German audio specialist Sennheiser has opened its first manufacturing plant in the Western Hemisphere, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, following recent growth in the company's US sales. The 4,500 sq.m facility produces printed circuit boards for electronic assemblies, digital RF mics and headphones for the US market. This is the company's fourth plant, complementing two in Germany and one in Ireland.
TSC Music Systems has won an Investors in People Award. The Crawley-based supplier of sound and communication systems to the retail and business sectors, specialises in providing tailored music solutions and over the years has devised a structured training programme for staff. Neil Abdool, managing director, told PLASA Publishing: "We are very proud to have won this award as it reinforces our commitment to our employees, and in turn our clients."
Neil Mooring, one of the directors of John Hornby Skewes, died suddenly at his home on Sunday 30th April at the age of just 48. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and joined John Hornby Skewes in 1970 at the age of 19. He worked in the sales office and was promoted to sales office manager before accepting a position as an area sales manager. He was promoted to purchasing manager in 1979 and joined the company Board of Directors. For many years he served on the Statistics Committee of the Music Industries Association. He leaves a wife Alison and two teenage children - Nicholas and Rebecca.
CIE Audio has been appointed UK distributor for Communications Technology, the company set up by Tony Walker to manufacture a range of desk, paging and gooseneck microphones and accessories. "This range of microphones adds another string to the CIE bow, said Jon Doar, CIE Audio divisional manager. "Communications Technology's series of single, multi-zoned and pre-amplified desk mics perfectly complements our existing commercial lines from Inter-M, Atlas Soundolier and IC Audio."
Simon Priestley has joined Allen & Heath as marketing executive in charge of the company's PR activities. With a wealth of experience in marketing & PR, which began in the early nineties at Link House Advertising Periodicals in Poole, Dorset, Priestley enriched his skills by writing for several of the titles in the Link House portfolio. A move to the National Motor Museum Trust, Beaulieu followed, where he successfully managed the marketing of the Trust's collection of 750,000 photographs and the world's largest Motoring reference library. Simon Priestley is pictured (right) with Andy Rigby-Jones at the recent Frankfurt Musik Messe.
Tim Adams is to take on the role of Editor of Installation Europe following Mike Lethby's departure at the end of April. Adams, who for the last few years has been working alongside Jerry Gilbert at JGP public relations, will take up his new position at the end of May.
The new AW4416 professional audio workstation from Yamaha is a complete stand-alone, 44-channel, 16-track, 24-bit recording studio with 12GB internal hard disk facilities (Expandable to 64GB). It incorporates many of the key features from some of Yamaha's most recent 'dedicated' products such as the 02R digital mixer, over 100,000 of which have been sold worldwide. The AW4416 will be available from July.
One of the largest pro audio sales confirmed at the recent Frankfurt Musikmesse was a major equipment upgrade from Neumann & Mueller, who will distribute their newly-acquired BSS Audio stock throughout their 11 rental depots in major German cities. The sale was confirmed by Mex Exner, from BSS Audio's exclusive German distributors Audio-Vertrieb Peter Strueven GmbH, shortly after writing out an order headed by 12 of the classic FCS-960 2 x 30-band graphic equalisers. Also included in the purchase were six FCS-920 Varicurve slaves, five TCS-804 2-in/4-out digital delay lines, six DPR-402 two-channel compressor/limiters/de-essers, four DPR-404 four-channel compressor limiters and seven DPR-504 four-channel noise gates.
As part of its family of IR transmitters for conference and associated communications applications, Auditel has introduced a new range of compact 4- and 8-channel models. Aimed at situations requiring simultaneous interpretation facilities, the new models - the TVR-4X and TVR-8X - can be rack-mounted or free-standing as required. Features include a test emitter diode enabling the operator to test or monitor language transmissions during simultaneous interpretation broadcasts, tape recorder output, headphone monitoring and individual channel switches.
