The legendary Lanxess Arena in Cologne in Germany, the Forum in Barcelona, as well as the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia in Spain, were the stages where DAS Audio premiered live its innovative sound system called LARA.
A summary of this premiere is that LARA made the attendees vibrate with its response, taking into account the needs of each venue, through a clean, powerful and dynamic sound that exceeded expectations.
LARA's welcome in Germany
On April 30, the journey of this sound solution began, in front of the more than 17,000 people who attended the Brings concert at the Lanxess Arena, a complex space due to the reflections and limitation of SPL.
TSL Production and FLUGE were in charge of installing DAS Audio's sound systems in the venue, with the support of Michael Häck, technical director of the Lanxess Arena.
For the celebration of this concert, in a space with dimensions of almost 84,000 m2 of useful space and a capacity of up to 20,000 spectators, TSL hung 18 LARA per side in L/R configuration, and 16 LARA-SUB distributed in L/R at 45º with respect to the LARA.
In addition, 15 LARA-SUB units were used, forming an electronic arc of about 35º aperture on the ground in front of the stage. The configuration was completed with 28 Aero-40A as Outfill 1 and 12 Aero-20A as Outfill 2 in L/R, which covered the high side stands, also using ALMA software for the control and monitoring of all systems.
Frank Schmitz, CEO of TSL Production, said: "LARA responds exactly to the needs of an enclosure like the Lanxess Arena, with distances of up to 80 meters that can be covered without a delay line and a long reverberation time usual for this size. In addition, the cardioid concept bore fruit twice: reflections and noise were greatly reduced and the sound was very dry and direct."
The performers also gave praise for a clean sound on stage. "The dynamics and free space of the system were also very impressive, and even in the VIP box area, about 70 or 80 meters from the stage, the sound was extremely direct and clear."
Great premiere in Spain
The official premiere of LARA in Spain took place last May in front of the 30,000 attendees of the Estopa concert at the Barcelona Forum and before the 8,000 people who were the audience of the Izal concert in the City of Arts and Sciences.
In the Barcelona Forum LARA and LARA-SUB were used as the main sound systems for the first 70-80 meters, in addition to Aero-40 and Aero 20 as reinforcement to cover the remaining 120 meters of audience.
According to DAS Audio, the cardioid configuration of LARA and LARA-SUB is a plus in the final result of the mixture, since it keeps the mixture clean of all the energy in low frequency that the system does not radiate behind.
Specifically, for the Estopa concert, the sound system was configured with 18 LARA per side to offer good vertical coverage. Combined with 18 LARA-SUB flown distributed in L/ R, to obtain a good control of SPL throughout the audience area. Likewise, 6 LARA-SUB and 10 Aero-20 were used as frontfill, 8 Aero-40 per side for the lateral reinforcement (Outfill), 24 Aero-40 of Delay.
The configuration of the sound system for the Izal concert in the City of Arts and Sciences of Valencia was similar, where the sound technicians highlighted the simplicity of assembly of LARA and its efficiency providing "an incredible and very clean sound, with a lot of glue".
Now, according to the technicians in charge of that event, another interesting point is that using ALMA they were able to verify that everything was working correctly as the systems were hanging, which gave them a lot of peace of mind.
In this case, to cover an area of 90 meters, 16 LARA and LARA-SUB were used per side, supported by Aero-40 for the Downfill and 8 Aero-20 for Frontfill, achieving a uniform coverage and frequency response thanks to the FIR optimization of DASaim.