile package. “The vendor, Beach Sound, supplied a gorgeous working system. I’ve found the washlight and the profile ability to cover a large area with few lights a Godsend for all my shows. I have a format now for arenas and stadiums and this fell into place at the Hard Rock arena. I’m not a flash and trash LD so the gobos and beautiful colors that Glen and Paul used in their design fell in with my graphic and saturated color looks throughout the shoot. It all turned out well and all I can say is that with the helpful advice from the tour’s LD it was a very BEAUTIFUL experience!” Lighting Designer: Paul Normandale |
J meets Daft Punk at Bang! Music Festival (News Link)
Fortunately promoters, Haddad Productions, also saw the dilemma and without hesitation ordered in another 60 x 40 outdoor stage: such is the mystique of this act. "We also had to pull in another PA system," continued Serafini. "My company, Beach Sound Incorporated, already had the other four stages covered, but we were max'ed out equipment wise with some simultaneous corporate events elsewhere in the States taking the last of our inventory." Serafini was anxious to provide the best for what was, after all, the headline act, "This needed to be a top line system; Daft Punk has a reputation for extreme high energy performance, I didn't want to draw upon any old pick-up system." As is so often the case in such pressured circumstances, fate intervened. "I'd recently purchased a d&b audiotechnik Q-Series line array through Chris Carlton at Carlton Audio Services. It was for a specific installation, somewhere demanding a small, lightweight system; frankly there is no other PA on the market that can deliver the kind of levels and musicality this client demanded with a rigging weight close to what the Q system can do." The experience was enough to tempt Serafini out to LDI in 'Vegas where d&b had a stage in the ET Live area and were demonstrating their latest product, the J-Series, a full size line array. "It was astonishing," said Serafini, "I didn't think a midsize line source box could exceed a large frame system's output and performance. Very fat and rich sounding." The J-Series rig being demonstrated belonged to Spectrum Sound out of Nashville, "They'd obviously done a good job there" he continued, "so I had no hesitation in contracting them there and then to cover the Daft Punk extra stage for Bang! Music." His faith was well made, "When Daft Punk's audio supervisor Peter Franco turned up he was very thorough." As Franco himself confirmed, "I thought the clarity was great," he said. "Frequency response was pretty stellar, and we had good coverage all the way to the back." Serafini was impressed with Franco's work, "When you consider this is just a two-channel show he knew his stuff. He checked all Smaart parameters, component checked every inch of the system, time alignment, coverage, and at the end announced himself very pleased. Check the reviews in all the Florida press and you'll know this was an outstanding audio event; loud and clean. For me I was especially impressed with the cardioid subwoofers. We were already using B2s in cardioid mode for the other main stage where Gnarls Barkley and Duran Duran headlined, but the flown J subwoofers were just amazing, low end control almost as good as what we've become accustomed to in the higher frequency ranges." The festival was hugely successful, "For me it was exceptional," said Serafini, "and I have to say a lot of that is thanks to the support I've received from Chris Carlton at Carlton Audio, and also Rusty King from Spectrum." This was Miami Florida, four o'clock in the morning, but when Daft Punk came on, for ten thousand ecstatic revelers there was just no stopping them. No wonder the Bang! Music Festival has, in just two short years, acquired such a reputation. |
| HANGIN' IN THE MOTOR CITY
Earlier this year, Earl Ciccel of NoJo Entertainment, the promoter for the 2003 show season at Chene Park, hired Nealie to come in and facilitate an upgrade of the canopy, room acoustics and audio system - all of which were in desperate need of attention. After addressing the first two issues with the replacement of several roof panels and addition of custom ceiling baffles to minimize sound reflections, Nealie recommended that the former loudspeaker system be removed and replaced with new setup primarily comprised of 12 dV-DOSCs and four dV-SUBs flown per side, all powered by L-ACOUSTICS' LA Series amplification. Although Nealie had mixed on V-DOSC systems in the past with great success ("V-DOSC is like mixing on giant nearfield monitors," he says), the engineer was a little apprehensive when he and Beach Sound's Jim Brightenfield and Steve Roesink first put up the dV-DOSC hangs at Chene Park. "Having only used a few dV-DOSCs and dV-SUBs once before for a Sony Playstation event in Miami, I have to admit that I was a little skeptical when I saw how small these cabinets looked in the venue. But when we fired up the system with my favorite CD and I started to walk the room, it was like 'oh yeah, I think we have a winner'." Over the course of the summer concert season, Chene Park hosted approximately 25 shows from a variety of jazz and R&B artists like Al Jarreau, Patti LaBelle, Stanley Clarke and Keiko Matsui, and there was no mistaking the difference in sound quality. Nealie recalls, "When Patti LaBelle's people came in, her house engineer and tour manager were both fairly insistent on putting up the loudspeaker rig they were touring with because they didn't particularly care for line array systems. I told the engineer just to listen to the dV-DOSCs for a moment before breaking out his PA. He walked down almost to the stage and couldn't believe that the dVs covered all the way up there. So I told him to walk to the very back of the seating, to the extreme left and right side, and he was absolutely floored by the smooth, even coverage and intelligibility throughout the entire venue. Needless to say, he mixed on the system and was very impressed. And when Patti came in and heard what everything sounded like, she also commented on how excellent the sound was." |
