UK - Front-of-house sound engineer Geoff Hooper is using a JBL VerTec VT 4889 line array system for Elvis Costello's current UK tour - a decision made as they stepped up a level in terms of production and venue size. Hopper has used VerTec for the three years he's been touring with Costello in the US, where the venues vary from 700 capacity clubs to 4000 capacity theatres and arenas. With several large concert halls on the itinerary for this UK leg of the tour, VerTec was the obvious option.

Costello knows exactly what he wants from a sound system, making the task of engineering simultaneously challenging and rewarding: "I interfere as little as possible with the distinctive Costello sound coming offstage," says Hopper. "I know I can get a great 'natural' sound out of the VerTec, and that's a primary reason it's my choice of system," he says.

Costello's flo

USA - In May, TMB shipped the 100th ProPower Rack Panel Distribution (RPD) System. The system was sold to Ed & Ted's Excellent Lighting, Inc. in support of an intensive summer of concert and corporate events, commencing with the Eminem North American Tour.

TMB's ProPower RPD features a comprehensive range of cULus Listed panels. Included are virtually every type of connector, voltage range, or special purpose power distro device used in the live event and entertainment industries. Over 150 panels are available, with more being added regularly. Panels and their positioning in the rack are selected by the user and the RPD system is built exactly as specified. RPD rack systems are normally shipped within ten days, completely ready to use. In addition to Power Distribution panels, an entire family of panels has been engineered using the ETC SmartPack dimmer modules and ProPlex Data

France/UK - Owned by Bruno Bertrand, Audiopole is a long time distributor of pro audio equipment for a number of leading manufacturers. The company recently found it had a gap in its product range that the MC2 brand could fill.

"When our previous amplifier brand stopped being made, we were on the lookout for a manufacturer offering innovative products to fit both fixed installation and touring applications," comments Bertrand. "These market segments need high powered, compact and reliable amplifiers that few manufacturers can offer today at a high quality level.

"After checking the new E series, we decided that MC2 products fit those needs exactly. Moreover, having been in touch with Ian McCarthy several times, we know the company has a profile that can offer innovation, flexibility and a friendly relationship. We are very happy to see that sales have start

Germany - Audio specialist Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG concluded financial year 2004 with worldwide sales of EUR 261.7 million, which corresponds to an increase of 10.3 per cent on the previous year. Sennheiser say that in addition to the positive development of the economic climate, this success can be attributed to the company's consistently high investments in production technologies and research and development; other contributory factors were decisive improvements to its logistics processes and efficient marketing strategies.

The Sennheiser Group, which in the year under report consisted of the parent company plus four domestic and 13 foreign subsidiaries, and the joint venture Sennheiser Communications A/S, raised its sales by EUR 24.5 million in 2004 to a figure of EUR 261.7 million. Profits increased to EUR 13.2 million, which already takes into account a special

UK - Electro-Voice's chic designer EViD loudspeakers are the ideal fit for the new refurbished interior of Birmingham's leading gay club, The Nightingale, where Matthews Electronics of Birmingham has just completed the installation of high-end sound and lighting systems throughout the venue.

The Nightingale is a unique managed business owned by its members, reinvesting its profits into the business. Now 35 years old and in its fourth location, the venue has recently undergone a £3/4 million redevelopment, evolving into a 'style bar and nightclub', open seven days a week.

Set over three floors, The Nightingale has capacity for 2,000. With live PA on the ground floor, and another large dance club on the second floor, the first floor in the middle features the new B5 Bar and Restaurant, together with a piano lounge and café bar with swanky leather sofas, chunky tables and big l

USA - Interpol, New York's most talked-about rock band, has been touring in Europe with a JBL VerTec system, souped up with BSS Audio's FDS-366T Omnidrive Compact Plus's. The FDS-366T was used as the main crossover unit for the VerTec's low mid-hi cabinets and for the subwoofers that made up the system.

Playing mid-size venues with 1500-3000 capacity, the European dates of Interpol's tour were serviced by British PA company, SSE Hire. Tim Fraleigh, system technician on the tour, praised the sound quality of the BSS unit, especially the facility which allows the engineer to EQ the system beyond the crossover settings.

The FDS-366T's are equipped with the V1T tunings using WHISEWORKS-NTM filters, first pioneered with VerTec by SSE during last years Metallica tour.

