Hungary - The end of January saw Chromasound, DiGiCo's Hungarian distributor, invited to demonstrate the advantages of DiGiCo consoles at the MPRT - the Hungarian Professional Technical Event Company.

Founded at the beginning of 2014 and based in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, the MPRT was set up to help train and educate those working in the theatre, cinema, television, radio and concert touring industries.

Chromasound was invited to introduce DiGiCo consoles to its members during an eight week series of events, where it worked alongside eight different brands.

"We were delighted to accept the invitation," says Chromasound managing director Imre Makkay. "We took three DiGiCo consoles - an SD8, SD9 and SD11 - to the Fono Budai Zenehaz, a cultural centre in the heart of Budapest."

Imre, along with three of Chromasound's sound engineers, Barna Hidasi,

Canada - Two nearly identical venues have become the first theatres in Canada to be equipped with the Meyer Sound Lyon linear sound reinforcement systems: Edmonton's Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium (NAJA) and Calgary's Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium (SAJA).

Both long-time Meyer Sound users since 1983, the 2,538-seat auditoriums selected Lyon as they looked to upgrade from their trusty M2D line array loudspeakers, a decision made jointly by Mark Belkie and Paul Schmitz, technical coordinators for audio at SAJA and NAJA, respectively.

"In our extensive listening and assessment process, Lyon set the benchmark that all other competing loudspeakers had to meet or exceed, and none could do so," reports Belkie. "We've found that Lyon is a significant step forward in terms of clean and effortless SPL, giving us systems that can easily handle the requirements of

USA - At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards held at Los Angeles' Staples Centre, audio manufacturer Sennheiser once again delivered reliable and detailed wireless audio to a host of world-class recording artists including Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Beyoncé, Madonna, Tony Bennett, Annie Lennox, Miranda Lambert and many others.

Sennheiser user Sam Smith scooped up four awards, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album; Ed Sheeran performed a guitar-centric, stripped down version of his blockbuster Thinking Out Loud, singing through a Sennheiser SKM 2000/MD 9235 combination, and Beyoncé delivered the performance of a lifetime through the Sennheiser Digital 9000 wireless system.

During a ceremony that featured no less than 23 live performances, Beyoncé's powerful rendition of Thomas A. Dorsey's Take My Hand, Prec

UK - Northern Stage Services Ltd, the specialist lighting, sound and stage solutions provider, has completed the acquisition of the business of Lancelyn Lighting and Lancelyn Theatre Supplies.

Northern Stage Services Ltd, whose client list includes the RIBA award-winning Liverpool Everyman Theatre, Brio Leisure and Manchester Communications Academy, acquired the business on 16 February 2015, enhancing its overall offering to be UK-wide spanning the theatrical, architectural and construction sectors.

Northern Stage Services Ltd managing director, Patrick Colin, comments: "Lancelyn has a long history in both Oxford and The Wirral and its customers very much value the service given by its skilled design, manufacturing and installation teams.

"Similarly, Northern Stage Services has built up a solid reputation within the industry through our ability to work on larger, m

UK - Welsh four-piece Catfish and the Bottlemen, winners at the inaugural BBC Music Awards in December 2014, have chosen Shure microphones for use live and in the studio. The band are now using Shure PSM1000 wireless in-ear monitoring, and an extensive complement of frontline and backline mics, including a KSM9 vocal mic for lead singer Van McCann, and KSM313 ribbons on guitars.

The new Shure equipment arrived in time for a single warm-up concert before the band played at the BBC Music Awards, where they walked away with the 'Introducing...' award for best newcomers.

"The KSM9 lends a beautifully natural sense of air and sparkle to Van's vocal, getting him to sit crystal clear on top of the mix without it sounding too forced or piercing," explains Catfish's front-of-house sound engineer Mike Woodhouse, "and the KSM313 ribbons naturally capture all the low and hi

USA / Europe - Media Networking Alliance, Bothell, Washington, USA. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio AB), Focusrite, Genelec, Riedel Audio & Acoustics and Shure Incorporated, are among the latest organizations to join ALC NetworX, Archwave Technologies, Attero Tech, Bosch Security Systems, Directout, Lawo, QSC, The Telos Alliance and Yamaha, in signing up to membership of the Media Networking Alliance.

The fast growing pace of membership follows the alliance's inaugural membership meeting at last October's AES Convention, and the recent AES plugfest which proved AES67 interoperability between equipment from 10 different manufacturers. Both the BBC and Swedish Radio were present during the plugfest in an observer capacity. Membership applications from several more AV manufacturers are currently being accepted.

