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Issue 15 January 2009
LIVE • COMMERCIAL • RECORDING • BROADCAST
HOUSES OF WORSHIP: TOP GEAR IN CHURCHES AROUND THE WORLD
AVAST!
www.audioprointernational.com
MONACO JAZZ FESTIVAL
RAZORLIGHT
CARRY ON SCREAMING On the road with Britain’s most rock n roll band
E Series. Touring Class. High Calibre Audio Amplifiers
www.mc2-audio.co.uk
WARRANTY
Built for a life on the road, E Series amplifiers combine audio quality and assured reliability. Featuring a lightweight aluminium construction, robust digital power supply, advanced protection technology and intelligent limiter, E Series amps deliver their full power across the entire audio bandwidth. Discover the complete range at www.mc2-audio.co.uk
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INTERNATIONAL
audioPRO INTERNATIONAL
CONTENTS
ISSUE 15 JANUARY 2009
REGULARS: STUDIOS 40 PEOPLE 42 DISTRIBUTION 43 PRODUCTS 44 e were saddened to hear the recent news that EMI Studios Group will soon close London’s legendary Olympic Studios. With a legacy spanning half a century, Olympic has hosted numerous rock and pop super bands and artists over the years, including The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Oasis and Spice Girls. EMI has been making headlines ever since the takeover of Terra Firma, mainly by its angry artists complaining about slashed budgets and the new corporate feel of the company. From the firm’s perspective, it is trimming the fat, a trend that has plagued the pro audio industry across the board. Smaller post production budgets have forced music and film editing under one roof and made composers collaborate with their computers rather than working with actual musicians, the banking crisis has diminished the amount of money for installation work and gas and production costs have created the need for smaller equipment and less crew. Many people who have worked in the industry for years see it as the lawyers and accountants selling the soul of the industry. Whether you see it as selling out or eliminating superfluous costs, the industry has had to react by making products leaner, faster and more efficient.
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With more companies fighting over smaller budgets, only those offering the most for the money will rise to the top. It will be interesting to see the industry’s latest reaction to these ongoing changes in 2009 at big shows like NAMM, ISE and Prolight + Sound. Although many will miss the big, manly gear that has brought great music to us for decades, the innovation and technical expertise that goes into the gear created today is a culmination of years of success and failures, resulting in a super breed of products aimed at satisfying the rockers and accountants alike. Another upside to modern technology is that manufacturers are forced to listen to the people who are using the gear and are tasked with developing technologies that reach the highest levels of sonic quality in smaller and more efficient packages. This will be an interesting year by all accounts; with more companies fighting over smaller budgets, only those offering the most for the money will rise to the top.
NEWS 4-6 COVER FEATURE
PRIMAL SCREAM
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Ger Colclough gives an inside look at mixing monitors for the UK rock and roll party band, Primal Scream.
EVENTS ISE 8 NAMM 9 Previews of two shows set to kick off the 2009 trade show season with a bang.
FEATURES AVAST! RECORDING CO. 26 Stuart Hallerman talks about the history of one of America’s best independent recording studios.
Andrew Low Editor andrew.low@intentmedia.co.uk
VERTIGO 28 London’s hottest new nightclub is kitted out with KV2 speakers.
The latest
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LIVE SOUND RAZORLIGHT 12 MONACO 30 Engineers from the Razorlight crew and the Monaco Jazz Festival give an insight on gear and techniques used for the live environment.
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NEWS
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Glade seeking new location for festival Organiser of dance gathering to make some ‘proper noise’ THE GLADE Festival has been forced to move to a new location due to inflexible noise restrictions enforced by the Berkshire County Council, Music Week reported in December. The festival has been held in the woodland at Wasing Estate in Berkshire for the past five years. The organisers have already set the dates for next year’s event as July 16th
to 19,th and they are desperately looking for a new site with suitable transport channels that can adequately host the needs of the 10,000 regular festivalgoers that visit the annual dance event. “Wasing has been a great home for us for our first five years, but as part of the natural evolution of Glade we have decided to find another beautiful bit of
England, in particular somewhere we can run it later on all nights, including Sunday, and make some proper noise,” said Glade’s creative director, Nick Ladd. 2008’s festival ran for three days and featured well over 100 acts on eight stages, covering every conceivable style of dance music. Updates are available from the website gladefestival.com
DK introduces Dolby coding
Nigel Luby
Confirmation that PT0760M now handles E technology
1955 to 2008
DK-TECHNOLOGIES (NYSE:DLB), has confirmed that the PT0760M can now handle Dolby E decoding, either from embedded audio within the HD/SD video or through separate AES inputs via Dolby’s Cat. No. 552 OEM decoder module. The PT0760M can also provide analog or AES audio outputs with integral level control. This allows the PT0760M to provide a solution for managing and monitoring Dolby 5.1 coded audio signals. Launched at NAB 2008, the award-winning PT0760M is effectively four HD/SD
NIGEL LUBY passed away at his Eel Pie Island home on November 29th, 2008. He was 53. Luby was best known for his work as a sound technician for Yes and for his studio work with bands such as The Alarm, Marillion and Mike Oldfield. Rick Wakeman of Yes remembered Luby as being part of a new breed of musicians in the 1970s and one of the first to gain a deep understanding of musical electronics. He stated: “As technical advancements raced ahead as regards equipment, there was a need for more knowledgeable people to work with bands and musicians and so the ‘tech’ came into being and Nigel was at the forefront of that new movement. “He was extremely knowledgeable in sound recording and all the new technical aspects of the industry that were appearing thick and fast and racing ahead of the musicians who really just wanted to play.
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waveform monitors in one box. This lightweight and easy to operate unit is aimed at outside broadcast vehicles, production studios, master control rooms and camera control units. Its unique feature set includes four separate autosensing HD/SD inputs that allow for the simultaneous display of four individual waveform monitors showing G, R, B, Y, Cb, Cr and Luminance, as well as an included vectorscope. The PT0760M has a DVI output that enables the user to view multiple screens on a single external display. The
January 2009
images can comprise of all four waveform monitors and the selected audio metering. Ease of use is key to the new meter and DK has provided 11 user presets, user definable Gamut error settings and ten user definable soft keys for fast set-up. Horizontal and vertical zoom is achieved via an inbuilt jogwheel and the unit also has an internal memory. The PTO760M incorporates DK-Technologies’ MSD range of audio software, which features the company’s unique Jellyfish and Starfish displays for stereo and surround sound monitoring. This combination of video and audio metering includes HD/SD audio de-embedding, surround sound metering, peak programme level measurements of up to 32 audio channels and seven selectable scales to conform to in-house standards. Users choosing this combined option also benefit from DK’s ITU 1770 loudness meter, which uses an approved ITU algorithm, covering stereo and mono audio signals. dk-technologies.com
“Nigel worked exclusively with [Yes bass player] Chris Squire for many years and also became involved on the periphery of many of the classic Yes recordings in the late 1970s. “After moving on from Yes he made a welldeserved name for himself in the world of studio recording and has left a legacy behind him of some classic music that he played an important part in producing. I shall remember Nigel with considerable affection.” Luby was considered by many as one of the finest in the country and as well as his work with Squire, he worked on the Francis Dunnery Fearless album and with many other iconic musicians includingThe Who’s Pete Townshend. In 2005 he recorded the reformed Syn concert (a super-group including Chris Squire on bass and top musicians from the likes of Oasis). Luby’s funeral took place on December 19th at the Mortlake Crematorium.
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NEWS
24th RS conference breaks records Highest ever percentage of student delegates attend the Institute of Acoustician’s event THE 24TH Reproduced Sound Conference was hailed a roaring success, with some 125 delegates attending, including 24 students – the highest percentage yet. The RS committee brought together a wide range of speakers on the theme of Immersive Sound. Kicking off with a tutorial and Q and A session on the general topics of rooms, loudspeakers, intelligibility and practice attracted over 60 participants there to test the experts. Sam Wise, the committee chair, officially opened the conference and called on the President of the IOA, John Hinton OBE, to present the Peter Barnett Memorial Award to Dr David Griesinger,
a physicist who works in the field of auditorium acoustics, auditorium and room acoustics and psychoacoustics. Griesinger received the award for his research and advancements in the fields of reproduced sound and concert hall acoustics, then talked through the conflicts that arise when balancing reverberation ratio and its role in the perception of localisation, clarity and the sense of audience envelopment of the sound. Some demonstrations using a JBL 5.1 system exhibited the issues Griesinger brought to the fore. In the intervening coffee breaks delegates quizzed
Griesinger (right) receives the Peter Barnett Memorial Award
presenters on various aspects of the subjects covered. Delegates heard from researchers, academics, manufacturers and consultants talk about issues as diverse as modelling methods for optimising room design, loudspeaker
Audio Alliance expands further Sound rental company adds more staff and increases stock levels SPECIALIST SOUND rental company Audio Alliance has continued its expansion with further increases in stock and more new members of the team. This follows a move to a larger premises and increase in staff and stock last year. Additions to its product portfolio include ten UPJ-1P compact Vario loudspeakers and a number of UMS subs from the Meyer Sound range as well as a Cadac S-Type mixing console, which has already seen service on a new concept in corporate entertaining and creative business development, The Great Northern Cook Off. The company has also appointed Pete Stanbank as warehouse manager and a formed an association with sound engineer Steve Phillips to ensure that it is
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transducer design, various techniques for deriving stereo mixes from surround sound formats, and the evaluation of bass transducers using modulation transfer functions. Phil Nelson of Southampton’s ISVR kicked
off the second day with a review of multi-channel sound reproduction, followed by some similarly detailed papers relating to immersive sound fields and their manipulation and related transforms. Peter Mapp showed the breadth of electroacoustic knowledge needed to plan deaf aid systems, while others described issues involved in modelling intelligibility in the real world of reflections and frequency response errors. Measurements and practical issues constituted the final session. Seven companies took up exhibition space at this year’s conference. reproducedsound.co.uk
Brace Audio releases DWG-1000 White space-proof digital guitar wireless system available in US
The Royal Television North West Awards show
well positioned to cope with the 30 per cent year-onyear growth it has seen over the last four years, a pattern which is set to continue into this year. “Audio Alliance concentrates on the corporate sector,” said director Oliver Driver. “Demand for our services is high, with regular work coming from a selection of European-based production companies.”
Recent jobs of note include a three-day conference that was attended by 1,500 people at the ICC for National Cancer Research, where AA supplied systems for 15 breakout rooms to augment the NICC’s house system. The company also supplied the system that delivered the coverage for The Royal Television Society North West Awards. audioalliance.com
BRACE AUDIO has announced the release of its 2.4GHz digital wireless guitar system: the DWG-1000. This system represents a breakthrough in wireless performance by utilising digital technology operating in a frequency band that provides better quality and ease of licensing problems. The system is guaranteed to be 100 per cent impervious to white space RF interference in the UHF frequency band used by most wireless mic and instrument systems on the market today. Since recent FCC ruling allows broadcasters to use this area of the UHF frequency spectrum, this is of paramount importance to
the integrity of wireless performance. On November 4th, 2008, the FCC voted five to nil, to approve new uses for white spaces, thereby silencing opposition from broadcasters in the US. It is hoped that within a year this new access will lead to more reliable Wi-Fi and other technologies. Brace Audio’s technology is digital and operates at 2.4GHz – outside the UHF frequencies that have been used widely by both the broadcast industry and manufacturers of wireless microphones. The Brace Audio DWG1000 is currently shipping, distributed in the US by RJMG Distribution. rjmg.com
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Yamaha CA hosts digital audio seminars Theatre audio students and professionals introduced to key digital audio protocols YAMAHA COMMERCIAL Audio UK has initiated a series of training seminars to introduce theatre audio professionals and students alike to the key digital audio protocols, while raising awareness of the possibilities that are now available to midand small-scale productions Presented by deputy general manager Karl Christmas and installation manager Scott Fraser, the first of these seminars took place at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. “As a company, we have extremely broad knowledge of audio networking technology,” said Christmas.
cabling, the pros and cons of using radio mics with different stage box solutions, the potential cost savings between different digital systems and so on. “This is something that is currently right at the forefront of the sound industry,” continued Christmas.“20 years ago someone could go and learn the basics of analog audio, then go into any situation and apply that knowledge. Nowadays that’s not the case because the sheer speed of progression in digital audio systems. It can be a lot to get your head round, so this will help.”
Top class: the first YCA seminar As well as examining the expected areas like audio quality and the wide range of digital mixing options, the
course looks at less obvious issues, for example the reasons for choosing Cat5, copper or fibre optic for
yamahacommercialaudio.com
Fairlight wins big
ATE develops P2C
Australian accolade for software design follows AES Pyxis award
Pioneering cone made with laminated APTIV film
FAIRLIGHT’S XYNERGI Controller has won the EDN Australia Innovation Award in the catagory of Best Application Of Design Software. Presented annually, the EDN Awards recognise those companies that demonstrate technological innovation and design creativity. This is second award Fairlight has received in recent months. In October, its Pyxis Multitrack Recorder/HD VTR picked up a Par Excellence Award during the AES Convention in San Francisco. These awards, hosted by Pro Audio Review, are given to companies who introduce significant new products at the AES Convention. Tino Fibaek, Fairlight’s chief technical officer, said: “We are delighted that both Xynergi and Pyxis have
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“The half-day course is intended to be a thoughtprovoking introduction to the subject, covering a range of digital protocols and examining which is best for any given situation. The theme of the seminar is ‘from air to air’ – in other words, examining signal flow from microphone to speaker via the digital audio protocols: CobraNet, Ethersound, optical and MADI.” Topics such as digital radio microphone technology, stage box solutions, digital mixing, audio networking, matrixing and monitoring are covered, including Aviom personal mixing systems.
been recognised for their excellence and technical innovation. It is especially good to know that we are winning accolades from professional end users because it has always been our intention to create products that make life easier for our customers.” Designed for a wide range of applications, from multiple room commercial audio post facilities through to aspirational home studio owners, the Fairlight Xynergi is targeted at users looking for a professional grade audio finishing system to create multimedia projects. It has already been installed in key broadcast and post production facilities around the world including NHK in Japan, Sonacom in France and Grand Central in London. fairlightau.com
January 2009
AUDIO TECHNOLOGY Engineering (ATE), a Germanbased innovator in the acoustic speaker market, has developed the P2C, a speaker cone made with laminated Victrex APTIV film. APTIV has a number of key acoustic properties, including lower distortion and ringing, no break-up-modes, very simple crossovers, and a flatter frequency response in comparison to cones made from conventional materials, such as polypropylene, paper and aluminum cones. The manufacturing process is fast and efficient, allowing it to be used in high volume and cost-conscious applications. Norman Gerkinsmeyer, general manager of ATE, said: “Our work with Victrex on the implementation of APTIV film, with its ‘tunable’ acoustics, has been integral to the success of our P2C cone design. APTIV films also offer properties for a range of
other applications including diaphragms, domes, and voice coil bobbins.” John Getz, APTIV film commercial leader at Victrex, said: “We are encouraged by the results that ATE is achieving. The inherent acoustic, high temperature, mechanical, fatigue and processing attributes of the film are well suited for use in acoustic applications and present opportunities for OEMs, designers and processors in the manufacture of high performance systems.” ATE is targeting the automotive speaker market, but the technology is suitable for a wide range of design and performance speaker applications. Notably, APTIV films meet the long term fatigue performance required for a speaker diaphragm. The semi-crystalline nature of Victrex’s ‘Peek’-based
polymers provide a relatively high modulus from the crystalline phase as well as a degree of damping from the amorphous phase. Speaker diaphragms can be designed in different thicknesses, giving them a great deal of flexibility during the design process. In examples where metal foils have been replaced, the lower density film allows a faster response and less mass of inertia in the whole speaker system. aptivfilms.com
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EVENT PREVIEW ISE
Fully integrated Amsterdam’s ISE show is rapidly becoming acknowledged as an key date on the pro audio calendar, particularly for those who deal in more permanent systems. API takes a look at the agenda…
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Cabling solutions aplenty are to be found at ISE
Event: Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) Venue: RAI centre, Amsterdam Date: February 3rd to 5th
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panning seven halls of Amsterdam’s monolithic RAI centre, Integrated Systems Europe returns this year, boasting the continent’s biggest gathering of AV and electronic systems professionals, from February 3rd to 5th. Considered to be the premier European event for commercial and residential systems integration, ISE is popular with exhibitors as a showcase of leading technologies and emerging developments in the sector and is often chosen as a launch pad for new products. Manufacturer seminars and an extensive conference programme add to its appeal. The show is likely to prove a wholesale triumph over 2008’s statistics, with more than 500 exhibitors already registered, compared to the final figure of 484 last year. While this might largely be a result of the burgeoning home installation industry, there is nevertheless a comprehensive list of pro audio companies on the roster, including Biamp Systems, Digico, Harman Pro, RSS and DAS, among many others. Exhibiting on Stand 9D108, Allen & Heath will unveil its new digital In/Out expanders for the iDR digital installation series. On display will be the new iDR D-in and iDR D-out units, which provide expansion options of up to 250m on CAT5 cable using the AES/EBU protocol. “Previously, the iDR-8 and iDR-4 mixing processor units used analog mic and line audio interfaces because that’s what our customers wanted. However, there is now a demand from broadcast, TV studios and large scale venues, to keep all audio interconnection in the digital domain, making use of common standards and increasing distribution distances,” explained Allen & Heath’s MD, Glenn Rogers. The company will also be exhibiting a selection of audio mixers from the iDR installation series and accompanying PL remote controllers, as well as the latest developments from the iLive digital mixing range, including the iDR0 network mixrack. The GR2 and GR05 analog zone mixers will also be displayed, alongside the Xone:S2 club installation DJ mixer. Tannoy will be present on stand 5Q86, taking the opportunity to showcase its new QFlex range of digital beamsteering array loudspeakers. QFlex is a series of self-powered, digitally steerable loudspeaker arrays using ‘beam-steering’
January 2009
DSP technology. The range is designed specifically to overcome the intelligibility problems associated with highly reverberant surroundings, by focusing the acoustical output in the target directions where it is needed. Other new products on show include the i9VP vandal-proof speaker system designed to satisfy challenging environments that demand speaker mounting within easy reach of the general public, such as underground rail stations and stadium concourse. Tannoy will also be showing its new CVS4 Micro ultra compact, shallow back can ceiling speaker. A variety of personnel will be on hand for demonstrations. This year’s pro audio themed educational sessions include Large Audio Project Management, in which Roland Hemming will discuss his experience of handling large projects and dealing with all the different elements, including contractual, technological, personnel, programme and risk. The basis is that large projects generally use more sophisticated technology, are higher profile, more political, contractually more demanding and the risks to businesses can be catastrophic if they go wrong. Hemming is also due to host Digital Audio on February 3rd. This seminar will identify the different file formats and protocols used to store and transport digital audio as well as explain why digital audio doesn't always mean good audio. In addition, it will describe how multi-channel digital audio has transformed surround sound and networks. Hemming will help visitors to understand all the different aspects and elements of digital audio. With a more hands-on approach, Stephen Fried will hold Integrating the Rack: How to save time and do it right, a workshop designed to demonstrate solutions to the common challenges faced by installers when loading a rack. Visitors will learn an integrated approach to loading a rack, including time-saving tips and tricks for effective cable management and a special focus on practical demonstrations of methods to ensure a properly cooled system. This session is absolutely free to attend, as is Jörg Wertli’s demonstration of the wave I sound system, to be held on February 4th. iseurope.org
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EVENT REPORT NAMM PREVIEW
The big winter thaw The NAMM Show 2009 is sure to deliver exciting new products and ideas for the MI and pro audio industries. Andrew Low gives some key points of interest for visitors attending this year’s show…
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Special sessions and performances make NAMM an indispensible show
Event: The NAMM Show 2009 Venue: The Anaheim Convention Centre, Anaheim, California Date: January 15 to 18, 2009 Exhibitors: Over 15,000 in 2008 Visitors: Over 88,000 in 2008 Prediction: New products launches and insights on keeping afloat during the gloomy times ahead.
