Sound

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Switzerland - In Autumn 2001, the old Wankdorf stadium in the Swiss capital of Berne was demolished to make way for a new multi-purpose stadium. The stadium where Germany won the FIFA World Cup for the first time against Hungary in 1954 (known as The Miracle of Berne), witnessed its last football match on August 3rd before the demolition team moved in.

The general contracting company, Marazzi AG, were awarded the contract for the planning and the realisation of the stadium, with a construction budget of 350m Swiss Francs. Over 32,000 comfortable seats make the Stade de Suisse one of the largest sporting stadiums ever built in Switzerland. Spectator comfort is at the forefront under the covered stands. There is an extensive range of catering services at over 20 locations in the ground; VIP and business lounges, 20 boxes, clear stewarding and sign-posting arrangements for visitors

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UK/Nigeria - Marquee Audio has supplied a full, integrated concert touring package to a client in Nigeria. Via two of the manufacturers that it represents, the Shepperton-based dealers and distributors were approached by Senator Daniel Aluko of Associated Logistics, one of the African country's leading polticians. He explained the requirement for a full front-of-house and monitor system in the south of the country, where the Governor of Calabar, Donald Duke, was a real music buff.

Says Marquee Audio's Andy Huffer, "They had been promoting a lot of concerts and festivals in the region but it was costing them a fortune hiring the equipment in - and they realised it would be more economical to purchase their own rig."

Marquee's sales director designed a proprietary system based around a Turbosound Aspect rig and Yamaha PM5000 analogue mixer. VDC Trading produced the nec

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UK - Sound recording college SAE London has completed the installation of its Digidesign ICON studio in a newly formed control and live room.

The Digidesign ICON is a control surface for Digidesign ProTools that provides "intuitive operation in line with other large format consoles... It provides an unprecedented level of control for ProTools allowing for intuitive mixing whilst giving access to the full power and flexibility of ProToolsHD".

SAE has installed a 32 Fader Icon console, which is based on the flagship D-Control tactile work surface. The studio features an HD2 ProTools system using an Apple PowerMac Dual G5 as well as Focusrite and SPL mic preamps and Bluesky monitors. Students will use the ICON for their music productions and are able to move their projects between four studios: ICON, SSL G+, Neve VR and SSL AWS.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Rycote, the long-established manufacturer of microphone windshields, shock mounts and all related microphone accessories has been given a striking new identity.

Over the last few months Rycote has been creating a more dynamic and bold image for the company and its products. Barneys Strategic Communication has been working with Vivienne Dyer, Rycote MD, to create a new look which marks a new phase in the company's plans for the future.

"We have new and exciting plans for the future, both through continued innovative product development and in the way we will be raising our profile in the year ahead," says Dyer. "Endorsed by the new strapline Sound Sense, we are actively planning new initiatives that will raise our Rycote brand image and which will directly benefit our distributors. Similarly, we will be supporting our valued customers with more new pr

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Germany - beyerdynamic has acquired Interkom electronic Kock & Mreches, a Wedemark, Germany-based company specialising in wired conference and simultaneous interpretation systems. The acquisition is effective immediately.

For 25 years, Interkom electronic Kock & Mreches has manufactured innovative products for the conference installations market. That tradition has continued with its recent focus on customisation and tailor-made solutions of analogue and digital wired conference systems. The company will remain at its Wedemark location through March 31, 2006, at which time it will relocate to beyerdynamic's production facility in Heilbronn Germany.

"beyerdynamic and Interkom are a perfect fit, given our respective product portfolios," commented Wolfgang Luckhardt, beyerdynamic's worldwide managing director. "We will capitalise on this synergy, improving our rese

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USA - Console manufacturer Solid State Logic exhibited at NAMM for the first time this year.The UK-based company showcased a selection of products including the AWS 900 Analogue Workstation System, SSL's most popular console ever.

Top producers and engineers, as well as artists, have been quick to acquire the AWS 900 for their private or commercial studios, says SSL. Installations include five at Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis's private studio, Flyte Time; Will Smith's studio, the Boom Boom Room; Alicia Keys's the Oven Studios; and engineer/producer Tal Herzberg's room at Henson Recording Studios.

SSL also exhibited the XLogic range of rack mount products, including the X-Rack modular rack system. The X-Rack Mic Amp and Channel EQ, introduced at NAMM, join the existing Dynamics unit to form a comprehensive processing solution for studio or live applications.

Also on display were

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USA - Detroit alt-rock fans kicked off the holiday season this year at the annual The Night 89X Stole Christmas at the Cobo Arena, hosted by Detroit-Windsor radio station CIMX-FM (known as "89X").

