USA - Community has added R Series to its growing library of manufacturer-authorized EASE Focus 2 GLL data files, allowing system designers to quickly create accurate 3D models of complex R Series arrays using the EASE Focus 2 software application from AFMG.

Dave Howden, Community's director of technical services, commented, "Because EASE Focus 2 makes it easy to see the direct-field coverage of a loudspeaker array, it's a great prototyping tool. Community is pleased to support system designers by providing manufacturer-authorized EASE Focus 2 GLL files for a wide range of our products."

EASE Focus 2 is a free application available directly from AFMG. Manufacturer-authorized EASE and EASE Focus 2 GLL files for Community loudspeakers may be downloaded from Community's website.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Revolution Hall in southeast Portland, Oregon is the reincarnation of the auditorium of former George Washington High School. The high school closed in 1981 due to low enrolment, and the 113,500sq.ft brick building has been unoccupied since that time.

Investors purchased the former school in 2013 and quickly began remodelling it as a mixed-use space. Old classrooms are now inspired offices, the roof is now a deck suitable for weddings and other events, and the old auditorium at the heart of the building is now Revolution Hall, capable of accommodating 800-plus music fans. Rose City Sound, a local audio rental, engineering, and installation firm, designed and installed Revolution Hall's sound reinforcement system using a Meyer Sound FOH rig and an Ashly/Fulcrum monitoring system, both of which are tied together by a FOH Midas console.

"They've got 12 Fulcrum loudspea

USA - The Ranch Concert Hall and Saloon is Fort Myers' newest and largest event centre and live concert venue featuring many of the country's leading performers. In recent months, the venue - more commonly known as The Ranch - was host to country music artists Josh Turner, Joe Nichols, and Tanya Tucker. The venue is a leading attraction in the area and, to ensure both the performers and the customers are happy, management wanted a sound system that was best in class. This is why they selected components drawn from the Aero Series 2 catalogue of Valencia, Spain-based D.A.S. Audio.

Ft. Meyers, FL-based Tech-Tronics Sound, Lighting, and Staging was contracted to provide sound for The Ranch. In addition to being a design / build firm for the AV installation market, Tech-Tronics is also a full service production company that provides turnkey concert and events solutions including sou

UK - Seven years after the grandeur of Harrogate's iconic Royal Hall was restored following an £8m grant-assisted investment, the theatre has installed a digitally steerable RCF column PA system.

With its spectacular décor, the Grade II*-listed 1000 seat multipurpose theatre not only forms part of the large Harrogate International Conference Centre (HIC) but significantly is one of the few surviving Frank Matcham designed theatres from the Edwardian era. Among its many technological breakthroughs, it remains the last surviving Kursaal, a genre which was particularly popular in spa towns, offering a 360° ambulatory for visitors.

Originally designed 115 years ago, the venue is focused on a wide range of performance, from the three-week International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival to a myriad of community activities. Therefore, the new sound system needed to be vers

USA - At North Carolina's Elon University, a steerable Meyer Sound CAL column array loudspeaker system provides clear speech and music in the Great Hall, a large common room with acoustically reflective architectural elements typically found in centuries-old European institutions.

"The plan was to use the room for everything from video game tournaments and movies to graduation-related ceremonies, and CAL has proven ideal on all counts," says Joe Davis, assistant director of campus technology support and solutions architect for Elon University. "The vast expanse of windows on three sides, plus one largely flat, sheetrock wall create a highly reverberant space that could be over-excited by amplified sound. And any permanent system had to be practically invisible while still providing high-level, full bandwidth sound. The CALs disappear into the décor and real

UK - Stage Audio Service is a long established L-Acoustics user, having taken delivery of its first system some 20 years ago. Its most recent acquisition is an L-Acoustics K2 system, purchased via SSE Sales, which is proving as successful as its existing 300 plus cabinets.

Investing in the L-Acoustics brand has, says owner Kevin Mobberley, been very good for the company. "We were the first company in the country to buy L-Acoustics. We were very small back then and it was a good decision. It's a product that people want, we were lucky to get on board early and we've done well from it. Now we have pretty much every cabinet they've ever made, plus 50 or 60 of their new LA8 amps," he says.

"We bought the K2 system because it's a natural progression from V-DOSC and DV-DOSC, and we wanted to be at the forefront of the new technology. It's a great 'polite' sounding sys

Germany - The German Broadcast Archive (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, DRA) has carried out extensive technical upgrades to three copy and production facilities at its Potsdam-Babelsberg location using Lawo technology. Integration of the Lawo equipment into the company's production environment was carried out by Swiss systems integrator, SLG Broadcast.

