Sound

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UK Early 2009 has seen 21 venues across the UK packed for Errol Brown's farewell tour. Engineer Ralph 'Rej' Jane manned a Yamaha LS9-32 console at front of house. Today, Jane works as a corporate sound engineer but, as Brown's long-term and trusted front of house man, he was tempted out of rock'n'roll retirement.

"I use the LS9 a lot for corporate work, but the chance to come out on tour for a month with it, using it every day, was one not to be missed." He says. "This will be my last tour as well as Errol's farewell tour, so using it in a different venue every day under touring conditions isn't something I'll get the chance to do in the future."

Supplied, along with the rest of the sound and lighting production, by STS Touring Productions, the LS9 had to be capable of fulfilling the rigorous front of house requirements, with demand for tickets so high and

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Germany - The Versio VSS 18 is a thoroughgoing digital system unit with integrated, direct-radiating 18" subwoofer and three class D amplifiers with prefixed 24 Bit / 48 kHz digital signal processor.

The analogue input signal is digitalised directly inside the input amplifier using an intelligent 24 bit AD converter and remains consequently digital to the class D amplifiers' output. The unit is powered by a wide-range switched mode power supply with PFC (power factor correction).

The directional (cardioid) dispersion is realised by special, digital controlling in the VSS 18 together with two additional passive 18" subwoofers of the Versio series. The cardioid dispersion in the deep bass frequencies efficiently avoids unwanted backward sound reproduction of the subwoofer.

K.M.E. will feature the new model at ProLight&Sound where the company will also feature its PAN

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France - Innovason reports that Tomas Ourednicek, who heads up Innovason's Czechoslovakian distributor, MusicData, has pulled off a fabulous result with his rally partner Miroslav Zapletal in their Mitsubishi L200 by coming seventh overall in the Dakar Rally.

Ourednicek is understandably delighted with his team's performance. "We are just amateurs, but we were the first Mitsubishi vehicle to cross the line, coming in ahead of the official Mitsubishi factory team AND the BMW factory team! Finishing in the top ten in an event like this is a dream come true."

Innovason's Xavier Pion adds: "What a performance. I'm in complete admiration of what they've achieved - when you consider that only a fraction of those who start even make the finish line at all, it puts into perspective the huge achievement represented by their seventh place - well done Tomas, we're all prou

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USA - Conductor specialist Switchcraft has broadened the type of products it offers by launching a top-level instrument direct box, which is named SC800.

Simple to configure and housed in a compact enclosure, the SC800 converts the outputs of high impedance line level audio devices and musical instruments to low level impedance balanced and isolated microphone level signals that can be connected to audio consoles, microphone pre-amps, effects processors and other equipment with three-pin XLR inputs.

Key features include Jensen transformer, dual 6.35mm (¼ inch) throughputs, 20dB pad, pin 1 ground lift, recessed I/O panels, non-reflective enclosure with laser-etched labelling and Switchcraft all metal connectors.

(Jim Evans)

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Spain - D.A.S. Audio has announced the appointment of Carlos A. Henao to the position of sales and technical support. In his new position, Henao will serve as the company's US regional sales account representative where he will identify sales opportunities, assist customers with product selection, and guide them through all aspects of the sales transaction.

Henao has travelled extensively throughout Latin America and Europe, where he served as both FOH and monitor engineer for a number of touring acts. For the past 20 years, Henao operated his own production company, Paradise Production Services, and was responsible for a number of high profile installations, including Miami, Florida's Club Space, Club Level, and Prive, as well as the Jet Lounge in New York, NY. He also spent ten years as the production manager / audio engineer for Grace Jones.

"I'm honoured to be joining

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UK - eMerging, UK distributors for Merging Technologies Pyramix DAW, has upgraded the twin Pyramix DAWs at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden to run Pyramix version 6 software, as part of an upgrade to the in-house broadcasting facilities there.

The Opera House was comprehensively rebuilt in the late 90s, and further work over the past few years had seen the installation of an in-house broadcast centre and an associated sound control room. But following the purchase of DVD label Opus Arte in 2007, the plan has been to expand the number of performances at the ROH that are recorded for subsequent release on DVD with a 5.1 surround soundtrack, and the former sound control room, which wasn't equipped for surround monitoring and mixing, became a liability.