Now in its eighth year, the event has become a Motor City institution, routinely selling out in a matter of days or even hours. Past years' events have included performances by Franz Ferdinand, Dashboard Confessional, Good Charlotte, Jimmy Eat World and many other top names.

This year, headliners, 311, were joined by Our Lady Peace, Alien Ant Farm, Fall Out Boy, Rise Against, Coheed and Cambria, Switchfoot, Motion City Soundtrack and Social Code. The show's organisers promised an experience bordering on "sensory overload," and Detroit-based concert sound providers Thunder Audio helped deliver the goods with a powerful Meyer Sound line array.

With a total

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Spain/Denmark - Vieta Pro has appointed Moto Audio Sales ApS (MAS) as its representative in Denmark, joining a distribution portfolio that includes Yamaha and Sony, L'Acoustics and Renkus-Heinz.

MAS has derived its successful installation business from its corporate origins as a rental company. The company's Erik Bjerre explains that, despite handling distribution for some distinguished sound reinforcement brands, MAS was seeking a line of installation loudspeakers which would be suitable for restaurants and other such venues which didn't require high SPLs but wanted real speech intelligibility and accurate reproduction.

"We first saw Vieta's Do-Line at the PLASA show in London, where the design of the cabinets stopped us in our tracks," says Bjerre. "This range is a perfect fit for designer restaurant and bar interiors, and its availability in black and white f

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The PLASA Show has today launched its 2006 website. The new site carries extensive information on PLASA06, which will bring the industry live to Earls Court 1 in central London between 10-13 September 2006.The striking new website has been designed to help exhibitors and visitors quickly access everything they need to know about the show. It features an easy-to-use menu system, quick links to essential information such as the exhibitor list and floorplan and a straightforward online registration area where visitors can pre-book their tickets at the reduced rate of £9.00 - a saving of 50% on the on-the-door price of £18.00.Further essential information will be added in the coming months, including details of the seminar programme and Innovation Awards, exhibitor and visitor events, the latest technologies to be previewed and any further new initiatives being introduced at PLAS

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UK - ADLIB Audio and sister company ADLIB Lighting supplied sound and lighting production to the Manchester v Cancer show at the MEN Arena.

The star-studded line up included New Order, The Doves, Johnny Marr & The Healers, Elbow, 808 State, Nine Black Alps, Badly Drawn Boy, and the tightly packed evening also included DJ sets from the Utah Saints, Tin Tin and Mr Scruff plus other local talent and acoustic artists during the change-overs.

ADLIB fielded a total crew of 19 who worked in two shifts to separate the load in crew from the event crew. The get in started at six a.m. that morning, and the show commenced at 6.30 p.m. in the evening. With doors at six, this left 12 busy hours to rig, set up and sound check eight headlining live acts. "It was an extremely hectic one day festival scenario," says ADLIB crew chief Dave Kay (recent winner of the 2006 TPi Award

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UK - Skouspel, the most prestigious event on the South-African music calendar, features a mixture of music styles include pop, rock, gospel and traditional African music. When the annual televised Skouspel concert went from the usual venue Sun City Superbowl to the Northgate Coca-Cola Dome last October, Matrix of Johannesburg was called-in to facilitate the audio element of the event.

Trevor Peters of Matrix says: "The Coca Cola dome near Johannesburg enjoys a less than favorable reputation for its acoustic characteristics. The space itself is a nightmare in that it is exceptionally reverberant. Furthermore, the domed shape of the venue leads to summing and cancellations dependant of the sound level and listening position. We were very excited to be involved in this event, as it presented us with an opportunity to use the largest Alcons line-array system assem

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Spain - EML Productions Spain is currently touring the world with Spanish bands El Canto del Loco and Mago de Oz. Madrid natives El Canto del Loco's Zapatillas Tour 2006 will span 10 months and include over 100 shows. The first two shows held on 13 and 14 January in Salamanca and Barakaldo, attracted over 20,000 people. The local press hailed the band's "musical abilities and performance skills", as well as "the technical presentation, which was comparable to the tours of the biggest stars of the world".

FOH sound sngineer Fernando Dias and monitor engineer Enrique Kike were hearing their mix through 24 Adamson Y-18 cabinets, eight Y-10 cabinets and eight SpekTrix cabinets which are being used for the entire tour. The Mago de Oz kicked their second act of their "Gaia la Boca Tour" to gear in Galicia, Spain. They will grace a further 80 venues

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The Netherlands - One of Holland's leading PA hire companies, Unit Sound, has recently purchased two new Allen & Heath multi-purpose GL Series consoles to add to their hire stock.

