UK - Sennheiser UK originally launched its Masters of Sound campaign at the beginning of 2012 by giving aspiring musicians the life-changing opportunity of helping to create a new track for singer-songwriter and producer, Labrinth. The next phase of this hugely successful venture is now underway, with the company producing a series of informal videos that will provide an insight into the work of some of the industry's most renowned and respected audio professionals.

The first video to be released features producer Steve Levine. This will be followed by Grammy award winning guitarist, keyboardist and music producer Mark 'Kipper' Etheridge, who is best known for his cooperation with Gary Numan and Sting, and live sound engineer Matt Napier, who works with some of the world's most exacting artists, including Madonna and Kylie Minogue.

"Sennheiser works with many of industry'

Australia - - P!NK is currently out on a massive 10-month global arena tour in support of her sixth and most recent record, The Truth About Love. Currently trekking across Europe - following an initial US leg that began in February - P!NK and her entourage will eventually head down to Australia for the summer months before making their way back to North America for a second sweep that will carry the pop superstar through the end of the year and possibly beyond.

Manning her FOH mix, as he has for the past five years, Chris Madden has specified the use of a full L-Acoustics K1 system for the entire duration of the tour, which is being equipped by Sydney, Australia's JPJ Audio - the merged operation of Jands Production Services, L-Acoustics' longtime Australian rental partner, and Johnston Audio.

Madden, who has also performed FOH duties for Joe Cocker, Sade and Jessie J i

UK - Allen & Heath's GLD digital system was employed to manage FOH and monitors for Elvis - the Ultimate Performance staged recently at the London Palladium. The show ran off AR2412 and AR84 input expander units, with 28 inputs on stage and three inputs into the GLD-80 mixer for playback and talkback.

Elvis - The Ultimate Performance stars Elvis performer, Chris Connor, accompanied by a comprehensive band comprising drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitar, keys and synth, dedicated wind band, brass section containing saxophone, flute, trumpet and trombone, plus four backing vocalists.

The GLD-80 was fitted with a Dante card, enabling a previous multi-track recording of the show to be played back for virtual sound check, making an easy system set up and system EQ.

"It's a great advantage when going to a new venue to be able to hear the PA as if the band were pl

USA - PLASA Focus: Orlando, the latest addition to the North American regional event series is hailed a great success, impressing local visitors with the newest and most innovative products and a show stopping line-up of seminars.

Nearly 700 attendees saw a number of new products make their regional debut, including the first fixtures of Martin Professional's new range - RUSH; four new fixtures from Robe Lighting's multi award-winning Robin product line; Elation's EZ6 LED Video Panel, Rayzor 7 and Platinum Beam 5R Extreme; DiGiCo's latest theatrical software updates for the SD9, showcased on the Group One booth; GLP German Lighting Products Impression X4S; Truss Aluminium Factory's TOWER 05; and iWeiss's ViaTraveler and BannerHoist.

The PLASA Professional Development Programme proved a massive hit once again, packing out rooms to see names such as Matt Conover, vice president

USA - Orbital Sound reports that it is currently out on the road with the Big League Productions' US national tour of the hit musical Dreamgirls, with the 21-week show schedule ending up on another continent this August - in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. Sound design on the show is by Matt Geasey and Mike Tracey, with Orbital contracted to supply and support the show's state of the art sound system.

Dreamgirls' big sound is delivered by the d&b audiotechnik V-Series speaker system, chosen for its compact yet extraordinarily powerful design, complemented by a Yamaha CL5 mixing console. The touring system comprises 14 V8 cabinets, four V12s, and four V-SUBs, which are designed to be flown or ground stacked, giving the show's sound crew complete configuration freedom depending on an individual theatre's requirement - all driven by d&b D12 dual channel amplifiers. The V-Seri

Australia - The P.A. People have been discovering the benefits of their Clear-Com Tempest Wireless Intercom System on a couple of recent major gigs: Sydney New Year's Eve Celebrations and the How To Train Your DragonAustralian / New Zealand and US tour.

For Sydney's New Year's Eve Celebration, The P.A. People provided data and communications including Clear-Com Eclipse Matrix, V-Station Panels, and Tempest Full Duplex for communications, network time-code, audio transport and much more.