Now a sizable replacement sound control room/audio broadcast centre for radio, TV, and satellite live-to-cinema transmissions

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Germany - FaitalPRO has lined up a number of new products that will be premiered at ProLight & Sound in Frankfurt next month.

Overseas sales manager Flavio Naggi says: "We will introduce several new loudspeakers dedicated to the professional world, which express our 'vital force': a true 'drive' to constantly improve and be ever closer to our sound reinforcement clients - at all levels - by listening to their requests and responding with new technologically rich proposals incorporating the quality for which our brand is a recognised synonym."

In the 1" compression driver area, the introduction of a new, more compact and economical version compared to products already on catalogue is planned. The new 1" HF driver adopts a ring diaphragm based on a 'patent pending' design and re-proposes the high quality and performance of the new FaitalPRO products, says the

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USA - In the afternoon hours prior to the Steelers and Cardinals storming the field at Super Bowl XLIII, John Legend and Journey kicked off the day's festivities with a concert staged just outside of Tampa's Raymond James Stadium. For its sixth consecutive year, NFL called upon Clearwing Productions to provide the sound reinforcement system for its official pre-game party, which this year made use of an L-acoustics Kudo loudspeaker system.

Partially televised on NBC and attended by 10,000 of NFL's 'closest friends', the invite-only Tailgate 2009 concert featured ground-stacked arrays of six Kudo enclosures per side paired with four SB28 subs, all positioned beneath large video screens adjacent to the stage. Four tiny MTD108 enclosures were spread out across the stage lip to provide front-fill coverage, with eight 115XT HiQ wedges available for monitoring. Loudspeakers wer

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Germany - KME will show the first release in a new series of rackmount amplifiers at ProLight & Sound. The DA428 is a four-channel unit, light- weight 19"-2U device equipped with comprehensive DSP features like matrix router, six fully parametric equalizers and two crossover networks.

All parameters can be managed using a simple five-key navigation pad together with four rotary encoders. The sophisticated user interface is completed by a graphic LCD display and four RGB LEDs indicating relevant operation parameters and state of the single channels.

Factory and user presets may be stored inside the unit, an SD- card reader is implemented and can be used to easily transfer preset and system information to other units. An preset editor software and various firmware add- ons are planned.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - High definition outside broadcast specialists Bow Tie Television has installed a SoundField DSF-2 and DSF-3 digital 5.1 microphone system into its second outside broadcast unit, OB2, which has recently been refurbished and rebuilt to handle 5.1 audio with the cooperation of satellite broadcaster Sky. The refurbished broadcast truck and the newly installed SoundField systems will be used to generate 5.1 surround audio for Sky Sports' premier league darts coverage.

"We recorded the World Championship darts event to multitrack at Alexandra Palace in December, using two analogue SoundField systems," explains Sky's operations manager Keith Lane, speaking in the middle of another darts championship match. "The broadcast itself was in stereo, but we took the multitrack recordings back to HQ to see whether we could produce 5.1 coverage of a game to the standard we wa

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UK - The Script's FOH sound engineer John Delf has been using a Midas PRO6 for the band's UK tour. Delf spec'd the PRO6 - supplied by Entec - after mixing the Irish band on a Midas XL8 for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo last December.

"It was my first time using an XL8 and even after just one sound check I had fallen in love with it," he states. "We were performing with a full orchestra and the production was running two XL8s at FOH and three PRO6s for monitors and recording. The house engineer was mixing the orchestra on one XL8 and I was mixing the band on the other. It just sounded so sweet and it was really easy to find my way around the desk. We were up and running really quickly and everything I needed to do mix wise was at my fingertips."

He continues: "Sonically the PRO6 doesn't disappoint and in my opinion sounds better than an analogu

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USA - For Trinity United Methodist Church in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, sound has always been an issue. The sanctuary's soaring peaked roof and exceptionally live acoustics lends a majestic touch to the choir, bell choir and pipe organ, but rendered the sermons nearly unintelligible. That was the conflict confronting Music Mart's Tom Gallagher.

"The room had a three-second reverb time, and the musicians loved what it did for the sound," says Gallagher. "But for the pastor, anyone more than about 20ft away could barely get a word out of the sermons. We had to find a way to improve the intelligibility factor without resorting to any acoustic treatment that would impact the room's resonance."

