On July 9th at Marlins way, adjacent to Marlins Park (home of the Miami Marlins baseball team), the 2017 MLB Allstar Pre-game Celebration took place. The event was a pre-party for the MLB All Star Game and featured Grammy Award winning Latin Reggaeton artist Nicky Jam as the headlining entertainment.
The Design Oasis, specialists in lighting, video, audio, staging and related AV equipment and applications, provided loudspeakers from D.A.S. Audio for this year’s MLB Allstar Pre-game Celebration.
The event’s designer, Marc Gambello from Event Management Group, and producer Barry Kates of Innovation Group were very clear on the need to have excellent audio quality during the show, along with clear, even coverage throughout the rest of the event while the DJ was playing.
After speaking with them, Abbas Ritscher, Design Oasis’ co-founder and CEO, specified an assortment of loudspeakers drawn from D.A.S. Audio’s UX and Aero Series 2 product lines. This included eight Aero 40A powered, 3-way line array enclosures, twenty-six Aero 20 powered line array elements, along with six UX-221 hi-power, ultra-low frequency sub bass enclosures. Ritscher discussed the project and his reason for deploying D.A.S. Audio loudspeaker systems.
“This year’s party was held in a very large tent,” Ritscher reports. “There were roughly 3,000 people in attendance—many of them celebrities—so it was critically important that the sound system be capable of addressing the crowd while also having consistent coverage throughout the area along with good music reproduction qualities and articulate speech characteristics. This is precisely why we used our D.A.S. equipment.”
The system for this year’s event used the Aero 40A line arrays as the house mains—with four enclosures each flown for the left and right sides. The twenty-six Aero 20A elements were used for several functions, including side fills, out fills, and front fills—as well as four stacks of delay loudspeakers. For low frequency support, the six UX-221 subwoofers were deployed three subs each for the left and right sides in a cardioid stack.
“Audio quality comes first and foremost,” Ritscher explains, “and in this regard, D.A.S. is hard to beat. The Aero Series 2 line array systems sound very clear and natural. Secondly, it was essential to provide even coverage throughout the area—and the D.A.S. Aero line arrays have excellent dispersion characteristics. Being able to control each box individually came in really handy. Equally important, the rigging hardware is first-rate, which makes it far easier to fly the line arrays compared to competing systems.”
Quality customer and technical support services are a crucial consideration for a firm like The Design Oasis because one never knows when assistance might become necessary. Again, Ritscher was very complimentary of D.A.S. Audio. “D.A.S. Audio’s Miami-based technical support team goes way above and beyond,” he says. “They make sure I have all the tools I need to have a very successful show—from the very detailed training for my team when we purchased the units to any help I required going into this specific gig. They are the best.”
With the 2017 MLB Allstar Pre-game Celebration in the rearview mirror, Ritscher offers these final thoughts concerning his experience with the D.A.S. Audio loudspeakers, “We couldn’t be happier with the result. We experienced crisp, clean sound throughout the venue—with more than enough bass to fill in the low end. It sounded great in front of the stage and it also sounded clear—but not overpowering—throughout the entire venue. The band’s management and my clients where all very happy with the results. To sum it all up, I’m really glad I went with an all D.A.S. rig for the show. It was perfect for this high-end event.”