Throughout the various key sites Clear-Com's Eclipse Matrix systems were deployed, including one Omega, two Medians and a Pico. Paul Barrett, communications manager for The P.A. People for the event, used Clear-Com Eclipse Matrix units in a distributed fashion to allow easy deployment of over twenty-five Clear-Com V-Series key stations. These were deployed and connected either directly o

UK - Turbosound's Flashline speaker system delivered the sound for Emeli Sandé's Hammersmith Apollo show at the conclusion of her warmly received seven-date UK tour.

The Flashline line array system - designed to deliver hi-fi sound to large audiences using paper cone midrange transducers to deliver beautiful vocal frequencies - was specified by Sandé's live sound engineer Darren Connor, and supplied by Mansfield-based Entertainment Sound Specialists (ESS) via Britannia Row Productions.

Connor deployed a configuration of 11 Flashline TFS-900H flown per side, six TFS-900B subwoofers per side on the floor, two Aspect TA-890H in-fills, and two TQ-308 passive two-way front-fills for the show.

This is a system that has been really well thought out, from the flying system right down to the amplifier features," says Connor. "I was impressed with the contained

USA - As some of music's biggest names came together for the fourth annual Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama, Professional Wireless Systems (PWS), a Masque Sound company and experts in supplying and supporting wireless systems for live and broadcast events, was busy providing frequency coordination for all the artists and media outlets in attendance at the event, the nation's largest beach bash.

Billed as the first and only event of its kind, the Hangout Festival is a three-day music party staged on the white sand beaches of Gulf Shores. For this year's event, the PWS team of experts was responsible for monitoring the RF spectrum to ensure there were no issues with the more than 600 frequencies in use. This marks the second consecutive year PWS provided frequency coordination for the festival.

"From an RF coordination standpoint, one of the great things about

Jordan - The success of Jordanian Dynacord and Electro-Voice partner Advanced Solutions continues apace, the latest instance being an installation in a newly built house of worship in Aqaba. The Stella Maris church in the coastal resort on the Red Sea has been fully equipped by Advanced Solutions with sound reinforcement systems from Dynacord and Electro-Voice. Two years in the construction, the church was dedicated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem in mid-December.

The nerve centre of the multi-zone installation in the Stella Maris church is an Electro-Voice NetMax N8000 controller that can be controlled remotely from a TPI-5 touch panel. Using IRIS-Net software, twelve different channels can be supervised and controlled individually and remotely. By this means, the loudspeakers in the hall and on the balcony as well as near the main and rear entrances can be turned on and off and

USA - On her recent North American Hundred More Years tour, Christian singer/songwriter Francesca Battistelli and supporting act The Afters played venues of all shapes and sizes. Big Thrill Productions of Weatherford, Tex. and Athens, Ga. provided a Meyer Sound system based on M'elodie line array loudspeakers and 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements that were successfully adapted for varying room configurations.

According to the tour's production manager and FOH mixer Anthony Martinez, the system easily adapted to any challenges that were presented. "I love the versatility," he says. "We often play wide churches with wrap-around seating, and for those I can take two M'elodies from each side hang and reposition them as outfill. I can also use them for front-fills. I don't have to run a lot of extra cable or rework a rack. I simply tap into the Galileo [lo

Brazil - With the help of trade bodies, PLASA and MIA, the APRS assembled 10 British companies, including eight sharing a national booth called the Great British Audio Embassy, who presented their wares at the annual AES Convention at the Expo Centre Norte.

Participants from the pro-audio, broadcast and sound reinforcement industries shared a specially designed booth at the heart of the show, creating a great first impression and receiving the glowing attention both of visitors to the show and of the host of local distributors and manufacturers with whom they were looking for local partnerships.

Console and auxiliary stalwarts SSL and AMS-Neve re-launched their Brazilian presences along with first time appearances from CB Electronics, XTA/MC2, Martin Audio, Sonnox, JoeCo, Sonifex, Sonic Distribution and Resolution magazine.

The Great British Audio Embassy booth also p

China - Throughout the week-long 15th annual Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition, more than 200 Meyer Sound loudspeakers provided quality, visually unobtrusive reinforcement for such leading automobile manufacturers as Ferrari and Maserati, among others.

Shanghai Huelead AV Equipment Co. deployed Meyer Sound systems for the stands of Shanghai Volkswagen, Škoda, Chery, BYD, Fiat, and Toyota, with a total of 147 UPA-1P loudspeakers and 42 M'elodie line array loudspeakers dominating the specifications. Low-frequency reinforcement was supplied by four 600-HP and 10 700-HP subwoofers.