Gallagher found the solution in Community Professional's new ENTASYS column line array system. "We looked into using a steerable array, but it wasn't really practica

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Germany - D.A.S. Audio will be present at this year's ProLight & Sound and will be showing some of its latest developments, including the new Aero and Avant series models, as well as a selection of its wide and varied range of products.

D.A.S. Audio's export sales team will be joined by staff from its subsidiaries, D.A.S. Audio of America and D.A.S. Audio Asia.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - In late January 2009, six performances of The Memory of WT Stead were made at Steinway Hall in London. These performances by artists Lundahl & Seitl and experimental pianist Cassie Yukawa, immersed their small audiences in worlds of darkness, storytelling and music, all the while exploring the geography and contents of the workshops and recital rooms behind the scenes at the piano maker's flagship store.

Sennheiser was an essential part of the process, providing 12 sets of Series 5 headphones for the small audiences. The quality audio of these headphones enabled Lundahl & Seitl to blur the lines between recorded and live sound, making a dramatic experience even more immersive.

"Our specific need was a pair of headphones with open backs, which would not isolate the visitors from natural spatial sound and the live piano play, and also gave us the best binaural p

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Germany - Event service provider Alpha Media Solutions (AMS) has purchased three digital consoles from DiGiCo's German distributor atlantic audio. An SD8 and an SD7 -were delivered at the end of October and December 2008 respectively and another SD8 will further enhance AMS's pro audio inventory this month.

Based in Hechingen, near Stuttgart, AMS has been involved in the professional event business for more than 20 years and its customers benefit from the company's technical and organizational know-how and its experienced staff. "The thing that people remember about an event is its uniqueness," says AMS's owner Jürgen Wirth. "The moment passes, but the fascination will remain... to ensure that this happens, you need technology you can count on."

Wirth continues: "I invested in a D5 in 2007 because, in my opinion, it was the best console on the market.

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Germany - The live concerts in the Agora Marquee in the central piazza at the Frankfurt Messe have for years been a feature of the Musikmesse/Prolight&Sound trade fair in Frankfurt. After a number of successful years with the Real Groove Band - along with star guests such as Haddaway, Bobby Kimball and most recently T.M. Stevens - Electro-Voice, Dynacord, Midas and Klark Teknik have secured the services in 2009 of guitarist Steve Lukather.

The session musician and Toto guitarist will be performing with his band three times a day from 1-4 April. "We're proud to be bringing, in the shape of Steve Lukather, a genuine legend to Frankfurt. The Agora Marquee promises to be packed," says Robert Pletz, head of marketing of the business unit communications systems of Bosch Security Systems.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - This month sees the release of Liquid 4PRE's Pro Tools TDM/RTAS control plug-in. The plug-in can operate alongside Liquid 4PRE's standalone control application 'Liquid4Control', and provides integrated remote control via Pro Tools software and hardware, including Icon and Venue systems.

As a Pro Tools TDM/RTAS plug-in, it brings other benefits, including comprehensive automation and session integration. This enables, for example, automated gain control of all four pre-amps and full recall of all pre-amp settings (including emulation choice), as part of the Pro Tools session.

Focusrite's LIQUID4PRE four-channel microphone pre-amplifier utilises The Liquid Channel's Liquid technology, marrying a flexible analogue front end with dynamic convolution DSP to deliver the sounds of 40 vintage and classic microphone pre-amplifiers across all four channels.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Link, a leading manufacturer and distributor of products specifically designed to solve wiring and connectivity problems within the entertainment arena, will exhibit its DGlink digital audio distribution system at the Prolight&Sound exhibition in Frankfurt (1-4 April 2009).

Link, the first manufacturer to introduce printed circuit board based modular snakes and stageboxes over a decade ago, is now introducing the first hybrid multi-protocol enabled modular digital snake system.

The primary objective of DGlink is to offer a solution that will replace, or integrate with, traditional audio distribution systems (analoguee and digital) during live applications, utilizing one or multiple, digital transport protocol standards over Cat 5 or 6 cables. The DGlink modular touring grade digital audio distribution snake (48 kHz/24-bit), is designed for live applications leveraging the

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Korea - Technomad reports that SBPROLINE, a sound system consultant and global supplier of professional audio and public address systems, has installed 18 Technomad weatherproof loudspeakers throughout Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Olympic Park, Seoul.