The Delft-based firm has been managing sound for top-line festivals and concerts in The Hague and Delft region for many years. Towards the end of 2005, the need arose for two new mixing consoles to upgrade and replace existing mixers, providing quality and versatility for a range of FOH and monitor duties. Unit Sound acquired a 10 aux, 8 group, 12x4 matrix GL2800 and a 6 aux, 4 group, 7x4 matrix GL2400, from Allen & Heath's Dutch distributor, TM Audio.

Unit Sound's managing director, Chris Snoep, says: "Extensive testing lead us to the new A&H GL Series, which clearly stood out from the competition. New preamps and EQ has resulted in excellent sound quality, and noise ratios have improved drasti

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France - d&b audiotechnik will use the Siel show (12-15 February, Paris Expo, Porte de Versailles) to disclose its latest ground-breaking J-Series loudspeaker range, which, the company promises "definitely lines up to go the distance".

The high output J-Series is designed to reach into large-scale sound reinforcement applications and consists of the J8 and J12 full-range loudspeakers and the J-SUB cardioid subwoofer, which are acoustically matched and constructed to be mechanically compatible both in flown or ground-stacked arrays. Both the J8 and J12 loudspeakers produce a flat vertical wave front and a symmetrical horizontal constant directivity dispersion pattern of 80° for the J8 and 120° for the J12; this is maintained down to 250Hz, say d&b. The J8, J12 and J-SUB produce maximum sound pressure levels at one meter of 145dB, 143dB and 138dB respectively.

Also o

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Belgium - Ampco Belgium collected the Installation Europe Award for Technical Excellence in Entertainment on the opening day of the Integrated Systems Europe Show in Brussels on 1 February. The award recognises the company's pioneering system design at the Kursaal Theatre, Belgium in 2005, which features a radical implementation of the Multi-Channel Reverb (MCR) concept.

The Kursaal, a newly refurbished 2,201 seat multi-purpose auditorium in Ostend, was equipped with an MCR system that allows the reverberation time of the room to be varied, without the addition of electronic reverb, in nine discrete steps at the touch of a button. This allows it to provide an acoustically optimized playing and listening environment for every type of performance from orchestral and opera to TV shows and reinforced music.

The system has to perform four separate roles - sound reinforcement for co

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UK - ADC's first major installation at London Luton Airport involved the design, supply and installation of PA and paging for the new walkways and gates built in the summer of 2002. At that time a TOA SX-1000 paging matrix and various branded loudspeakers were used to provide paging for the new build and also paging facilities for the entire old terminal, replacing their existing control system. All of the old paging panels were upgraded to custom ADC designed and supplied units and new amplifiers were installed to drive both the new loudspeakers and also the older legacy system.

The New Terminal Building's (NTB) existing voice alarm systems front end control and amplifiers were upgraded by ADC to a TOA VX-2000 integrated voice evacuation control system. Fibre-optic LAN based paging and control systems have also been installed throughout the airport complex and WAN based technol

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UK - Javier Weyler, drummer with Stereophonics, has one of the most extraordinary stories to tell. One minute he was working as an assistant engineer at various studios across London, the next he was playing drums for Stereophonics in front of billions at Live 8 . . .

He met Kelly and Rich from the band while working at BJG-Sahara Sound. They quickly clicked and became friends and he ended up playing some percussion on their album You Gotta Go There To Come Back. Last year he then got an unexpected call from the band to work with them on their latest album, Language, Sex, Violence. Other? "I started playing along with them and we just clicked," he says - so well that he has now become a fully paid up member of the band. "It was when we were mixing that we had a chat about it and everything came together. It has been a very natural process."

An

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UK - Essex-based sound rental company, Event Sound & Light scored a world touring first when it put out its newly purchased VHD sound system from KV2 Audio on the recent Illegal Eagles UK Tour. The VHD system, launched at PLASA last autumn, is KV2 Audio's new large format active driven speaker system which features what is the first implementation of Direct Stream Digital (DSD) technology as part of the speaker control system's delay circuit.

The company supplied a complete VHD system comprising VHD 2.0 mid/high enclosures, the VHD 4.18 Quad 18" subwoofer system and VHD2000 and VDH3200 amplification and control units. Event Sound & Light also supplied a number of KV2 Audio ES1.0, Epak 2500 and EX12 units for in-fills, balconies etc, plus some of its own proprietary CS200 speakers for the front of stage-fill.

Initially apprehensive of using a brand new, untried system, Tim

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USA - US-based loudspeaker system manufacturer Renkus-Heinz will showcase a number of key proucts at this year's NSCA exhibition (16-18 March, Las Vegas, USA). Top of the list is the revolutionary Iconyx Digitally Controlled Column Loudspeaker Series - now shipping and dismantling the rules of what can be achieved in the most acoustically challenging environments around the world.

