Drummer Boy Sound Productions recently used different configurations of its Martin Audio W8LM system for a series of concerts by Machel Montano, the world’s leading exponent of Soca, at the Miami Carnival celebration.
According to Drummer Boy Sound CEO Harold Cummings, promoter David Fredericks of Islands United approached his company to handle full production––backline, sound, staging and lighting––for the first time.
“David decided to give us a try and when we came in with the smaller Martin Audio W8LMs,” Cummings says, “he didn’t think the boxes were big enough. They’d used a production company with larger format loudspeakers last time out, and he was totally blown away when he heard the W8LMs. Not just the coverage and volume, but the sound quality and control as well.”
The Miami Festival event consisted of three concerts in totally different venues, necessitating specific setups for each. Day one was a “Girl Power” concert targeted for women at the Miami Airport Convention Center. A smaller site with ceilings only 14 feet high, the theater presented several challenges.
“Because the ceilings were so low, we couldn’t fly the full rig,” says Cummings, “but we still needed to cover a 3,000 person space and throw 200 feet, so we flew five W8LMs and four WS218X subs per side and it was more than enough sound for the room. Even with the short ceilings and below average room acoustics, the speakers sounded great.
“The second night was called ‘Fantastic Fog Friday’ based on Machel’s hit single ‘Fog’ at the Broward County Convention Center, which has 26-foot ceilings so there was more space to play with. We used a bunch of hazers and CO2 jets to create some deep low lying fog and haze, with seven boxes a side, 10 subs and our client was extremely happy that we could get a much bigger sound without losing any clarity and coherence.”
“Rave,” held in the East parking lot of Miami’s Sunlife Stadium, was the biggest show and crown jewel of the weeklong Carnival. As Cummings describes it, “The Carnival actually lasted a whole week with parties going on all over town and this concert is where everything really came together. It drew over 10,000 people, had several opening acts like the Caribbean fusion band Karma, and the headliner Montano played a two-hour set of his hit songs.
“Because it what the largest space of the three nights, we used eight W8LMs and one W8LMD (down fill) per side, two W8LMDs on the stage deck for front fill, 16 WS218X subs, Martin Audio H3+s and WMX subs for side fills, 12 LE1200 and one LE1500 stage monitors plus MA 3.0 and 9.6K amplifiers—the full Martin Audio complement.
The FOH console was an Allen & Heath iLive T112 digital with a iDR64 rack, monitor console was a Yamaha M7CL-48 digital, processing was Ashly Protea, and the mics were all Shure. The crew included Cummings as FOH and System Tech, Gerald Thomas (monitors) and Matt Psarsky (stage and backline tech).