"This was a great event for us, and all of our end-users were satisfied with the performance of the Meyer Sound systems," says Richard Du, senior sales manager of Shanghai Huelead.

On both the Maserati and Ferrari stands, Superb Oriental Exhibition Service Co. deployed m

Korea - ARX Systems, the Australian based designer and manufacturer of digital and analogue interface and signal processing products has announced the appointment of Seoul based AVIX Tech as their new distributor for Korea.

ARX managing director Colin Park said, "Avix Tech are a well known and established company in the Korean professional audio industry. We're looking forward to working with director Jay Chung and the Avix team, they're enthusiastic about the possibilities for the ARX product range among their extensive client base."

Established in 1992 by Mr Joo Hong Chang, Avix Tech adds ARX to a distribution portfolio for Korea that includes Meyer Sound, Calrec, Optocore and Mogami.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Orbital Sound's expert easiHire rental service team will be on hand to explain the essential details on Stand No 129a at ABTT 2013. easiHire's intuitive online portal provides 24/7 access to everything needed to create a rental package, and is designed for professional and non-professional users alike.

Orbital's easiHire service enables rapid and simple product selection across individual components or complete systems, backed up with detailed specifications and photographs, comprehensive product information, detailed budget guides and convenient planning tools. easiHire is designed to provide an easy platform for sourcing anything from a single microphone to a complete opening-night musical package. It takes users step-by-step through the selection and quotation process, providing a ballpark cost and logging all the relevant information ready for a rapid direct contact fro

USA - "InfoComm never ceases to amaze, for d&b audiotechnik it's a great platform to introduce people to the advances we are making in providing a great listening experience," says d&b marketing manager Roger Keim. "It's about hearing as well as seeing. Audio might not be as glossy as the video displays, but without good sound a picture only tells part of the story. We are demonstrating new products and will be hosting presentations on how to apply them."

Product demonstrations commence at 11:00 am on 11 June in the demo lounge, number W204A, and run throughout the exhibition, and for the main expo d&b is located at booth number 1027 from the 12-14 June in the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando. Products from the d&b White and Black ranges will be on display, along with two stations on the booth where the d&b new ArrayCalc V7 acoustic modelling software

Canada - When Canadian television company Eastlink TV contacted DiGiCo distributor Gerr Audio to talk about an intercom system for the company's new HD mobile unit, it ended up with more than it bargained for. This new, state-of-the-art facility not only features the originally requested intercom, but a DiGiCo SD10B broadcast specific digital mixing console, which has already more than proved its worth.

"Historically, we've supplied Eastlink with Clearcomm intercoms," explains Gerr's Andrew Hope. "So when they were kitting out the new HD mobile, which is a big step up for them as a regional television provider, they came to talk to us about it.

"Of course, I looked around and said 'so what else are you going to put in this truck...?'. We ended up supplying a large part of the audio system, with CEV in Montreal handling the integration. The centrepiece is th

USA - Located in rural southern Michigan, Hillsdale College is an independent, coeducational, residential, liberal arts college with a student body of about 1,400. With the February opening of the Margot V. Biermann Athletic Centre, the college has a new 76,000sq.ft state-of-the-art facility that primarily serves the track and tennis programmes while providing additional space for general physical fitness.

As part of this new addition to the campus, sound reinforcement takes on a new dimension with the installation of a sound system drawn from the Aero Series 2, Artec, and Arco catalogues of Valencia, Spain-based D.A.S. Audio.

Battle Creek MI-based AVTEK, a design / build and special events firm with a focus on AV installations for the commercial, education, and worship markets, was contracted to design and deploy the college's new sound system. Andrew Walker, who handles both

UK - West Midlands-based technical solutions specialist Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) has been appointed as the preferred technical supplier for Stoneleigh Events.

Stoneleigh Events' venue, Stoneleigh Park, is set in theWarwickshire countryside just 30 minutes outside the commercial hub of Birmingham and also in close proximity to CPL's HQ. CPL will be offering all the sound, lighting, video and AV equipment, and technical support required for corporate and live events, plus exhibitions.

CPL was invited to tender for the position after Stoneleigh Events had learned of the company's fresh and innovative approach, especially with regard to visual presentation of all types.

CPL's Richard Burrow, said: "We are really proud to be working so closely with the team at Stoneleigh Events and look forward to a long and productive working relationship with the venue."