he Anaheim Convention Centre will soon host the 2009 NAMM show from January 15th to 18th. Located just outside Los Angeles, California, last year’s show featured over 15,000 exhibitors and nearly 90,000 visitors eager to display and see the latest the industry has to offer. International visitors from over 100 countries travel to Anaheim every year to see new product releases, announcements and take part in NAMM University sessions. With all this on offer, the organisers of the event state that the NAMM Show is the best place to establish a company’s brand and take it to the next level. NAMM University features four days of quick sessions on focused topics ranging from handling finances to ideas for promoting business on the web. The one pro audio focused session will be given by Peavey’s Kent Morris in the Idea Center in Hall B, stand 5501, on January 15th at 1:30pm. The class is designed for MI retailers who want to gain a greater understanding of the technology behind professional audio equipment, from digital consoles to line array technology. Morris will take a beginner’s look at the finer points of professional-level live sound. Another interesting session for all attending NAMM is the Best In Show session. Held on the final day of the show, Music Inc publisher Frank Alkyer and a panel of industry leaders will review the hottest products, ideas and trends displayed during the show. The hour-long session will be held in the Pacific Ballrooms on January 18 at 8:00 am. Over 1,500 manufactuers are exhibiting this year, including the likes of Shure, Audio Technica, Dynaudio, Tannoy, TCHelicon, TC Electronics, Behringer, Community Loudspeakers, Rane, Audix, DAS, Tascam, Harman Pro and many other major players. While most manufacturers are reluctant to give out details of their secret new product launches until the day of the show, a few have hinted at the new gear that they will be releasing or pushing at the show.
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Allen & Heath will be present at the American Music and Sound stand, stand 6474, exhibiting two new products, one digital and one DJ. It will also show its ILive series of digital consoles for live audio and its new Zed FX series of small format mixers with onboard effects. Harman will show its brand new DMS 700 wireless system at the show. A sneak preview of the system was given at PLASA 08, but the official launch will be made in Anaheim. The DMS 700 features a broadband frequency range with extended flexibility in crowded RF environments. With over 100Mhz of bandwidth, the DMS 700s low RF link quality offers service that is secure from interference or distortion. It also has a dynamic range of 121dB(A) and offers up to 40 channels simultaneously. AKG is boasting that the DMS 700 is the first digital wireless system to meet worldwide transmission regulations. The DMS 700 also incorporates AKG’s D5 dynamic microphone capsule, while its patented laminate varimotion diaphragm and supercardiod polar patterns ensure maximum gain before feedback. Harman’s HiQnet System Architect supports all of the features of the DMS 700. Furman will be exhibiting its range of AV signal processors alongside its AC power conditioning and distribution products on stand 6874. It will also be unveiling a brand new series designed for AV professionals, the Prestige series. The new line includes the P-1800 PF R Power Conditioner, the P-1800 AR Voltage Regulator and the P-1400 AR E Export voltage regulator. OC Weekly writer, Rick Kane described NAMM visitors as, “Just barely cooler than your average Star Trek or Dungeons and Dragons geek.” While Kane’s comment is a bit harsh, participants of NAMM 2009 will be eager to see the raft of new products, innovative ideas, interesting topics, new industry trends and the occasional celebrity guest present every year in Anaheim. namm.org/thenammshow
January 2009
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SENNHEISER K ARRAY EVENT REPORT
Sent back from
Coventry Sennheiser UK held a special launch event at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena to display its latest distributed line of compact loudspeakers. Andrew Low reports on the three-room spectacle…
S Sennheiser UK is now the exclusive distributor of K Array in Britian
ennheiser went all out in December 2008 for the official debut of the K-Array speaker line. The company fitted out three rooms in the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, UK with several other new slim-line loudspeakers. Visitors witnessed product demonstrations by an aerobics instructor, an acoustic busker, a cooking presenter and a DJ scratching double decks to display the diversity of the K-Array line. If all that wasn’t enough, a full stage production with KArray’s KH4 self-powered line array matched with its KS4 subs were used to broadcast an electric string classico-rock quartet. So why such major outlay? From Sennheiser UK’s point of view, it is now distributing a new and innovative product for the UK pro audio market with the K-Array loudspeakers. The range was first debuted to select guests at PLASA 08, but it waited for three months to make the announcement official. K-Array is an Italian-made brand of point source and line array speakers designed for installation and live sound use. At first glance it is hard to notice that the skinny arrays from the Kobra line actually produce the sound you are hearing. The K-Array line ranges from the 112cm x 60cm KH4 line array to the two-inch KT20 point-source speaker. Its KV50 array is so light that it can actually be fastened to a wall with velcro. Big or small, the K-Array speakers are unusually compact and designed for discreet use, while helping cut down on transport and rigging costs. The Kobra and Viper series features the KK50 Ultra Slim, 50cm, 3D array element; the KK200, 200cm, high power, 3D array element; the KV50, flat 3D line array element and the KKS50 line array bass speaker. The Kobra line arrays come in active or passive versions, each with full-range excursion cone drivers. They can be arranged in vertical, horizontal and 3D line-array configurations. K-Array assures that, although they are thin and small, the speakers deliver unique performance-to-size ratio with high dynamic range and smooth frequency response. The KKS50 is an ultra-slim, 50cm line array bass speaker that provides vertical and horizontal array adaptability and
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multiple four-inch long excursion drivers. The speaker has a frequency response of 65Hz to 300Hz and can be used as stand-aline units or with other K-Array speakers. The Tornado series is K-Array’s line of two-inch compact point-source speakers. They were designed with a profile to create space savings, or to be used for fill or spot coverage. Its frequency range is from 150Hz to 18KHz (+⁄- 3dB) with an 87dB SPL (1W/1mt) and a maximum SPL of 101dB. The tiny speaker has a 90-degree horizontal and vertical coverage. The larger KH4 line array elements provide 120-degree horizontal and seven to 37-degree vertical coverage (mechanically variable) and a frequency range of 40Hz to 20KHz (+⁄- 3dB preset relating). From the front angle the array looks higher and wider than other line arrays on the market, but when viewed from the side its 16cm depth is strikingly slim. It features 12-inch by eight-inch neodymium speakers with 2.5-inch voice coil for low to mid frequency support and fiveinch by one-inch neodymium planar wave drivers with a 1.75inch voice coil for HF. The arrays are self-powered with integrated DSP and remote control. The flat profile of the KH4 allows for space and weight savings for flying or stacked with custom hardware. The KH4 can be paired with the dipole KS4 subwoofer, which is 16cm flat and weighs only 37kg. It includes ten-inch excursion cone drivers with a two-inch voice coil, powered by eight power amplifier channels. The woofers are mounted in a box to ensure high rigidity and resistance to vibrations. It also provides extensive horizontal and vertical coverage. Sennheiser UK displayed many of K-Array’s key products at the Ricoh Arena, but even kitting out three demo rooms was only enough to skim the surface of its wide range of products. Sennheiser has added K-Array to its products portfolio to complement its existing range of professional audio products. It now aims to integrate K-Array as a leading brand in the UK installation and live sound sectors. k-array.com sennheiser.co.uk
January 2009
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Sounding sharp Amid a hectic 11-date UK tour with indie rockers Razorlight, FOH engineer Ian Laughton and the crew grabbed a well-deserved breather to discuss their Turbosound Aspect rig and reflect on how they tamed the acoustics of the notorious Brixton Academy…
W
hile promoting its latest album, Slipway Fires, Razorlight took in some surprisingly modest venues during its intimate UK tour, given the calibre of festivals that they headlined over the summer. Establishments such as London’s Brixton Academy, however, can attract some hardcore and demanding rock fans, but with this and four over gigs already nailed, Ian Laughton is relaxed enough to indulge in a little nostalgia. “I started engineering in the 80s with various bands – Elkie Brooks and people like that,” says Laughton. “I worked for what was then a little PA company called Star Hire (now staging specialists Star Events Group) as staging crew chief on weekdays and PA man at weekends. We had a Turbosound festival system, the one with the long throw horns. This is what I really cut my teeth on. After that we used Floodlight and Flashlight rigs, but then, of course, the industry went head first into line array, which in my view is fine for bigger venues, but when you’re playing theatres and clubs, really isn’t suitable.” Provided by Entertainment Sound Specialists (ESS), the sound hire company run by Razorlight monitor engineer Phil McDaniel and his business partner, Richard John, the system comprised 18 TA-890H and 18 TA-890L cabinets with eight TSW-218 subs and four TQ-445s used across the front four fills. The system was powered by Britannia Row’s recently acquired Yamaha T5n amplifiers, with Dolby Lake units for system control. Two of the Aspect stacks were configured in B-mode with their horns rotated for infills or outfills as needed. Britannia Row system tech Mikey Gibbard and monitor tech and system rigger Darren Connor, were on hand to ensure all went to plan. The venues on the tour varied considerably in size and shape, from theatre-style venues such as Brixton Academy, Manchester Apollo and Portsmouth Guildhall to more unusual designs such as Lincoln
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Engine Shed and Edinburgh Corn Exchange. The latter, for example, is effectively three long rectangular rooms – a central high-roofed main room with small VIP balcony at the rear, flanked each side by spaces with much lower ceilings. The tour PA therefore, had to be extremely adaptable. At Brixton, for example, the flying limits meant that only a restricted number of cabinets could be hoisted, whereas the restricted room for the lighting rig at Edinburgh meant the entire audio system had to be ground
“We’re in venues where you can point the boxes where you want them to go and know that it will sound good, without being reliant on prediction software.” Ian Laughton stacked. Nevertheless, after having to sacrifice a couple of the TSW218s to achieve this, the crew found that TA-890Ls were quite capable of providing the low end in their absence. “Razorlight is a great band to mix – you need real punch and clarity from the live sound,” says Laughton. “It’s really hard to find both in live audio systems, but this one achieves it without even trying. There are a lot of dynamics in the band’s new album, so it’s a great test of its live sound. I honestly believe there’s nothing better than this system to do it justice. When it comes to live sound I’m quite old-fashioned – I like to hear the air moving and Aspect provides the best of both worlds. It’s a modern day system but it’s not line array.
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Echange The Edinburgh Corn e zon was a no-flying
Frontman Jonny Borrell puts the PA through its paces
“We’re only on day five of the tour now, but we nailed it from day one. I think it’s fantastic. “After the Brixton show, people said it was the best sound they’d ever heard on the balcony. We had just four boxes per side facing up there,” he continues. “I thought it was nowhere near enough, that nobody would feel it, but Mikey said it would be fine and he was spot on. Apparently they had loads of people ring in and ask who the hell put that system in because they’d never heard anything like it.” “There were 2,100 people on that balcony, with just eight cabinets covering them all. Afterwards, Bob Angus of Metropolis and the stage manger came out to us and said ‘people have been complaining about the sound in here for years, yet you come in and just get it right’. “Well of course we’ve been doing shows in here for a few years but the aspect rig made a huge difference. I told them that if they want to know how to make Brixton Academy sound good, just call Britannia Row and ask for Mikey Gibbard. He’ll tell you what we put where and that’s the problems at the Academy sorted.” “For me, one of the pleasures of this tour is being able to go back a few years. We’re in venues where you can point the boxes to where you want them to go and know the sound will be good without being reliant on prediction software. It’s amazing how important that is.” “If you’re in arenas or stadiums you obviously have to make more use of the predictor software regarding where you position the boxes,” adds Gibbard. “But in venues like these, you can just look around and know the angles they’ve got to be at. To be honest it annoys me when you get to small venues like these and there’s a line array in there, because it causes more problems than it solves. But it’s often because that’s what the front of house engineer is used to nowadays. “The Aspect system goes together in a very straightforward way. We go to each venue with a standard plan and then add or subtract to get what we’re trying to achieve. For example, at Edinburgh we put the big left and right ground stacks in, then realised we needed a bit more on the outside. So we put a couple of speakers in B-mode and a sub to cover the outfill. The TQ-445s really work for the front fills as well, they’re great little boxes and blend seamlessly with the Aspect. “You can push the Aspect system as hard as you like and it just will not distort,” Gibbard continues. “I turned to Ian at
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Left to right: McDaniel, Gibbard, Laughton and Connor
the Brixton show and pointed out that we were pretty much averaging between 110dB and 115dB at front of house during the whole show. But it didn’t sound that loud because there is so much headroom and the system doesn’t colour the sound. It’s so smooth, there is absolutely no distortion.” Phil McDaniel comments: “If you’re doing a very dynamic kind of show, most systems change character according to how hard they are being driven, whereas the Aspect doesn’t and, because it’s so smooth and clean, the audience’s ears don’t get as tired when you’re running a show at 110dB to 115dB. That makes it a more pleasant experience for them. Indeed, sometimes we have to say to FOH engineers: ‘Do you realise you’re running at 112dB?’ because they’re not hearing that telltale sound of high/mid distortion. The polyhorn doesn’t introduce any harmonic distortion at all, which makes the high mids extremely clean. We’d much rather have a neutral system like Aspect, where if you want it you have to introduce that high mid crunch by using external processing, than a system where you can’t avoid it. “For starters we never have to push the box to anywhere near its limit. There is plenty of headroom, which is really good for the longevity of the speakers,” he adds. “The power efficiency means that we can use perhaps half the number of boxes that were required with older systems. This is great for the flying limits in some venues, it also saves on trucking costs and means we have to hold less stock.” “With a line array you need different format boxes for small, medium and large gigs, whereas we can put a bunch of Aspect cabinets on a truck and do any size of gig. This tour is a prime example of that. We’ve also got a John Martyn tour out at the moment with Aspect Wide. You can use one stack per side for a small venue or with four stacks per side you can do much bigger spaces. Furthermore, while we know Aspect works really well in smaller venues, it also sounds amazing in arenas or even outdoors. “With Aspect we split the hangs up to miss the balcony front, and as a monitor engineer, that was really noticeable,” McDaniel concludes. “At some stages, Ian was running up to 120dB, and normally the sheer energy of that coming back from the room would crush the band on stage. But since we could just crack the hang open to miss the flat front of the balcony, we could avoid that.” britanniarow.com turbosound.com January 2009
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Christ Church in London’s West End using Innovason’s Sy48 to mix its holy rock n rolling band
What would
Jesus use? God-loving folks around the globe are being treated to some of the best technology the pro audio industry has to offer. Some of these complexes can hold over 4,000 people and require sound support for orchestras, choirs and presenters. Andrew Low shines a light on the audio in houses of worship… Christ Church, London CHRIST CHURCH is located in the West End area of London in Piccadilly Circus. With a 1,200-capacity main area, the church needed a console to mix audio from preacher’s sermons and the eight-piece rock n roll band that performs every Sunday. Visiting engineers frequently use the board, so Christ Church’s technical director, Rhys Scott, needed a console that was intuitive and quick to learn. He chose Innovason’s Sy48 because he feels it is a userfriendly and flexible desk. The services also use Aviom’s networks for the band’s IEMs, which are streamlined via the board’s Aviom interface. He states, “I met the Innovason team at the Messe in Frankfurt and was given a demo of the Sy48. It was extremely impressive and there was no doubt that it met all of our criteria. “We were looking to have the new console in place before we moved to our new venue at the Piccadilly Theatre and fortunately for us, Innovason launched its ‘New for Old’ initiative just at that time, allowing us to purchase the Sy48 Evolution package within the budget we had available. “Since the console arrived we’ve been extremely pleased with it,” explains Scott. “The audio quality is fabulous and the team has found it very easy to use.” Christ Church shares the same venue as the West End Musical Guys and Dolls, so, every Sunday, its production team works with Piccadilly’s staff to drop a sound and video system, trussing, backdrop and instruments onto the stage via a chain hoist. Scott finds that the Sy48’s ability to store settings and recall dynamics and mix settings makes this arduous task a bit easier. “It’s made a huge difference to our tight set-up and sound check time, Now, I’m pleased to say, we’ve all got a little bit more breathing room!” Scott notes.
