South Africa - Saint Thomas Church in Linden sought to upgrade its sound, with a quality solution that would not detract from the church’s looks and not break the bank. They got their solution from DWR Distribution in the form of Quest Audio and Audix microphones.
“We didn’t want it to look out of place and we did need to get better sound,” says Gift Chanza the head of Sound Ministry at Saint Thomas, “The Quest loudspeakers were exactly what we needed”. Three HPI Quest speakers were installed in the main hall. The left and right being handled by two Quest HPI8i two-way passive loudspeakers hidden within the Churches woodwork and the centre speaker, a Quest HPI111 compact loudspeaker, hangs from the middle of the ceiling.
An additional White HPI5 high output loudspeaker sits in the room adjacent main hall. These speakers have the church fully covered for sou

UK - Allen & Heath’s SQ series has stepped into broadcast with TV sound supervisor, Rob Ashard, working on a number of shows such as Comedians With Friends Watching Football, Al Murray’s Great British Pub Quiz and Race To The Numbers, all of which have vastly different requirements.
Ashard, who has previously worked on shows including Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and The Graham Norton Show, chose an SQ-5 - along with a Dante card and DX168 Expander for remote I/O - specifically for his work on smaller-scaled productions, where space can often be at a premium.
“Every now and then a TV show comes along where you can’t park a big TV Outside Broadcast (OB) unit and the technical team build the facilities into a smaller room, or rooms, at the location and assemble a load of flight-cased gear on tables, so I needed

China - It might be called the National Centre for the Performing Arts but the Beijing facility is all about the international exchange of culture. Not surprisingly, this is a showcase for Chinese talent in opera, music, dance and ballet, theatre and Chinese traditional opera, but as important are the international festivals and the visiting performers.
A centre of this importance needs to have superlative facilities in every area and recording and broadcast are no exception. In company with the vast majority of world-renowned concert halls and opera houses, the NCPA has installed a Merging Technologies solution.
Pyramix and its DSD workflow is essential for recording and archiving performances, but the NCPA has determined that having the ability to record and post-produce in 5.1 is also vitally important. This further emphasizes the wisdom of choosing a Merging solut

UK - Gottwood marked its 10th anniversary with a carefully crafted programme of underground electronic music. The festival’s organisers are committed to giving its community the best possible sound and, with that in mind, called in Audio Feed (with a little help from its friends) to deliver Funktion-One systems on all 10 stages, including the first outing for Vero VX.
Each stage was curated by the people behind some of the UK’s best parties and music labels, making for a varied line-up of DJ and live performances.
Vero VX, which received its global launch at Prolight + Sound 2019 in April, was deployed at The Lawn - the festival’s 3,000-capacity main stage. The system featured four ground stacked Vero VX90 cabinets per side and eight V124 bass enclosures. Power came from MC2 Delta 90, Delta 100 and Delta 80 DSP Dante amps.
Funktion-One founder Tony Andre

UK - The PLASA Awards for Innovation 2019 are now open for entries from PLASA Show exhibitors. Products from all sectors of the entertainment technology industry are invited to be entered for the awards by 16 August.
Judged independently by a panel of industry experts, the Awards for Innovation are respected throughout the industry for recognising innovative new product design. All successful nominees will feature in the Innovation Gallery during PLASA Show from 15-17 September at London Olympia, culminating in a ceremony at the show on 16 September where the winner will be announced.
Product entries must demonstrate a new style of thinking, improve technical practice and safety, introduce new technology, materials or techniques, or offer new commercial advantages. Furthermore, an Award for Sustainability is reserved for products which achieve a significant reduction

UK - Prolight Concepts Group has announced the appointment of Jeff Davenport area sales manager. Davenport will represent the company in the north of the UK including Scotland. He was previously employed as a business development manager for Hawthorn and as a UK sales manager for EMD Music.
He comments: “It's a pleasure to now be representing the fastest growing supplier to the UKs event and install industry. With so many event ready products available next day from their huge stock holding, Prolight is a really exciting company to know for every size of business.”
(Jim Evans)

