DRUMMER BOY BRINGS BIG SOUND TO CALLE OCHO

Drummer Boy Brings Big Sound To Calle Ocho With Martin Audio Line Array

Considered one of the largest Latin celebrations in the country, Calle Ocho Festival runs nearly a mile up and down SW 8th street in Miami from 22nd Avenue all the way East to 5th.

As Harold Cummings, founder and CEO of Drummer Boy Sound Productions, the company in charge of the sound production for the Power 96 Radio stage tells it, 'They have six stages and they gauge the success of each one by who drew the most people. It was incredibly crowded. Like a big huge street festival and our stage was rockin' between the incredible amount of sound we were getting from the Martin Audio system and the 9 x 12 LED screen set up by the side of the stage.'

Performers included leading national and local rap, hip hop and R&B acts like Flo-Rida, Jeremih, Jay Sean, New Boyz, Black Dada, Pretty Ricky, Mims, Kevyn Little, Jimmy Hart Black n Red, Charles Sweeting and others.

Describing the setup, Harold elaborates, 'We had to cover the intersection at 17th Avenue, so we set up a stage 120 ft into the Avenue facing toward 8th St. so the people walking up and down the street could stop and come into our block or continue down to another stage.

We were in charge of all audio for the stage, backline, monitors, sidefills, etc. Rush Sounds, the main production coordinator for the radio station, brought in Image Pro Sound as overall Production Manager and Drummer Boy Sound Productions to be in charge of sound production and engineering the show.

Continuing, Harold points out that his team 'deployed our recently acquired Martin Audio W8LM line array system with 18 boxes that we needed for the size of this show which included up to 10,000 people. We verified with (Martin Audio North American Sales Director) Rob Hofkamp that 9 boxes a side would do the job because they were small boxes and I was a little skeptical. And we couldn't even rig all nine boxes per side because the roof system wasn't tall enough, but it was still more than enough sound.

'We used Martin Audio WS218X subs and H3s for side fills with additional subs and a total of 10 LE1200 stage monitors. We used Martin Audio MA 2.8 and 4.2 amplifiers as well. Mixing consoles included a Midas Verona 48-channel for FOH and Allen & Heath iLive digital board for monitors.'

Asked how the Martin rig worked out, Harold concludes, 'It sounded a-ma-zing. I'm just so happy because of the Martin Audio array and we ended up getting 16,000 people in front of our stage and it covered everything over 125 feet away all the way up to the intersection at 8th plus more people on the other side of the intersection too!

'The performers were happy too because anytime they asked us for more, we were able to give it to them. We have a couple of shots of Flo-Rida standing on the subs in front of the whole line arrays rapping with no feedback. Amazing!'