Oklahoma City, OK… Held in downtown Oklahoma City at the Cox Convention Center Arena on January 2 – 5, the Student Mobilization Conference (SMC) 2017 (www.stumoconference.com) was a 4-day program designed to build spiritual leaders for Christ from among the area’s college campuses. This year’s program featured Craig Groeschel (the founding and senior pastor of Life.Church), Bryan Loritts (Lead Pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View, CA), and Sam Hannon (a Teaching Pastor and Congregational Leader at Fellowship Bible Church of Northwest Arkansas). To ensure everyone in attendance could hear the presentations clearly, a sound reinforcement system consisting of loudspeakers from the Event and Action Series catalogs of Valencia, Spain-based D.A.S. Audio was utilized.
Relevant Audio + Visual of Wichita, KS, which handles live event production, equipment rental and sales, as well as being an AV design / build firm, was contracted to provide sound reinforcement services for the event. Chris Derstein, the company’s CEO / Operations Manager, also served as the head production manager for this year’s conference. His company deployed a combination of D.A.S. Event 210A powered 3-way line array elements, Event 218A powered subwoofers, Action M12A powered stage monitors, and Action 8A powered point source enclosures. He discussed the project and his experience with the D.A.S. Audio equipment.
“The Cox Convention Center Arena is home to the Oklahoma City Blue of the NBA’s Development League,” Derstein explained, “so it’s a pretty sizeable space that is frequently used for a variety of other programs, including graduation ceremonies and similar community events. For SMC 2017, there were over 3,400 college students in attendance, the largest SMC conference gathering ever. With that many people, it was critically important to provide a sound system with a high level of speech intelligibility in addition to solid music reproduction capabilities. This is precisely why we deployed the D.A.S. Audio Event and Action Series loudspeakers.”
The sound system setup Derstein and his team created utilized 24 Event 210A line array elements—flown 12 enclosures on each side of the stage area for the left-right hangs. For low frequency support, the crew utilized 8 Event 218A subwoofers. These enclosures were positioned on the ground—4 elements per side aligned with the flown clusters above. For stage monitoring, the team placed 6 D.A.S. Action M12A’s for monitor wedges and, for front fill, they deployed 4 Action 8A loudspeakers, evenly distributed across the front of the stage.
When asked about those characteristics that made the D.A.S. Audio equipment the ideal choice for this project, Derstein offered the following thoughts. “First and foremost is audio performance,” he said, “and in this area, the D.A.S. equipment excels. The Event 210A is an incredibly smooth sounding array across the entire dynamic range and they provide a ton of headroom. Equally notable, it required very little EQ to get the system tuned to the room. These traits, combined with the impressive horizontal and vertical dispersion characteristics, enabled us to provide even coverage with clear, natural sounding audio throughout the audience area.”
Be it live sound production or an installation project, questions inevitably arise. Knowing that your equipment manufacturer has your back is critically important to companies like Relevant Audio + Visual. Here too, Derstein was very complimentary of D.A.S. Audio’s Miami, FL-based staff. “D.A.S. Audio’s customer service and after sales support has been nothing but superb,” Derstein reports. “This is the best support we’ve ever received from a speaker manufacturer!”
Before shifting his focus to some upcoming projects, Derstein offered these final comments regarding his experience with the D.A.S. loudspeakers at the SMC 2017 event. “The results were absolutely amazing,” he said. “Our client was incredibly happy with the D.A.S. audio system and Brandon Deibler, our lead designer on this job, was equally impressed with the D.A.S. system’s performance. I have to say it was the best sounding system we have used for this type of project.”
For more information about Relevant Audio + Visual, visit the company online at www.relevantaudiovisual.com.
About D.A.S. Audio
Headquartered in Valencia, Spain, D.A.S. Audio is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of loudspeaker systems, power amplification, signal processing, and related components. D.A.S. Audio products are found on tour with the world’s greatest performing artists and installed in many of the most prestigious facilities. For additional information about D.A.S. Audio, visit the company online at www.dasaudio.com.
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Photo info: from left to right: Chris Derstein and Brandon Deibler