Burr

UK - Celebrating their 30th anniversary at Firex International, Baldwin Boxall commissioned a bespoke label for a bottle of ale from their local brewery - Harveys of Lewes. There was a great atmosphere on the stand with visitors enjoying the hospitality they have come to expect from the company's staff.

Baldwin Boxall was formed in 1982 by four directors - Terry & Patricia Baldwin and Dave & Dawn Boxall - in 1982 in a shed at the bottom of Terry's garden and Dave's home. A direct 'communication link' was set up between to two properties - an unofficial product invention!

They proved to be a great team and, within a couple of years, the shed was upgraded to a railway cottage near Crowborough rail station. A short while later a 'sales office' (caravan) was added to the site for Terry and Neil Jarvis. This was followed by the addition of a small mobile style building, for storage

Belgium - Belgian sound engineer Joris Verniest, from betterliVe.be, has been introducing DPA Microphones' new d:facto II Vocal Microphone to some of the country's top bands after being blown away by the natural sound quality it delivers on the live stage.

DPA's Belgian distributor Amptec gave Verniest the first DPA d:facto II Vocal Microphone in the country to demo and since then he has been using it for a wide variety of gigs and with many different artists.

"It doesn't matter what situation I put it in - whether it is a small club, a big outside stage such as the Pukkelpop festival, with wedges or in-ear - I have consistently got great results," Verniest explains. "The vocals are incredibly clear through my mix and there is very little crosstalk from the drums or guitar amps. I even recorded some gigs in multitrack to compare the d:facto with other microphone

USA - Having participated in last year's event, Cadac is an official sponsor of this year's Broadway Sound Master Classes, in association with its US distributor Lift Distribution and RF Production's Tom Benson, its US theatre sound consultant.

Addressing what is for it a traditional customer base, this year Cadac is focusing on the opportunities offered to smaller performance venues and productions by its latest compact LIVE1 analogue console series and CDC Four digital mix system.

Commenting on this year's approach, international sales manager, Ben Millson, says, "With the focus on the LIVE1 and CDC Four we are illustrating that, with its new console range, Cadac has a Broadway quality board for everyone, all offering cost competitive, high quality sound design capabilities. Once Cadac sound and engineering was only available to the biggest theatre productions, now ther

UK - Roland Systems Group (RSG) is joining with some of their biggest dealers to put on a series of one day training events across the UK - starting on 20 June at SFL Group in Reading, followed by 3 July at Wigwam Acoustics in Heywood.

The events, which are free to attend, give those present unlimited access to the RSG audio and video product range and the chance for some 'one to one' training with RSG experts. The core functionality of the V-Mixing System will be the main focus of the training - with a spotlight on the new iPad controllable M-200i, the M-480 and M-300 Digital Live Mixing Consoles - both of which have recently launched new iPad Apps - as well as the range of Digital Snakes.

The range of video products such as the new V-4EX 4 Channel Video Mixer, the V-800HD Multi Format Video Switcher and the V-40HD Multi format Video Switcher will also be demonstrated. The da

UK - London's broadcast, recording and audio post production communities turned out in large numbers as HHB Communications Ltd. and Scrub, its Soho-based subsidiary specialising in serving the post production industry, hosted the UK launch of Avid's Pro Tools 11.

Held at the Ray Dolby Theatre in Soho Square, London, the event was hailed as a success by the UK's biggest Pro Tools users as they experienced first-hand the innovative new features offered by Pro Tools 11 in the state-of-the-art theatre.

Avid UK's audio solution specialist Simon Sherbourne led an in-depth overview of Pro Tools 11 on the theatre's class-leading sound and projection systems during three sessions throughout the day. Version 11 software offers even more tools to handle the most demanding sessions, with new features such as a new 64-bit audio engine, advanced metering, offline bounce, a new HD video engi

UK - Audio-Technica has announced the recruitment of Matthias Exner to the position of business development director EMEA for professional products.

With a strong technical and commercial background, Exner has spent many years in the pro-audio industry representing leading brands like Biamp, Tannoy and BSS, in various roles working with distributors across EMEA and SAARC regions. Exner brings significant experience of the commercial installation industry to Audio-Technica

Exner said, "I'm very excited to be joining Audio-Technica - it's a fantastic company with great technology, high quality products and an amazing heritage. Incidentally, my first contact with the company was the purchase of a pair of its noise-cancelling headphones, which I still use on business travels today.

"I am looking forward to working closely with our distribution partners to implement str

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