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“The Sy48 has already proved itself to be an extremely valuable asset for us in every possible way,” Scott concludes. “It has everything we were looking for in terms of features and audio quality, and with the new functionality that is slated for next year, it’ll be even better still. It was the ideal choice for us.” innovason.com Peace Apostolic Church, Caifornia CARSON, CALIFORNIA’S Peace Apostolic Church houses a 900-seat worship hall and a 300-seat fellowship hall, which both host regular services, rehearsals and bible studies. In order to provide audio for the two rooms, Noel Gould at West LA Music and John Stack at Audio Gear provided mixing desks for the church in the form of Allen & Heath’s iLive-112 control surface and GL2800 console. The ILive system in the worship hall features 40 inputs and 32 outputs from the iDR10 mixrack with an additional eight inputs and eight outputs on the iLive-112 control surface. Peace Apostolic’s music director, Andre Lamb, comments: “We are running a full band with acoustic drums, guitar, keyboards, piano, MPC click, six praise team mics, six choir mics, the minister’s wireless mic and the pastor’s wireless mic. A full Aviom system plus overhead and floor monitors are in place for the podium and choir area.” Lamb is utilising the ILive’s onboard eq and compression on all the various channels. He continues: “The pre-amps are what really stood out for me – such a warm and articulate sound. Everybody is overjoyed with the sound in our church. Our band and choir recently performed at a sister church and when they returned they were all saying ‘Whoa, we are so spoiled by our church’s sound quality now, we’re used to being able to hear everything so clearly’.”
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The outputs of the board utilise an integrated 1⁄3-octave graphic eq to help with room tuning. Drums, keyboards, choir and praise team mics are grouped into four individual DCAs. Lamb also stores each type of event at the church as scenes for quick recall. “The analog-style layout of the iLive has made a huge difference in getting us up and running fast. Coming from an analog background, the iLive is really familiar and comfortable to mix on,” Lamb comments. ilive-digital.com St Paul the Apostle Church, Texas ST. PAUL’S Apostle Church in Richardson, Texas has a 600seat worship space that Electro Acoustics recently fitted with a completely new audio system. The company chose JBL’s VRX portable line to outfit the 30-year old space and provide clear speech during services held in the acoustically troubled main room. Electro Acoustics’ president, Chris Jordan, comments: “The church has a tile floor, brick walls, a wood ceiling and pews without cushions, so there were some issues from an acoustic standpoint. They also had at least two previous systems in the space and there was a definite need for a sound system renovation. “We measured the reverberation time in the space and installed acoustic panels to reduce that time to an acceptable level,” Jordan says. “We also discovered that they had a return air vent that made a lot of noise, so we designed a baffle to counteract it and the changes made a substantial difference.” After addressing the acoustic problems in the church Electro installed three arrays above the main stage on the church’s ceiling. Jordan states that the VRX speakers were chosen because their directivity is superior to single, two-way boxes. He also feels the directionality of the line arrays provide a lower articulation loss of consonant sounds. Each array is spaced 12 feet apart and features three VRX928LA line arrays and one VRX915S subwoofer. Jordan has used the speakers in the past and is pleased with the final results of St Paul’s new installation. He states: “The VRX loudspeakers are very easy to use, you can quickly hang and snap them together, so they’re easy to install. Aesthetics were important in this project, and the VRX loudspeakers look very nice. The price was also very reasonable and the performance is just outstanding.” jbl.com
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Andre Lamb likes the analogue feel of Peace Apostolic’s ILive console
Parishioners at St Paul’s raise the roof with the help of Community Loudspeakers
Crossings Community Church, Oklahoma THE 4,000-capacity Crossings Community Church is a megacomplex of godly proportions. It holds a 120-piece chorus and full orchestra during regular services. Clear-Com’s CellCom 10 digital wireless system is used by technical staff at Crossings for communication throughout the 290,000 square-foot complex. Chuck Timmons, director of media ministries, feels the CellCom system is invaluable. He explains: “For a production like ours, you must have reliable communications among the technical staff. Clear-Com’s new CellCom10, version 1.5.7 is equipped with all of the features we’ve been looking for, particularly its new call alert option.” Crossings uses seven wired and three wireless beltpacks for services and up to 13 wired with the three wireless units. Timmons feels that features contained in the 1.5.7 version, such as vibration alerts, remote battery monitoring and remote microphone kill control and the ability to create communication routes and conference groups, are all welcomed new additions to the system. clearcom.com Kingsway International Christian Centre, London KINGSWAY International Christian Centre (KICC) was forced to move out of its premises in Hackney, London, to make way for construction of the 2012 Olympic Park. It has since relocated to a 1,000-capacity location in an old twolevel movie theatre. The busy service has to be repeated six times on a Sunday to accommodate all its visitors and a 40-piece choir and live band accompany Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo. A great emphasis was placed on the audio for the Hoe Street location. “This is the last sanctuary for real musicians,” says sound engineer Dipo Fasade. “They play a very important part in our services, creating a distinctive warm sound that everyone can relate to. Also, we have very popular youth services, where the teenagers make the music themselves. We needed a PA system with real bass response for their music.” KICC contracted Systems Etc to help them equip the church. After a demo at EV’s distributor, Shuttlesound, it chose an EV PA system for to its low profile, speech clarity and high SPL levels. There are now four EV Xi1082s installed under the auditorium’s balcony. Two pairs of Xi1152s 64AF are flown above the stage with Xi1152 90AFs in place for delays on the sidewalls and three RX218 units have been installed under the stage for low-end coverage. EV’s Phoenix range cabinets are also in place for monitoring for the choir and other vocalists. The system is powered by EV’s P3000 and P1200 RL amplifiers and controlled by a NetMax audio processor and matrix. System designer Ricky Ramsay explains, “There are six zones here, all independent and, via simple navigation, you can use NetMax to control the signal distribution and level as well as adding a valuable degree of security. Services are being mixed on a digital console, which gives the technical team a full recall of settings, should anybody alter them.” shuttlesound.com
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St Paul’s Church, Maryland WHEN parishioner Dean Gladden took on the responsibility of choosing the AV gear for St Paul’s new 900-seat home, he was willing to spare no expense to make it a state-of-the-art house of worship. He explains: “In today’s world we’re competing with all kinds of technology in different forms. “It wasn’t a matter of whether we’d go mainstream, but how to best achieve it. We also wanted our church to perform more outreach to the local community by hosting conferences and concerts.” As such, Gladden hired Pottstown, PA-based Audiobahn to provide the new facility with hi-tech audio, video and lighting gear. Audiobahn chose Community Loudspeaker’s SLS series to cover the diverse audio needs of the church. St Paul’s main system now features left, centre and right hangs consisting of five Community SLS920s. Audiobahn’s president, Tony Hersch, feels that the SLS dedicated midrange drivers provide powerful and clear voice intelligibility. “The SLS boxes can achieve concert level sound without distortion, even at several hundred yards,” Hersch notes. Under balcony coverage is provided by eight of Community’s Cloud 6 ceiling speakers, with four CPL27’s providing coverage above the balcony. A pair of TD218s dual 18-inch subwoofers was also installed in concrete under the stage to provide low-end support while XLT41E monitors were placed on the stage for monitoring. The system is powered by QSC amplification. Gladden is very happy with Audiobahn’s work and the Community loudspeakers and has reported that the church has already begun to draw new parishioners as a result. communitypro.com
JBL line arrays helped solve speech clarity problems in St Paul the Apostle’s main room
St Mary Magdalen chose the LS9 for its intuitive layout and transparency
The James River Assembly, Missouri THE JAMES River Assembly in Springfield, Missouri recentl;y found itself playing the part of testing ground for what would become Tannoy’s VQ Series of loudspeakers. During the NSCA 2006 convention, Michael Garrison Associates (MGA), a company set up to address the acoustical sound and reinforcement needs of churches, explained to Tannoy’s director of business development, Graham Hendry, that dual concentric driver technology lacked the directivity and high SPL levels needed to accurately support the needs of audio projection in large houses of worship. It was determined that an additional four dB of headroom was needed above what dual concentric speakers, which have a sensitivity of 100dB/Watt, could deliver. Hendry agreed that existing products on the market were unable to deliver the required headroom. Tannoy soon began beta testing prototypes in the 4,000seat sanctuary at The James River Assembly. The new product, which would become the VQ series, used only three boxes to meet the requirements of the church and exceeded all existing levels, including an additional 14dB of SPL. It also gained better pattern control with the new speakers. Tannoy’s VQ series was subsequently launched at the 2008 Musikmesse show and includes a range of speakers designed to provide accurate directional control, sonic performance and high SPL levels for houses of worship, large corporate AV systems, stadiums, large dance clubs, live concert halls, theatres and open-air venues without the need for great amounts of amplifier power. Its VQ 60 gives 115dB for one Watt and 138dB for 200 Watts of amp power. The VQ line was also develop with the idea of offering the versatility of being used as stand alone speakers for discrete use or in an array configuration. Michael Garrison of MGA, states: “All of us at MGA were overwhelmed by Tannoy’s demo room presentation of the new VQ series loudspeaker products. Tannoy has hit a grand-slam home run on this one.” Hendry states that people outside the house of worship sector are also benefiting from the extra headroom that the VQ series provides. He says: “The Tannoy VQ range has a diverse market appeal. VQ has already enjoyed a high profile install in one such alternate sector – at Ibiza’s premier dance club, Es Paradis, which has been winning plaudits from clubbers and DJs alike since the start of the summer season.” tannoy.com
St Mary Magdalen Catholic Church, California CALIFORNIA’S St Mary Magdalen Catholic Church features five diverse choirs whose perfromances range from traditional to contemporary music. The church does not employ a full-time sound engineer, so it needed a board that is easy to use and provides the transparency that allows proper mixing of the many diverse musical styles performed at the church. Atlantic Professional Audio was hired to upgrade the church’s sound system and chose Yamaha’s LS9 as the primary mixer for the main service area. Craig Beyrooti of Atlantic chose the board for its fully featured channels. Its onboard compressors, gates and eq are constantly in use to help the volunteer engineers keep a handle on their mixing, as the church has lively acoustics and restrictions on speaker placement in the room. “The all-in-one control that the Yamaha LS9 offers with delay and eq on the outputs is hugely beneficial in this regard,” Beyrooti adds. “Another key feature is that one can recall a scene and get out of any trouble that may arise from service to service and operator to operator.” yamahacommercialaudio.com atlanticproaudio.com.
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New gear for old music
The Aviom 6416m arrived in giant boxes, just in time for a challenging location recording. Billed as excelling in simplicity, flexibility, fidelity and reliability, engineer and producer Wes Maebe was rather keen to see how it performed… TECHNICAL SPEC - WHAT’S IT GOT? The 6416m provides 16 mic inputs, a mini channel strip per input featuring a switchable pad, continuously variable gain in 1dB increments, phase, low cut and +48V phantom power. It also features mute and channel activation switches and a six-segment level meter per channel. If 16 XLR inputs are not enough for you, alternate inputs can be accessed through the DB25 connectors on the back, which also serve as passive splits. The 6416m has 24-bit A/D converters and runs on sample rates from 44.1kHz up to 192kHz. Related products, depending on how you want to use it, include the 6416o analog output module, 6416dio digital I/O module and a 6416Y2 A-net interface card. As the 6416m is a remote-controlled mic pre-amp, Aviom provided the remote control interface (RCI) and a very neat mic control surface (MCS). These can be used to control up to 64 channels of 6416m inputs and as they allow you to select any audio source within your network, they also double up as a straightforward headphone monitor station. They can be hot-swapped without affecting your network’s behaviour. All the components connect via A-net, Aviom’s proprietary audio distribution and networking technology, designed to stream dataintensive audio, reduce latency, allow longer cable runs and improve clock performance. It is based on Ethernet and uses reassuringly familiar Cat-5e cables and RJ-45 connectors. SETTING THE SCENE A live recording for a DVD promoting baroque ensemble The Frolick was the perfect test drive of the 6416m. I racked up Aviom’s seven
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units of gear, gathered some microphones and a laptop loaded with Pro Tools and headed off. The recording was done in a Grade 1 listed 17th century house with high-ceilinged rooms densely populated with the statuary glitterball the size of Saturn, a rotating marble table, a seven-piece baroque ensemble and a stuffed adult giraffe. HOW DID THE AVIOM PERFORM? Set-up on the day was simple, but only because I had spent an entire afternoon wading through manuals and hot-plugging the A-net cables until I had it working. Once you get your head around the fact that you are in essence working with Ethernet protocol interconnectivity, rather than physical audio ins and outs, it all makes sense. I saved my prep work to a preset on the 6416m and on arrival my unit powered up with all the phantom power, phase reversals, highpasses and gain settings in place and after minor tweaks I was ready. Baroque period meant no visible mics, so my main stereo pair of Brauner VM1s had to be quite far back to stay out of shot. The 6416m definitely gave me enough gain and headroom to pick up a range of delicate, un-amplified instruments. I added spot mics, DPA 4061s, which I had to stick to the backs of a couple of statues. The 6416m was definitely up to the assignment. It’s the main component of an extremely flexible audio networking system, with a very clean signal, loads of headroom and all the functions you expect to find on a mic preamp. This big blue box is a reliable work-horse – a full-blown remote-controllable mic preamp that will hold its own in any recording situation – on location, in the studio, theatre, outside broadcast or in a live environment – with or without stuffed giraffes. aviom.com
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Behind the board with...
Ian Livingstone Ian Livingstone has scored many TV ads, video games, documentaries, feature films and written chart-topping pop songs. He has recently worked on the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie... Which project are you currently working on? Just finished the MIDI programming for the Harry Potter movie, which was lots of fun. Currently composing scores for two video games for Electronic Arts and a six-part series for Discovery Channel about a guy who lives with bears. Where are you at the moment? In my studio in the garden in beautiful Surrey. It’s really great working from home and seeing my kids grow up, but being out of the house so I don’t have to change nappies. What audio console are you utilising? And how many channels? I’m console-less now and happy to be. I mix everything in Nuendo with RME Madi cards taking 64 channels from eight slave PCs via Adat. I use an old Tascam DS-M7.1 as the interface between the Madi and the Quested 5.1 speakers (208s) – such a shame Tascam decided to discontinue the DS as it’s still so unique. What decision process was behind the choice of this audio console? There aren’t many options for a console with eight Adat inputs. I used to have a Mackie D8B, but that only managed four. I have a huge custom orchestral sample library spanning many terabytes spread over eight PCs running Kontakt and Gigastudio, using 800 MIDI channels for my template. RAM has always been a bottleneck, although I’m hoping I'll be able to downsize the number of slaves soon once 64-bit gets established and I can use more than 3Gb of RAM in each machine.
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Do you utilise any outboard effects/eq? Not any more since I discovered UADs. I’m working on so many cues simultaneously for speed’s sake that outboard gear just doesn't work for me. I used to have some tasty eqs and compressors in my last studio, but it was just too much hassle wiring them up. UAD does vintage so well, I don't think there’s a big enough difference between virtual and real any more. I have most of the Neve plugins, the new Moog filter sounds great and still put the original LA2a and Pultec on nearly everything. I miss my old Lexicon though, sometimes. What makes you happy when working? Watching my disklavier do its thing. What’s been your worst professional experience to date? I had a flood in my studio a few years ago when I was based in a cellar, because I was too stingy to install a £50 pump in the soak away. What’s been your career highlight? I worked with Nokia on the transition from monophonic ring tones to polyphonic eight years ago, which included my piano arrangement of the default Nokia ring tone that so many people never get around to changing on their phones. It still gives me a buzz every time I hear it – in restaurants, trains, travelling abroad, or even watching Eastenders. Funny that the year I spent a fortune on custom speakers built by Roger Quested, I spent most of that year mixing through a miniature 1cm phone speaker. ianlivingstone.net
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Going with a bang Having cost an estimated 1.5 billion dollars, the man-made island of Palm Jumeirah was completed recently with the opening of its focal point, Atlantis. Sporting a newly expanded Dubai office, Delta Sound was on hand to satisfy audio requirements…
H
eld in celebration of the ‘ultimate fantasy hotel’, the launch of Atlantis was a musical and visual spectacular that attracted luminaries aplenty. Following a recommendation by technical director Simon Ransom, Delta Dubai was handed the project by owners Kerzner International with a merciful 11 months to prepare. With the head of the Dubai office, Andy Jackson, already enlisted to undertake sound design, it was decided that it made sense for the company to handle the whole event, including equipment. Delta was already experiencing a significant growth period and this gave the company the perfect opportunity to consider investment in new equipment – undoubtedly standing it in good stead for future large-scale events.
