Sound

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30 October 2025

Qatar - PRG has announced the expansion of its Middle East operations into the State of Qatar.

This move builds on PRG’s delivery of major events in the region, including the FIFA Fan Festival, World Aquatics Championships, and the AFC Asian Cup opening ceremony. PRG sees Qatar as ‘a vital market for its continued regional growth’.

Since its expansion into Saudi Arabia in 2021, PRG Middle East has grown significantly and continues to invest in equipment, facilities, and staff.

Leading the new venture in Qatar is Harry Lister, who has been appointed general manager of PRG Qatar. Lister brings a deep understanding of the Qatari market and has built strong, long-standing relationships with key clients over the years. He will continue to serve concurrently as director of account management for the Middle East.

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30 October 2025

USA - Spanning over 40 stops in arenas, amphitheatres and outdoor festivals across the United States, Dierks Bentley’s 2025 Broken Branches Tour featured the musician’s full repertoire, including classics and tracks from his latest album, Broken Branches. ACT Entertainment provided the audio backbone necessary for the production.

The tour’s audio workflow was designed by front-of-house and systems engineer James ‘Pugsley’ McDermott, who worked with ACT Entertainment to leverage Avid Venue S6L-24C consoles and a PK Sound Trinity Black Line Source System for a flexible, fast-deploying setup. The Avid consoles played a central role in the workflow. The system’s tight integration with Pro Tools and networked audio allowed for seamless virtual soundchecks, real-time adjustments and precise control over dynamics and EQ.

“Tra

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30 October 2025

France - When Collectif La Bringue and Minuits took over Nantes’ 9,000-capacity Zenith Arena for Calling For Rave, they made history. This was the first time the venue, a cornerstone of France’s touring circuit, had hosted an all-night techno event. For audio, the team turned to long-time collaborator Combeuil Audio and its Funktion-One sound systems.

“Zenith Nantes is a major institution for entertainment production,” said Esteban Haie of Collectif La Bringue and 99dB. “Our goal was to deconstruct the venue’s image and create a true rave experience in a concert hall environment. Funktion-One has been with us since the beginning, so it was the obvious choice.”

Working with La Bringue’s production team, Combeuil Audio designed a system to deliver powerful, coherent coverage across the vast arena. Suspended Evo 7T arrays with F

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30 October 2025

USA - In June, for the first time since 2019, Starbucks convened its Leadership Experience conference, bringing together more than 14,500 of its store managers and other Starbucks leaders at Thomas & Mack Centre in Las Vegas. The three-day gathering included breakouts and workshops, keynote speakers, competitions, live musical performances, all backed by a large-scale Cohesion audio system.

FOH engineer Andrew Waterman, who also serves as account manager for global brands Starbucks and Microsoft, was entrusted to select the PA. “I’ve done a lot of events lately with Cohesion, and the sound and the coverage have been amazing,” he said. “It’s just so smooth and good sounding. It’s a team effort, and I think James [Ellison, system engineer] has done an amazing job with the design, so my hat’s off, for sure.”

The system comprised two

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30 October 2025

India - Jaipur-based rental company Chopra Sound has invested in 24 of Martin Audio’s flagship WPL line array enclosures. This will ‘redefine large-scale event production’ for the family business across the Indian north-west state of Rajasthan.

Now in its 50th year, the company placed the order – which also includes 16 SXH218 (2 x 18”) subwoofers and 10 iKON amplifiers – with VMT, Martin Audio’s exclusive Indian distributor. They, in turn, emphasise that the scale of the system enables Chopra to cover even the largest venues with ease. “This massive deployment gives them the capability to take on projects of unprecedented size without compromising quality,” they say.

“Choosing Martin Audio has given us a clear edge in the market,” believes Puneet Chopra, founder and director of Chopra Sound. “The WPL line arrays provide scale

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29 October 2025

Germany - Prolight + Sound, the trade fair for event and entertainment technology, has been held in Frankfurt am Main for over 30 years. However, its organisers have announced that following the end of the early bird booking period at the end of September 2025, the feedback from exhibitors for the event in March 2026 has not been sufficient to guarantee that Prolight + Sound can be held satisfactorily. For this reason, Messe Frankfurt has decided not to hold the event as a stand-alone edition. Instead, a scenario has been developed that includes making an offer to those exhibitors who could benefit from synergies with Light + Building, the trade fair for lighting and building technology.