(Sarah Rushton-Read)

Spain - When Spanish soccer giants Real Madrid decided to renew their old sound system at the famous Bernabeu Stadium they turned to pro audio specialists Gaplasa/DBM Pro ES, who recommended a Denon/Marantz playback solution.

As one of the best football teams in the world Gaplasa's José Maria Penalba rationalized the club deserved nothing less than the best in sound quality too. "However, it was not only a question of offering them top quality equipment but also the best engineering team and service," he emphasized.

After listening carefully to the club's needs, the D&M Professional Spanish distributors were able to meet all system requirements from the company's catalogue. The background music is now delivered from a Marantz Professional CC 4300P 5-disc CD changer, designed for commercial use. Also installed is a Marantz Professional CDR510 Live Event CD Recorder.

UK - Latest signings to Parlophone, The Departure, continue their intensive touring schedule with the release of their debut album, equipped with a stage full of Audio-Technica mics.

The band, whose album, Dirty Words, was released on 13 June, has played over 100 shows in the last nine months. With no let up, they have dates, including support slots with Duran Duran, lined up throughout Europe until September, after which they embark on a headline UK tour, followed by a US tour and a further European stint.

With a few days respite before the summer's first European sprint, FOH engineer John Delf, took the opportunity to equip the tour inventory with a full complement of A-T mics. "We played Sonicmania 05 in Japan this year," he states. "The festival is sponsored by Audio-Technica, so we played with a full A-T mic kit. I was especially impressed with the A

UK - Shuttlesound has made the first UK sale of Dynacord's new Xa-2 horn-loaded high SPL sound reinforcement system to Banana Row, the Edinburgh-based music services company. The new system makes one of its debut appearances in front of the most important people in the political world, when it is used at the Delegates' Ball at the G8 summit in the Gleneagles Hotel.

Banana Row is a multi-faceted music operation, incorporating rehearsal and recording facilities, instrumental teaching and PA/backline rental services for a wide range of customers. Having only taken delivery of the new Dynacord Xa-2 system at the end of May, the rush was on to gain some real-world experience with the system before the high-profile G8 summit event.

The first outing for the new system was at Edinburgh's biggest free festival, the Meadows Festival. Craig Hunter of Banana Row used the complete Xa-2 sys

Japan - Lying between Tokyo and Narita International Airport, the Makuhari Messe exhibition complex is ideally situated for its role as one of Japan's leading business and entertainment destinations. As with so many Expo centres around the world, Makuhari Messe prides itself in its ability to present a full range of events. Trade shows and corporate events naturally lead the way, but the complex is also home to the purpose designed 9,000 seat Makuhari Event Hall, where rock concerts can easily be staged.

Like its close neighbours Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea Park, the Makuhari Messe has become increasingly successful since it first opened, so successful in fact that demand for the Event Hall had exceeded its ability to deliver. This was in part due to its large and heavy PA system that required four people to stack each cabinet. With a constant need to reconfigure the hall fo

Germany - Sixty-three million euro has been spent getting the AWD Arena in Hanover ready for next year's World Cup; the 49,000-seater stadium now complies fully with FIFA regulations.

Among the key items in the modernization programme was the provision of new sound reinforcement and public address systems, with the decision-makers opting in each case for systems from EVI Audio: the centrepiece of the acoustic design is now formed by a PROMATRIX paging and alarm system from DYNACORD and a professional sound system from Electro-Voice in which FRX+PI enclosures and RL amplifiers play key roles.

For a major project such as the AWD Arena, EVI Audio's virtually comprehensive product portfolio offers considerable advantages, since each of the different areas of the stadium - the VIP lounges, the stands, the playing field etc. - poses a different problem, which (naturally) requires a

UK - The European Headquarters of Digidesign, based at Pinewood Studios just to the West of London, is well-positioned right in the heart of a major film and television production centre. Housed within the offices of its parent company, Avid, Digidesign's entire sales, marketing, training and education resource operates from this site; its proximity to Heathrow allows easy access for UK and international visitors.

The training and education centre offers excellent facilities for its European re-sellers. An array of meeting rooms and two fully equipped studios provide the perfect surroundings for hands-on understanding of their products. Since launching the ICON D-Control and very recently the D-Command, the Digidesign headquarters has played host to many of the company's re-sellers visiting the training centre for training on these new products.The ICON tactile worksurface, D-Co

UK - Stardraw.com recently announced that it has incorporated support for WebBrick technology from UK-based home automation products and solutions company O2M8 into its award-winning application, Stardraw Control.