USA - Nine-time Grammy-winning jazz songstress Norah Jones, first shot to stardom in 2002 with the release of her debut record Come Away With Me, which has sold more than 20m copies. Today, her record sales have surpassed the 50m mark and after recently completing a tour of Australia and New Zealand, she has embarked on a 24-date North American tour, where FOH engineer Jamie Landry is mixing from an SSL L500 console.
The North American tour kicked off on 18 June at Pittsburgh's Heinz Hall. Although the venues can be varied, Landry says for the most part, Jones and her band tend to play in theatres.
“It's a nice situation where she can do a theatre in most markets at this point; she doesn't over-reach, which means she can sell 2,000-plus tickets pretty much anywhere,” Landry explains, adding that all of the shows have been or will be sold-out. “She's real

Germany - Barbara Schöneberger released her fourth album, Eine Frau gibt Auskunft in May and has recently presented it with 10 live shows across Germany.
The Event-Net GmbH from Halle (Saale) has been working for the singer since 2008 and has been a technical service provider for all tours and various individual shows. The team headed by managing director Kay Schöttner and technical department manager Mathias ‘Hein’ Schroeter was also responsible for the complete technology, the stage management and part of the tour management on this latest tour.
In 2004 Event-Net was one of the first users in Germany to invest in Alcons Audio. Since then, a stock of Alcons LR14 and LR16 including BF362 subwoofers has been established in Halle and used for past Schöneberger tours.
For the 2019 tour, however, they turned to the larger LR18 pro-ribbon line-array syst

The Netherlands - Dutch singer Marco Borsato performed his anthemic back catalogue to 240,000 fans over five nights at Rotterdam’s De Kuip stadium in May. His dynamic songs and enthusiastic performance style required full spectrum coverage across the entire roof-less stadium, leading the production team to the d&b audiotechnik SL-Series.
Borsato is a national treasure in The Netherlands, thanks to a hit-making, multi-award-winning 20-year career. He is one of a handful of artists with the fanbase clout to play five nights at one of his country’s biggest venues - the 51,000 capacity De Kuip (which translates into English as ‘The Tub’- the affectionate nickname for the Stadion Feijenoord).
Utrecht-based d&b partner Peak Audio was challenged with providing a system that could deliver full-frequency range in the demanding open-air stadium environment.

USA - Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, ZZ Top - long comprised of the classic trio of Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard - are celebrating their 50th anniversary by trekking through a world tour that runs into mid-October.
As a thank you to their fans in Texas, where the band got its humble start back in 1969, the tour kicked off with three consecutive shows in the Lone Star state, all of which were reinforced by Houston-based LD Systems with a long throw L-Acoustics K Series loudspeaker rig.
Sharing the bill with Bad Company, and joined by opener Cheap Trick, ZZ Top performed to full crowds at Dallas’ Dos Equis Pavilion, Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, and the Austin360 Amphitheater in May, prior to heading to Europe.
LD Systems audio crew chief and systems engineer Julian Gates, who expresses his appreciation for S

UK - Production company SFL has just completed the AV requirements for Christopher Wheeldon’s staging of Cinderella by the English National Ballet (ENB) and The Royal Albert Hall, staged at the RAH.
“The project was 18 months in the planning,” explains SFL director, Craig Lawrence. “ENB’s technical director, George Thomson, was looking to stage a large-scale production in-the-round. The production required many different changes of scene and the use of projection seemed the obvious answer. English National Ballet had never worked with projection on such a large scale before so turned to SFL to provide that experience.”
In the early planning stages, SFL was appointed as technical provider, tasked with designing and installing the AV infrastructure, utilising content provided by projection designer Daniel Brodie, which not only created incredible atmo

Sweden - Astro Spatial Audio (ASA) has appointed Audile Electroacoustics AB as its official solutions partner for Sweden.
Audile will provide training and support whilst spearheading the expansion of Astro Spatial Audio’s brand-independent immersive audio technology into the country's entertainment sector.
“Our experience with these kinds of systems and the sonic evaluation of our trusted customers have all been clear that this is the best sounding platform on the market,” explains Mikael Collin, sales and project manager at Audile. “More or less all of the larger venues will be investing in this kind of technology to cope with future demands from productions so the number of possible installs over time is huge. We already have a lot of requests for demos.”
“We are both delighted and honoured to welcome Audile into our global family,” said Graham Mu

