Two categories, one family, and two decibels between them.
The ARA Series is published as one family with a line array box and two point source boxes. The maximum SPL figures sit almost on top of each other.
- SARA — line array, 142 dB
Powered, 2 x 750 W LF plus 1400 W HF, a 2 x 8-inch and 3-inch two-way box. DAS publishes maximum SPL at 142 dB, horizontal coverage 100 degrees, dispersion 100 / 80, weight 34.0 kg (75.0 lb).
- ARA-P12 — point source, 140 dB
Powered, 1200 W LF plus 800 W HF, a 12-inch and 3-inch two-way box with a rotatable 70 x 40 horn. Maximum SPL 140 dB, weight 24.0 kg (54.0 lb).
- ARA-P8 — point source, 140 dB
Same amplifier pair, 2 x 8-inch instead of a single 12, the same rotatable 70 x 40 pattern, maximum SPL 140 dB, weight 23.4 kg (51.5 lb). Two decibels below the array box and ten kilograms lighter than it.
The array box costs about forty per cent more weight per enclosure. It returns vertical control.
A difference of two decibels at one metre is close to nothing on a field two hundred feet deep. The difference that survives the walk to the back is pattern.
Both ARA point source boxes publish a single, finished dispersion figure: 70 degrees horizontal by 40 degrees vertical, rotatable. That is the pattern, it leaves the box that shape, and aiming it is the design work. SARA publishes 100 degrees horizontal and then stops, because the vertical pattern of an array box is splay dependent — a property of the hang rather than of the enclosure. There is no number to print for it until somebody has decided how many boxes and at what angles.
This is why a maximum SPL comparison box against box answers a question nobody on a field is asking. A catalogue prints one figure per enclosure. A hang of eight arrives at the back of the field as eight overlapping contributions, and the level at row forty is a property of the splay, the throw and how many boxes share that arrival. The 142 and the 140 describe one box each at one metre.
The decision on an open site therefore runs on coverage geometry first. A 200-foot-deep field with a 120-foot-wide audience served by 70-degree point source boxes needs enough boxes side by side to cover the width and something downfield to cover the depth. Served by an array, the same field is one hang per side with the vertical split between near and far. Count the boxes before comparing the decibels.
Rear rejection is printed on two boxes in the catalogue. On the rest it is an arraying technique.
On a municipal field with houses on a boundary and an ordinance cutoff, where the system is quiet matters as much as where it is loud.
- LARA — 150 dB, cardioid, 86 kg
DAS publishes LARA as a four-way cardioid line array: 12000 W peak, 2 x 12-inch LF, 2 x 8-inch MF, 2 x 3-inch HF and 2 x 8-inch cardioid transducers, 100 degrees horizontal, maximum SPL 150 dB, weight 86 kg (189.6 lb). The rear-facing section is part of the enclosure.
- MARA — 148 dB, cardioid, 71.5 kg
The same idea one size down: 8400 W peak, 2 x 10-inch, 2 x 8-inch, 2 x 3-inch and 2 x 6-inch cardioid, four-way, 80 degrees horizontal, maximum SPL 148 dB, weight 71.5 kg (157.3 lb). The horizontal pattern is twenty degrees narrower than LARA’s.
- What it costs in load
SARA is 34.0 kg. LARA is 86 kg. Choosing the published cardioid behaviour multiplies the per-box weight by roughly two and a half, and on a park site that load lands in a ground-support tower and its ballast rather than in a roof steel somebody else already engineered.
DAS sorts its own loudspeakers into line arrays, curved source and point source. The middle one answers most festival fields.
The question arrives as a binary. The manufacturer that makes the boxes does not file them that way.
Alongside the line array and point source listings, dasaudio.com carries a curved source category. The box listed there is a 12-inch two-way, 500 W LF plus 250 W HF, published at maximum SPL 135 dB with a 90 x 15 horn — a dispersion narrower in the vertical than either ARA point source box and finished in the enclosure rather than in the splay.
A 15-degree vertical pattern is a long, flat slice. Aimed across a flat field from a stage-height position it puts energy down the depth of the audience and keeps it off the sky and off the ground in front of the first row. That is the geometry a delay position wants, and it arrives without a motor, a bumper or a splay plan.
The EVENT Series sits in the same middle ground from the other direction. EVENT-30A is published as a 2 x 10-inch line array box, 2000 W peak Class D with 24-bit FIR processing, maximum SPL 142 dB, 90 degrees, 26.5 kg — the same maximum SPL as SARA at three quarters of the weight, with a narrower horizontal pattern. EVENT-212A, a three-way 2 x 12-inch box, publishes 136 dB at 41.0 kg (90.4 lb). The catalogue does not reward the assumption that bigger and heavier prints a bigger number.
Sorted by maximum SPL, the list is nearly flat. Sorted by weight, it is not.
Five boxes from one manufacturer, as published, with the numbers in the order that matters on a field.
Maximum SPL across SARA, ARA-P12, ARA-P8 and EVENT-30A spans two decibels: 142, 140, 140, 142. Weight across the same four spans eleven kilograms: 34.0, 24.0, 23.4, 26.5. Add the cardioid pair and the SPL range opens to ten decibels while the weight range opens to sixty-three kilograms. Level scales slowly in this catalogue. Mass scales fast.
For an outdoor build the mass is the part that touches everything else: whether the system flies or stacks, whether the site needs a ground-support tower, how much ballast goes on turf a city will walk afterwards, how many hands are on the load-in call, and how long the strike runs after amplified sound has to stop. A box chosen for two decibels can add a tower.
So the sequence runs: measure the field, choose the vertical pattern that covers it, check what the chosen pattern weighs, and then look at the SPL column to confirm there is headroom. Starting at the SPL column picks the box first and discovers the rigging afterwards, usually on site.
Every figure above is printed on the manufacturer’s own systems pages and was read on 24 October 2026. Specifications are revised; check the current page before a figure goes in a plot or a quote.
Where the figures come from
- SARA 142 dB, 100 / 80, 34.0 kg; LARA 150 dB, 100 degrees, 86 kg; MARA 148 dB, 80 degrees, 71.5 kg; EVENT-30A 142 dB, 90 degrees, 26.5 kg; EVENT-212A 136 dB, 90 degrees, 41.0 kg — DAS Audio’s published line array systems listing, dasaudio.com, read 24 October 2026.
- ARA-P8 140 dB, 70 x 40 rotatable, 23.4 kg; ARA-P12 140 dB, 70 x 40 rotatable, 24.0 kg — DAS Audio’s published point source systems listing, dasaudio.com, read 24 October 2026.
- Curved source box, 135 dB, 90 x 15 horn, 28.5 kg (62.8 lb) — DAS Audio’s published curved source systems listing, dasaudio.com, read 24 October 2026.