Mackie Powers Red Bull Energy Station
Red Bull has been deeply involved with NASCAR for many years, including high-profile team sponsorship. And while most teams provide a hospitality area at the races to feed and entertain guests and sponsors, the Red Bull Energy Station goes the extra mile.
The Red Bull Energy Station, which made its debut at the Las Vegas Speedway, is a two-story steel and glass structure featuring more than 10,000 square feet of lounge areas, stainless steel bars, and high-impact audio and video entertainment.
The Station, which travels to events in four semi-trucks and takes several days to assemble, is outfitted with ten 42-inch Sony LCD displays and a sound system composed of Mackie components.
“The structure is typically set up pretty close to the track, so there was a need for a sound system with a pretty substantial output,” says Scott Ramsay of Broadcast Support, the company behind the structure’s audio and video systems. “In Las Vegas, for example, the front of the Energy Station was thirty feet from the top of turn three. The sound system needed to compete with a bunch of race cars going by at full throttle.”
The system centers around eight Mackie SRM350 Active Loudspeakers. “We had originally specified a larger Mackie speaker, but they were looking for as small a footprint as possible, to maximize visibility from everywhere in the structure,” Ramsay explains. “As it turns out, the 350 was more than capable of delivering the levels we were looking for.”
Low-frequency impact is amply covered by four of Mackie’s SWA1801 Subwoofers. “We went with a pretty substantial subwoofer arrangement, because after the race the Energy Station typically becomes an impromptu nightclub,” says Eric Eastland of All Access Staging. The company worked with Broadcast Support on the project’s design and implementation. “If you really want to connect with this crowd, they need to feel the music. The bottom end from the system is just awesome.”
A Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro Compact Mixer is mounted on the rack’s top.
“The support from Mackie was truly excellent,” adds Ramsay. “We didn’t get the final order for the project until a couple of weeks before deadline, but they put the entire order together in a matter of hours, and jumped through a bunch of extra hoops when it looked like the freight company had lost the order.”
The Energy Station’s unveiling in Las Vegas was, by all accounts, a high-energy success. “Several of the Red Bull representatives from Austria were on site when we first powered the system up,” Ramsay reports. “We hadn’t even dialed it in yet, but their jaws were dropping to see how much sound was coming out of such small speakers.”