“We were the source of all timecode, which we distributed to everyone. So when we hit the button, we effectively blew up The Palm.” Andy Jackson “We started the project with a clean slate,” recalls Jackson. “We knew there was going to be a large audiovisual content and that there would be some serious pyrotechnics involved. Those were the things that were set in stone as far as the sound design went. Things evolved over the next eight months, but we also knew fairly early on that there was going to be a major artist performing. The sound design had to cover all those aspects and preferably not double up on systems.” That artist turned out to be pop princess Kylie Minogue – no mean feat for any events company. But Jackson designed a system that proved ideal for Kylie’s engineers, who brought in their own Digico SD7 and D5 consoles as local control to dovetail with Delta’s own Digico D5 and the 5.1 setup that the company installed for the overall production.
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Delta’s D5 at FOH – the first to reside permanently in the UAE – was operated by engineer Martyn Ward, with playback from two Radar V 24track hard disks sent out from the UK head office. These were primarily used for the 20-minute audiovisual 5.1 surround piece that was the climax to the show and included music that was sync’d with the firework display. “All the sessions were mastered on Pro Tools by Ali Viles,” says Jackson. “We then put everything on to the Radars and two 360 Systems Instant Replay V2s were used for all the incidental two track audio, walk-up music and backing tracks. We were the source of all timecode, which we distributed to everyone else – pyro, lighting, projection, show callers and so on. So when we hit the button, we effectively blew up The Palm.” The aforementioned equipment investment included a substantial L’Acoustics loudspeaker contingent, which Jackson considered perfect for the job in hand: “We had a total of 28 V-Dosc, 32 dV-Dosc, 24 SB218 subs, four Arcs, 12 Kiva, four Kilo and four dV subs. Our monitor system was 16 Audio Analyst 12FRs with control from a Yamaha PM5D and was run by our monitor engineer, Phillip Down. Everything was powered with L-Acoustics amps.” The main room 5.1 and stereo system comprised left and right hangs of ten V-Dosc, a centre fill of 12 dV-Dosc, rear left and right arrays of four V-Dosc each, along with 16 SB218 subs. As part of the opening reveal, arriving guests were met by Poseiden himself and for this, a separate system consisting of 24 dV-Dosc and eight SB218 Subs was employed. This system also took care of the Afterglow party, hosted by DJs Donna D’Cruz and Samantha Ronson. “We had a fantastic crew,” concludes Jackson. “As well as those already mentioned, Liam McGrath and Peter McGlynn were in charge of the stage, and system engineers were Robert Eatock and Craig Harvey. Mohamad Arif was also drafted in from Gearhouse which, being an L’Acoustics network supplier, we also occasionally bring in to supply additional equipment for our larger projects.” deltasound.co.uk
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The sound of the universe
UK loudspeaker manufacturer Ohm has been producing world-class products since the 1970s. With a thriving export business and pro audio products galore, it is quietly establishing a major international presence. Gary Cooper talks to Ohm’s Clive Kinton about changing gears…
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udio Pro readers with elephantine memories will remember the Cheshire-based Ohm company from long ago – back in the 1970s, in fact, when its distinctive products were closely associated with the MI sector of the business. Though Ohm never went away (far from it, it turns out), the company seems to have hidden its light under a bushel in recent years, busily developing a thriving export business in 15 countries and moving into the pro end of audio with a comprehensive range of vertically integrated products – yet not seeking a great deal of publicity back home. Recent months have seen a change of direction, at least in a marketing sense, explains sales manager, Clive Kinton, with a new advertising campaign designed to raise awareness of just how large a company Ohm has become and a range of products and expertise that might surprise some. “The company came from the MI side of the business and today has moved into installation and live sound rental, with about 80 per cent of our business in the former,” he says.
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This is a traditionally more robust area and Kinton reveals how he is finding the recent climate in installation. “It does seem that whatever happens in the economy, people seem to go out and spend money. I’ve just had some customers from Finland over for the weekend to look at some club installations we’ve done and everywhere we've taken them has been packed – there seems to be no recession in club land. That said, club owners have never been very keen on spending money – particularly on sound systems. One of the biggest issues we have in the audio industry is epitomised by one guy we’re in discussion with at the moment. He’s spent £1.4 million on his club, wants to open it in a few weeks, he still hasn’t made his mind up about sound and is moaning that he hasn’t got any money left. Out of that £1.4 million, he’s worried about £20,000 on sound.” Besides operating in a relatively healthy sector, another factor helping Ohm ride out the rough times is its thriving export business. “It has certainly been the mainstay of our activities over the past few years,” he says. “The company is based in Cheshire, but we have a factory in
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“From ceiling speakers in a wedding room, through churches, schools, bars, pubs, nightclubs, sports stadiums – anywhere there’s sound, we’ve got a product to suit.”
Clive Kinton Poland, which we’ve had for about 15 years and Poland is a good market for us as well, with a growing economy. Some of the nightclubs they are putting together in Poland now are really very nice and we’re lucky that we are established in that market. “We also have a factory in China and they also look after our sales in the region, which has been another developing market. They’re keen on Europe-made products and we are finding some excellent business in hotels. For example, in one they have 120 rooms, each with a karaoke set up and a pro-quality audio system that we’ve supplied – the sort of system that would sell here for a couple of thousand pounds each. “Another area we’re doing a lot of business is in India, where they are spending lots of money on big hotels and they don’t think of stinting on the sound systems.” Ohm, it turns out, is also tremendously busy in Korea – another export market where it has become a significant supplier, notably in the country’s huge house of worship sector. To supply these growing demands, Ohm now offers a wide range of products, designed in the UK by a team led by company founder, Jo Olenski. They range from an installation ceiling speaker to a stadium speaker, with amplifiers and all the associated products in between. “We’ve got something that will cover every application from ceiling speakers in a wedding room, through churches, schools, bars, pubs, nightclubs, sports stadiums - really anywhere there’s sound, we’ve got a product to suit. We don’t specialise in anything in particular, for example we don't say we do swimming pool speakers, but we do have speakers that can be used in swimming pools and we know what needs to be done to get them to work properly. And all our users are served by our dealer network or by the rental company involved in a particular project.”
Ohm’s BR Series extends its remit into the installation sector
Ohm has an impressive client list, too, including such prestigious venues as the Vienna State Opera House, The National Gallery in London, Moscow Airport and the largest dance club in Northwest England – the 5,000-capacity Blackpool Syndicate. Though Ohm does offer line arrays (indeed, they are quite frequently included in its club systems), the company’s main live rental sound system at present is a ground stack, Kinton says. “That’s our TRS system and the main market for that is live sound festivals. Big act touring tends to go for line array, of course, and we’ve not been in that market, though we will be launching some line array systems at the Frankfurt show, later this year – a double ten-inch and a single 12-inch.” The existing speakers in the TRS line vary from the dual 12-inch TRS-212 to the TRS 118H, along with a range of subs. Cabinets in the series are made from 18mm birch plywood, finished in eco friendly anthracite paint. High SPLs have made the speakers ideal for club installations, as well as FOH and monitor applications. “It’s a very funny market, the line array business. Once a big touring company has bought its line array, that’s it – they’re not going to buy another and there are companies who have virtually given stuff away to get into the market. We’re not into that, but we’ve got a customer base that is already using our equipment, who have said to us that if we had a line array, they’d use it, so that’s what we are going to offer.” Not only does Ohm have a range that embraces most audio applications, but it is unusual in the way it sources supply – it makes everything itself. “About 90 per cent of what we sell, we make ourselves,” he says. “We make all the wooden boxes, we make the drivers, for example, and all the professional products are cast basket drivers, even down to our six-inch speakers. Little things make the difference and enable you to keep control over the manufacturing quality, which is so important.” If that comes as a surprise, so does the actual size of the company. Ohm currently employs about 100 people worldwide, Kinton reveals. “In the UK there’s about 20 of us and, in fact, we’ve just added two people in the UK factory, which is good at a time when so many are laying people off. We did it because we need the extra people because we do so much ourselves. “One of the nice things about working this way is that we can have an idea and turn it into a product and be testing it virtually the next morning – it gives us great flexibility and the ability to offer our customers a lot of adaptability. For example, if they suddenly find they’ve got to fly three speakers in the middle of nowhere, we can make a frame for them to do that and we’ve made a lot of fixing frames and flying frames that enable people to do unusual things – we’re that flexible, because we have the metal working, the welding capability and the machinery to do it. “It’s important to remember there is still business out there,” Kinton says. “It’s quieter than it was, of course, but people are still doing things and export is still good to Northern Europe and also to Eastern Europe, like Slovakia, where every little town seems to be getting its own club.” Ohm might have been playing down its success in the UK market in recent years, but one thing seems sure – they have certainly been making a heck of a lot of noise overseas. ohm.co.uk
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January 2009
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Showtime
at the Apollo
Ger Colclough has been mixing monitors for Primal Scream for the past for eight years. He has chosen some key gear to best support the bands recent rock and roll party shows and the support bands on the tour. Andrew Low talks to Colclough about being on stage with the Scream…
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rimal Scream is known for a lot of things: taking loads of drugs, creating innovative music, taking more drugs and getting crowds on their feet through explosive live shows. Lead singer Bobby Gillespie is the leader of the rock n roll party establishing the band as a mainstay in the UK music for decades. Through many line-up changes and collaborations, Primal Scream has grown up from its avant-garde routes and borrowed from the late 80s acid house movement, which brought the group its first chart success in the 90s with the album Screamadelica. Almost two decades later, the Scream was back in London’s Hammersmith Apollo, hooting and hollering hits from its back catalogue, along with songs from the latest album, Beautiful Future. The band’s monitor engineer Ger Colclough is no stranger to being on the road. Just before he jumped on the buss with Primal Scream, he was on a world tour with My Bloody Valentine (MBV). It seems that Colclough is on most of the interesting tours that come through town, as he is also the monitor engineer for New Order, Placebo, The Charlatans, Kosheen, Adele and Divine Comedy, in addition to working with Primal Scream for more than eight years.
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Colclough was spoiled by being able to use an analog Midas Heritage H3000 on MBV’s tour, but he is back to using Yamaha’s digital PM5D for the recent Primal Scream outing. He has been with the band so long that he knows the songs just as well, even more than some of the newer members and does a lot of on-the-fly mixing, making slight adjustments to different songs to adapt to different acoustics in the various venues on the tour. The PM5D was chosen for the tour because, with two opening bands, Colclough felt it necessary to use a digital board to save on set up time and space. He has been very happy with the board’s work on tour, aside from a power surge that reset it to its original software version. He explains, “I had a power surge last week and as the board didn’t come with a UPS back up, it reverted back to its original running system of 1.12. Even though I save each show it was in the 2.2 version, so I couldn't access any of my shows. Luckily I was able to get online and download the 2.23 version and reboot the board before the show, otherwise it would have been a disaster. Note to PA companies: all digital consoles should be supplied with a UPS to avoid situations like this.”
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Yamaha’s PM5D takes the stage every night to provide monitor mixes for one of the loudest bands in rock n roll
Colclough has not been personally affected by the cutbacks often reported from modern touring productions, nor has he been forced to use a certain piece of gear by a tour manager to save on space and costs. In fact, Primal Scream’s two trucks and 14man crew seems extravagant by today’s standards. “I haven’t personally seen any effect. I presume some accountant is having a sleepless night over a budget, but the show must go on,” he jokes. The band performs extremely loud rock n roll that does not require the use of outboard gear for monitors and Colclough only uses the board’s onboard gates and compression on keys and bass channels. He is running 32 channels over 11 different mixes through ten L-Acoustics 115XT HiQ wedges, two VDosc side fills with two Arcs per side and two SB118 drum subs. The FOH PA for the tour features 12 dV-Doscs per side with eight V-Dosc subs and three dV-Subs per side with Arcs as infills, mixed by Michael Brennan on his own Digidesign D-Show Profile. The no frills, rock ethic is also demonstrated on stage, as only drummer Darrin Mooney uses Shure E3s IEMs, with other members relying solely on the stage wedges. “Mooney has a mixer that I send three lines to, which comprise guitars, vocals and his kit that he mixes himself along with a click track,” says Colclough. The board’s saved scene feature is also not needed and most of the mixing is done during the show as cues from the band members and Colclough’s memory. “There are a couple of songs where the guitarist will give me the nod to up the solo in his mix and a couple where Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield (the bass player) likes to hear the track maxed out in his mix. He simply loves the volume of it,” he explains. MBV’s own Kevin Shields also joined the band onstage for the Apollo show to play songs from Exterminator and other hits. “Shield’s took a regular mix of drums and bass and his guitar, nothing special as he was only playing on a couple of songs with us,” Colclough notes. “It can get very crazy on some of the songs and difficult to balance Gillespie’s vocal over the ensuing volume, so I try to reduce some elements of his mix to get him above the carnage. Some of the dancier tracks are hard and aggressive and the volume is incredible on stage, so at times it’s a fight to get his voice above it all.” The mics used to capture said ‘carnage’ are a typical mix of Shure and Sennheiser. Each guitar amp is miked with an SM57 and a Sennheiser 606, which creates two contrasting sounds that are blended together. “Gillespie has used a Standard SM58 as long as I can remember. He really puts the mics through their paces; dropping it, throwing it – usual lead singer behaviour – and the 58 takes it every time. We use SM Beta 57s on the backing vocals because they seem to give more bite to the occasional shout given by the musicians.”
“It can get very crazy on some of the songs, so it is difficult to balance Gillespie’s vocal over the ensuing volume.” Ger Colclough The past ten years in the business have been extraordinary by all accounts, as he has consistently worked for innovative and legendary bands. His only complaint is the way the music business has lost its soul with accountants calling the shots. He also feels that manufacturers should develop road versions of new gear, rather than making live engineers use reverbs and dynamics designed for studio use. Colclough will stay on the road with Primal Scream in 2009 and travel to Japan, Australia and the US. He has also hinted at more MBV shows. Based on his schedule in 2008, he will be on a tour bus for most of the year. No doubt, whatever stage he is on will also feature a great band benefiting from his talent and passion for good music. primalscream.net
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January 2009
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New Seattle sound
Fleet Foxes recorded hit albums and grew great beards at Avast!
Avast! Recording is Seattle’s best-known underground studio. Forged in the flames of the grunge era, it has lasted though the ages and its producers and engineers have stamped their sound on some of the biggest indie records from the past decade. Andrew Low talks to Stuart Hallerman about the continued success of Avast...
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hen I interviewed Stuart Hallerman of Avast! Recording a few months ago, he told me that a young band that was family friends of producer Phil Ek had just been in the studio and left a giant EMT 140 plate reverb. That band turned out to be Fleet Foxes, which has recently received four stars from Rolling Stone and hailed by critics as this generation’s answer to Crosby, Stills & Nash, received a nine out of ten stars from Pitchfork.com and reached number one on the CMJ Radio chart. Whether it is the bands, the producer or the studio that is responsible for the many successful albums that have been made at Avast, the reputation of the studio certainly precedes itself. Hallerman opened the studio in Seattle in the spring of 1990 while working as Soundgarden’s FOH engineer. Since building the first studio it has hosted major indie trend setters like Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, The Shins, Death Cab for Cutie, Cat Power, the list goes on. Avast! has also become the favourite area studio for Phil Ek (Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Les Savy Fav, Mudhoney), John Goodmanson (Hot Hot Heat, Blondie, Unwound, Sleater Kinney and Wu Tang Clan)and a considerable number of others. Hallerman believes that one of the reasons for the studio’s success is his aim to not make everything sound ‘squeaky’ clean. He explains: “When I first started the studio if you were in a rock band going into a Seattle studio dressed scrappy looking like you were in a bar band you
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would get the assistant engineer or and intern to record your session. Those guys would get nervous and make a ‘perfect’ sounding album. They would minimise distortion, minimise the bleed and put everyone in headphones; basically do all the wrong things and the band came out with a clean recording that they didn’t like. Rock music is art, not cookie-cutter commercial stuff. It has more feeling and heart to it.”
“Rock music is art, not cookie-cutter commercial stuff. It has more feeling and heart to it.” Stuart Hallerman He also consulted with Soundgarden to devise the best atmosphere for the studio. “I was on the road with Soundgarden while I was shopping around for a space,” Hallerman notes. “They really put the reins on me and told me to make the studio kind of cheap, really comfortable and I knew to let the bands hang out and record all day rather than kicking them out for an advertising client. As a result, the Avast! aesthetic is a super comfortable space that people describe as the best rehearsal space they have ever been in.”
