Capital Cities performs at Skyline Park as a part of MLS All-Star week. Photo: Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
Denver, CO (September 8, 2015)–Major League Soccer’s AT&T MLS All-Star Week, held at Skyline Park in downtown Denver, served up plenty to do in the days leading up to the annual big game, including the electro-tropical sounds of Bomba Estéreo, MLS Movie Night and concerts from Capital Cities and Aloe Blacc. Providing audio and staging for it all were Code Four (Huntington Beach, CA) and H.A.S. Productions (Las Vegas, NV), who together fielded a variety of Vue Audiotechnik systems.
The site’s Main Stage featured a full complement of al-8 high output line array systems, al-4 subcompact line array systems, hs-28 Dual 18-inch ACM subwoofer systems and hm-112 high definition stage monitor systems.
Each side of the Main Stage at Skyline Park had a hang of 12 Vue al-8 Line Array systems, supplemented with 16 hs-28 Subwoofer systems, four al-8s for front fill, and al-4 Line Array systems for side fills. Sixteen hm-112 High Definition Stage Monitors were used for the performers’ on-stage monitor mixes, while power amplification for the entire system came from network-controlled Vue Audio V Series system engines.
“In planning with the city we knew noise abatement was going to be a hot issue for the local residence of the downtown area,” said Kevin Elliott, President & CEO of Code Four. “Per noise restriction standards the city of Denver required no more than 55 dB noise pollution as measured at the doorstep of the condos a few hundred yards behind the stage. This was a key factor in our selection of PA and in its strategic configuration”
In such situations, low-frequency audio presents a particular challenge due to its inherently omnidirectional nature. However, Jay Easley, COO of H.A.S. Productions, created a narrow directional pattern in the low frequencies, preventing it from spilling into unwanted areas. “We physically arranged the hs-28s in an end-fire array,” he said, “with eight cabinets underneath the stage and eight in front of those, in-between the stage and the barricade. Then we steer using delays. The hs-28’s DSP is built into the cabinet itself, so it took the calculations that we put in and accurately reproduced what we asked it to accomplish — which was pretty impressive. The condo building was located behind the stage, and the end fire array prevented low-frequency sound from spilling off the back of the stage, instead pushing it all forward. It worked out extremely well. In the five nights that we did shows, we never got any complaints from local residents.”
“I was very impressed with the sound of the Vue Audiotechnik system,” says Elliott, “but perhaps more importantly ,our client Major League Soccer and the performers themselves were very happy with it. Each day there were a variety of events leading up to the concert, and the system handled all of them equally well.”
VUE Audiotechnik
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