Now completed, the centrepiece of each copy suite is a 12-fader Lawo sapphire console, comprising one central unit and three fader modules. All audio sources (inputs and outputs) are connected to a DALLIS mainframe fitted with a GPIO board that allows control of tape decks, CD players and DAT machines from the sapphire console surface.

Technically, the Potsdam Broadcast Archive comprises three copy and production suites with sapphire consoles - two of the suites were built in 2014, also by SLG Broadcast - which are connected to a Law

UK - Rob Baldock, owner of Re:live Recordings zips around the UK recording live performances and interviews by acts such as One Direction, Foo Fighters, Kasabian and Labrinth for video production company, LiveFi. He has been perfecting his gear set-up, and is currently testing out six ASP880s, the eight channel mic pre from Audient.

He describes his recording kit: "It's based around two RME FireFace UFX and a MacBook Pro running Reaper for recording. The Audients fit in great - D-SUB out of the first one to analogue in on the FireFace and then ADAT out for the other two - repeat for the second rack/FireFace.

"I did a live EP with The Shires at The Green Note in Camden, this was the first time I decided to go out with just the Audients and the RME," he continues. "The brilliant thing for me was that it ended up being such a portable rack that I could take th

USA - Currently touring the US with a Martin Audio MLA loudspeaker system provided by SES (Special Event Services) of Winston Salem, NC and Nashville, TN, the Avett Brothers recently sold out three nights at the challenging Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado.

An eclectic mix of bluegrass, country, punk, pop melodies, folk, rock, honky-tonk and ragtime, the Avett Brothers are generally defined as 'Americana', their music encompassing an unusually wide dynamic range.

As SES system engineer Andrew Steelman points out, "They're not a highly compressed band that lives in a pocket during the show. They go from very loud, aggressive, in your face rock, to acoustic guitars, banjos, a cello, violin and small high fidelity stringed ensembles. In terms of dynamics, it's a constant rise and a fall."

Because MLA has smaller format compression drivers, the system offer

UK - Minerva Hearing, the specialist British manufacturer of in-ear hearing protection technology, has appointed Sue Harris to the position of business development manager.

With over 20 years experience in healthcare services and associated industries, Sue Harris will now be working on further expanding the UK client-base of Minerva which was founded in 1930.

The company provides custom-made In-Ear Monitors (IEMs) for musicians and broadcast presenters, as well as hearing protection used throughout industry and sport, including Formula 1 racing, motorcycling, gun clubs, swimming and surfing. The company also provides sleep plugs for people kept awake by their partner's snoring or neighbourhood noise.

Minerva Hearing is also one of the leading suppliers of earmolds for hearing aids to NHS hearing clinics.

Kevin Davies, operations director of Minerva Hearing said, "Sue

UK - CIE-Group has announced the launch of the Inter-M AOE212N audio-over-IP distribution system. With its AoIP (Audio-overIP) capabilities, the AOE212N is designed for transmission of voice, music or audio advertising content, either throughout multi-zone buildings or across campus-wide, multi-sites, or globally.

Suitable for retail outlets, banks, university campuses and other large-scale PA / BGM applications, the system connects via standard TCP/IP to a LAN or WAN, and is simple to operate and offers compatibility with a wide range of audio sources.

"Being IP-enabled, the new AOE212N brings PA systems right up to date," comments Chris Edwards, marketing director of CIE-Group. "The AOE212N device can distribute content locally and globally, whatever the requirement. It is extremely versatile and can be used as a full-on Audio-over-IP public address system or

USA - A popular choice for conventions and exhibitions with nearly 190,000sq.ft of space, Wisconsin Centre in Milwaukee remains one of the state's most popular destinations for large-scale business gatherings. But times and technologies change, and in recent years there had been a growing recognition that the original audio processing infrastructure was approaching the end of its natural lifespan.

The need to prevent potentially costly downtime due to equipment failure was the final prompt for venue owner and operator Wisconsin CentreDistrict (WCD) to enlist locally-based Metro Sound & Video to specify and install a replacement for the existing DSP and paging set-up, as well as some ageing amplifiers and mixers. "Both WCD and we felt that it would be best to replace the entire system head-end now as opposed to when disaster strikes," says Metro Sound & Video director o

UK - "The DiGiCo SD7 has been my companion for the last 18 months and I wouldn't change it for anything," says Chris Marsh, Front of House engineer for Ed Sheeran.

