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.

Canada - Award-winning musical Once returned to Canada on 10 February to start a 111-day run at Toronto's Ed Mirvish Theatre. Having enjoyed a particularly successful stint in the city during the show's North American Tour in 2013, Once's producers decided to re-visit for an extended stay. Sound designer, Clive Goodwin, has created a new audio concept for the production that is, once again, formed around a Funktion-One sound system.

Set in modern day Dublin, Once is the story of a guy who gives up on his love of music and the girl who inspires him to dream again. The show is being performed by an all-Canadian cast of actor-musicians. A 63-day run was announced last year but demand for tickets, even before it opened, has seen that extend by almost seven-weeks.

Commenting on the production's continuing success, Goodwin says, "I think Once connect

USA - Seeking to provide exceptional audio quality for its diverse speech and music programmes, the Penn State Great Valley graduate school has recently installed a Meyer Sound Mina line array loudspeaker system in its 300-seat Warren V. Musser Auditorium.

"With Mina, we have future-proofed the room for any future needs," says Dave Brotman, president of Coatesville, Penn.-based DBS Audio Systems, which handled system design and integration. "Mina's clarity and coverage easily take care of all current speech requirements for educational uses and corporate conference rentals. Beyond that, the room is also ready for extremely high-quality music reinforcement, which allows it to double as an intimate performing arts venue."

Twin flown arrays of nine-each Mina loudspeakers seamlessly cover the steeply raked auditorium from front to back with a 500-HP subwoofer h

UK - With little over a week to go before this year's ISCEx2015, the Institute of Sound and Communications Engineers is reporting a record number of companies exhibiting.

The two-day networking event, taking place at the picturesque rural location of Coombe Abbey, a four-star country house hotel outside Coventry, will bring consultants, specifiers and manufacturers together under one roof. Following the AGM during the afternoon of Wednesday, 3 March, a networking dinner, with comedian Lea Roberts, will serve as a curtain-raiser for the following day's exhibition.

Wednesday, 4 March will also feature an active programme of seminars - building on the previous day's RF address by Alan March, in which he will provide updates on the Radio Spectrum.

Topics for Day 2 include: Is the market ready for audio over IP (presented by Kevin Sherwood, sales director, CIE-Group): T

USA - The in-store radio architecture is typically a patchwork of systems and components from different sources to deliver music and advertising to businesses, with challenging scenarios for licensing music and audio content. The formation of StoreStreams aims to simplify the launch and management of a multi-site in-store radio system, cleanly integrating IT network infrastructure with audio players-and providing the content, licensing and user interface to ensure a unified and profitable service.

StoreStreams brings together the music catalogue and network intelligence of XYZ Stream Hosting, a specialist in live, multiplatform content delivery; with end point hardware supplied through LineQ, a distributor specializing in networked AV equipment. LineQ will supply Ecler Sound amplifiers, Cornered Sound loudspeakers and media players from Barix, an IP audio pioneer with hundreds o

USA - At the request of FOH engineer Jose Rivera, a Meyer Sound Leo and Lyon linear sound reinforcement system was deployed for Marc Anthony's recent mini tour. The shows - which included 360-degree productions in New York and New Jersey - were Anthony's first North American concerts to be heard through a Leo system.

"Everybody was extremely happy with the performance of Leo and Lyon, both on stage and throughout the audience," reports Rivera, who first used Leo at a stadium concert in Peru. "The overall sound was very transparent and open. Vocal intelligibility was impressive, and the separation of instruments made it easy to achieve clarity in the mix. Also, the 1100-LFC units are remarkably musical in the low end. The system did more than we expected it to do.

"Using another system on our last arena tour, we had challenges with sound bleeding back onto t

USA - From its start in 1996 as a small independent plant by Grandville, Michigan's Resurrection Life Church, Radiant Church in the Richland suburb of Kalamazoo has steadily grown its membership to 3,500. Recently expanding its service count to four each weekend - two on Saturday and two on Sunday - the church also freshly upgraded the audio facilities of its 1,050-seat sanctuary with a new ARCS WiFo (Wide and Focus) loudspeaker system from L-Acoustics.

Parkway Electric & Communications of Holland, Michigan provided the design and integration of the new system, which replaced an outdated PA rife with hot/dead spots and uneven low frequency coverage. The installation and commissioning process took Parkway only four days, which also included repurposing the previous rig for the church's youth facility.

Today, the main sanctuary system features left and right arrays each comprise

UK - Adlib has been providing a riotous sound for favourite UK rockers, Kaiser Chiefs, renewing a long term working relationship with the band and reuniting many crew who have worked together over several years, on a tour that's been every bit as full-on and enjoyable as previous ones.

Adlib's George Puttock, Sam Proctor and James Petch joined the band's engineering duo of Chris Leckie at FOH and Ilias Andriantos on monitors for a rousing three week tour where all the energy and passion of the Kaisers' renowned live performances was exceptionally well received by the public.

Working alongside Chris and Ilias are the tour's production manager James Hennin and tour manager Liam Rippon.

The sound system chosen was L-Acoustics. The venues ranged from London's 16,000 capacity O2 Arena to many well-known & loved theatres and town halls, culminating in a homecoming gig at Leeds Are

UK - Bombay Bicycle Club will forever be known as the last live band to play at London's Earl's Court venue. But preceding that already-famous December show was a tour that had started nearly a year before, on which DiGiCo SD9 and SD10 consoles played a starring role.

Front of House engineer Tom Wiggans joined the band in the summer, part-way through the tour. A DiGiCo user for around 12 years - including working with UB40, Squeeze, Wet Wet Wet and The Cranberries - Tom's debut with Bombay Bicycle Club came on festival shows, before he used a DiGiCo SD9 on the band's US shows. He then chose an SD10 for the UK tour.

"One of the advantages of professional sound these days is how much preparation you can do," he says. "I was able to get a multitrack recording of one of the shows, which I listened to on my laptop and figured out what was coming from where, because t

USA - After Oscar awards were collected and the lights dimmed on stage at the Dolby Theatre, the stars hit the streets of Los Angeles to find their favourite after parties. Among these, the Governors Ball, held at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at the Hollywood & Highland Centre. Kicking off the event's entertainment this year was Grammy Winner Sergio Mendes, who performed songs with special guest will.i.am from their co-produced, Latin Grammy-winning album Timeless, using several DPA Microphones d:facto Vocal Microphones.

Selected by Mendes' production manager John Baker, wired and wireless versions of the d:factos were used for vocals by Mendes, will.i.am and the three female singers who performed centre stage for their roughly 45 minute set. Baker also selected DPA's d:vote 4099 Instrument Microphones for a variety of the band's instruments.

"My goal was to spread the D

UK - Alchemea College is celebrating the recent success of several of its former students at this year's BRIT Awards, Grammy Awards, MPG Awards...and on the charts.

Jimmy Napes (aka James Napier, Class of 2004) was both songwriter and producer whose work contributed to Sam Smith's BRIT Award nods for British Breakthrough Act and British Global Success, as well as nominations for British Album and British Single. Other Alchemea alumni represented at the BRITs include Steve Sedgwick (Class of 2002), house engineer for British Male Solo Artist nominee Damon Albarn, and Robbie Nelson (Class of 2001) who engineered Morning Phase by International Male Solo Artist nominee Beck.

Earlier this month at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Napes' work was also acknowledged as Smith took home the prestigious prizes for Record of the Year and Song of the Year, as well as winning Best New Artist

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