Around 30 APG speakers, subwoofers and racks have returned to Andalusia, following a busy summer season of live entertainment with Spanish audio specialist, Sonido Zero Dbs.
Cabra-based Zero Dbs boasts one of the biggest APG inventories in the region, having worked with the French manufacturer since 2012. For the 80+ live events it helped produce this summer – from 20 June to 20 September, the company leaned heavily on its APG equipment, which includes 20 Uniline Compact line-array speakers, four SB118 subwoofers, two UNIRACK flight case racks, and ten compact DX multipurpose speakers and stage monitors.
Spain saw “an explosion of events” in the summer months, and businesses like Zero Dbs had to be ready to respond to the unprecedented post COVID-19 lockdown demand for live shows, according to the company’s owner, Juan Antonio Cuevas. “The public reacted with a great desire to go back to attending outdoor events,” he explained. “We must have catered for 35,000 people in just three months”.
As a result, it was an extremely busy three-month period for Zero Dbs, which worked on everything from concerts and festivals to corporate events and theatre shows, and with performers in a dizzying array of genres, including jazz, folk, flamenco and classical music stars such as Dorantes, María José Llergo, Israel Fernández, Kiko Veneno, Fuel Fandango, León Benavente and María Peláe.
To meet the demands of this diverse array of live events, the company made frequent use of the SMX15, APG’s high-performance stage monitor, and SB118, a compact infra-bass subwoofer, continues Cuevas. “The SMX15 is one of my favourites – it sounds incredible with all kinds of music,” he said. “When combined with the SB118, the result is fantastic. For me, this is a quick but very effective set-up for an audience of up to 400 people, and sounds great for rock, pop, electro, reggae and similar concerts.”
This kind of do-it-all flexibility is unique to APG, suggests Cuevas, who says he has never “heard that kind of sound versatility in other brands” and is invaluable for a medium-sized PA company like Zero Dbs, which could be working on an open-air rock festival one day and a classical-music recital the next – or even at exactly the same time.
“In August, we had three festivals with different capacities and featuring different musical genres at the same time,” recalled Cuevas. “The first was Jazzándaluz, a three-day jazz festival with a capacity of 800 people. The second was a 300 people concert series called Música al Aire in the Córdoba town of Carcabuey, with styles from flamenco to pop and singer-songwriter Cantautor. ” While the third was a festival in Alhaurín de la Torre, in the province of Malaga, called Alhautor, with a capacity of 600 and pop, rock, indie and flamenco performers.
“For Jazzándaluz we deployed a complete kit of Uniline Compact with the UC115B basses and SB118 subs; for Música al Aire, we used only the SB118 subs with the UC206N [medium/long-throw line-array speaker], for the style of music and the small capacity; and for Alhautor, which was held in an auditorium, we used two UC115B, four UC206N, two UC206W and two SB118 per side,” Cuevas added. “So that was three venues, three capacities and three very different musical line-ups, all delivered by APG systems.”
Zero Dbs’ APG inventory continues to be popular heading into winter, with its trusted SMX15 + SB118 combo featuring at the recent Festival Selpia in Córdoba, and a Uniline Compact stack providing sound for the SolidariRock benefit concert.
“For me, one of the most important things is to have the same sound footprint in all products and I have that with APG,” continued Cuevas. “All their products are complementary, and they have equipment for all kinds of applications. For example, with a modular system like the Uniline Compact you can do what you want, from a simple speech with only one UC206 per side, to a theatre show with a stacked system, to big outdoor festivals with the system blown. I think APG have the ideal equipment for small and medium PA companies like us – with only a few products, we can do everything.”