Front of house engineer Abel Ocasio, currently working with Atlantic/APG recording band “ARIZONA,” got his start in his native Venezuela as a child. “I remember being at church with my mom, and the time came for me to start volunteering. The audio got me hooked. I remember it was a smaller 32-channel board and just a few powered speakers, but it really got my attention. That was the start of it for me, and I learned more and more, especially when I began my audio studies at Full Sail University in Orlando, studying recording arts.”
After that, he got a job working audio with Royal Caribbean cruises, managing all the audio for Broadway-type shows with large ensembles. He recalls, “Doing shows nearly every night for almost three years, that really helped me to sharpen my skills.” More gigs came and went, and eventually he ended up with ARIZONA, where his finely-tuned ears are put to use across a wide range of venues and house P.A. systems. A particular highlight was a recent show where Ocasio and the band got to experience the ShowMatch line array system from Bose Professional.
“Obviously I was familiar with Bose products, but I hadn’t ever mixed on a ShowMatch line array,” recalls Ocasio. “I had read about it, but I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Going from venue to venue, we have to be ready for whatever system they have in place. When we got to a venue with the Bose ShowMatch system installed, I was truly blown away by how it sounded. It was shocking, honestly, as it was such a step up from some of the other systems we’d used at other dates. The transient response was unreal, and the amount of air pushed by the low-frequency elements was phenomenal. It was a very clean P.A. overall. It reminded me of all the good things that Bose consumer products offer, audio-wise, but in a much bigger, professional setting. Soundcheck was a more straightforward process than normal. We had lots of headroom in the P.A. too. This was a great system for the space, and it was a great setup for our group.”