MIAMI'S FESTIVAL DE ARGENTINA 2000 (News Link)
Andre Serafini, owner of Beach Sound, described the system at the first large show for the company's recently acquired NEXO rig. "We used 12x ALPHA M3, and 12x ALPHA B1 loudspeakers flown in the checkerboard arrangement 4-wide and 3-deep, ground stacking only 6x S-2 subwoofers total. More than 10,000 packed into the AT&T Amphitheater , and the most popular artists (vocalists, bands, tango dancers and more) from Argentina came to Miami to participate in this huge event for the masses of Latins and non-Latins alike. Says Serafini, "as yet, NEXO Alpha is not found too often in Argentina but, judging by the ecstatic touring band engineers' and performers' praises, we think it's only a matter of time before South America catches on."Supporting the NEXO cabinets were NEXO TDcontrollers, Crown amps, a Yamaha PM3500 56 input FOH console, and Yamaha PM2800 40-input Monitor console. |
CYBERFEST 2000, FLORIDA (News Link)
Andre Sarifini, proprietor of Miami-based Beach Sound, took the role of FOH engineer, while Dan Fowler, proprietor of NC-based FAT productions, handled monitors. Chief Audio Tech was Clark Sykes. Comprised of 30x M3 cabinets, 36x B1 boxes, and 16x S2 SubBass, processed by 4x NEXO NX-241 TDcontollers, the rig quickly became known as "THE BEAST IN THE EAST"! "This collaboration was awesome," says Terry McNeil. "Every one of us knew what the objective was and we set a plan to let everyone know that NEXO is the leading PA in the world. To bad we couldn't really crank it up to 90%, although there were moments when we played at 30-40% and I must say that I've never experienced any sound like that before. The only way that I could explain it is that, when the bass would drop, it felt like someone was driving a HUGE BULLDOZER and plowing into the crowd. "It was the first time that we used the Alpha PA in that kind of configuration. All of the stories were true. When using the NEXO PA outdoors, this is the best option, hands down. We never got a chance to light up the amps and the level indicators on the console barely moved. UNBELIEVEABLE!!!! After hearing how incredible the PA sounded, I signed about six show deals at Cyberfest. They all want the same configuration." |
The Ultra Music Festival tales place each year in Miami, FL. This festival concludes the weeklong Winter Music Conference which is attended by electronic music artists, producers, and fans from around the world. The world's hottest DJ's perform throughout the festival site, and the site is crammed full of PA systems from various vendors.
Bellator Fighting Championships, a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) promoter, has been equipping D.A.S. loudspeakers for a variety of US-based events, using an Aero system supplied by Beach Sound. Based in Miami Gardens, FL., Beach Sound supplied 16 Aero CA-28A powered line arrays, 8 CA-215A powered subwoofers, and 4 LX-218A powered subwoofers
On May 10th James Blunt’s highly acclaimed world tour took him to the Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida. The British artist’s tour sees him playing beneath a MAC rig of MAC 2000 Profiles, MAC 700 Profiles and MAC 250 Washes with lighting design by Paul Normandale. The Hard Rock Live show was a noteworthy stop on the tour in that it was filmed for a PBS special to be broadcast later in the year. To aid in the broadcast lighting, LD Tom Kenny (The Who, Page and Plant, David Bowie) was called on to share his expertise in television lighting. For the Hard Rock Live show production was handled by local company Beach sound and Lighting Inc.
Chene Park, a 6,000-seat canopied outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Detroit River, dramatically improved the quality of its sound this past summer with the seasonal rental of an L-ACOUSTICS dV-DOSC and dV-SUB rig. Provided by Beach Sound of Miami, the system was specified and employed for 12 weeks between early June and late August by Los Angeles-based engineer William Nealie of Insomniac Creations.
One of the highlights of Miami's musical calendar is the annual Argentinian Festival, held at the AT&T Amphitheater, with sound provided by Beach Sound Inc. This is the second year running for Beach Sound, but the first time the company had used their brand new NEXO ALPHA system, which met with an enthusiastic reception from the visiting band engineers - not all of whom have had a chance to use NEXO's flagship SR system in Argentina.
[ 22nd September 2000 - 12:26:40 PM ] USA |
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