Also on show will be the new CF/CFX Series of high value, high performance loudspeakers, now shipping to both portable and installed sound dealers. The self-powered CF Series incorporates Renkus-Heinz's new PF-1 Intelligent Digital Amplifier, while the CFX Series is designed for use with external processors and amplifiers, say the company.

Also available will be EASE 4.2 - a majoe free upgrade: Acoustic Design Ahnert (ADA)and Renkus-Heinz Inc as worldwide distributor, will preview EASE 4.2 at NSCA in

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Germany - The EV/Blue Cardinal and Raven microphones combine eye-catching retro styling with state-of-the-art technology. The Cardinal is a cardioid condenser designed to capture the detail of both voices and instruments in live sound or studio applications. Employing Class A, discrete ultra-low noise amplifier circuitry, the Cardinal's smooth and detailed performance is sure to please even the most discerning artists and engineers. The Cardinal delivers impressive figures, such as a frequency response of 35 Hz - 20 kHz and 150 dB max SPL.

Despite their resemblance, the Raven and Cardinal are birds of a different feather: the Raven is designed as an all-rounder. It is also the perfect microphone for live and studio instruments. The Raven's cardioid pattern with excellent off-axis rejection serves to reduce to a minimum the risk of feedback. The Raven's frequency response is 45 H

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UK - A new product from Court Acoustics Ltd, the Vocal Management System has been designed by Stephen Court in a joint venture with Recording Studio Design Ltd, and is "the first piece of kit developed entirely for the vocalist - arguably the most important member of the band, yet traditionally the one person who has no capital expenditure for equipment".

Stephen Court told us: "Ever since we left the recording studios to help our clients achieve the same sound on stage - the quality difference between the studio and a live performance has been a problem, and the singer's voice in particular. Traditionally, in a studio, the vocals are processed through a lot of expensive and complicated equipment. Even if a singer could afford to take all that gear on the road, it would be an almost impossible task to set up. We took samples of singers' voices in both studio and i

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Belgium - Flashlight/APR Belgium has strengthened its sales team with the appointment of Laurent Grietens as international sales manager for France, Switzerland and Italy. Laurent was previously founder and director of leading Belgian audio rental company Art System.

Erwin Franck, sales director of Flashlight/APR Belgium, says: "Due to the company's continuing growth and its strength in our local market, we are ready to explore new markets. Laurent Grietens was already looking for an exciting new challenge in new markets and we are delighted that he decided to join us. The fact that we also want to develop and grow new technologies such as XLNT's CyberHoist and Synco audio equipment made the challenge and the opportunity even more exciting for him. With Laurent on board we have all the necessary skills to take this next major step in our commercial activities."

Griet

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Ireland - LX2000 Stage Lighting Hire has become the first company in the Republic of Ireland to purchase a Jands Vista console, taking delivery of a T2 for the 2005 Wexford Festival Opera season at the Theatre Royal, last October.

The company specialises in providing a complete lighting service from equipment dry hire through to lighting design, rentals and installations for clients all over Ireland operating in the theatre, entertainment and events sectors.

LX2000's Seamus Reck had been a very satisfied Jands Event 408 user for the past four years, but had decided it was time to upgrade to a newer console with the extra programming power and DMX channels needed to handle the production needs of larger clients.

Reck had seen the Jands Vista launch at PLASA and was extremely impressed by it. Then earlier this year, having decided the timing was now right to upgrade, he came b

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Germany - At the ProLight + Sound in Frankfurt, Kling & Freitag will present the close-to-production prototypes of the new digital speaker controllers CD 24 and CD 44. The digital controllers replace the previous analogue system controllers.

The development goal during the conception of the CD 24/ CD 44 was to set new standards for sound quality and operating safety. In doing so, a high-resolution DA/AD converter (96 kHz / 24 bit) and a sophisticated limiter concept were used. Two fully automated independent limiters monitor and limit the cone excursions and the thermal load of the speakers using a sense connector at the amplifier output. Despite this complex circuit technology, the latency time is only 0.7ms. Every output channel can be used with individually parameter sets (macros) and saved as new pre-sets. The controllers operate with a mains voltage of 90 to 240 volts.

Th

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  2. EtherSound networking at Circus Festival
  3. Mach CI4 and CI6 in 100V versions
  4. Community Helps in Gulf Coast Rebuilding
  5. d&b audiotechnik's J-Series unpeeled
  6. Camel purchases Nexo GEO S rig
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