Jazz by the Boulevard Festival resonates with D.A.S.

By Roger Maycock
As part of its ongoing efforts to revitalize Fort Worth’s historic Camp Bowie Boulevard, the Camp Bowie District, Inc. recently completed its Sixth Annual Jazz By The Boulevard festival. Featuring performances by Buddy Guy, the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra featuring Randy Brecker, Lee Ritenour, and the David Sanborn Group with Adonis Rose, this year’s festivities offered something for every musical preference. Complete with a Cooking Carnivalè pavilion that included wine seminars, specialty food vendors, along with cooking demonstrations and samplings by top area chefs, this was the place to be–and all the while, revelers were treated to great music that reached far and wide, thanks to a potent D.A.S. Audio sound reinforcement system.

Dallas, TX-based American Audio Video was contracted to provide sound for this year’s festival. The firm, operated by owner Mike Horn, focuses on the special events market and routinely handles large corporate industrials, festivals, and local concerts. This year’s festival, which occurred on September 19 – 21 and has become a premier event in the Dallas Fort Worth area, attracted record crowds–thanks to the combination of a great artist lineup and ideal weather conditions. As such, a sound reinforcement system with broad horizontal dispersion and long throw capability was absolutely essential, as Horn explained.

"Depending upon who was performing at any given time," notes Horn, "the crowds ranged from two to three thousand spectators all the way up to about ten thousand. There were people everywhere and because of this, the ability of the sound system to throw far and wide was absolutely critical. For this reason, we deployed a line array system that consisted of sixteen D.A.S. Audio Aero CA-28A self-powered loudspeaker enclosures–flown eight per side. These were augmented by eight D.A.S. CA-215A self-powered subwoofers, which were positioned on stage, four per side, aligned directly underneath the flown CA-28A clusters."

The self-powered design of both the Aero CA-28A line array modules and the CA-215A subwoofers paid big dividends for Horn on this event. "The fact that the entire system is self-powered is a huge benefit," explained Horn, "because we don’t have to carry racks of separate power amps. This means less weight and gear in the truck and it greatly streamlines setup–with less cabling that results in a clean-looking appearance. Further, the rigging hardware is fully captive, so it’s much easier to keep track of everything. These two features make the system ideal for events of this nature."

Horn reports that he and his crew received positive feedback from spectators, the FOH (front of house) mix engineers that travel with the artists, as well as the sponsors of the festival. "We received compliments from everyone," says Horn. The promoters told me this was the best sound they ever had for the festival, and the mix engineers were equally upbeat. I heard numerous remarks about the system sounding very musical and that it was never harsh or fatiguing. No matter where you walked around the general area, the sound coverage was clear and even. The system performed really well."


Sound Audio Systems is a division of Signature Ventures