South Africa - Splitbeam, the theatre division of rental company Gearhouse, has invested in a DiGiCo SD7T supplied by DWR, DiGiCo’s distributor for the territory.
“Bad sound is as detrimental to a production as an actor forgetting their lines,” says Splitbeam’s MD, Alistair Kilbee. “Good sound feels natural, never taking away from what is happening on stage but supplementing it, giving the sound for the ears to match what the eyes see for the magic of theatre to take place.
“Mixing sound is the art of balance - balancing what comes out of the speaker to transform a noise into a recognisable piece of information that feels good to experience. This is where the gear becomes important. Having a console capable of not merely handling the show, but orchestrating it, the engineer acting as the conductor for the sounds, matching, mixing and blending them to becom

UK - Brompton Technology has relaunched its website (www.bromptontech.com) which has “a new, modern look, an easy-to-navigate menu structure and extra features that provide a better overall user experience”.
“We wanted to ensure that the website reflects the easy to use, intuitive nature of Brompton’s LED processors and provides both useful and essential information in a much more user-friendly format than we had previously,” explains Brompton’s managing director, Richard Mead. “For example, in the 'Support' area, as well as the latest product information and downloads of the latest software, we have added a sign up page for our increasingly popular training programme, making it quick and simple to find out where and when courses are happening and reserve a place.
“This update is just the first phase, and we expect to add additional pages and functional

UAE - The latest addition to the entertainment outlets at Dubai’s Atlantis, The Palm Hotel’s Wavehouse is a family-friendly entertainment centre built on the site of a former nightclub. Wavehouse provides two floors of arcade attractions, a 13m high soft play area and a ProSlide Waverider surf machine as well as numerous F&B outlets, a sun terrace, mezzanine and a pair of live stages.
Wavehouse’s operator Solutions Leisure has had a long relationship with Dubai-based systems integrator Pulse Middle East, relying on the company to handle the audio integration at a number of its other venues and contacted the team at Pulse ME to create a comprehensive solution for the venue.
“The team at Solutions Leisure invited Pulse ME to come and have a look at a venue,” recalls Joe Chidiac, managing director, Pulse Middle East. “After the audio requirements brief, th

Europe - Snow Patrol returned to the road after a seven-year break with their 2018 album Wildness. Audio provider Adlib used the Outline Newton multi-source processor at the front end of their systems.
The Newton is quickly becoming an Adlib standard for audio processing and this sold-out UK arena tour was no different.
Sam Proctor, senior system engineer at Adlib, optimised his workflow to put the Newton at the centre of the processing operation, handling all the delays and EQ for each zone of the PA, as well as being a front-end matrix mixer to get all consoles into the system.
He comments: “Using one dedicated device to replace what was previously several devices networked together has been so much easier to adapt to different scenarios. Day to day, we may require multiple additional feeds for house delays, VIP boxes or hearing loops, or additional

UK - Adlib provided design services, lighting, audio, custom drapes and staging elements for the most recent UK leg of The Specials’ Encore album tour, as the record topped the UK album charts, providing the band’s first ever number one album.
Adlib’s Simon Pettitt was back as lighting designer, having lit the band since 2014. Simon was also instrumental in developing the stage design, and he was joined by their regular audio engineers, Marcos Ferrari at FOH and Marina Martinez Sebastian on monitors. Adlib’s lighting account handler was Dave Eldridge, while Phil Stoker looked after all things audio.
Adlib offered the use of its full tour prepping facilities - a designated pre-production space in the company’s massive new Knowsley warehouse – to ensure that the production left the warehouse ready to roll.
Simon received an outline brief from th

Trinidad & Tobago - Earlier this year, Trinidad-based Rent A Amp Sound Co (RAA) took delivery of an SD10 and SD12, the first DiGiCo consoles to permanently reside in the Caribbean. The purchase, made through local sales and rental company Caribbean AV / AMR, followed multiple requests for DiGiCo consoles on local events.
The SD12’s first outing was on the I Am Legend concert at the end of April, which attracted an estimated 28,000 audience. Headlined by Jamaican musician Buju Banton, this was the follow up to his Long Walk to Freedom concert in March which marked his release from an eight-year jail sentence and his return to the Caribbean music scene.
The console was deployed for local artists Ziggy Ranking, Ataklan, Isasha and Kes the Band, plus Caribbean artists Wayne Wonder, Koffee and Luciano, as well as Banton himself. With both the SD12 and SD10 also booke