Speaking for Shure, among t

USA - The Audio Engineering Society hosts its 57th International Conference, the Future of Audio Entertainment Technology: Cinema, Television, and the Internet, on Friday 6 March through Sunday 8 March 2015, in Hollywood, California, at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres.

The conference will feature the AES's first-ever Immersive Audio Day (Sunday), an entire conference day packed with panels, papers, workshops and demonstrations focusing on one of the most active new areas of audio technology: immersive sound. Starting with the day's presentation by Francis Rumsey entitled Immersive Audio: Status and Challenges, the day will delve into issues pertaining to mixing, asset management and processing for these massive multichannel formats.

Immersive Audio Day will bring together both pioneers and up-and-comers in the field to discuss immersive audio formats and how they cont

USA - Life Church of Rock Run is a Pentecostal church in Joliet, Illinois with an unabashed flair for engaging, contemporary services. Outfit with drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, and plenty of spirit, Life Church rocks its message every Sunday. Knowledgeable in technical matters, the church had acquired a high-performance Danley Sound Labs sound reinforcement system but for budgetary reasons had omitted low-end from the system.

Understandably, the church was keen to shore up that omission, and it timed subwoofer installation to correspond with the addition of new seating that would require additional system coverage. The church hired Chicago-based Advanced Systems & Technologies (AST) to design and install the additional coverage and to overhaul the existing system. To Life Church's existing Danley SH-60 and SH-DFA, AST added two Danley SH-mini loudspeakers for fill, four Danley

UK - Shure microphones including Beta series drum mics, KSM9 vocal mics and a UHF-R wireless system are being used extensively on the UK and international dates for Holy Holy's live presentation of David Bowie's album The Man Who Sold The World, featuring original drummer Woody Woodmansey and producer Tony Visconti on bass.

After selling out several UK venues including the Shepherds Bush Empire and the O2 Academies in Glasgow and Sheffield in Autumn 2014, the live show is returning for more dates in June 2015, and will tour Europe, the USA, Japan, and Australia later in the year.

The Man Who Sold The World (released in 1971 in the USA, and 1972 in the UK) was never toured live, as David Bowie had already put together his Ziggy Stardust stage persona and album by the time of his next live tour. In 2014, with Bowie's blessing, the album's original drummer Woody Woo

UK - Professional loudspeaker manufacturer Void Acoustics has launched a new website (//voidacoustics.com) With a modern, responsive design, the new website is optimised for desktop PCs, tablets and mobile devices and across Mac OS and Android platforms. It is designed to offer a more engaging visitor experience, offering in-depth product information logically grouped together, a news section with current news releases, upcoming events and embedded social media feeds from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The Dorset-based maker of the Incubus system, a mainstay of many of the most popular nightclubs around the world, provides detailed product information and technical resources on its new easy-to-navigate website product pages - from full specifications and high resolution images to EASE data, 3D cabinet drawings, user manuals and crossover settings.

According to Void's sales and

UK - Stage Electrics has updated its inventory of audio equipment with the recent addition of an L-Acoustics ARCS Wide and Focus system. The investment follows the appointment of Rob Collett to audio hire manager and his remit to ensure the standard of equipment within the hire department is in line with needs and the expectations of its customers.

One of my first roles was to evaluate the audio equipment we offered and identify opportunities to invest in new technology says Rob. "Stage Electrics' aim is always to be at the forefront of the industry and our policy is to ensure that our hire stock reflects that."

With Stage Electrics servicing high-end corporate clients, as well as West End and touring theatre productions, Rob needed a system that delivered great intelligibility, combined with a compact size and economic price point. L-Acoustics ARCS Wide and Focus wa

Fighting Talk - Foo Fighters have revealed they will be the headline act on the first day of Glastonbury Festival. The US rockers announced the news after they were named best international band at the NME Awards. In a recorded video message, frontman Dave Grohl told music fans at Brixton Academy, south London, they were returning to the UK to play Glastonbury. They are the first major act announced for this year's event. Foo Fighters will headline the Pyramid Stage on Friday, Glastonbury's website confirmed, making their first appearance at the Somerset festival since 1998. Lionel Richie was the first 2015 performer to be announced in November. He will make his debut in the Sunday teatime slot on the Pyramid stage.