Stardraw Control generates standalone, customized control programs that can manage and monitor any type of addressable equipment from any manufacturer using any protocol over any communications infrastructure. This approach frees systems integrators from closed or proprietary architectures and applications, offering instead the ability to create a single application that can control many different products with as much or as little complexity as the end user needs.

O2M8 Ltd is a UK-based company creating innovative smart home products and solutions using standard technologies and open source software to reduce costs and drive growth in the smart home industry. WebBri

Worldwide - Round-the-world concerts in the run-up to a summit which is already destined to go down in history: before the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, from 6 - 8 July, Live 8 aims to encourage people to speak out against poverty, especially in Africa. A steadily growing number of top national and international stars have agreed to appear at the concerts to be held on 2 July in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Philadelphia, and Barrie in Canada. RF and microphone specialist Sennheiser will make use of its worldwide network of subsidiaries and affiliated companies to equip all the events with wireless microphone and monitoring technology, attending to frequency planning and provide on-site support.

"On 2 July, the curtain will rise on the 'global stage' for what is probably the largest live concert the world has ever seen," says Rolf Meyer, speaker of the Sennheiser E

UK - New technology, originally developed by AnswerBack Interactive to facilitate audience participation in the 2005 summer show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Live, is now available at venues around the country.

First UK venue to be 'AnswerBack Enabled' is the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham where rehearsals for the show took place during early June. Over five kilometres of cable linked 2,200 handsets to each other, and to ultra-speedy processors, which identify the players' fastest response to within a thousandth of a second. AnswerBack Interactive's MD Paul Krisman says "During the course of our largest shows we will be processing more than 10,000,000 messages with a peak greater than 7,000 per second - this is more than 10 times that achieved by the London Stock Exchange."

Other venues offering the AnswerBack Enabled facility include the Eastbourne Con

USA - Ashly Audio, Inc. announced the introduction of the PE-Series remote controlled amplifiers. PE-Series (Protea Enabled) amplifiers are high-power, high-efficiency, lightweight amplifiers incorporating the latest in power and control technologies. Each amplifier can be controlled and monitored through the built-in Ethernet port using Protea Software. Protea gives users access to many features, including: input attenuation, channel mute, channel polarity, input level, output voltage, output current, clipping, temperature, and power on/off.

The 800, 1200, 1800, 2400, 3000 and 3800 are low impedance amplifiers ranging in power from 400W to 1900W per channel at four ohms (20Hz-20kHz, 0.05% THD). All models will drive two, four or eight ohm loads.

All amplifiers are 2RU, weigh 20 pounds and utilize a state-of-the-art, efficient, high speed switched mode power supply. Additional

Poland - Horn Distribution SA has been appointed the new Polish distributors for Marantz Professional products, with effect from 1 June this year. Making the announcement, Mark Perrins, general manager of D&M Pro Europe, said: "Horn has enormous experience and has been selling Denon Pro products since 1997. We are delighted to give Darek Swiderski and Jaroslaw Bronowski the official distribution for Marantz professional products as well."

Horn Distribution in fact, has been operating since 1991, when the two men set out to build a portfolio of brands that they could represent exclusively in Poland. Denon was among its first serious brands in consumer electronics but the company soon realized that there was a huge demand for Denon Pro products.

To implement this, Horn Distribution set up a Pro Division and employed a dedicated sales force. "Adding Denon Pro produ

Norway - Leading RF manufacturer Trantec recently announced that its sole Norwegian distributor, AVAB, Cac, has acquired a fleet of its internationally award winning S6000 and S6001/2 radio mic systems.

Adding to the potential of Norway's main sound rental company and complementing AVAB Cac's expansive portfolio, the systems' have recently deployed on a musical adaptation of legendary Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's classic Per Gynt.

Staged in Norway's oldest theatre Den Nationale Scene (DNS), the production was directed by Robert Wilson and co-produced by two of Norway's largest theatres Det Norske Teatret and DNS - the score written by Michael Galasso.