UK - Creative Technology Group (CT) has acquired Ion Solutions, a provider of professional audio visual and broadcast technology systems in Ireland.
Dublin-based Ion Solutions will become part of the CT Europe & Middle East group and will be rebranded as Creative Technology (CT) Ireland after a transition period. The existing management team of Ion Solutions will continue to run the day-to-day business.
Dave Crump, president and CEO of CT Europe & Middle East, comments: “The addition of Ion Solutions strengthens the CT organisation, increasing our full range of services and rentals we can provide to our clients, especially in an increasingly significant business hub like Dublin.”
Ion Solutions was founded in 1967 as a technology engineering specialist and has since added broadcast and AV systems integration, AV rental, facilities management and conte

China - Powersoft has entered into a strategic alliance with Chinese audio manufacturer and rental house Reyn Audio.
the pro audio arm of Foshan YiFeng Electric Industrial Co, Reyn Audio has an established presence in China and, through its sister brand ACME, has been able to supply many of the region’s most important local and visiting artists with full production for shows that draw fans in their thousands.
Massimo Minardi, Powersoft’s APAC account manager - OEM solutions, comments: “As their business has grown, Reyn Audio has started to get requests for systems that are comparable with the big players in the market, and with a similar level of usability. Considering the high profile and the size of the events that they are catering for, our ArmoníaPlus software and the X4 amplifier models have been the best choice for them. As they are a manufacturer with spe

South Africa - The Voice is now in its third season in South Africa and is proving as popular as ever. It has just entered the ‘live show’ phase, broadcast from Mosaiek Teatro in Fairland, Johannesburg and aired on M-Net, DStv 101.
This year, this section of the TV show is bringing a new audio experience to its studio audience, courtesy of L-ISA Hyperreal Sound technology by L-Acoustics and DiGiCo mixing consoles, provided by the show’s full technical supplier, Mutli-Media.
Multi-Media has worked with The Voice since the popular competition hit Africa four years ago. During this time, the company has grown and become more involved in live events. At the beginning of this year, it decided the time was right to invest in a top-end audio system, initially purchasing 30 L-Acoustics Kara, 12 SB18, four KS28 and seven LA12X amplified controllers, adding

Canada - The Empire Theatre in Belleville, Ontario, recently invested in a new audio system built around Adamson’s IS-Series and sourced through London, Ontario’s The PA Shop Productions.
The building, originally erected as The McCarthy Theatre in 1938, was purchased by Mark Rashotte in early 2002 with the goal of returning it to its original use. In September 2003, The Empire Theatre was open for business, and its team has been working hard to advance their shared vision of enhancing the community they serve ever since.
In the autumn of 2018, ahead of a special show commemorating 15 years of operations, Rashotte and his team decided to invest in a new audio system to better cater to visiting productions and invited several manufacturers to demo their array systems in the Empire’s 700-seat auditorium.
Kyle Schroeyens, VP and production manager with The PA S

UK - Since their initial investment in Outline point source systems in 2017, growing rental and installation company Novum AV has been deploying its Vegas 12CX and 8CX inventory in a wide range of work around the UK from their base in Tamworth, Staffordshire.
Tim Jacques, managing director of Novum AV, explains the reasons for that investment: “Back in 2017, Outline was very new to us and a surprise choice. We ran blind tests with seven different manufacturers and Outline was unanimously chosen by our six technicians who all thought they had selected their preferred brands. The system has changed how we operate and design certain jobs as not only is there a like-for-like weight saving compared to our previous point source enclosures, but the HF throw is so great and the sound quality so clear that we have often needed fewer speakers to achieve the required results. The pur

USA - Laredo, Texas has broadcast its city council meetings via public access cable TV since 1984. The city updated its 10-year-old conference system with a DICENTIS Conference system from Bosch, providing significant upgrades in control, sound quality and ease of operation with IP connectivity.
The public access centre manager of the city, Gerardo Leal, is responsible for operating the conferencing system during meetings, and porting the audio into the video feed. The programme is aired on large video screens within the meeting room, which accommodates about 100 people. In addition, the meetings are streamed online and aired on the city’s public access channel. Audio, data and power for the discussion devices all run over a computer-based IP network using Bosch-developed OMNEO media-networking technology.
Laredo’s set-up features 16 DICENTIS Discussion devices wi

Latest Issue. . .