Light + Building will take place from 8 to 13 March 2026, just under two weeks before the originally planned Prolight + Sound (24 to 26 March

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29 October 2025

Finland - Bose Professional has appointed Lighthouse Entertainment as its exclusive distributor in Finland, marking a significant step in strengthening Bose Professional’s partnerships across the Nordic region.

Headquartered in Kaarina, Lighthouse Entertainment specialises in importing and distributing lighting, staging, and installed audio solutions for venues, corporate environments, houses of worship, live events, and beyond. The company will now offer Bose Professional’s complete range of audio solutions alongside their portfolio of leading AV and stage brands.

“We’re excited to welcome Lighthouse Entertainment as our official partner in Finland,” said Hans Vereecken, vice-president of international sales at Bose Professional. “Their deep market knowledge, trusted reputation, and strong relationships within the Finnish AV industry mak

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29 October 2025

USA - Shure has announced the formation of a new strategic alliances team dedicated to ‘strengthening partnerships, expanding the company’s technology ecosystem, and driving transformation across global markets’.

The new team will focus on three core priorities:

‘Building deep alliances with technology partners to amplify integrated solutions, and reinforce Shure’s leadership within the UC and collaboration ecosystem’

‘Driving ecosystem engagement, ensuring Shure is fully represented in industry forums, partner programmes, and joint initiatives that shape the future of the market’

‘Enabling transformative partnerships that expand Shure’s reach, open new revenue streams, and accelerate customer adoption of next-generation solutions’

Said José Rivas, vice-president and chief sales officer: “By connecting

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29 October 2025

Argentina - Following a major renovation between 2020 and 2023, Estadio Mâs Monumental, the home of Club Atlético River Plate and the Argentinian national football team, has been transformed into one of the most advanced sports and entertainment venues in the world.

The largest stadium in South America, with a capacity exceeding 86,000, Mâs Monumental has undergone a complete overhaul of its sound system, supported by global acoustic design consulting and media systems engineering specialists WSDG.

Implemented in close collaboration with Bosch and Electro-Voice, the new electroacoustic system was engineered to deliver ‘exceptional speech intelligibility, uniform coverage, and an immersive audio environment’ for both sporting events and large-scale concerts. WSDG conducted a detailed peer review of the proposed specifications, contributed criti

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29 October 2025

Sweden - For nearly 140 years, Nalen has been hosting the performances that shaped Swedish culture – from the artists who graced its stage in the 1950s and 60s, to the diverse roster of contemporary acts that keep its calendar packed with over 100 concerts and events annually.

The 19th-century Stockholm concert hall's architectural constraints – strict weight limits, sightline restrictions, and a protected building status – meant that the aging sound system needed replacing with something both powerful and ingenious.

Working with consultant Fredrik Martinsson of Comet Audio, Nalen assessed these challenges and identified the requirements for a premium solution. Several integrators were asked to propose systems. JLE Audio AB, an L-Acoustics certified provider with over 20 years of experience with the brand, was selected based on the strength of

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29 October 2025

Jordan - Auditoria designed and operated audio for composer, maestro and vocalist Sami Yusuf’s concert at the Roman Theatre in Amman, a live performance that blended ancient architecture, intricate musicianship, and modern sound design.

The one-night concert brought together more than 50 musicians, including traditional instruments and voices spanning the Middle East, South Asia, South America and Europe in a celebration of cultural tradition and musical unity, set within a historic performance space.

“It’s always a privilege to work with Sami Yusuf,” said Scott Willsallen, director at Auditoria. “He surrounds himself with exceptional musicians, and his music draws on such a diverse range of traditions. To bring that to life in a 2,000-year-old theatre was really special.”

The Roman Theatre, built entirely from stone into the side

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29 October 2025

USA - St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City required a new sound system that could meet modern performance standards without compromising its architectural beauty. To achieve this balance, the church worked with manufacturer’s representative AudioPros, design consultant Salas O’Brien and AV integrator IVCi to deploy an audio system using EAW AC6 ADAPTive column loudspeakers.

“For this project there was only one option that met the needs of what the leadership at St. Bartholomew’s was looking for,” says Andrew Shillo, principal at AudioPros, EAW’s regional sales representative. “EAW’s ADAPTive system was the best solution because it not only provided quality sound coverage, but was architecturally pleasing without disturbing the historical nature of the space.”

The church’s design made for a challenging acoustic environment.