Featuring as part of a sophisticated sound system, the Trantec systems' were specified by sound designer, Bjarte Vage. AVAB's Arthur Botnevik collaborated with Vage form the early stages to ensure that all the aspects of

UK - Digidesign has appointed Marquee Audio and Orbital Sound as exclusive UK distributors for their innovative Venue Live mixing environment. Designed from the ground up for live sound reinforcement and broadcast applications, Digidesign Venue is a feature packed, purpose-built, modular live sound mixing and production environment. Venue comprises the D-Show mixing console, front-of-house mix engine, Stage Rack I/O unit with recallable, remote-controlled preamps, and a multi-channel digital snake.

As a hugely creative sound design tool, it offers the quality and functionality of highend live sound mixing systems at an affordable price. Plus Venue is the only live sound mixing environment to feature an optional direct digital link to the industrystandard Digidesign ProTools systems. As a modular base system it is infinitely configurable, supporting up to 96 mic inputs and 27 bus

UK - At the IBC show this year, HHB Communications will show its broad range of broadcast audio technology, including the company's own HHB Portadrive location sound recorder, HHB Portadisc portable MD recorder, HHB CDR830 and 830 PRO CD recorders and the new HHB CDP-88 professional CD player - which features a full complement of balanced and unbalanced analogue and digital I/Os, a Word Clock input with SRC, frame accurate cueing and instant start.

Also new at IBC is V2.0 operating software for the Portadrive, which incorporates a number of important developments including enhanced iXML implementation, copying to external DVD±R/RW and CDR/RW, and support for UDF format for DVD-RAM, providing compatibility with Fostex DV40 and DV824. In line with a policy of continually developing the Portadrive platform in response to user feedback, V2.0 also addresses a number of operational e

Australia - The AM Pro XR series speaker systems are versatile, high performance two-way injection moulded enclosures offering features such as rotatable high end drivers and fold back kits as standard across most of the range. The XR series is equally ideal for installations and live sound reinforcement applications, say the company. The XR series ranges from a 6" + 0.75" through to a 15" + 2". The rotatable high end driver on the XR8, XR10, XR12 and XR15 make them ideally suited for foldback use or for mounting horizontally where low ceiling heights, or impeded sight lines are an issue in installations, say the company.

Also new from Australian Monitor is the Installation Series IS600 and IS1200 - both 2U stereo power amplifiers. The IS600 delivers 300W per channel at 4 ohms and the IS1200 delivers 600W per channel @ 4 ohms. Designed for permanent installat

UK - Denon has overhauled its popular DN-D4000 professional dual CD/MP3 rack-mount player, introducing a number of new features. Known as the DN-D4500, the new playback device features vastly-extended MP3 functionality - including hot starts - which will come as great news for the mobile and club DJ requiring a simple workhorse with high reliability.

How to improve an already award-winning product was the challenge facing the Denon design team, who turned instinctively to the MP3 section of the player. As a result, Key Adjust, Auto BPM Counter, MP3 Seamless Looping with B-Trim edit, MP3 Hot Starts, MP3 File Search System, MP3 Frame Search, CUE Stutter and wider +/-24/50/100% pitch ranges for audio CD's are just some of the enhancements that have been introduced.

(Lee Baldock)

UK - Canford has supplied Durham Cathedral with the equipment necessary to bring their sound reinforcement system up to date. The work was carried out by the Cathedral's own Clerk of Works, Bob Mathews and his team. The Cathedral is a World Heritage Site built in the late 11th and early 12th centuries and as such the installation required special care and attention to detail.

It is freely admitted by those at Durham, that for many years, their speech reinforcement system in the Cathedral has needed updating. Unfortunately, there have also been spots within the Cathedral where the spoken word has been unintelligible due to the intense natural reverberation caused by the Gothic architecture. It was decided that a new sound system should be installed to include new microphones, induction loops, video distribution, CCTV and control circuits associated with the upgrading of the speec

China - Shure Incorporated has hosted the grand opening ceremony for its two new locations in China: a manufacturing facility in Suzhou, and a sales and marketing office in Shanghai. "We are all very excited about this new chapter in Shure's history," said Chris Schyvinck, executive VP of Shure. "China is a key market for our company's strategic growth goals as we expand into Asia, and it's essential in order for us to provide support and service for our growing customer base in the region."

The Suzhou manufacturing facility has been conducting production trials for several months, but is now at full production of selected product lines. In March, Shure appointed Oscar Fulvio Hernandez as plant manager for the facility, which features the same calibre of superior testing equipment utilized in other Shure plants. "Just like all of our other plants, the Su

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