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Finding the right building was another task altogether. “I was hung up on 100 times when I was looking for a studio, after explaining to landlords that it was going to be a rock n roll recording studio,” Hallerman explains. “This was during the height of the Seattle grunge era, and Nirvana, Tad and Mudhoney had already recorded albums. I was starting to think that if I didn’t open up the studio by the end of 1989 I was going to miss the entire Seattle scene.” After the arduous search for the right space, Hallerman bought a modest amount of recording equipment, developed a studio that people could relate to and his calendar quickly began to fill up. He was able to record many bands during the grunge era and stay busy despite its decline by recording bands in the burgeoning indie rock scene. The work was so steady that he and producer John Goodmanson opened up a smaller studio, whose schedule also filled up instantly. Things were very busy for Avast! until the advent of Pro Tools. After hearing feedback from engineers stating that early versions of Pro Tools were “kind of shitty”, Hallerman stuck to using analog tape until it became apparent that he had to make the change over. “I was a late-comer to Pro Tools. It was not cheap and there was no way I was going to spend 15 to 20 thousand on something that sounded worse than what I already had. It got to the point that my calendar was empty and the phone was ringing with people asking if I had Pro Tools. I had to turn away a lot of people until I finally broke down and bought it. The work began coming back in, although it still took a long time for tape to dwindle away.” While he still prefers tape, he is happy with the modern Pro Tools HD systems, but still suggests that bands mixdown to half-inch tape. “I’m happy with the sound,” he admits. “And if you have really great sounds going into it, it barely puts a hurt on it. Maybe even less so than analog, although they both colour the sound a little bit. Pro Tools still changes the performances and the sounds you record to it. One of the dangers that still exists with any DAW is that you never say no to overdubs and decisions don’t get made because the band always wants to wait until you are mixing to decide which tracks to use. Then it comes time to mix and you have a morass of stuff. “It also leads to the situation where a band member will do a performance and miss something or hit a bad note, they will put down their instrument and expect the engineer to fix it with cutting and pasting, rather than going for inspiration or playing it right. When you put the same people in front of a tape deck and they have to get it right or know where they are going with the song, it is artistically different.” With nearly two decades of experience under his belt, Hallerman has collected a huge range of great analog gear, including LA2As, dbx 160s distressors and large plate reverbs. Studio A at Avast! has a 36-foot by 34-foot live room and a 19-foot by 26-foot control room. A 36-channel Trident ARange console, Studer A827 two-inch, 24-track recorder, and a Pro Tools HD2 system are also in place for digital and analog recording, with an extensive array of vintage and modern outboard mic preamps and processors. It can take up to 30 players with isolation areas for soloists and vocals. Studio B has a 22-foot by 32-foot live room with wooden floors and two isolation booths. A Trident TSM console and Pro Tools HD2 system lives in the control room along with an Ampex MM1200 two-inch, 16-track recorder and an Ampex half-inch, two-track deck. Studio B is the more affordable of the studios and can be used for tracking, overdubbing, editing, or mixing. The API Legacy Console, analog gear,
www.audioprointernational.com
Large live rooms and great gear at Avast! have made it the choice of great bands and producers from around the world
stacks of 1176s and a fully loaded Pro Tools system originally located in Avast! Classic was moved into the same building as Studios A and B. Hallerman credits the API Legacy as the reason for the great high-end sheen that bands like Band of Horses, The Shins and Fleet Foxes have got at the studio. He explains: “Both Goodmanson and Ek would boost up really nice parts of the high end and I asked Goodmanson how to get that clarity and brightness. He told me just to turn to up the high end up a lot. I looked at the board, and, sure enough, the high end was turned up on everything and it works. The high end from the board doesn’t hurt your ears. “Phil Ek really knows how to sculpt the high part of the frequency range beautifully. I can’t mix as brightly as he does. My ears tell me that things should be darker than that. He has eagle ears and wants things to sound good. He also helps me maintain the studio by pointing out all the broken gear,” Hallerman laughs. The reverb heavy vocals found on recordings from Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes is another signature sound of Avast! and Hallerman attributes it to the EMT 140 plate reverb left by Fleet Foxes, combined with the studio’s Lexicon 480 and Klark Teknik DN780. The legacy of Avast! Recording has spanned across many years and successfully influenced several waves of the music business. It is now known as one of the premier studios in the US for indie rock bands, big and small. With carefully chosen gear and a mandate to keep things rock n roll, Hallerman and the associated engineers and producers at Avast! aim to infuse a pulse into every song tracked or mixed at the studio. avastrecording.com January 2009
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Overcoming Vertigo Legendary London nightspot Number One Leicester Square has been brought back to life with the help of Essex Sound and Light. Thanks to its new KV2 sound system, Arron Curtis tells API, this time the sky is the limit…
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ecognised by London’s clubbing fraternity as one of the city’s hotspots, Number One Leicester Square – the birthplace of the infamous Home nightclub – has now reopened as the 750capacity Vertigo, under the ownership of Interguide London. With Sound Bar also trading further down the building, the new management team quickly realised that the inherited hybrid sound system was something of a mismatch and sought the advice of one of the club’s experienced DJs, Southend-based Andy Smith. Smith told marketing and promotions manager Arron Curtis that a number of busy venues in his seaside hometown had been fitted with thumping KV2 systems by local installers Essex Sound & Light and before long, the company’s MD, Mike Glover, had been drafted in to add Vertigo to his list of projects. The first stage of a phased upgrade has seen Glover install a KV2 ES system in the main clubbing area and the lounge area above. With the Leicester Square Empire situated just next door, Curtis sensed that in taking over a venue used to host film premiere parties, they would have a lot to live up to: “The sound is the heart of a club,” he says. “But we didn’t have a heart and Andy was jumping up and down about the KV2 system.” Curtis himself had graced the wheels of steel at some of London’s most famous super clubs of the 90s, such as Club UK and the Leisure Lounge. With his knowledge of the industry, he commissioned Mike Glover’s company and the KV2 rig purely on reputation, without so much as an audition, deciding to purchase the system rather than rent. Working alongside Darren Lambert, ESL’s head of engineering, Mike Glover carried out a survey and quickly divided the three floors into a multi-zone configuration. He also realised they were in an inherently ‘live’ room, with a large number of windows which, while offering spectacular views over the city, presented the potential for a mass of sonic reflections in what was already a hard-surfaced room, with an arced exterior wrapped around the rear of the bar. The solution was not an easy one, but Glover soon got on top of it.
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“Time aligning the EX10’s around the curve proved difficult, but we’ve done so very successfully, with the delay taps set in three pairs,” reports Glover. Six of the compact EX10 two-way speakers, with a ten-inch woofer and one-inch compression driver, form the perimeter system, wallmounted on their own brackets and facing inwards. Glover decided that the advantages of an inherently optimised system were selfevident, with on-board electronics ensuring fast, easy set up and complete control, and electronic crossovers, phase alignment, eq and speaker protection integrated into the EX10’s amplifier module. Each main dancefloor stack comprises a pair of ES1.8 reflex hornloaded, single 18-inch subs, under a three-way, very high output, active-driven, ES1.0 mid-high/mid-bass enclosure, using EPAK 2500/R amp modules. All control and signal routing take place in a Soundweb London BLU-160 (configured four-in/12-out), which routes sound sources between the different floors. Both the sixth and seventh floors are also equipped with a Soundweb London BLU-6 remote panel, for local source selection and volume control. “Each floor can play out to the other, including the eighth, where we’ve integrated the existing 3088 Soundweb Lite DSP into the new network,” states Glover. “It’s a complete matrix. We have kept this installation remarkably simple. The placement of KV2 enclosures is vital in order to get the best out of them. If you try to be too clever, or use indiscriminate equalisation or other needless ‘correctional units’, it will backfire.” The DJ booth also houses a KV2 EX6 for reference monitoring with a small footprint. Up on the seventh floor, Mike Glover repeated the formula, wall mounting eight EX10s with a pair of EX2.2 subs providing bass extension. The DJ booth is configured identically to the set-up beneath. A similar approach to delay taps of the EX10 was applied. kv2audio.com esl-systems.co.uk
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Jazz haven
The eminent Herbie Hancock performs with the first Digico SD8 to be used in France providing his monitor mix
The third Monte Carlo Jazz festival attracted an impressive list of musicians and a discerning set of fans, both accustomed to exceptional sound quality. Rob Hughes went along to find out how Digico met some great expectations…
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ith a focus on innovation, the third annual Monte Carlo Jazz festival was presented by Mr Jean-René Palacio, artistic director of SBM (Société des Bains de Mer), which owns some of Monaco’s most distinctive landmarks, including the Monte Carlo Casino. The festival took place across several locations, chiefly the Opera House (or Salle Garnier) and the trendy Moods music bar, a small, multi-layered club-style venue. The most recognisable name on the artist roster was possibly Herbie Hancock, who played to a packed house alongside Manu Katche Playground, but for many punters, the highlight of the festival was a world first performance of Marcus Miller and the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra. The younger generation was represented by ‘gipsy jazz child’ Thomas Dutronc and Malene Mortensen, while a series of festive concerts included Franck Mead Band, Ben Sidran and Georgie Fame. SBM’s technical partner for the event was local Nice-based supplier Arpège Son Lumière, headed up by Philippe Barguirdjian, who was duly enlisted as sound supervisor at the festival. Barguirdjian was present throughout the duration to provide crucial onsite support together with David Webster, marketing director at Digico. The manufacturer’s digital live consoles featured prominently in FOH and monitor positions across the event. “We started to prepare around two months before the festival, after the summer season has finished,” recalls Barguirdjian. “We received the last riders at the beginning of October and began to write the list of equipment for the festival. As technical supplier, our job is to provide all the support necessary. We look at all the artist riders along with the stage manager and we can then decide what equipment to specify. If there are any problems, it’s our job to call the technical directors to discuss the rider and maybe arrange alternatives.” A loyal client of Digico, Arpège supplied the consoles to three locations – the Opera House, Moods bar and the Auditorium Rainier III, which was used by Marcus Miller band and the orchestra for
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crucial rehearsal sessions. Due to the nature of the festival, Barguirdjian and Webster encountered a number of engineers who were not familiar with the desks and therefore required a degree of support and reassurance in using them. This however presented no problems, as Palacio explains: “We host many events that would not normally use Digico, but although the engineers don’t know what the consoles are like, they are interested because they have heard the name and they are always very happy because they are so cool to work with. Nobody says they don’t want to use Digico; some engineers are not familiar with the consoles, but we are here to assist and after five minutes they understand.” Running the show this year required a slightly different approach to 2007 due to the addition of Marcus Miller – the idea of Jean-René Palacio. The complexity of the act called for rehearsals to take place during the festival itself, running concurrently with other main events. Barguirdjian found himself splitting his time between the Opera House and the auditorium, to keep a technical eye on both venues. His crew faced a very limited timeframe in which to turn the end of rehearsals in the auditorium into the main performance in the Salle Garnier and thus wanted to make best use of the equipment that was already present in the Opera House. Although the act, which comprised over 20 musicians, had rehearsed on a Digico D5, the only desk that would fit in the FOH box in the Opera House was a smaller-format D1. Unfortunately, the team was prohibited from positioning a console amid seating areas, but compatibility between the two desks negated the need for this, as Barguirdjian puts it: “The FOH booth in the Opera House is very small and getting the desk inside was very tricky. We didn’t want to have to put a different desk in there on the morning of the Marcus Miller show, so during rehearsals we used exactly the same audio equipment that was in the Opera House. That meant that FOH engineer Dennis Thompson, mixed on the same L-Acoustics system that he would be using on the night of the performance. Its tonal
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Above: Marcus Miller in 11th hour rehearsals on a D5 and, right, the illustrious Monte Carlo casino and entrance to the Opera House
balance was exactly the same as for the show. The desk was a D5, but the session was fully compatible with the D1 in Salle Garnier. We just had to save his session onto a USB key and load it into the D1 on the Saturday morning. For monitor engineer Rebekah Foster, we had an SD8, exactly as she used in rehearsals.” In fact, the only piece of equipment the team had had to move into the Opera House was the D5 desk that pre mixed the orchestra. From this they sent three stereo groups to Thompson and Foster to add to their mix for Marcus Miller. The orchestra was pre mixed by Olivier Moreau from Arpège. XTA DP226 crossovers present in the Salle Garnier were used to control the system. 226s have been used every year since the first event three years ago, before the 448s were available. As the company has supplied the same system each year, they simply load the same presets onto the units each time, which Barguirdjian says simplifies their job enormously. Over at Moods bar, resident engineer Philippe Dagau was on hand to welcome the visiting bands and their engineers. The club features a Digico D1 permanently installed at FOH, which was specified and fitted by Arpège in the spring of 2008. Again, the small footprint of the console was a deciding factor, as was the fact that SBM engineers who would work in the bar were already familiar with Digico desks, having mixed on the SD7 and D5 at the Monaco Sporting Club. When Audio Pro International caught up with Dagau, he was mixing a show for the Franck Mead band. He comments: “The acoustics at Moods bar are really good because the place was designed to give the best result. It’s not easy to mix here, however, because the FOH booth is upstairs, looking down onto the stage. This means that we don’t have the same sound at the desk as we do in the room. Nevertheless, the D1 is really easy to use, with great ergonomics. Visiting engineers are usually very happy to work with this desk.” Visiting engineers aren’t the only ones happy with Digico – monitor engineer Rebekah Foster has noted that her future riders will specify Digico, while a jubilant Jean-René Palacio
“They park their Bentley in the street and when they come inside, they like to hear a Bentley of consoles at FOH.” Jean-René Palacio www.audioprointernational.com
is keen to stress his appreciation of the company. He notes: “We have a long history with Digico; we have been partners since the opening of the first festival three years ago. We already have a really strong relationship and we have new Digico desks every year. The whole of SBM is now Digico equipped. “It’s essential we have a very high-level of equipment because this is the only time we host an amplified event at the opera house; the rest of the time it’s purely acoustic. It’s really important to people in Monte Carlo that they get the best sound. When they arrive, they park their Bentley in the street and when they come inside they like to hear a Bentley of mixing desks at FOH.” With the help of Barguirdjian and Webster, Palacio seems to have ironed out the multitude of problems that events of this size can present. Not only was the show an operational success, it is reported that four of the five days were completely sold out. Palacio is left with one more dilemma however – what to change for 2009. He continues: “The only question is what do we do next year because we want to come up with new ideas and continue to be creative. We have to be different each time, but the venue will remain the same because for us, Salle Garnier is so beautiful. At work today everybody is asking: ‘why don’t you go for a bigger venue?’ – well, this place – it moves your soul.” digico.org
Moods engineer Philippe Dagau tweaks the sounds of the Franck Mead band
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Wigan’s ultra modern council chambers sports a new RCF system
Breaking convention In the modern world of fragile economic and diplomatic relationships, it’s crucial that delegates of decisive meetings are clearly heard. Rob Hughes calls an assembly of equipment found in contemporary conference rooms… Danish Interpretation Systems DIS HAS delivered conference and simultaneous interpretation systems to parliaments, national banks, and organisations such as NATO and UN, for some of the world’s most prestigious installations. The company’s flagship DCS 6000 system is designed as a complete solution for conference discussion, voting and simultaneous interpretation requirements, while providing a sound reinforcement system for the users. Fully digital, the system is connected via standard CAT 5 cables and has been designed to offer the best technical opportunities for interpreters, chairmen, and delegates, regardless of origin, to be able to listen, talk, vote and understand each other. DIS claims that it is the first system in the market to handle up to eight active mics plus 32 different language channels simultaneously. For more advanced use the DCS 6000 Conference Management Software, SW 6000, enables extended control and enhanced features from a central PC or a client/server network. The SW 6000 supports numerous screen languages, delegate information, mimic diagram, mic and interpretation management, system admin, multiple room selection, voting, agenda handling, messaging and so on. A new addition to the system, the DC6990P is the first conference unit with a built-in touchscreen. This allows participants to request and view the agenda, delegate information, messages and more. Users can see the results of voting appear onscreen before them. A DCS 6000 system featuring DC6990P units was recently installed within the EU Committee Room at the Danish Parliament, Folketinget. dis.cc Audio-Technica FOLLOWING its introduction of the first fully automatic, hands-free conference system in 2007, Audio-Technica’s latest development in the field is the ATCS-60 wireless conferencing system.
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Designed for large-scale conferences, the ATCS-60 can cater for up to 150 delegates. Flexible routing and multi-channel operation can manage simultaneous interpretation of one native and three foreign languages. Infra-red communication between delegate mics and master control unit ensures increased security over UHF and 2.5Ghz-based systems, with signals unable to pass through conference venue walls. The 19-inch rackmountable ATCS-C60 master control unit can be configured to control several functions, including the number of delegate units with priority settings, select automatic or traditional button press modes, adjust threshold for automatic mode, or output up to five separate audio channels, via software. Either wall or ceiling mounted, the ATCS-A60 infra-red transmitter/receiver connects to the C60 master control unit via BNC coaxial cable. Use of separate ATCS-D60 distributor units allows up to 16 A60 devices to be used simultaneously to cover larger venues. The standard version of the ATCS-C60MAG conference manager software is supplied free of charge with each C60 master control unit. The software allows complete control over all basic functions of the system including number of speakers, speaker order, individual volume, thresholds and audio routing for interpretation integration. Use of the extended version of the software (C60MAG-REG) affords audio and video recording, minute taking and programmability to enable cameras to follow the delegate unit currently in use. audio-technica.com Beyerdynamic BEYERDYNAMIC has been manufacturing advanced dedicated audio conference systems for over ten years and was the first company to introduce wireless technology to the conference market. Heading up the digital wireless range is the MCWD 200 AUDIO conference system. As well as push-to-talk functionality and chairmanPRO override,
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the MCWD 200 features integrated digital voting together with up to eight channels of simultaneous translation, text paging and on-board data display. All MCW-D systems feature the most advanced security and encryption techniques possible in conference technology, to ensure total privacy for each meeting. With integrated 128-bit variable chipping keys and eight digit alpha-numeric PIN codes, beyerdynamic insists that the MCW-D is the most secure dedicated wireless audio conference system line available on the market. Using the dedicated PC control software, all MCW-D systems can be controlled remotely through either the TCP/IP or RS-232 connection interfaces. Supplied as standard, these feature easy-to-use synoptic interfaces and intuitive microphone queuing systems, as well as integrated data logging. Joining the range in 2009 will be the MCW-D Revoluto series, featuring the line-array microphone system, designed to allow maximum user movement when in use, enabling the speaker to stand up, sit down, move to the left or right and still benefit from a good audio response. This new technology removes the gooseneck mic completely and also boasts integral DSP for enhanced frequency response. An MCW-D 100 system was installed in Edinburgh City Council chambers five years ago, but this is now due to be upgraded to an 85-unit Revolotu system, in preparation for the upcoming Royal visit for the Military Tattoo in August. beyerdynamic.com Allen & Heath A&H’S IDR series is a digital audio processing and distribution system, which, although designed for a broad range of applications, is ideal for use as a conference audio networking solution. The iDR device is an audio matrix mix processor which provides up to 16 inputs and 16 outputs with comprehensive DSP capability, including eq, dynamics, delay, auto mixing and so on. Up to 250 presets involving complex parameter settings can be saved and easily recalled on the box itself, via a PC running iDR system management software, or from the associated PL series of wall plates and remote controllers. The system’s capacity can be easily increased without the need for extensive wiring, as several iDR units can be linked and holistic control established across all connected devices. A 16 by 16 matrix iDR system was recently installed in the conference suite of Turkey’s Anadolu University, as part of an audio upgrade of the University’s public areas. The suite was fitted with three iDR-8 digital matrix mixers, two iDR-IN expander units, a PL-6 eight-fader remote control panel and two iDR switch units, mixing 31 Sennheiser gooseneck mics through two EAW digital line arrays. A Crestron touch screen connected directly to one of the three iDR-8 units gives manual control of mic switching and levels at the top table.
