Empire Music Festival 2016

Empire Music Festival, Guatemala’s biggest electronic and alternative music celebration, recently completed its two-day run in Guatemala City. Over 15,000 festival-goers descended on the four stages set up at Finca El Jocotillo to see performances by a wide range of artists, which ran the gamut from Incubus, Zedd, and Café Tacuba to Skrillex and Paul Van Dyk. Artists and fans alike enjoyed superb sound provided by a robust professional sound system drawn from DAS Audio’s Aero Series 2 catalog.

Guatemalan sound company Blessure, with Alan Mejia at the helm, was called in to handle the sound for the festival. DAS Audio Systems Engineer Vicent Olucha made the trip from Spain and was also on hand to help the Blessure team set up and adjust the small army of DAS systems deployed for the event.

The hard-hitting performances that took to the EMF’s main stage required an equally powerful sound system to guarantee flawless sound, and after studying the stage’s particular requirements the sound technicians designed a solution based on DAS Aero Series 2 line array systems. A total of 16 cutting-edge Aero-40A ALAS™ (Advanced Line Array Systems). These high-performance line arrays were combined with 16 DAS UX-221A powered subwoofers, groundstacked in front of the stage to ensure excellent low-frequency support.

This impressive set of gear was rounded out with eight DAS Aero-12A line arrays as front fill, brought in to provide even sound coverage for the down-in-front fans. Two lateral sets of three Aero-40A systems, which were stacked on a LX-218CA subwoofer, handled side fill. This powerful system, controlled by the powerful DASnetTM remote management and monitoring system, offered powerful response for the artists and DJs who performed on the main stage over the festival.

A no less impressive arsenal of DAS Aero-20A powered line arrays and LX-218CA powered subwoofers were rigged at a second stage at EMF, dedicated to DJ sessions showcasing some of the world’s top artists. The Blessure sound team also rolled out a combination of DAS Convert-15A and LX-218CA subwoofers on this stage to take care of side fill duties.

Empire Music Festival is quickly becoming one of Latin America’s biggest music festivals, following the footsteps of similar multi-genre events that have grown in popularity in the United States and Europe and incorporating their recipe for success: several simultaneous stages on massive concert grounds in order to offer a range of musical genres and entertainment.