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28 October 2025

USA - Biamp has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire assets of ClearOne, including intellectual property and brands. The acquisition adds signal-processing designs and patents to the Biamp technology portfolio.

For more than two decades, ClearOne has been involved in audio conferencing technology with contributions in DSP, acoustic echo cancellation, microphone array processing, and beamforming/beam-steering techniques. The acquired assets include designs and several significant patents associated with beamforming microphone arrays and related audio signal-processing innovations.

“ClearOne helped set benchmarks in professional audio, particularly in beamforming microphones and core DSP,” says Rashid Skaf, Biamp president, CEO, and co-chairman. “Bringing these assets into Biamp strengthens our already deep audio engineering

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28 October 2025

Iceland - FLÆKT, a dance performance piece created by artist Juliette Louste, premiered at the Tjarnarbíó Theatre and utilised a Zactrack mini automated tracking system for the first time in Iceland to track lighting, audio, and video cues.

Juliette is also a lighting designer, lighting, AV and sound technician, a technical director, and a choreographer.

A combination of these disciplines led Juliette and IT specialist and computer programmer Owen Hindley, who worked on the show’s technical production, to utilise a Zactrack solution, together with the rest of the technical team, including Zactrack technician Dariel Garcia.

FLÆKT, which translates to ‘unravelled’, is a powerful one-person performance related to the challenges of living with psychological issues, among them obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It is

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28 October 2025

Lithuania - Event production company Šviesiai Garsiai began its partnership with Nexo in 2023, and a busy 2025 season of events across Lithuania for the Vilnius-based sound and lighting specialists has served to showcase the versatility and scalability of their Nexo Geo M12 line array.

It all started in April when the country’s UTMA combat sports organisation hosted a mixed martial arts (MMA) and kickboxing event, bringing together some of Lithuania’s best-known fighters at the Žalgiris Arena in Kaunas.

The main goal for the event's sound team was to design and deploy a system that would give good sound everywhere in the arena without blocking the view of the central LED screen cube. The solution came in the form of six compact line arrays supplemented by point source speakers drawn from a total of 46 x Nexo Geo M12s, 32 x MSUB18s and eight ID2

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28 October 2025

China - K-System, Naostage’s beaconless, AI-powered tracking and show control solution for pro-AVL applications, celebrated its first deployments in Asia this summer, demonstrating to Chinese audiences for the first time how the technology can support live entertainment and corporate events by automating audio and visual effects.

Following a successful exhibition at Prolight + Sound Guangzhou, where Naostage’s distributor for mainland China, EZpro International, showcased its capabilities for the first time to an APAC trade show audience, K System was deployed to deliver reliable real-time tracking for several high-profile live events, powering spatial audio localisation, automatic light tracking and interactive projection-mapped visuals without the need for beacons or location tags.

On World Earth Day 2025, headphone brand Clee

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28 October 2025

USA - Roots festival Pickathon 2025 celebrated its 25th anniversary by adopting a Martin Audio Wavefront Precision system for its main Paddock Stage - set on the picturesque Pendarvis Farm, in the Happy Valley district of Portland, Oregon.

When word reached Martin Audio’s Simon Honywill from long-time friend Graeme Harrison that festival chief, Zale Schoenborn, was looking to upgrade the main stage sound, a meeting was brokered with local AVL rental house Cascade Sound, who immediately invested in 20 WPC and 10 SXC118 cardioid subs, along with THS, FP12 and XE wedges. As their VP engineering and system designer, Sean Rathbun - who was project lead at Pickathon - points out: “While this was our second year at the event, we have staff that have been supporting it for a number of years.”

Simon Honywill, meanwhile, set to work on the desig

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28 October 2025

Mauritius - Opened in 2018, the Caudan Arts Centre is a privately owned theatre and cultural hub in the Mauritian capital of Port Louis. Playing host to an average of 135 shows per year over 300 days, this busy 431-seater venue recently made a significant investment in its live mixing technology with the purchase of a Yamaha DM7 console, supplied by Stage Audio Works (SAW).

“We have a beautiful, high-performance space here at the Caudan Arts Theatre, with excellent acoustics and an exceptional PA system,” comments Kooshal Dwarka, technical manager and head of sound at the venue. “Since the very beginning, we have worked closely with Stage Audio Works. When it came time to upgrade our front-of-house kit, I reached out to the SAW team right away.”