Festival Move - T in the Park will be on a new site this year and the headliners will be Kasabian. Avicii will make his debut at the festival when he closes t

Switzerland - A new website marks the official launch of the Schertler Group of companies, as its members formalise a corporate re-branding that has been in progress for several months. The group comprises Schertler SA, Swiss manufacturer of high quality contact microphones and compact acoustic and electric amplification systems, SR Technology, the Italian loudspeaker systems manufacturer (wholly owned by Schertler since 2012) and Velvet Strings SA (developed and owned by Schertler).

The group's new website offers pro audio customers, hi-fi enthusiasts and performing musicians an extensive range of products from amplifiers, preamps and contact microphones, through to compact active and passive loudspeaker systems for live performance, home listening and installation, as well as high quality string sets for 'cello and bass, which are soon also to be available for violin, viola an

Poland - Located in the provincial capital city of Lublin in eastern Poland, Arena Lublin is a new 15,500 seat capacity football stadium. Built on the land of a former sugar factory, the stadium's surrounding area has been fully landscaped and is bordered by trees, with lawns to the adjacent river. Home ground to the football club Motor Lublin, the city is proud of its new landmark venue.

With unequalled experience in stadium audio in Poland, Tommex ?ebrowscy Sp. J. was commissioned to design and install the sound for the new venue. "We designed the system based on Dynacord electronics with Dante protocol networks and Community R Series loudspeakers," said Marcin Zimny, sales director of Tommex. "It's a combination that gives us outstanding audio quality and proven reliability."

The control centre of the sound system is sited in the commentary room with a D

UK - When the annual TPi Awards switched from the Hammersmith Novotel to Battersea Evolution in 2015, turnkey event technology specialists VME were delighted.

Moving across the river to the large, wide open 5,500 sq.m Evolution temporary structure in Battersea Park was almost familiar territory, and the restricted sightlines and low balconies that had challenged them at the Novotel became a thing of the past. "We have worked in similar venues at Aintree and Tatton Park and are entirely comfortable in this marquee type of venue," he said. And of course he knew that the offsite sound restrictions imposed would pose no problem for MLA, with its advanced multi-cellular control software.

The Manchester-based company fielded its MLA Compact and MLA Mini systems to stunning effect - and leading the praise afterwards was the compere himself, stand up comedian Russell Kane.

UK - Having already supplied new Soundcraft Vi3000 consoles for installation at Liverpool University and at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, UK rental company Adlib has now added two Vi3000 consoles, plus two Soundcraft Realtime Rack plug-in engines, to their own rental inventory.

Packaged with the Realtime Rack and utilising the Vi3000's on-board Dante interface, the compact rental system provides 64-channel recording, virtual soundcheck, and integrated UA plug-in capability alongside the Vi3000's acclaimed sound quality and ease of use.

Dave Jones, Adlib director commented, "We have packaged the Vi3000s with a touchscreen interface to the Realtime Rack via a mac mini which can be used for virtual soundcheck and audio playback using the console's on board Dante interface. This combination makes a very compact 64 channel recording package with integrated plugins."

(Jim

Australia - For the past three years, Entertainment Installations has been supporting the long-standing Twilight at Taronga summer concerts in Sydney with production services.

Based an hour north of the city, the installation and production specialists can hardly have taken on a more challenging task, since the concerts take place in the middle of the busy Taronga Park Zoo, with restricted site access. Despite its picturesque setting, with around 1600 people nightly picnicking as the sun sets behind the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, in the past off-site noise has been a real issue.

"Being a Sydney Harbourside location there is a lot of 'old money'," observes Entertainment Installations' MD, Neale Mace. "These are well-to-do residents who you don't want complaining about noise. There is also the issue of the animals themselves, the elephants in particular are s

USA - Founded in 2005, the Rocky Mountain Classical Academy is a successful K-8 charter school in Colorado's second-largest city, Colorado Springs. However, RMCA was split between two locations until the recent completion of a $17m, 100,000sq.ft building to house all of its 1,000 students, with additional room to grow school enrolment by 33%.

The building is community-oriented, featuring lots of open areas and gathering spaces with an abundance of natural light. Among them are an adjacent gymnasium and auditorium. With a clever arrangement of movable partitions, the two facilities share a stage that can be used for a wide range of events. When unforeseen budgetary issues threatening the audio/video systems in both rooms, the school district hired local A/V integration firm Sight & Sound Technologies to engineer a fix that would preserve the hoped-for functionality and reliabilit

USA - Some may say bigger is better when it comes to speakers, but in this case Avalon Hollywood's owner and audio expert John Lyons says, "It's a matter of being louder, cleaner and clearer."

