Austen Derek and Rachel Stires provide the impetus behind Aurateq Systems, a multi-faceted design, installation and production company based in New York City, with a number of high-profile projects in the US, London and South America.

Formed by Derek and another partner in the mid-late ‘80s, the company specialised in sound systems for concerts and dance clubs like the Sound Factory, the Roxy in New York and Ministry of Sound in London. In demand because of his many talents, Austen had also been handling audio and general production for rock concerts, church events, parades and industrials in both countries as well.

When Derek reformed the company in the early ‘90s, an opportunity arose in South America to produce large-scale outdoor dance events featuring European DJs. A Colombian/American company, Mission Pro-ductions, which owned a club in Cali, needed Aurateq’s help to create these outdoor events because they were outgrowing the club. Hugely popular, these festival-style events quickly drew massive crowds.

From this point, Mission Productions started booking bands for concerts, and utilised Aurateq to design and build their PA’s. Currently, these shows feature Grammy-winning Latin American bands like Mana from Mexico and Los Prisoneros (The Prisoners) from Chile.

These, and other Latin bands, have drawn extraordinary crowds. In fact, Derek says, “The last show we did was
a festival-style event for 60,000 people.”

Martin Audio has been a staple for Aurateq Systems for a long time. When the Wavefront W8 Series first came out, they purchased a number of enclosures that they used for years.

“Right after that purchase, I was called to update Ministry of Sound’s sound system in London which had a similar bottom end to the Martin Audio design,” recalls Derek. The only thing that was missing was the 6.5/1" combination, so Bill Webb built a module for me that worked really great, and we’ve been with Martin Audio ever since!”

Mission Productions inven-tory now comprises of well over 400 Martin Audio speaker cabinets, with two line array systems out all the time throughout South America. “We use W8L’s for front of house,” Derek adds, “with W8C’s and W8S for side fill and front fill; and depending on the size of the show we’ll either use W8CT’s, W8CM’s or W8T’s for the delay positions.” The entire FOH and delay speaker systems are powered exclusively by Martin Audio MA4.2S and MA2.8S power amplifiers.

Asked why he is so loyal to Martin Audio, Austen is very straightforward. “I love the sound of the boxes. A lot of engineers and production people down in South America say, ‘Oh, they have that typical Brit sound…’ and sometimes it takes a while to get them comfortable; but now these guys are flipping out about how great they sound.”

Mission’s production manager, Rolli Garbalosa, has worked with Martin Audio products before. He recently used 40 x W8L line array cabinets per side with three delay towers of eight W8L line array speakers for Vincente and Alejandro Fernandez, and he was completely blown away. There were over 75,000 people in attendance at this stadium.

“The W8L is also the fastest flying Line Array sound system, without a whole bunch of gadgets you need to keep track of. Everything is self-contained,” he added.

Mission Productions, in conjunction with Aurateq Systems, are currently working on a large Christian rock tour with US and Latin acts and plan to add another complete FOH system in the coming months to cover the anticipated increased demand for their large-scale stadium productions.

The Mana concert at Bogota Stadium