Dwarka sought the advice of Stage Audio Works during negotiations on the mixing console upgrade. W

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28 October 2025

UK - URSA introduced the full range of URSA products to industry professionals at PLASA London 2025. Following on from the launch of the Performance Pouches, URSA has unveiled further products in the Live Range, now available directly from the URSA website, including the Spectera compatible Live Pouch.

The pouches have been designed in collaboration with industry professionals, including Sennheiser UK's technical applications engineer Marcus Blight, making them suitable for use with Sennheiser ranges. In typical theatrical fashion, there have also been a variety of unexpected applications for the pouches and belts, including their use for blood-packs and even for the quick creation of reverse-radios, or onstage wireless loudspeaker rigs.

The URSA Spectera pouch is made from URSA’s signature fabric and features an off-centre strap that holds the bod

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28 October 2025

UK - Celestion has introduced the CDX14-3035 - a 1.4" exit, ferrite magnet, single-piece titanium diaphragm HF compression driver.

This new driver is an upgraded version of the legacy CDX14-3030 model and offers increased power handling capability of 120W nominal (measured to AES standard) / 240W continuous and enhanced sensitivity of 108dB. The compression driver also offers a lower minimum crossover point of 800Hz (12 dB/oct) to increase application flexibility versus the earlier model. In addition, the CDX14-3035 provides the same HF performance as the CDX14-3045 neodymium HF compression driver, but is designed for applications such as cabinets for larger fixed installations and heavy-duty line array systems, where size and weight are less important than cost considerations.

Several design elements contribute to the driver's linearity, durability,

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27 October 2025

UK - Established in 1969, Coton Green Community Church serves the communities of Tamworth and Lichfield in Staffordshire from its purpose-built centre located between the two towns. Opened in 1992, The Coton Centre offers a range of flexible spaces designed to meet the needs of both the church and the wider community, centred around a 650-seat auditorium.

When the time came to upgrade the main auditorium’s sound system, the church consulted several companies before choosing Novum Live.

To design the system, Novum Live relied on OpenArray, Outline’s 3D acoustic simulation software. The team modelled the auditorium and positioned Outline loudspeakers virtually to evaluate coverage, SPL, and uniformity across the entire space.

“During the modelling process, it became clear that several configurations could technically work,” explains Tim

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27 October 2025

USA - AtlasIED has announced the appointment of Cameron Javdani as vice-president of market development for security solutions. Javdani has extensive experience in both the audio and security sectors.

“Cameron will lead the expansion of our partnerships at both the integrator and ecosystem levels,” said Michael Peveler, vice-president of sales at AtlasIED. “He is an incredibly well-respected part of the security industry and SIA community, and we are happy to add his leadership and insight to our security solutions team.”

In his new role, Javdani will focus on accelerating AtlasIED’s presence in the security market by strengthening relationships with integrators, consultants, and technology partners, while expanding industry outreach and advocacy for AtlasIED’s unified communications and life safety platforms.

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24 October 2025

Turkey - Bedri Rahmi Bay, not far from Gocek in Mugla Province on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, is a location accessible only by sea and one of the first anchor points on the Blue Voyage. Catering for the many visitors who arrive by boat is Miori, a collection of six ‘culinary journeys’, which opened earlier this year. As well as the opportunity to eat and drink in its six distinct eating areas, Miori also offers live music performances and DJ sets.

Miori’s owners engaged leading Turkish audio specialists MEK1 Sound to design, supply, and install systems to cover each different area. Specialising in bespoke installations across the commercial and professional audio sectors, MEK1 Sound also distributes a number of leading international brands across Turkey. These include Funktion-One loudspeakers and MC² amplifiers, with the two brands front

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24 October 2025

Japan - Audio engineer Krzysztof Borowicz from Commercial Audio, DirectOut’s distributor in Poland, flew out to Expo 2025 in Osaka to programme two Prodigy.MPs at the heart of both the Netherlands and Philippines Pavilions, overseen by one of the Expo’s turnkey partners, BeWunder.

“I was in Frankfurt meeting other DirectOut partners and doing some training when a friend called and asked what I was up to next week. A week later, I was sitting on a flight to Japan,” Borowicz recalls. “It was all very quick, but thanks to the flexibility of the globcon software, many things can be programmed in advance – even remotely. That helped me work more efficiently and avoid surprises on-site. Both Pavilions were a real multi-media experience, with many conversions between different formats, networks, computers and loudspeaker systems.”

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