For three wild days and nights, music enthusiasts of every popular genre in Medellin, Columbia recently had the opportunity to enjoy live performances of their favorite artists at the 8th Annual Altavoz International Music Festival, more commonly known as Festival Altavoz.
Key acts at this year’s festival included Mexico’s alternative rock band Plastilina Mosh and Latin Grammy Award-winning rockers Molotov, the English punk band The Adicts, as well as Argentina’s Bajo Fondo Tango Club.
Held at Estadio Cincuentenario, a large multipurpose arena and surrounding grounds that serves as home to a variety of sports and entertainment events, the sound reinforcement system assembled for the roughly 80,000 music fans in attendance was no small undertaking.
Medellin-based event services and production company Hangar Musical designed and deployed the system, along with handling video, lighting and staging.
Hangar Musical’s Santiago Velez, who served as technical producer for the festival, notes that the concert system was developed to serve the wide variation of artists and musical styles. “The acts were able to work with a flat, balanced system that gave them complete freedom to mix however they wanted,” he adds.
Far & Wide
The outdoor coverage area was quite large, measuring roughly 300 feet long by 200 feet wide.
To provide commensurate long throw and broad horizontal coverage, Hangar Musical crew deployed a system headed by 32 DAS Audio Aero 38A 3-way, medium format, powered line array elements – flown 16 modules per side at a height of 33 feet.
Low-frequency support was delivered by a combination of 12 Aero 182 arrayable subwoofers – ground stacked six enclosures per side – augmented by yet another 12 DAS LX-218A powered subwoofers (also six enclosures per side).
The extreme sides of the wide audience area, the Hangar Musical crew flew ten DAS Aero 12A powered 2-way mid-high line array enclosures.
These were positioned five modules per side, 20 feet up in the air and were angled 45 degrees from the house mains.
Meanwhile, the far corners of the stage hosted two Aero 12As per side, stacked, to bolster front fill.
