Red Rocks, the geologically formed open-air arena located just outside of Denver, recently attracted the popular hip-hop group Atmosphere for a concert, with production rental company Slamhammer Audio providing sound and staging.
Martin Audio played a significant role in Slammhammer’s sound system with 28 W8LC compact line arrays and 24 Martin WSX subwoofers, along with four W8Cs and four WT3s for fills.
Slamhammer also complemented the Martin lineup with DX-1 processors, LE12J stage monitors, W8Cs for side fill and WS2A DJ subs. Crest 9001, 8001, 7001 and 7301 amps provided power for FOH and Monitors.
Slamhammer System Tech Matt Totzke explained, “The ability to move the array center of gravity fore or aft on the array fly frame allows relatively easy vertical coverage flexibility without altering pic points. With the venue having a fairly extreme long and high vertical rake, the bumper and rigging design made quick work of getting the PA where we needed.
“Also having the WSX horn loaded single driver sub box allows long throws of low frequency information while keeping amplifier quantities and loads down. We never seem to have a problem with the line array outrunning the subs in the extreme far field.”
Randall Hawkins, FOH Engineer for Atmosphere, added “the Martin W8LC Line array is clean – real clean. It makes me feel like my artists are standing next to me no matter how many people are there. Plus, running them full range down to 60 Hz, we didn’t need to fly subs to get to the top of the Mountain. The WSX folded subs are warm and powerful, perfect for hip hop.”
With a crew that also included Brian Klingenberg (system tech) and Miles Kennedy (monitor engineer), the show came off without a hitch.
Totzke sums up, “Rob Hofkamp and Martin Audio has always looked out for us and if we need something by the next day, we get it. The scalability of having older point source traps that still sound great and the W8LC line array allows us to work small to large shows with ease.
“The W8LC with a little gain shading for the front seats has good far and near field balance and whether it’s a small stack or a large hang the rig always does the job.”