A pretty strong statement, but with Ed just completing a short, but hugely successful, run of gigs at London's Wembley Stadium and Croke Park in Dublin, selling out every date and playing to a total audience of over 400,000, Chris had to be sure he was working with the best tools for the job. For him, an essential element is his SD7.

Chris has been a DiGiCo advocate for many years, but the SD7, used in conjunction with an SD-Mini Rack on stage, is now his favourite. "The pre amps are incredibly natural, they really sound musical," he says. "There's so much you can do with Dynamic EQ and Compression; the need for additional outboard is negated by the power within the console itself. As long a

USA / UK - To combat theft, an epidemic that annually costs the motion picture/television industry millions, PLASA has introduced Rental Guard, an enhanced alert system and missing equipment database consisting of three distinct tools.

The Rental Guard Database and Notification Module allows anyone to report stolen equipment and receive notifications of recent thefts at no charge. Companies or individuals buying, selling or servicing equipment can quickly check serial numbers to determine if equipment has been reported missing or stolen.

New customer Inquiries allow PLASA members to solicit information about potential customers from PLASA's international membership to help determine credit worthiness or legitimacy. The Questionable Customer Alert notifies recipients when a PLASA member suspects that a potential customer may not be a legitimate renter. Use of the New Customer I

Korea - Korea's high-profile World DJ Festival is another stellar live event making good use of Nexo's STM Series modular line array systems. The annual EDM festival is held in the Song-Am sports complex stadium in Chuncheon City, and this year was headlined by French DJ Justice.

Now one of the biggest outdoor events in Asia, the festival lasts two days, running until 4am with a capacity of 90,000 EDM fans. The event was previously held in Yang-Pyeong, but moved to Song-Am stadium in the famous nature and leisure resort of Gangwon province for the first time.

Rental company Way Audio is the regular audio service provider for the World DJ festival, and once again chose to deploy a large Nexo STM Series PA, using main arrays of 18 x STM M46 mains and 18 x STM B112 bass cabinets per side, together with 16 x S118 subbass flown behind each main array.

Spectacular stage monitoring

UK - Delivering a serious level of power and processing in an affordable package, Harman's Soundcraft and UK distributor Sound Technology has announced immediate UK shipping of the new Si Impact digital mixing console.

The Si Impact draws on Soundcraft's more than 40 years of excellence in live sound mixing, combining the latest digital innovations together with its unrivalled sound quality. The Si Impact is designed to be as simple as an analogue mixer, but with radical workflow enhancements and DSP power that make it a perfect tool for the stage and the recording studio.

The 40-input desk offers powerful live sound digital mixing with ViSi iPad control and built-in Stagebox connectivity for I/O expansion. In addition to its live sound components, the Si Impact has a 32-in/32-out USB recording and playback interface that provides easy multitrack recording and playback directl

Indonesia - Befitting a country that has the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia is home to an extensive network of mosques both old and new. In one of the latest additions to the country's worship community, the Masjid Raya Pontianak mosque in Pontianak, west of Kalimantan, was officially opened by President Joko Widodo in January 2015 - and among its many features is an impressively high-end audio installation.

Jakarta-based AV supplier and installer PT Gracia Auvindo was enlisted to ensure that prayers and meetings in the new facility could be heard as clearly as possible. As a long-term Symetrix system user, PT Gracia Auvindo director Adi Widjaya was aware that one of their DSPs would provide the simple yet robust audio processing and distribution required throughout the 3,600sq.m site.

"We created a four-zone section in the salat (prayer) area as well a

UK - For Harvey von Strode, feline-in-chief at Somerset's Strode Theatre, "the impawtence of high quality sound is impussible to overestimate". So the installation of a new Yamaha and Nexo audio system has been a real claws for celebration.

Opened in 1963 and funded by the Clark Foundation, the 343 seat theatre and cinema is a part of Strode College at Street, near Glastonbury. Acting both as a key community and educational resource, the theatre promotes a mixed programme of live professional and amateur stage productions, as well as mainstream and arthouse films alongside live and recorded transmissions of opera, ballet and theatre.

As a senior member of staff, Harvey was on hand while Dominic Sandford - the theatre's technician and projectionist - explained how the new audio system came to be installed.