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Above: DIS 6000 at the Danish Paliarment and, right, Edinburgh City Council will soon have a brand new Revoluto system
The ATCS-A60 comes with the added benefit of making delegates think they are being watched
Erçin Ural, from Allen & Heath’s Turkish distributor, Asimetrik, explains: “The ceiling is a polished hardwood dome and the walls are acoustically absorbent, so feedback was rampant from 160Hz all the way up, but the PEQ and dynamic processing on every iDR channel allowed us to arrive at a very natural sound.” allen-heath.com RCF RCF’s Forum 9000 is a completely digital conference system offering excellent audio quality with totally un-compressed wideband digital audio ensuring maximum intelligibility. The system is ideally suited for council chambers, congress centres, law courts and parliamentary chambers. Forum offers four different conference modes including ‘open discussion’ ‘automatic discussion’ ‘automatic timed discussion’ and ‘managed discussion’. Additional options that can be specified include electronic voting, audio broadcasting in the room, audio recording, camera control and simultaneous interpretation. Interactive keypads and graphic displays capable of showing a variety of information, including voting results and the number of delegates in the booking queue, add to useability. Forum is wired with category 5 UTP cables and RJ45 connectors and does not require external boosters or splitters. The Forum FMS 9411 console uses a very high quality professional hyper-cardioid microphone. Four audio outputs are programmable in audio level adjustment according to the active microphones to link into a supplementary PA System. This makes Forum ideal for installation in acoustically critical environments. Systems can be designed up to a capacity of 240 delegates. Since Forum’s introduction, numerous systems have been specified, not only in Italy and the rest of Europe, but also in China and the Far East. One of the largest systems to date is in the UK, at the Council Chamber of Lincolnshire County Council. A 118 delegate system with electronic voting, camera follow and internet web casting facilities has recently been commissioned, supplied by RW Salt and installed by The Sound Workshop. Other UK installations include Wigan Council Chamber, which boasts a 70-delegate system. rcfaudio.com Yamaha THE AUDIO giant manufactures a groundbreaking range of conferencing devices known as the Project Phone series, which it has recently started to distribute in the US and Europe. Central to the range Project Phone range is the IP audio conference system, comprising the PJP-100H and PJP-50R units – audio conference systems with built-in IP communication functions. Users can immediately set up an inhouse conference with multipoint connections using an existing corporate LAN, with no call charges. This system is ideal for companines that need communication systems between offices within a single company, for example, between Hong Kong and Tokyo branches.
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Transmissions by the 7 kHz-bandwidth systems cover almost all frequencies of the human voice when using G.711 extended code. This is approximately two times that of analog phone lines (3.4 kHz), affording such high fidelity that it not only reduces ear fatigue, but also creates conversations with audio quality that is a so close to that of a face-to-face situation, that it allows speakers to be easily identified by the sound of their voices. The adaptive echo canceller on Yamaha's conference systems analyses the operating environment and automatically adjusts the echo-filter factor accordingly. This performs well in many different acoustic conditions, and enables conferences to be held in any space available. yamaha.com Sennhesier SENNHESIER’S SDC 8200 is a fully digital conference and interpretation solution, which is entirely configurable to allow
The DSP functions of A&H’s iDR system helped solve feedback probelms at Anadolu University
the SDC system to be employed at anything from a small meeting to a vast convention. The SDC 8200 CU central unit is the heart of Sennheiser's system. All settings for the system are made via the central unit's local configuration menu. Housed within 19-inch fullmetal casing, the SDC 8200 CU powers up to 120 conference terminals in six cable lines. The central unit can handle up to 28 languages with five licences included in the basic package. The unit features two analog audio inputs for applications such as wireless microphones, and an analog audio output for recording units or an additional public address system. A four-channel operation infra-red modulator, such as the SI 29-5, connects to the CU’s 15-pin Sub-D connector. The device is also fitted with RS 232 interfaces for PC, media and camera control. Up to 12 central units can be daisy-chained to create systems with up to 1,024 conference terminals. Connected to the SDC 8200 CU, the SDC 8200 AO analog output unit features nine analog outputs to deliver the floor language plus eight translations to IR modulators, PA equipment, recording equipment and so on. The SDC 8200 AO is powered via the central unit. Top of the microphone unit range is the SDC 8200 DV. This delegate unit is designed for a single user and boasts five voting keys, a card reader for secure smart card voting and an LCD display for identification and displaying voting results. Individual or global text messages can be sent to this unit when the system is PC controlled by the SDC configuration and control software. sennheiser.com
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The entertainment and installation technology showcase for the North of the UK
25-26 February 2009, SECC, Glasgow, UK evenTech Scotland is a focused networking forum for the region’s key decision-makers to keep up-to-date with the hottest technologies and latest industry trends and developments.
Register NOW! to attend and win a Tannoy i30 iPod docking station, visit www.eventech-scotland.com
evenTech will provide manufacturers and suppliers with a unique regional platform to make face-to-face contact with a quality audience involved in the North’s major entertainment and installation projects and initiatives.
Prize does not include iPod
To enquire about exhibiting email: info@eventech-scotland.com Media Partner:
www.eventech-scotland.com
2009 The entertainment and installation technology showcase for Ireland
24-25 November 2009, RDS, Dublin, Ireland evenTech Ireland is a focused networking forum for the region’s key decision-makers to keep upto-date with the hottest technologies and latest industry trends and developments.
evenTech will provide manufacturers and suppliers with a unique regional platform to make face-to-face contact with a quality audience involved in Ireland’s major entertainment and installation projects and initiatives.
Enquire NOW about exhibiting at evenTech Ireland 2009! To find out more about evenTech Ireland and the exciting opportunities Ireland presents contact:
Email: info@eventech-ireland.com Telephone: +44 (0) 1776 703572 To register to attend for FREE as a visitor please visit www.eventech-ireland.com Media Partner:
www.eventech-ireland.com
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Each month, TL Audio’s Sarah Yule offers her personal insights into the world of sound recording, mixed with some hot tips for you to try out...
Chewing the fat Sarah Yule looks at different methods to fatten up various elements of a mix…
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his month it’s all about being big and fat in the mix, instead of worrying about how fat we are around the waist. Firstly, I think its important to identify what accounts for something sounding ‘big’ or ‘fat’ and then also which instruments are key to achieving a ‘fat’ and ‘weighty’ impression. When listening to a sound or a complete song, it will only sound ‘fat’ if there is a good representation across the frequency spectrum within the overall sound. A lack of low frequency content and low mids will have the greatest negative effect, as this will make the song sound thin. Try adding in extra sounds, or give an eq boost in these areas. For instance, on a vocal line, remember that the note A by middle C on a piano is 440Hz in the frequency spectrum. This means there are bound to be a number of fundamental frequencies around 400Hz to 500Hz, so try giving these a gentle boost. You should then look to boost the surrounding harmonics of this fundamental frequency. For instance, if you make a boost to the vocal line at 400Hz, try a small boost at 200Hz and 800Hz as starting points. Some of the key frequencies across the spectrum of the mix, where there should be content, are 150Hz, 400hz, 800hz, 1kHz, 2kHz, 4kHz, 7kHz, and 10kHz. As you’ll notice from the frequencies listed, a lack of high mid and high content can also prevent you from achieving a ‘fat’ sounding mix. This is because aurally, the song will sound smaller and less wide without that high-end sparkle. Reverb trails and percussion are a nice way of achieving a good sounding sparkly top end that will add space and dimension to your mix. Your rhythm contained within your drum track is the backbone of your song. This determines a lot of the feel of the track and its tempo and pattern is usually the key in defining genre of the piece. Within this drum track, making your kick and snare stand out is essential for achieving a ‘fat’ sounding track. Volume is not the answer; neither is limiting the kick to 0dB. The best way is to layer the sound. If you are recording live drums you can do this by using at least two mics on the kick. Try something up close to the skin inside the drum to get the slap or crack of each hit and then have another placed further back towards the opening of the drum to get the ‘boom’ sound. You will find that using this combination, first, helps you achieve a bigger, weightier sound, but second, it also means you have much more control over the sound of the kick by balancing up the ‘slap/crack’ sound with the ‘boom/oomph’ sound. If you program your drums using either a pattern editor or samples or playing it in as a finger drummer, you can actually use completely different kicks at the same time to layer up your kick sound. When doing this
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however, please be careful not to choose additional kicks with a long delay on fast tempo music as this could blur the rhythm. When you are recording a snare drum live, try using one mic facing down at the top of the snare and then a second mic facing upright towards the bottom of the snare. This will help you capture the ‘crack’ and the ‘crunch’ of the snare hits. Do not forget that due to the polarity of the two mics, you should always reverse the phase of the second microphone when recording. This can usually be done from your console channel or preamp unit. The other important element is your bassline. A mistake that often occurs is that people go for a very low sub bass as their main bassline. This means that on some playback systems it cannot be heard properly and causes the mix to actually sound thinner on these playback systems. To compensate people end up turning the bass up, which actually causes it to overload on larger playback systems and sound unbalanced. Although sub is important, you should also have some bassline content around 200Hz, so that the melody can clearly be heard and sits on top of your kick drum nicely (kick will probably be around 80Hz to 120Hz). Having space for your kick is essential and the bassline should sit just above it and just underneath it – do not try and turn your kick into your sub content. If the bassline is a key element of the song then the bigger the frequency content the better – you should even try mirroring the bassline an octave up, but slightly lower in the mix to give it more depth and melody. Once you have your bottom end nicely fattened, repeat the concept of layering sounds throughout the piece. Pack up vocals with harmonies and backing vocals, fatten up guitar lines by adding the same hook, but with a bit of distortion and add to string parts by adding pad sounds and individual string parts to make it all appear to sound bigger. Afterwards, use some multiband compression or mix bus compression to glue everything together into a nice solid finish and try adding a smile curve eq boost – a gentle lift in the lows, a cut in the mids and a lift in the highs. Combining these techniques means your mix will soon be saturated with ‘fat’. Enjoy. Sarah Yule is an experienced audio engineer and Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) graduate. She currently works for TL Audio where she was recently promoted to the position of sales director, which is partially due to the success of her conceptual design of the Fat Track Tube Production Suit.
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SCRATCHING THE PAD DPA MICROPHONES’ French distributor Audio² has provided DPA’s MSS6000 microphone summation systems and the DPA 4060 miniature omnidirectional microphones to the Cité de la Musique in Paris for two Serge Gainsbourg tribute concerts. Designed to reduce ten or more individual mics down to a single stereo pair, the MSS6000s helped engineers manage over 70 voices. “The 4060s were perfect for this application for several reasons, firstly of course for their sound characteristics, but also for their mounting accessories, which enabled us to close-mike each violin,” said Cité de la Musique engineer Bruno Morain. dpamicrophones.com GENERAL MOTORS Place, home of the Vancouver Canucks NHL hockey team, has replaced its existing intercom with a multi-node Riedel Artist digital matrix. The system was designed and installed by Rocky Mountain Production Services in collaboration with John Riley, head of audio for GM Place, as part of a major audio and communication upgrade of the 475,000 square-foot facility. The Artist system includes two Artist 32 frames linked via fibre, a variety of intercom control panels, plus several Performer C3 digital beltpacks and interfaces for existing analog two-wire beltpacks. reidel.net
KMR Audio has sold the first 32-channel API 1608 console in the UK to record producer Ethan Johns (son of legendary producer and drummer Glyn Johns). Ethan Johns is a record producer, engineer, mixer, musician, and songwriter who has worked with such artists as Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Ray LaMontagne, Rufus Wainwright, Emmylou Harris, Crowded House and others. He is also the owner of indie record label Three Crows Music, which is home to Julianna Raye, Sarabeth Tucek and pianist/composer Dave Palmer. apiaudio.com
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Neutrik floats with Caravan Numerous connectors donated for floating stage production
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eutrik donated several of its bestselling connector products to the Caravan Theatre Company’s floating tour of coastal Greece and the Greek Islands. The theatre company has been putting on contemporary theatre productions for the past 38 years in North America and abroad. In autumn of 2008 Caravan visited 15 locations in Greece to perform the play Utopian Floes on a ship called Amara Zee. “We needed connectors that would be reliable in adverse weather conditions,” said Caravan’s Tom Richmond. “We knew that Neutrik connectors could put up with rough handling, last in the long term and would be easy to install. Neutrik was the obvious choice.” Neutrik donated its jack and XLR cables and Speakon plugs, which
Caravan used to connect the sound system for the four-piece live band that performs during the show.
“We needed connectors that would be reliable in adverse weather conditions.” Tim Richmond The band includes a drummer, bassist cellist and harpist. The audio gear used to support the band featured Speakon plugs connecting a 12-channel AKG radio mic system to a Soundcraft 24/4/2. Speakon plugs were also used to connect the board to JBL speakers and amplifiers used for the show. Additional Neutrik connectors were used to build all the patch cables
Neutrik connectors were the obvious choice for the floating tour
used for the show. Four flush mount Speakon plugs were also placed in strategic points throughout the ship to upgrade its internal speaker wiring. “Neutrik is thrilled to be a part of such a unique adventure,” stated Fred Besnoff, product applications manager at Neutrik USA. “Neutrik supports all areas of music and theatre and we are very happy to be able to help
produce such a wonderful and creative concept.” The Neutrik donation included Speakon four-pole male chassis and rightangled connectors, four-pole lockable couplers, protective gaskets and dust covers; Opticalcon Soft plastic D-size chassis covers, three-pole male XLR’s, three-pole female XLR’s and X-Series two-pole ¼-inch professional phone plugs. neutrik.co.uk
No drama for Alcons Audio Southern Austrian theatre upgrades to Alcons pro-ribbon PA
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t Pölten’s theatre in Austria has upgraded its PA to an Alcons pro-ribbon system. The theatre presents live concerts and drama in addition to rental space. Optimal speech intelligibility at all seats was the main requirement for the new audio system. “Crucial for us was the quality of speech reproduction and therefore the use of pro-ribbon drivers, which are used in all Alcons systems,” said Kay Burki, who handled the new system installation with Alcons’ Austrian distributor, Pro Performance. “These have excellent acoustic and dynamic characteristics as well as system-related, low distortion values, which never lead to a harsh sound, even at high SPL levels.” Four Alcons Audio VR12 compact multi-purpose loudspeakers, equipped with
RBN601 pro-ribbon tweeters and 12-inch neodymium drivers, are integrated into the proscenium of the large theatre hall. Two BF151 bass systems, each sporting a sturdy 15-inch driver, are responsible for supporting the low frequencies. Three Alcons SR9 are also used, one as infill at the stage lip and two as over and under balcony delay lines. The SR9 is equipped with a RBN401 pro-ribbon tweeter and two five-inch drivers in a sealed enclosure. Due to its shallow depth, it is suitable for positions with marginal room and in this respect it proved ideal. “The SR9 system has a remarkable directional characteristic of 120 by 15 degrees, which is absolutely perfect for front fill or under balcony applications because of the narrow vertical control,” said Burki.