Tele Denmark Satellite & Broadcast (owned by Ameritec) has purchased 30 ADDA 2402 audio converters from Digital Audio Denmark. The Digital Audio Denmark ADDA 2402, 24-bit 96kHz A/D, D/A, D/D converter, has been selected by Tele Denmark in a project for getting the second national Danish TV channel DR2 distributed via the Terrestrial TV network. A total of 30 ADDA 2402s are used on different transmitter sites to convert the digital audio signal from the satellite receiver, and for feeding the analogue audio signal to the UHF transmitter system.
JBL Professional/Harman Professional's projects group has appointed Rod Falconer as marketing manager, with responsibility for developing communication between the JBL/Harman projects group and end-users. Prior to this appointment, Falconer worked for AMX Corporation in Dallas, and before that for Lone Wolf Corporation in Seattle. At the same time, the company has announced the appointment of Brad Ricks as systems integration specialist. In this role, Ricks will provide large project coordination and design assistance for systems contractors.
Commercial amplifier manufacturer Inter-M and its UK distributor, CIE Audio, are sponsoring a charity bid by Sandra Lee to trek across Alaska. The seven-day trek aims to raise money for SENSE - the national deafblind charity. CIE's Chris Edwards said: "The aim of Sandra's challenge is to benefit some of the UK's 23,000 deafblind people and their families and carers.
John Eeles has joined Chameleon Audio Ltd of Cinderford, Gloucestershire, in a market development role to promote sales of the full Chameleon product lineup, and especially the new ultra compact, lightweight D777 pro audio amplifier. His experience covers all aspects of live and studio sound facilities. He started in the music business as a pro musician, moving into sound production to support many leading artists. He is still involved, through his own company Spadger, in all aspects of production for music festivals from the Shetlands to Jersey.
Sound and lighting company CAV has supplied the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, (DERA), with a Crown-powered Nexo Alpha speaker system which was used to run a series of acoustic propagation tests for the Ministry of Defence. CAV supplied four Alpha S2 subs, eight M3 mid-high packs and eight B1 bass bins which were arrayed eight wide and three deep around a specially-constructed drum, which was laid on its back to fire up into the air. The system was powered by two digitally-controlled racks, each with a Nexo NX241 digital controller, two Crown Ma-3600 VZ and two MA-5000 VZ amplifiers. A number of sensitive B&K 4188 microphones were suspended over the array to record and plot the results for analysis. DERA project scientist Tim Williams explained in more detail. "We set the system up on the runway at Pershore airfield in the Malverns, which is now an official DERA test site,
Mackie Designs has announced the promotion of Jay Schlabs to the position of national sales manager for all Mackie product lines, including Mackie, Mackie Digital Systems, and Mackie Industrial Contractor Products. Schlabs joined Mackie in 1994 as a technical sales trainer and in 1996 was promoted to western regional sales manager. Jay comes to the national sales manager position with an extensive background in music retail, live performance production and recording technology knowledge.
Andrew Bruce, who started the Autograph group of companies from a stable in Camden 27 years ago, has announced his decision to step aside as managing director and take on the role of chairman. This will allow him to focus on his career as international sound designer and consultant. Terry Jardine, who joined the company 11 years ago, will take his place as managing director of the group. Accompanying Jardine in his new role is Duncan Bell, who has been appointed group financial director. Duncan has worked in numerous technical areas of the company over the past 15 years before becoming involved in the commercial side of the business.
Following the departure of Ian Woodall to launch is own multimedia installation venture, Steve 'Bunty' King will take on the role of sales manager at LMC's London branch. With over 20 years experience in the professional audio industry, including touring FOH and monitor engineering, PA hire management, project management and technical sales, King has a complete understanding of the level of service the industry demands.
Strengthening the team at the Sound Dept is Andy Simmons, who has recently been appointed as sales director. Best known for his management of the Crest Audio UK operation before taking it to the Sound Dept two years ago, Simmons has recently finished a stint working with XTA Electronics as international sales and marketing manager. The Sound Dept is the distributor for many leading pro audio brands including Community, Crest Audio and, until recently, EAW. However, it has recently been announced that after the acquisition of EAW by Mackie they have decided to strip the Sound Dept of their distributor status preferring instead to put it with the RCF/Mackie UK office.
