Colorado Springs, CO–Rokbox Entertainment recently purchased a Martin Audio Wavefront Precision Mini (WPM) system and SX118 subs for a variety of high school dance events, assemblies and conferences.
Asked about the purchase, Rokbox owner Matt Stoneback comments: “After seeing the system demoed at InfoComm, I fell in love with the boxes, especially their tonal quality and basically doubled my company’s inventory with 24 WPM, eight SX118 subs and two iK81 amps. I also appreciate the scalability of the system that gives me more flexibility in terms of price point and a greater variety of events.”
Matt also owns Eddy Sound, a company focused on corporate, faith-based and concert events which has a large inventory of Martin Audio CDD-LIVE and CSX-LIVE subs. He created Rokbox Entertainment as a DBA in 2012 “which basically does these huge high school dances, so we basically run two businesses out of this shop because the clients we were trying to get for Eddy Sound do not respond well to the social media we were doing for Rokbox.”
The first Rokbox event for WPM was a statewide student leadership conference for the Colorado High School Activities Association Fall Leadership Conference at Manitou Springs High School. Describing the rapid process between sale and first deployment, Matt recounts: “I went to NAMM in 2019 to see the Martin Audio team and bought the WPM system in early October 2019 based on getting delivery in two and a half days. They managed to get it to me in time, and we loaded and put up the system for the Conference two days later.”
“With close to 650 people there and 72 high schools represented––all student leaders––we provided full support for everything, projection screens, lighting and speaker systems for smaller subset productions and a huge dance event with a quarter of a million dollars of gear inside the gym––20 WPM with two main arrays of six a side and delays with four a side fifty feet out in the gym plus eight SX118 and four SXP218 subs stacked on either side in front of the stage. At the back, we had four CDD-LIVE 8 powered boxes for a VIP dance area. That plus a blacklight dodgeball competition and a movie presentation with Martin Audio throughout the school.”
Asked about the system’s performance, Matt explains, “One of the things about the system that blew my mind is how powerful and efficient WPM is given the low power consumption. I was able to run 20 boxes and eight subs on two amplifiers with two-box resolution and it sounded great. It’s amazing that we were only using two 20 amp circuits for distro and I still had to turn it down which is unusual because I love really loud music.
“The tonal quality is insane,” Matt continues, “and the cool thing about Martin Audio is when I listen to a CDD-LIVE 8 and a WPM array, they sound the same to me and I can’t say that about most other brands we’ve used. I was extremely impressed by the SPL I was able to get out of 20 boxes and the fact that Martin Audio product support engineer Paul Giansante and I were able to work out the system deployment on DISPLAY and even though I thought the system was hung too low, when we turned the system on and I walked the room, it was spot on!
“Best of all, my client was absolutely blown away. We get hired by high schools to do sound reinforcement for their assemblies because we can get the kind of audio in a gym that 1,000 kids will listen to because it sounds so much better than a typical installed system. And when I asked my wife, who worked closely with me on this event and knows the market really well, to listen to the system after we’d first put it up and played some songs that we both know and I saw the relaxed look on her face with a big smile, I knew we were home free.”
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