On stage, two VR8s, featuring RBN401 tweeters and an eight-inch driver, are used as monitors along with two VR12s. The smaller studio stage is also fitted with two VR8s and a BF151. The sound and recording
studio also has two VR8s that are used for reference monitoring. All loudspeakers are driven by Alcons ALC2s, with according SDP controller cards. alconsaudio.com
High quality speech reproduction was key for the new installation at St. Poltens
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A tour built for a Mann The Manfreds turn to LD Systems for Maximum monitoring on the road
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he Manfreds, featuring original members of Manfed Mann, have been touring for the past 15 years with gear provided by Ultrasonics Audio Services. This year’s Maximum Rhythm and Blues tour was no exception as the band employed Ultrasonics to provide a d&b audiotechnik PA and amplifiers for FOH and LD Systems’ range of cabinets and amps for onstage monitoring. In addition to its work with the Manfreds, Linconshire-based Ultrasonics has toured throughout the UK for the past 25 years, providing support for bands like Journey South and Mick Fleetwood’s Blues Band. Ultrasonics used the LDSystems speakers for the first time on X-Factor finalists Journey South’s
tour. The company’s director, Ian Thorpe, was very happy with the LD speakers and has since used them along with its amplifiers and sub cabinets for Mick Fleetwood’s tour. The Manfreds hit the road last fall for the Maximum Rhythm and Blues
tour with Paul Jones (original lead vocalist for Manfred Mann), Mike D’Abo (subsequent lead vocals – Manfred, Mann), Mike Hugg (original Manfred Mann drummer), Tom McGuinness (original guitarist for Manfred Mann) and Rob Townsend (original
drummer of Family, also now with The Blues Band). The shows used LD’s 152 loudspeakers to provide monitoring for the singers and guitarists. Drummer Rob Townsend also used a LD 152 and two LDP Sub 15s as monitors. LDSP1800 amplifiers powered the LD speakers. Ultrasonics also use many of the company’s LDI02 Active DI boxes. Ian Thorpe has been very happy with performance of LD Systems on the various tours. He stated, “After the success of the LD drum-fill system on the Mick Fleetwood tour and the onstage monitors on the Journey South tour, this was my obvious choice for the Maximum Rhythm & Blues tour this autumn and for their forthcoming Let em Roll tour in the spring of 09. ld-systems.com ultrasonicsaudio.com
Shocklee and TL drop the bomb Famed producer Hank Shocklee uses an Ebony A2 for live shows
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he multi-talented and diverse producer, composer and record label executive, Hank Shocklee, has recenly invested in TL Audio’s A2 discrete Class A and tube stereo processor and employed it on recent live shows with the Bomb Squad and Public Enemy. Shocklee is best known as the creator of Public Enemy, but has worked with Ice Cube, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Slick Rick and Peter Gabriel, in addition to scoring and producing film soundtracks for movies like Dangerous Minds, Juice and He Got Game. The A2 is from TL’s Ebony series of discrete Class A processors, which features a tube stage with variable drive, allowing the user to control how much valve sound is applied to a signal.
TL Audio’s Sarah Yule dwarfed by Hank Shocklee
Shocklee feels that the A2 gives him a studio sound on the road and puts his entire live mix through the A2 He also stated that it gave him more control in the live
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environment. “Playing in different live environments changes depending on the venue and the set up that is in front of you, but the A2 allows me to keep a uniform
sound wherever I go,” Shocklee explained. “Our European tour visited 2,000 to 5,000 seaters and the A2 sound quality was impeccable. The overall result was always bigger, the stereo separation was wider and the compression was tight. The combination of all of this was big and loud, but not harsh and brittle. It allowed people to really get into the sound. My new sound has a lot to do with bass and a lot of ambient textures; The A2 made all the different colours and textures stand out. “We also did a couple of festival dates with the A2 and once again, the sound quality was amazing. It allows me to have the versatility to shape and create my own sound before it goes into the mixing board.” tlaudio.co.uk
METALLICA RECENTLY set out on a North American tour with 200 self-powered Meyer Sound loudspeakers The arena tour features an in-the-round set up with main hangs of eight equally spaced arrays, each consisting of 12 MILO line array loudspeakers and four MICA line arrays. Forty selfpowered 700-HP subwoofers are in place for bass support, arranged in a sub array configuration created using the MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction program. The Galileo loudspeaker management system handles system processing with five processors networked with the RMS remote monitoring system. meyersound.com WIGWAM ACOUSTICS recently fitted Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral’s visitor centre with an Ateis Messenger array system. The Ateis Messenger was installed as part of a £3 million refurbishment. Wigwam specified the Messenger system to replace its old one because it was not providing accurate coverage in the venue. The cathedral features an area of an area of 96,87.4 sq metres and an RT60 of over eight seconds. Wigwam is very happy with the coverage and clarity that the Messenger speakers now provide in the cathedral. ateis.co.uk FIREHOUSE PRODUCTIONS recently provided L-Acoustics LA8-powered Kudo arrays for Sigur Ross’ extensive North American tour. Nine Kudo boxes were flown on each side of the stage, with six dV-Dosc across the lip for front-fill, while four SB28 subs per side were placed in a cardioid configuration for LF support. Two Arcs cabinets per side were also flown or ground stacked for out-fill in venues where seating wrapped around the stage. The tour also used four of L-Acoustics’ new LA-Rak touring racks, each with three LA8 amplified controllers. l-acoustics.com
January 2009
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FOCUS: IN SESSION Audio Pro International’s regular section looking at the equipment
C
hapel Studio’s owner, Steve Williams, began his professional career as the drummer for Midge Ure. A Guildhall graduate, Williams went on to work as a session musician and producer for projects with high-profile artists, such as Britney Spears, Sting, Seal and Eric Clapton. Williams is now the proud studio owner and chief producer of South London’s Chapel Studios. Chapel offers full music recording, producing, editing and mastering services. A 48channel SSL Duality console, the only one in London, sits as the centrepiece of the state-ofthe-art studio. Additional outboard from Lexicon, Eventide, Crane Song and other major brands complement the board, while a 192-track Pro Tools HD3 system handles session tracking and editing. It also has Nuemann U-87s,SSL XLogic preamps and a Miller & Kreisel Monitoring System.
The recording area for Studio One is a large, acoustically treated room with two adjacent voice-over and mastering booths. The mixing room is also acoustically designed to offer an accurate mixing environment, with large gothic windows giving the studio natural light during sessions. A new Pro Tools suite for programming, timing instruments, MIDI work, recording guide parts and preparing projects for mixdown in the main studio has recently been added at the studio, which features a Digidesign 002 rack and no less than four highquality mic preamps. Source-Live online technology offered at the studio enables clients to sit in on mixing sessions from anywhere in the world via a streaming link from Quicktime. Chapel also offers voice-over services and a mobile unit for location recording.
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8141 2638 Web Address: www.thechapelstudios.co.uk
R
oasting House Studio has successfully adapted the new model of recording studio by offering publishing and distribution to artists in addition to its fully equipped analog and digital recording studios. In fact, it has been since 1987. Located in the south of Sweden, just 30 minutes from both Malmo and Copenhagen airports in the centre of Malmo, Roasting House aims to provide artists with a studio where inspiration and musical creativity flow at every session. Its studio one features a Hill Audio Concept 32-24-2 console and Studer tape machine for analog recording, with a Pro Tools set up for digital tracking and editing. The live room is 130 sq m with natural daylight and wood, stone, carpet floors and walls that create ambient and natural sounds. It can also be damped-down with heavy curtains, which is ideal for drums and other acoustic instruments.
Multiple plugins, outboard racks and instruments are also available during sessions. Studio two is a smaller 25 sq m studio area with natural daylight and a vocal-booth. It can be used on its own or in conjunction with Studio 1 for overdubs, vocal parts and midi. It features a ProTools HD3 system with a host of plugins, Event 20/20 monitors and a variety of outboard gear. Roasting House began producing hard rock and metal in 1992, but branched into pop and rock in 2002 and quickly earned a spot in the Swedish top 20 charts with the band Sofie. Due to the vast variety of its past projects, the studio and engineers are equipped to successfully record and produce a wide range of musical genres. The owner of Roasting House is Anders ‘Theo’ Theander, a wellknown producer in the melodic rock scene. The staff at the studio has collectively recorded over 200 albums.
Telephone: +46 (0)40 937678 Web Address: www.roastinghouse.com
Rooms: Large live room, control room and Pro Tools suite Consoles: 48-channel SSL Duality Mics: Neumann, AKG, Electrovoice, Sennheiser, Shure Outboard: SSL, API, Universal Audio, Yamaha, Kurzwell Monitoring: Miller & Kreisel, Klein & Hummel, Yamaha, Avantone, Geithain
CHAPEL STUDIOS
Rooms: 130 and 25 sq m live rooms with isolation booths Consoles: Hill Audio Concept Digital: Control 24 Mics: U87, U47, AKG, Sennheiser Outboard: Millenia, Lexicon, TC Electronics, Neve, Tube Tech, Monitoring: JBL, Genelec, B&W, Acoustic Research
ROASTING HOUSE
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and the people behind studios in the UK and around the world...
H
eaded up by CEO and founder Patrick Roberts, Shocking Vibes Studio is found in the heart of Kingston, Jamaica and is home to the famous reggae record label of the same name. Sporting multicoloured exterior walls and gates conspicuously emblazoned with large, vivid logos, the studio was constructed from the ground up, designed by CN Fletcher, owner of Bostonbased Mercenary Audio and wired by Joe P of GI Electronics. With a roster of Jamaican reggae stars on its books, the studio aims to meet and exceed world-class standards. Well-trained and knowledgeable engineers, including Dean Mundy and Gary Samuel are on hand to assist clients with direction and programming if needed, while composers, arrangers and studio musicians are also available upon request.
Recording is to two-inch tape courtesy of Studer and for those who wish to get creative, a charming collection of vintage electronic instruments includes Korg DRS, X3, MI and Trinity keyboards, Akai MPC2000 and MPC3000 drum machines and a Kurzweil K2500RS sampler. Its big list of outboard gear makes tweaking sounds effortless. Multiple Grammy nominee Beenie Man and Grammy winners Sly & Robbie are just two of the notable acts that have recorded at the facility. Ideally located off the main highway to provide both privacy and five-minute access to the business district, the 7,677 square-foot complex also features peripheral amenities such as cable TV in both the studio and in the adjoining lounge, dining and kitchen facilities with three chefs on staff, a fully self-contained onebedroom apartment with living room and balcony.
Telephone: +1 876 941 1408 Web Address: www.shockingvibes.com
W
est London-based Greystoke Studios is the home of top UK record producer Andy Whitmore, who, with 14 top ten UK hits under his belt, including mixes for Lemar, Atomic Kitten and Eternal, is in high demand as an engineer, keyboard player and writer/arranger. Whitmore is currently writing and producing X-Factor’s Bad Lashes new single and, after a recent refurbishment and update, his studio has been reopened and is proving more popular than ever among artists from all over the UK. Originally built in 1991, Greystoke combines the UK’s largest working keyboard and vintage synthesizer collection along with an impressive array of world-class outboard gear and, importantly, a friendly, welcoming atmosphere. An outstanding range of over 50 working vintage keyboards includes the EMS VCS3 (as used
on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon), the classic Mini Moog, a Wurlitzer electric piano (Supertramp, Doors) and a Hammond C3 (Bob Marley, Santana), among many others. Greystoke insists that its collection includes nearly every classic keyboard ever made from the 1960s to today. The studio has a fully isolated vocal booth and a number of renowned microphones, such as the AKG C12. A good range of boutique, vintage and handwired outboard gear is on hand, including two Avalon 737sps, a GML 8200 EQ and PCM90 reverb. As a guitar player Whitmore also ensured the studio was well equipped to cater for guitarists. At the heart of the setup is a superlative Apple Mac 3.2GHZ 8 core Mac Pro with 10GB RAM running Logic Pro 8. This is coupled with pristine ADA conversion. provided by an Apogee Rosetta 800.
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7456 8910 Web Address: www.andywhitmore.com
Rooms: Control Room, Voicing Room, Pre-production Room Consoles: Langley Design, Mackie Mics: AKG, Neumann, Sennheiser, Shure Outboard: Amek, Tube Tech, Summit Audio, Drawmer, Empirical Labs, Eventide Monitoring: Yamaha, Genelec, Mackie
SHOCKING VIBES STUDIO
Rooms: Studio A, Studio B Consoles: Mackie d8b Mics: AKG, Neumann, Sennheiser, Shure Outboard: TL Audio, Avalon, Lexicon, Eventide, Focusrite, dbx, GML, Chiswick Monitoring: Yamaha, JBL, Alesis
GREYSTOKE STUDIOS
details to andrew.low@intentmedia.co.uk, or call +44 1992 535646. www.audioprointernational.com
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DISTRIBUTION
in brief
Goleniowski joins D&M management
HARMAN Professional has announced the promotion of Bill Raimondi from market development manager, Crown Audio to group-wide director, sales US distribution and strategic accounts. Raimondi will now manage sales of Harman’s US distribution channels and direct strategic account activity for Harman Professional. Scott Robbins, Harman Professional vice president of sales, commented: “Bill Raimondi is a proven sales professional with extensive background in consumer and professional audio distribution. “In this new role, Bill will be directly supporting our ‘One Harman’ initiative by aligning our business practices in a way that promotes growth, profitability and improved customer service for US dealers and distributors.” harmanpro.com
Industry veteran promoted to expand business in the European pro and business market
DAVID McCarthy has Joined Apogee Electronics as its new director of sales. McCarthy has a large task ahead of him, as he will lead the company’s worldwide sales team, forecast and plan global business, contribute to the marketing, tech-support and operations efforts while developing and maintaining partner relations. McCarthy joins Apogee with 26-year’s experience in the MI and pro audio industries. He has previously held positions at Line 6, Alesis and Peavey. “David’s enthusiasm, experience and leadership skills make him a superb addition to the Apogee team” stated Betty Bennett, CEO of Apogee. apogeedigital.com COOLUX has promoted James Lachinger to VP of operations, a role in which he will be responsible for the logistical operations of Coolux in the US, Canada, and Central and South America. Rod Kavanagh has also been named operations manager and will oversee client support and service operations as Coolux expands its dealer and client base in North and South America. “I am pleased that Laschinger and Kavanagh will be a strategic part of our future success," said president Steve Gilbard. coolux-us.com
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THE D&M management team appointed industry veteran Bob Goleniowski as the new managing director of its business and professional group, Europe. In his new role, Goleniowski will spearhead efforts to guide the business and professional brands through a continued expansion of the company’s professional lines throughout Europe. He has over 25 years of industry experience, having worked for Harman International and recently Allen & Heath. D&M’s business and pro group includes brands like Denon Professional, Marantz Professional, Denon Professional DJ, Allen & Heath and Calrec.
Goleniowski will guide brands through European expansion
Goleniowski will join the existing teams at D&M and aid in their efforts to bolster product ranges to cater for all professional requirements, from small installation jobs to broadcast applications.
The company is dedicated to becoming known as a one-stop-shop, providing products and service for all industry professionals from all sectors of the professional audio business.
Goleniowski commented: “I have always been a great admirer of Denon and Marantz products and the ability to offer some of the finest audio solutions available, especially in the area of CD, DV and solid state storage devices for the professional user.” The D&M management team has stated that they have great confidence that Goleniowski will use his rich management experience and marketing insight to build on professional business and help position it as the leader in the European professional market, particularly in the AV sector as it is a key market for the company. dm-pro.eu
L-Acoustics expands with two new hires
Fred Heuves retires from Ampco
Business development and technical departments burgeon with new staff
CMO and Synco head retires after over three decades in the business
L-ACOUSTICS has strengthened its business development and technical departments with the addition of Jochen Frohn and Jamie Gosney, respectively. Joining as international business development director, Fohn brings extensive managerial experience in the pro audio industry, notably 14 years at US manufacturer Crest. His initial remit will be to take responsibility for the sales, development and coordination of L-Acoustics’ business worldwide, focussing on actively building foundations for LAcoustics Germany and coordinating sales across
FRED HEUVES, CMO of Ampco Flashlight Group and head of the Synco Europe Network has retired. In his parting letter to colleagues and the media, he stated: “After working in the entertainment industry for more than 30 years, of which the last 18 years have been within the Ampco Flashlight Group, I have decided the time has come to slow down and make room for the talented new generation within the Group.I have, therefore, decided it is time to leave the company. “It has been an exciting period and looking back at how we started and what has been accomplished, not only in the industry in general, but also within the Ampco Flashlight Group in particular, I feel a modest pride for all of us in this industry and in the Ampco Flashlight Group.” Heuves began working with a sound rental company in 1976, which later formed a partnership with Ampco. In 1997, Dutch
Europe by building and piloting teams for these territories. He will work internally alongside the LAcoustics committee, led by CEO Christian Heil. Jamie Gosney was also hired to serve as the UK technical manager, working with sales manager Stuart Down and sales coordinator Nathalie Prade. Gosney has three decades’ experience of working in the pro audio industry in a career that has included systems operation and design, sales, installation and set-building. Gosney has previously worked for Autograph Sales and Amber Sound. l-acoustics.com
(L to R) Stuart Down; Nathalie Prade; Jamie Gosney
Fred Heuves
Broadcaster NOB acquired both Ampco and entertainment lighting specialists Flashlight Rental. Five years later, a management buyout lead to the creation of the Ampco Flashlight Group, which soon became a major independent rental, sales, distribution and product development group. This led to the development of an expanded management team and offices in locations around Europe. Heuves was also head of the Synco Europe Network, one of the world’s largest groups of independent sound rental companies. ampco-flashlight.com
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PEOPLE
A&H appoints JHS for Ireland
Funktion-One names distributor for Turkey
Move follows success of UK deal
Murat Uncuoglu and EK Elektronik Sistemler team up for distribution
LEEDS-BASED UK MI distributor John Hornby Skewes has taken over sales and distribution of Allen & Heath’s PA and Zed series of small format mixers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This follows the company’s appointment as exclusive England, Scotland and Wales distributor for the range, which has already proved successful. “As predicted, Allen & Heath has proved to be a perfect complement to our other hi-end pro audio brands, HK Audio, LA Audio and Lab.gruppen,” commented JHS MD, Dennis Drumm. “As such, adding
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. to our A&H sales territory is the perfect way to capitalise on our work with the brand. We look forward to generating similarly successful results with the additional expansion of these areas in JHS’ sales.” A&H sales manager, Martin Daley added: “The transfer of PA and Zed distribution to JHS has proved very successful and the sales teams have been enthusiastic and effective. We are certain the addition of Irish territory will only strengthen our relationship and build on our achievements so far.” jhs.co.uk allen-heath.co.uk
FUNKTION-ONE recently announced that EK Elektronik Sistemler will now serve as its exclusive distributor in Turkey. With offices in Istanbul, Turkey and Irvine, California, EK specialises in the design sale, installation and maintenance of commercial and professional audio. Its remit also stretches into video, computer display and control systems. The partnership was sparked after Murat Uncuoglu heard the Funktion-One speakers at the World Music Conference in Miami. A producer and DJ, Uncuoglu is also a renowned pioneer of sound system design and installation in Turkey. He was impressed with the sonic qualities and clarity of the Funktion-One system and agreed with the company’s Ethos. Uncuoglu recommended the company to EK’s managing director, Ertugrul Karasati, who was equally
impressed with the system and agreed to collaborate with Uncuoglu for distribution of its products in Turkey. EK will now handle the company’s extensive range of point-source loudspeakers, including the new Resolution 1.5 speaker and the RM18 triaxial stage monitor ekconsultant.com funktion-one.com.tr funktion-one.com
Digico announces SD8 dealers Five dealers announced across England and Ireland FIVE DEALERS have been appointed by Digico to handle sales for its new entry level SD8 digital mixing console: Autograph Sales in London, Hawthorns in the Midlands, Stage Electrics in the South West, Wigwam in the North of England and Ireland’s Rea Sound. “Being a lower cost, higher volume product with a slightly different market emphasis to Digico’s existing consoles, it requires a different route to market,” explained Mick Anderson, whose company was also brought onboard in July 2008 to help put in place the commercial template necessary to capitalise on the SD8’s phenomenal take
up since its launch at PLASA in September. “We are delighted to be chosen as one of the key dealers for the new SD8 console,” says Autograph director, Duncan Bell. “It continues the close association that we have built with Digico over the last five years. The SD8 brings the intuitive and flexible architecture of Digico products to a whole new range of clients and applications. As a balance of price versus features it’s a tough act to beat. “We look forward to adding SD8 systems to the impressive list of productions, installations and projects that already combine the
Autograph reputation and the Digico brand throughout the world.” Wigwam MD Mick Spratt explained what the new set up means for his company. “We’ve worked with Digico for some years with previous products, particularly the D5 and we’ve had great success, especially for our rental market, so we know the company well,” he said.
