Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert - The 20th Anniversary Tour with dBTechnologies VIO

	"The vocals were very crisp, yet warm through the VIO X206s front fills, and the bass of the S318s rumbled through the seats during dramatic moments," says Brandt. Photo: James Garbo III

On the SDSU campus, silence isn't a suggestion -- it's enforced. The Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre sits directly beside the university library, and until 5pm, even concert productions setting up for the evening's performances are bound to those limitations.

On November 10, the challenge arrived in the form of a mesmerizing orchestral ensemble fusing Eastern and Western musical elements, playing with a bespoke compilation of the iconic animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender's three seasons shown on a full-size cinema screen. Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert - The 20th Anniversary Tour wasn't just being watched -- every note, word, and sound effect had to carry across the 4,825-seat outdoor amphitheater. Front-of-house engineer TJ Young had only 30 minutes to tune the system prior to musicians taking the stage for soundcheck, there was no room to ease into it.

"I was a little nervous going into the gig with only a 30-minute window to make noise prior to musicians taking the stage, until I heard through pre-production emails that the front-of-house system was to be a dBTechnologies rig," Young comments. "I've mixed on multiple dBTech systems previously and love how they respond right out of the gate. I knew the PA side of this show was going to be a breeze."

MixOne, the audio vendor based in Orange, CA, has worked in this amphitheatre more than a hundred times. They know its quirks the way other people know their childhood street: which way the wind can bend high frequencies, how far subs can travel before they start rattling the student halls, and exactly how loud a show can get before it disrupts the campus around it. That experience shaped their choice of system: a full dBTechnologies VIO L212 deployment.

On each side of the stage, twelve VIO L212 modules were flown -- each capable of reaching 142dB -- but chosen here for their clarity and range rather than sheer output.

Six VIO S318 subs per side in a cardioid configuration sent low-end energy into the house while keeping the surrounding campus quiet. Across the stage lip, six VIO X206 front fills provided detailed coverage to the closest rows, where strings, winds, and solo instruments needed intimacy rather than impact.

VIO-certified technician Greg "Haggard" Brandt walked the seating bowl during tuning and heard his design become reality. "This open-air amphitheatre sounds amazing no matter what seat you're sitting in when you fly 24 dBTech L212s with the preferred angles and settings predicted through Ease Focus," he says. Pointing toward the front rows just before doors opened, he adds: "the vocals were very crisp, yet warm through the VIO X206s front fills, and the bass of the S318s rumbled through the seats during dramatic moments."

Interestingly, the evening's cold air extended the high-frequency intelligibility well across the venue, but the same acoustic properties threatened to carry sound well beyond its borders. Systems tech and A1 Michael Netteberg explains that "to combat it going too far, we shaded the top 2 boxes and adjusted the HF compensation to isolate the sound a little more due to the dB limits."

Despite the restrictions and time constraints, the system came to life. Aurora Net provided control and DSP management, SMAART V9 guided tuning, and multitrack playback from Reaper enabled a quick virtual soundcheck before the orchestra took the stage. From woodwinds to taiko drums, all 105 input channels passed through a single Allen & Heath dLive system handling front-of-house and 26 IEM mixes with all onboard processing.

TJ summed it up with the kind of simplicity that usually follows when the hard work is done: "Everyone had a great show."