Jamsil Baseball Stadium, built in 1982, seats 30,265 people and is home to both the Doosan Bears and LG Twins, both professional teams of the KBO Baseball League. SBPROLINE installed Technomad Berlin 15/H, Noho C, Paris 616T and Vernal 15T loudspeakers at various stadium points depending on the audio requirements for each location, relying on the abundance of mounting points and strong construction to ensure the best possible placement of each loudspeaker.

Specifically, six Berlin loudspeakers were selected to provide short throw audio to the main seating areas. Two Paris loudspeakers and eight Vernal loudspeakers provide satellite

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Gibraltar - St. Michael's is the most visited of the more than 150 caves found inside the Rock of Gibraltar, receiving over 1,000,000 visitors a year and making it one of the country's top tourist attractions.

The long passages and large caverns were created over thousands of years by rainwater, turned into a weak carbonic acid by slowly seeping through limestone, gradually dissolving the rock itself. Stalactites and stalagmites in the caves are formed by an accumulation of traces of dissolved rock deposited by water dripping from the ground above.

The cave's structure remains as nature intended, but they have been subject to a sympathetic sound and lighting treatment to reveal the natural beauty of the formations and to guide and inform visitors.

The largest chamber, called Cathedral Cave, has been used to create a an auditorium and houses a permanent stage and seating for

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USA - Highland Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, recently built a new facility, upgrading the sound system with an Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing system.

"It's not a typical sanctuary," notes Tim Cates, audio-visual director for the church, "it's a multipurpose facility where we also host concerts and banquets in addition to two full size basketball courts. So we needed something with lots of flexibility and, of course, we had a budget. We looked at all the alternatives, and in terms of bang for the buck, iLive hit a home run."

In its primary use as an 1800-seat sanctuary, the church has a 90ft wide stage along one of the long walls of the rectangular room. The iLive-176 Control Surface is positioned halfway back, with the iDR10 MixRack located backstage, connected by two Cat 5 cables. The system also includes the optional Aviom module which integrates wit

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UK - With Red Nose Day just over a week away, HHB reports that the Comic Relief media team is using FlashMic Digital Recording Microphones to gather interviews from participating celebrities, members of the public, and from those whose lives are transformed by the work of Comic Relief.

"The FlashMic has been used by Comic Relief to help achieve widespread coverage, which helps us to raise awareness of our campaigns and raise much needed funds in the process," says Comic Relief media officer Lucy McGill.

"Whether collecting soundbites in London, in any of the regions across theUK or at our international projects in Africa, the FlashMic has been invaluable."

Commenting on the news from Comic Relief, HHB managing director Ian Jones says: "The FlashMic is all about making it easy to record and deliver great results, and that makes it useful for gathering

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UK - TOA returns to Frankfurt's Prolight & Sound this year with "the most comprehensive range of commercial audio solutions it has ever presented at the show".

Brett Downing, sales & marketing director, TOA Corporation (UK), comments, "Prolight + Sound is our number one tradeshow for Europe and this year we have a whopping 150sq.m stand on which to showcase our products. We expect to attract many new customers with our offering and, just as importantly, to link up with existing dealers and distributors, from markets as far afield as Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East."

Among the new products on offer are the VM-3000 PA/VA System and the SX-2000 Audio Management System, both of which made their debut at February's Integrated Systems Europe show in Amsterdam. Designed for small to medium-sized and multi-site projects respecti

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UK / Germany - Having celebrated its 50th anniversary in the music industry in 2008, Fane is ready to announce its largest launch of new products for many years, to be unveiled at the Frankfurt ProLight&Sound exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, (1-4 2009).

Fane International Limited has announced the launch of two new Colossus drivers handling 1000 and 1500W (AES) respectively and the Sovereign range consisting of 17 new models from 6.5" to 18" designed for a broad spectrum of sound reinforcement situations comprehensively covering midrange, full range, bass-mid and dedicated bass applications.

Director Mark Barnes says: "2009 represents an important year in the development of Fane and our continuing impetus in the international market. After spending a year in research and development, the timing of our product launch could not be better. In the current climate i

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  3. Warhol comes alive with Meyer Sound
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  5. Prolyte appoints Mexican distributor
  6. The British Music Experience opens at The O2
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