“This year, we’ve moved into selling larger format digital consoles and it’s gone very well. The timing of the SD8 is really good business for both companies. “In fact, before we even started we’d sold one console to Dimension Audio, which saw the potential of the product and wanted to get in at the very beginning.” digico.org
If you have any distribution or personnel news you would like featured on these pages, please send all details to andrew.low@intentmedia.co.uk or call the Audio Pro International team on +44 1992 535646 www.audioprointernational.com
in in brief brief LITESTRUCTURES Litestructures has recetnly completed a deal to secure the distribution of Carlsbro pro and MI products. “Litestructures has an enviable reputation and a record of success,” commented Carlsbro’s Andy Bishop, welcoming the move. “Litestructures is in regular and frequent contact with a wide cross-section of Carlsbro’s customer base. As a key player within this marketplace, it is well placed to enhance the sales, status and reputation of the Carlsbro brand.” Echoing these sentiments, Litestructures managing director, Adrian Brooks, added: “Both companies have a longstanding commitment to the business of music making. As a leading supplier of products and services to individual musicians and the performance industry in general, Litestructures is uniquely positioned to service and expand the demand and potential for all of Carlsbro’s audio products. “We are in touch with music and musicians at every level and always have been. Both companies have an established history in the music industry and we are looking forward to enjoying a dynamic and constructive relationship." Litestructures maintains a significant position in a wide cross section of markets, from staging, through touring and concert events, to portable equipment. litestructures.co.uk RIVERA International of Mumbai has launched and sold the first Lab.gruppen PLM series amps in India. The company has supplied eight PLM 10000Q powered loudspeaker management units to Sound.com and four to Sound & Light Professional, both also of Mumbai. Riveira International is headed up by Rajesh Sadarangani and GM Sadarangani and has been a leading company in the cinema and AV business for the last 30 years. Rivera represents several reputed companies and has an impressive list of clients in the Indian entertainment industry. riverainternational.com
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NEW PRODUCT AKG ¬ AUDIO -TECHNICA¬ TANNOY ¬ YAMAHA
AKG LC Condenser Microphone
Audio-Technica AT4022 Microphone
They say: The LC professional condenser vocal microphone produces outstanding performance through the loudest mix or on any stage.
They say: The low-profile AT4022 omnidirectional condenser recording mic is outstanding for piano, acoustic guitar and other acoustic instruments.
Specifications: The AKG condenser mic was designed for a wide range of applications, including vocals, live sound, recording and studio use. It is a slim line condenser microphone with a cardioid polar pattern to ensure maximum gain before feedback that has been optimised for use with in-ear monitor systems. The LC also features an XLR connector module with 24-carat gold plated pins for efficient connectivity and resistance to corrosion and humidity. The LC has also been equipped with a spring steel wire-mesh grill for extreme durability and control of pops and wind noise in live applications. Its frequency range is from 60 to 20kHz and includes a 24-carat gold plated transducer. The mic’s design is slim and lightweight with a piano black finish. A PC 1000, which adds 3dB to 5dB of high-end enhancement between 5kHz and 9kHz and a mic case come standard with the product. Additional features include the PB1000 Presence boost adapter and shock mount. akg.com
Specifications: The AT4022 was designed with a flat, extended frequency response, wide dynamic range and high SPL to suit studio and live applications. With an omnidirectional polar pattern, the mic features a low-mass diaphragm to improve transient response and reduce handling and mechanical noise transfer. The mic features a switchable 80Hz hi-pass filter, a 10dB pad and a frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz and 250 Ohms impedance. Its maximum input sound level is 146dB SPL, 1kHz at one per cent THD; 156dB SPL, with 10dB pad (nominal) and a signal-to-noise-ratio of 133dB, 1kHz at max SPL. The AT4022 weighs 124g (4.4oz) with dimensions of 144mm (5.67 inches) long and a 21mm (0.83 inches) maximum body diameter. audio-technica.com
Tannoy Qflex range
Yamaha IMX64 Installation Mixer
They say: Qflex is the first digitally steerable array to maintain music quality over the desired area of coverage, all in a very architecturally pleasing package.
They say: The IMX644 continues Yamaha’s Installation Series philosophy of delivering excellent sound quality from unobtrusive, easy to install products at an advantageous price point.
Specifications: Tannoy’s Qflex is a range of digitally steerable, multi-channel, array speaker systems for professional installation. The series comes in a variety of sizes, including 8, 16, 24, 32, 40 or 48 transducers, with a dedicated amp channel for each. Qflex creates an asymmetrical pattern, which allows similar SPLs in the near and far field. It also has the capacity to steer the beam away from surfaces that cause reflections to frequencies beyond 12kHz. An added BeamEngine GUI allows designers to specify target areas, and a steering algorithm is created for each area. Other features include steering control of +/- 70 degrees, densely spaced transducers to defeat the effects of aliasing, integrated DSP, network control and amplification, unique digital filter structure for efficient implementation and low latency. It uses a powerful Regularized Least-Squares Multichannel Inversion algorithm for beam control. Qflex is networkable with other Tannoy VNET products. tannoy-speakers.com
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Specifications: The IMX644 rackmount digital mixer was designed for use in conference rooms, banquet halls, bars and restaurants. It features six Euroblock mono inputs (each with individual +48V control), four RCA stereo inputs and an extra optical digital input. The outputs of IMX644 are two pairs of stereo Euroblock connectors, with two channels of mono output. RCA and optical digital outputs can also be used for recording. Additional software can be used with the mixer by via USB port. The software offers a feedback suppressor and automatic ducking on all mono inputs, six band parametric eq, digital delay and output balance on all outputs. Complete configurations can be saved to any one of 16 instantlyrecallable scenes. GPI inputs and outputs are also provided in addition to a RS232-C remote connection, allowing remote control with third party systems such as AMX or Crestron. yamahacommercialaudio.com
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NEW PRODUCT DIGIDESIGN ¬ GENELEC ¬ VICOUSTIC ¬ ZAXCOM
Digidesign 003 Rack+ Factory
Genelec 5041A Active Sub woofer
They say: The 003 Rack+ Factory comes with everything users need to compose, record, sequence, edit, mix, and master music, right out of the box.
They say: This incredible active subwoofer packs a huge punch in an unbelievably slim enclosure.
Specifications: The 003 Rack+ Factory is the first member of the 003 family to offer eight high-quality microphone preamps with 48V phantom power on all channels, in a 2U rackmountable chassis. The 003 Rack+ Factory ships with the latest Pro Tools LE software, which features a variety of studio-quality sound processing, mastering and effects plugins, virtual instruments, compatible applications, and sound libraries. Version LE 7.4 comes as standard, but users are applicable for a free upgrade to Version LE 8 when it is released. Additional feature include 18 simultaneous channels of audio I/O, 24-bit/96 kHz resolution, eight analog DI/line inputs (including one on the front panel), eight analog outputs, eight channels of ADAT optical I/O, two channels of S/PDIF digital I/O, one MIDI I/O (16 channels in/16 channels out), BNC Word Clock I/O, dedicated studio monitor output, alternate control room output, alternate source input for external device monitoring, individual headphone source and level controls, dual headphone outputs and high-speed FireWire connectivity digidesign.com.
Specifications: The Genelec 5041A was designed for use with its AIW25 Active In-Wall and Genelec AIC25 Active In-Ceiling loudspeakers. The 5041A extends the system’s bass response down to 35Hz with an upper cut-off frequency of 95Hz and delivers an SPL of 105dB. The 5041A features two 6.5-inch LF drivers in an 82mm (31⁄4-inch) deep MDF enclosure and a 4U RAM3 amplifier unit that can be installed in an equipment rack using the optional RM2 rack adapter. The RAM3 amplifier features parallel XLR and RCA input connectors and an XLR Link Out connector for daisy-chaining multiple subwoofers together. The bass roll-off rate and crossover phase can be adjusted to suit acoustical environments and subwoofer positioning. The RAM3 amplifier power switching can be adjusted as manual, automatic signal sensing or remote controlled by a 12V trigger. The 5041A features an output of 105dB maximum SPL, which can be increased by combining multiple subwoofers together using the Link Out channel to provide an additional 6dB for a system of two, 9.5dB for three and 12dB for four subwoofers. The 5041A subwoofer enclosure features a mounting system that uses adjustable brackets and rubber springs for isolation from walls. genelec.com
Vicoustic Flexi Screen Lite They say: Flexi Screen Lite provides a portable, easy to assemble, semicircular microphone surround whose polyurethane structure is designed to give maximum absorption efficiency. Specifications: Flexi Screen Lite is a portable acoustic screen for vocal recording. Designed as a lightweight version of the Flexi Screen, It was specifically created for vocal recording in untreated rooms, or venues that do not have acoustic control. Flexi Screen Lite is comprised of a polyurethane structure, which provides absorption of the singer’s energy on the inside to create a less ambient sound and partially absorbs scattered room reflections on the outside. Flexi Screen Lite’s acoustic foam also uses a series of air cavities to reinforce the absorption effect and add structural support to the join mechanism. Easy set up makes it suitable for location-based recording venues, project studios and classrooms. It can be used with a variety of mics and adjusted vertically or horizontally. vicoustic.com
www.audioprointernational.com
Zaxcom Fusion 12 Multitrack Recorder They say: The new Fusion 12 high-resolution audio mixer/recorder provides all of the functionality of a traditional hard-disk-based audio recorder but with no moving parts, optimising it for sound bag or overthe-shoulder use. Specifications: The Fusion 12 Multitrack Recorder is Zaxcom’s latest addition to the award-winning Deva range. The solid-state recorder features 12 balanced analog inputs and records to dual CompactFlash cards simultaneously, eliminating the need for an additional hard drive. It can record up to 12 tracks via eight balanced mic/line level inputs with phantom power through XLR connectors. The other four balanced line level inputs on Fusion 12 use a single 10pin Hirosi connector, which can be used to feed any mix track pre-, or post-fader, or as a four-channel monitor return. Each of the four inputs can be sent through headphone busses. Eight output mix busses that are available in analog and AES digital output on the records. The recorder also includes 16 dedicated meters for input channels, an output mix busses and a soft knee compressor on each of the 12 internal record busses and eight output busses. zaxcom.com
January 2009
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marketplace
AUDIO MARKETPLACE TO ADVERTISE ON THESE PAGES CALL DARRELL CARTER ON 01992 535647 CLASSIFIED RATES: Minimum 12 Months - One Annual Charge Quarter Page £1,495
SUPPLIER SPOTLIGHT
FULL FAT AUDIO
F
ull Fat Audio has an impeccable track record for boutique, hand-built amps that utilise Class D technology, developed inhouse, alongside its offering of switchmode power supplies. This has allowed FFA to achieve the high power levels that its amps produce, while at the same time making them particularly efficient. The company was founded in 2003 when managing director Dave Millard, a former support engineer with BSS Audio, began designing amplifiers after joining forces with some friends met through his work with sound systems. Now into its sixth year, Full Fat’s enviable reputation for bass could be the reason why it is currently making a fair amount of noise in high-end nightclubs in the UK – most recently The Egg in London – and across Europe alongside its
presence in the touring and festival scene, which it has had for the last three years. The amps are often associated with Funktion-One loudspeakers (used as a reference by the company) and Noise Control Audio, for which FFA manufactures OEM amps supplied with many of its systems. With the support of these major companies backing its technology and products, Full Fat Audio has now reached new levels of success and has begun branching out into the European market. Despite its growth, the company continues to manufacture its amplifiers entirely in the UK. Most of the components and metal work are sourced in the UK and Full Fat insists that it is more than happy with the quality still available from British manufacturing, even though it imparts a slight price premium.
“The amps are built to last and they’re not mass produced items,” explains Millard. We could make more money on them if we made them easier to manufacture, but sometimes quality suffers with that. We have spent a lot of money on the box – it’s very road worthy and rugged. We used 2mm aluminium instead of 1mm or steel. We try to keep it light, but very tough.” New developments are on the horizon as research and development to expand the FFA range to incorporate high power four-channel amplifiers and more cost-effective installation products is nearing completion and the company has recently launched its new model, the FFA 10000, a twochannel 12kg unit, which puts out a counterfeit plug-melting 5,000 Watts per channel at two Ohms. fullfataudio.com
MARKETPLACE INDEX Alcons
+31 (0) 229 28 30 90
Flightcase
www.alconsaudio.com
+44 (0) 1792 702701
www.roland.co.uk
+44 (0) 182 760 009 www.flightcasewarehouse.co.uk
Stage Accompany +00 31 229 282930
www.stageaccompany.com
Full Fat Audio
info@fullfataudio.com
TL Audio
+44 (0)1462 492090
Hot Rox
+44 (0) 115 987 3163
www.hotrox.com
Waveburg
+8522 7711 580
Neutrik
+44 (0) 1983 811 441
www.neutrik.com
Yamaha
+44 (0) 1908 366700
www.fullfataudio.com
Roland
To advertise call
www.tlaudio.co.uk
www.waveburg.com
yamahacommercialaudio.com
DARRELL CARTER + 44 (0)1992 535647
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marketplace amplification
audio transport
distribution
loudspeakers
Made in the same factory that makes Jensen musical instrument speakers in Italy, Sica Speakers are the finest replacements available for your bass amplifier or PA system.
Utilizing modern materials and designed by engineers who care about tone, these speakers will bring new life to your speaker cabinet.
For a brochure or details please contact
UK Distribution Hot Rox UK Tel/Fax: 0115 987 3163 www.hotrox.com Email: sales@hotrox.com Unit 6, Millview Court, Newark Street, Nottingham NG2 4PS
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marketplace flight cases
loudspeakers
42”/50" plasma case These cases are always available ex stock. We foam them to suit with partitions for speakers etc. From £279.00 inc VAT and UK Mainland delivery •Full touring spec Choice of finishes: •9mm Black hexaboard •9mm Black Laminate •Heavy Duty Butterfly catches •6 x Recess Sprung handle •High density foam padded interior •4" Castors `(2 braked) •Int dims 1220mm x 360mm 755mm
Unit 2 Meltex House, Mariner, Lichfield Road Industrial Estate, Tamworth, Staffs, B79 7XE Tel: 01827 60009 Fax: 01827 313877 Email: sales@flightcasewarehouse.co.uk Web: www.flightcasewarehouse.co.uk
loudspeakers
manufacturer
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marketplace mixing consoles
recording
We hope we passed the audition.
CONNECT WITH EXPERIENCE
ADVERTISER INDEX A
Adam Hall ..................................................51
N
Neutrik..................................................29, 48
O
OHM .......................................................... 25
P
Palme ........................................................ 32
R
Roland ...................................................... 47
S
Scattered Media ........................................36
Alcons Audio ........................................19, 47
D
F
Digico ..........................................................2
FlightCase Warehouse................................47 Full Fat Audio ............................................ 49 Funktion one ..............................................21
H
Hot Rox ......................................................49
I
ISE ..............................................................10
T
TL Audio ............................................ 7, 14, 48
J
JTS ..............................................................35
Y
Yamaha ....................................................48
Stage accompany ................................ 52, 48
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