"The theatre's audio system needed completely updating,

Italy - Genelec has appointed PRASE as its Italian distributor for AV-Install and home audio products. MidiWare will continue to distribute Genelec's professional line of products.

Located in Noventa di Piave near to Venice, PRASE has been operating for more than 20 years as an AV distributor.The firm constantly updates the professional training of its technical staff, allowing them to transfer their knowledge to the market, ensuring added value for its customers.

Jarmo Masko, international sales manager for Genelec said, "This company is full of energy, with an enthusiastic team lead by the Prase brothers, Alberto and Ennio. They have highly skilled personnel as well as their own R&D in order to match the future needs of skills to maintain various applications and systems, from railway stations to home theatres. We believe they have the dedication and enthusiasm required

UK - Pro audio and acoustics consultancy NoiseBoys Technologies, based in Lutterworth, Leicestershire, have set sail to Norway with Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, after installing a new sound and lighting system in the show lounge on board its flagship, Balmoral. They have also provided full training and support to the technical team on board.

Whilst on board, NoiseBoys also assisted with an event that made history for the cruise line when, on 28th July 2015, all four ships owned by Fred. Olsen - the Balmoral, Braemar, Black Watch and Boudicca - united in the port of Bergen on the same day. This was the first time ever that the whole Fred. Olsen fleet has come together, and NoiseBoys were on hand to advise and arrange power distribution for the celebrations and activities taking place on the quayside that day.

NoiseBoys won the contract to supply and install the new lighting and so

Europe - Rock band, Ash is currently on tour supporting the release of their latest album, Kablammo! with Allen & Heath's ultra-compact Qu-Pac digital mixer managing monitor sound.

For some time, the band had been considering the need to replace the old analogue mixer and the existing multi-track recorder.

"I told Tim the singer about the Qu-Pac mixer and that it did playback too, and he said it was a no brainer," says FOH engineer, Alan 'Hagos' Haggarty.

"Before this tour we were using an analogue mixer running a multitrack recorder for playback, all of which required a monster rack. Qu is basically doing the job of three different bits of kit as Tim also had a compressor in the old rack for his vocals but that's no longer needed either," explains Ash's drummer and monitor engineer, Rick McMurray. "Now that we have Qu-Pac, we can fit our in-e

UK - Harman Professional UK and Ireland distributor Sound Technology has further strengthened its position over the Irish Sea by announcing a major sale of a JBL VTX system to McCusker Pro-Audio in Northern Ireland. The sale was facilitated by Sound Technology's Irish sub-distributor, Reynolds of Raphoe.

The family run sales, hire and installation house, based in Co. Armagh, upgraded its front line fleet with JBL's new VTX V20 system - maintaining a relationship with the Northridge-based manufacturer extending back a number of years.

Director Barry McCusker, who fronts the business with his brother Colin and father Enda, confirmed the purchase of a rig comprising 24 x VTX V20 dual 10" line array elements; eight VTX G28 ground-stacked dual 18" subwoofers and four VTX S25 dual 15" arrayable sub-woofers.

The VTX Series is a result of JBL's continued effort to del

UK - With Phase 3 of its seminar sessions finalised, PLASA Show reveals content that is both informative and a little out of the ordinary. From audio as art and colour changing lights, to safety - both electrical and aural - and the importance of apprenticeships, PLASA continues to cover key issues for the entertainment technology industry.

"It's art, not plant hire." These words from Tony Andrews, founder of loudspeaker manufacturer Funktion One, will ring true with sound designers and engineers around the world. Having spent his life exploring the higher possibilities in audio, Tony is well placed to discuss his statement further in the 'audio moment', the chosen subject for his Audio and Consciousness session at this year's PLASA Show, where he will doubtless take an audio path less travelled while considering the difference between hearing and listening.

T

UK - West Midlands lighting and sound reinforcement company Pacific Sound & Light has been increasing its inventory of Shure equipment in recent months to supply a number of live music tours in the UK.

For the past few years, they have been using PSM900 in-ear monitoring on the live tours for the Drifters, and began working with the Ultimate Eagles tribute band two years ago (currently, the band are on a successful European tour). Now the company has also been asked to handle the forthcoming UK 2015 dates for the official Blues Brothers touring band. For this project, Pacific are turning to ULX-D wireless mics, and have expanded their existing complement of eight channels of ULX-D to 12.

"We've always used Shure mics, even before I set up Pacific," explains the company's managing director Paul Duffy. "With the arrival of in-ears, we began advocating their use to

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