Hanover-based full service production company Rocksound will be providing all audio requirements for the Hanover EXPO 2000, which begins in June - catering for 153 days and nights of theatre, dance, music and cinema over 11 stages site-wide. Rocksound's head of sound Lothar Strunk said: "As it's such a long-running event that requires a huge amount of equipment both in use and as permanent spares, we've invested in a lot of new stock to maintain an appropriate inventory for the rest of our work. For example . . . we've just placed an order with Telex/EVI for an XL-4, a Heritage 3000 and four Heritage 2000s, with an option for a further two XL-4s and two Heritage 3000s." Two Heritage 2000s and two Heritage 3000s are permanently located in Hall 11, the rock and pop venue at EXPO 2000. An XL-4 will remain in permanent warehousing as an alternative board should the need arise. Ther
Celebrating the renaissance of Vietnamese art and culture in recent times, the Hue Festival recently took place in Vietnam's Hue city during April. Live sound was engineered exclusively by Allen & Heath mixers which comprised one 32 channel, and two 16 channel GL2200s, supplemented by four MixWizard WZ16s and two WZ20s. Allen & Heath distributor, Nguyen Hoang Company of Ho Chi Minh City, supplied all the equipment.
A large TOA paging and sound reinforcement system has been specified to provide the public address throughout the new Weald Sports Centre in Cranbrook, Kent. TOA's commission came from engineering company, Consulting engineers MVM M&E have designed the system around TOA's V-Series equipment, working with E-1231 graphic equalisers and AC-120 loudspeaker controllers. The feature clusters of TOA CS speakers are suspended over the swimming pool and the sports hall, while a pool aerobics system utilises the F-500 Series speakers. In the creche and aerobics room, a portable flight-cased rack system houses TOA WT870 diversity radio mics, a mixer, CD and tape player, which are all on jacks linked back to the amplifiers.
The newly-refurbished Shetland Island Council building has just received a significant facelift to improve the way the facility is used and to open up the spectacular meeting chamber into a multi-purpose facility allowing it to be used for receptions, dining and weddings. Pivotal to the success of the upgrade was the implementation of the new beyerdynamic wireless conference system, the MCW series, giving the Council full conferencing facilities without the encumbrance of fixed installation. This means that custom modular interlocking furniture could be quickly put into place and the delegate microphone stations simply placed in position without connectors, wiring or fixing. The MCW system was released in the UK just six months ago and the Shetland installation is one of the first major installations and the first time that multi-media installation specialist ADS has used beyerdynamic co
Pro sound amplifier specialist Chameleon Audio Limited of Cinderford, Gloucestershire won the contract to supply the amplifier/speaker combination for the world-famous Vienna Festival which is running from 12 May - 18 June. Chameleon competed with five other world class pro sound equipment manufacturers for the project, with live tests being carried out in a local theatre and in the open air outside the Vienna City Hall. Both classical and rock music were included in the test, attended by the Austrian Broadcasting Commission (ORF) and the Vienna Festival organisers.10 Chameleon 3500 DP2 amplifiers with Adamson Y-Axis speakers carried 25,000W of high quality sound from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir to an audience of 40,000 outside the Vienna City Hall on the opening night. Alex Schlosser GmbH of Cologne supplied the equipment for front-of-house. The 10
Surveillance specialists Arkonia Systems is investing heavily in DPA Microphones 4060 miniature microphones, exclusively supplied in the UK by pro audio distributor Sound Network. The award-winning microphones are primarily used in broadcast and theatre applications, but Arkonia Systems has incorporated them into surveillance equipment which is sold to military and government departments around the world. Arkonia Systems managing director Len Robinson says: "We needed a very small, highly sensitive microphone that was capable of delivering excellent dynamic range and a particular polarisation field." Over 100 DPA 4060s have now been installed in Arkonia Systems patented surveillance equipment. The company is so impressed with the results it is achieving that it is ordering new stock at the rate of approximately 25 a month.