The new system, which was unveiled during Grammy weekend at Hollywood's historic venue Avalon two weeks ago, features Powersoft's new M-Force technology - and is claimed to be the world's largest subwoofer club installation ever.

While other venues may opt for sound systems featuring a du jour brand, Avalon has its own namesake speaker series. No stranger to conceptualizing game changing speakers, owner John Lyons is an audio expert responsible for installing sound systems at some of the world's leading nightclubs.

Making this new speaker a realisation is a feat that Lyons and premier audio engineers at EAW and Powersoft have worked rigorously for two years to perfect. "

South Africa - Wild & Marr, the South African distributor for Harman Professional, will be hosting two exciting Harman BSS Audio workshops in Johannesburg during March 2015. The workshops will be presented by Justin Hankey, Application Engineer for Networking and Installed Sound at Harman.

The target audience for the classes would primarily be AV Programmers and Systems Integrators as well as audio designers and anyone else in the professional audio industry that require a better understanding of Audio Architect, networked audio signal processors and digital audio networking protocols and systems.

The first workshop is an Introductory Course to HiQnet Audio Architect, which is the software platform that is used to configure, control and monitor BSS Audio Soundweb London and the Crown DriveCore Install Network Series.

Soundweb London is an award-winning product line of digita

USA - The second edition of PLASA Focus Orlando, the regional event for the live entertainment technology industry, has been branded a resounding success by both visitors and exhibitors alike. Attracting record numbers of attendees, the popular event offered networking opportunities and hosted many over-sold education sessions presented by top industry speakers including Richard Pilbrow - lighting designer, theatre design consultant and author and Jim Hutchison, customer engagement and education manager for Chauvet Professional.

Taking place on 17-18 February at the Rosen Plaza Hotel, PLASA Focus Orlando proved to be a vibrant networking hub for 64 live entertainment technology brands and more than 840 attendees. "This has been by far the best PLASA Focus event so far," said Geoffrey Platt, product training specialist at TMB. "We had steady, quality visitors each

The Netherlands - How to design the perfect audio solution in small & medium sized applications? Apart Audio has developed a digital tool to help and inspire every installer. There is no need any more to search for a product in a product catalogue. The new intuitive web based plug & play tool is starting from the customer needs and presents an entire audio solution for the specific customer requirements. Visit the Apart Audio website www.apart-audio.com to experience it yourself. A high quality audio solution is designed in no time.

On the Apart website (apart-audio.com) a Plug & Play section has been added where you can discover more than 50 audio solutions for the small and mid-sized fixed install market. It shows a variety of audio applications that gives the installer a quick answer on the following questions:

"Apart is aiming to become the installers' friend," s

UK - Source Distribution is hosting the world launch of several RØDE products and new Genelec loudspeakers at BVE 2015 in Lon don this week.

Source is making the exclusive world-wide launch and first public display of RØDE's new RØDE Link Digital Wireless System, NTG4 and NTG4+ shotgun microphones and the NTR ribbon microphone.

The RØDE Link Wireless system utilises 2.4GHz technology to provide a high-resolution 24-bit/44.1kHz digital audio signal at a range of up to 100 metres. The system consists of a number of receiver and transmitter options, and will be available in a number of kits targeting film, news gathering, presentation and stage use. The first kit to be available will be the Filmmaker Kit, which consists of a beltpack transmitter, an on-camera or beltpack receiver and RØDE's broadcast quality Lavalier microphone.

The NTG4 and N

Germany - Having updated the audio systems in its Ü2 and Ü3 radio OB trucks back in 2013, Bavarian public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) operates integrated systems of Lawo production and on-air products. At its Nuremberg Regional Studio, BR is now replacing another two aged OB vans (Ü1 and Ü2) with new vehicles that have a largely identical configuration.

Mixes of all kinds are handled by Lawo mc²66 consoles, providing the recording, sources and TB signals needed for large-scale live events using a sapphire mastercard-equipped DALLIS router frame. The different processes are visualized and operated by way of a multi-page graphical user interface with touchscreen operation. This is where the VisTool software provided by Lawo's radio tools portfolio comes into its own. For the playout - also in multichannel mode - it is possible to dock a sapphire console at any time.

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