PSNE November 2015 Digital

Gate of delirium November 2015

A Brandenburg spectacular with Nexo STM for the 25th anniversary of unification p34

www.psneurope.com

p42

p30

p48

ONE WILD WEEKEND

RADIO.CO-A-GO-GO

ARCADE FIRE-D UP

SSE AND L-ACOUSTICS AT THIS SUMMER’S WILDERNESS FESTIVAL

THE LATEST START-UP FROM ENTREPRENEUR JAMES MULVANY

INSIDE NOTTINGHAM’S INCREDIBLE TEMPLE TO VIDEOGAMES

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MONITORING ESSENTIALS

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Welcome

PSNEUROPE Editor Dave Robinson drobinson@nbmedia.com

Advertising manager Ryan O’Donnell rodonnell@nbmedia.com

Deputy editor Jon Chapple jchapple@nbmedia.com

Account manager Rian Zoll-Khan rzoll-khan@nbmedia.com

Managing editor Jo Ruddock jruddock@nbmedia.com

Head of design Jat Garcha jgarcha@nbmedia.com

Content director James McKeown jmckeown@nbmedia.com

Production executive Jason Dowie jdowie@nbmedia.com

Contributors: Kevin Hilton, Marc Maes, Dave Wiggins, Erica Basnicki, Mike Clark, Phil Ward

PSNEurope NewBay Media, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18–26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN Editorial: +44 20 7354 6002 Sales: +44 20 7354 6000 Press releases to: ukpressreleases@nbmedia.com Circulation and subscription: Refunds on cancelled subscriptions will only be provided at the publisher’s discretion, unless specifically guaranteed within the terms of the subscription offer. NewBay Media may pass suitable reader addresses to other relevant suppliers. If you do not wish to receive sales information from other companies, please write to Circulations and Subscriptions, NewBay Media, Curwood CMS Ltd, The Barn, Abbey Mews, Robertsbridge TN32 5AD Subscribe by email to: psne.subscriptions@c-cms.com Subscriptions tel: +44 1580 883 848

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Cover image: German reunification concert, Berlin, auvisign/Nexo

P3 NOVEMBER 2015

DAVE ROBINSON Editor

@PSNEurope

A

few sobering thoughts have revealed themselves to me this month. Well, in fact, all my thoughts have been sober, as I’ve been off the booze for the month of October.

The entertainment industry is fuelled by the flow of alcohol, the essential accoutrement when building relationships. Journalists are infamous for their fondness for a libation or five. Combine the two disciplines, and it’s GAME OVER. (…though, on p52, at the National Videogame Arcade, it’s very much ‘game on’…)

My first temptation against temperance was during PLASA, at the spirited SSE booth party (the spirit being gin). I felt distinctly uncomfortable in that ExCeL hall, sipping my third Virgin Bramble while all around were letting their hair down. So uncomfortable, I had to escape. And – strained metaphor alert! – that same unease has been reflected in PLASA’s move to Olympia for 2016: read my revealing interview with Chris Toulmin on p18.

The second tantalising allure of alcohol arrived at a gig at the XOYO venue in London. There’s a d&b audiotechnik system installed there. Obviously, the management has taken the decision to invest in a quality PA in order to attract a certain pedigree of musicians. And then I read Phil Ward’s sobering piece on the state of the mid-range touring industry (p44), which revealed much about what’s going on for venues in that sector. I suggest you do too.

But! I repelled the Demon of Drink. And in my sobriety during the Vessels performance (fantastic thumping electronics played live, incidentally), I made a point of telling a guy with his phone aloft, filming the gig and blocking my view, to put the thing away.

Not just for my sake, but because he’ll have the inevitable, sobering revelation when he gets back home of endless minutes of crappy, distorted, strobing, wobbly footage and no engaging memory of the gig at all. The dick. n

1 Color - 0 Cyan / 100 Magenta / 99 Yellow / 4 Black

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P4 NOVEMBER 2015

Contents

In this issue...

P34 GERMAN REUNIFICATION A UNITED BERLIN TURNS 25 YEARS YOUNG

P20 PETER PAN: THE NEVER ENDING STORY THE LOST BOY AND STUDIO HAIFAX’S NEW TOY

P50 OKTOBERFEST 2015

DYNACORD IN BEER HIMMEL IN MUNICH

Studio 20 24

P20 HIGHFIELD STUDIO GETTING IT TOGETHER IN THE COUNTRY

Business 6 7 8 10 12 14 22 26 44

Audioprof/Apart expands its global Community Paragon hits a bullseye with Five Arrows acquisition Free tickets still available for PSNPresents on the 4th Vocal Channel: Eric Basnicki and Dave Wiggins Movers and shakers PSNTraining The Strategic Position: Chris Toulmin, PLASA Feature: Start-ups Feature: Mid-size touring

Technology 16

New products

Elliot Richardson flying high at Highfield Mastering Muse with Giovanni Versari

Broadcast 30 32

Radio.co: The start-up with its head in the cloud Spatial sound immerses IBC

Live 34 36 40

Uniting Germany with Nexo Peter Pan soars with Studio Haifax and Coda Outline watches its step in Milan

Installation 50

EV/Dynacord: Boozing in Bavaria

Back pages 53 54

Hither & Dither Backtalk: Thomas Schäfer, Neumann&Müller

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ANDREW DUBOWSKI / SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY

“The more natural the sound, the more perfect the amplification. LEOPARD’s sound is so natural, it fools me into thinking the sound is not really amplified, even though I know it is. That feels like magic.”

Andrew Dubowski, Director of Operations

LEOPARD AND 900-LFC THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE LEO FAMILY Read the full interview at meyersound.com/sfsymphony

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Business

P6 NOVEMBER 2015

Belgium

“Business as usual” as Audioprof swallows chunk of Community The Belgian owner of Apart takes control of US-based Community, reports Dave Robinson

K

oen Claerbout, the CEO of Audioprof Group International, says it’s “business as usual” following the holding company’s acquisition of a majority shareholding in Community Professional Loudspeakers.

Now the Pennsylvania-based, 1968-founded manufacturer of largescale PA systems for sports venues, houses of worship and theme parks, joins Apart Audio, the 1992-formed Belgian maker of small-to-medium sized commercial fixed installation speakers, under the Audioprof banner.

“We are very happy that we can offer our worldwide customers a complete range from indoor to outdoor and from small to large fixed Install Audio solutions with two very strong brands: Community and Apart Audio,” said Hans Swinnen, chairman of Audioprof Group International,1following the deal.

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We see this as a partnership in which two brands are joining forces. There is a lot of respect in Belgium for the great heritage at Community

Koen Claerbout, Audioprof Group International “Both companies will be developed as standalone entities under the same umbrella respecting their market focus, customer base, culture and heritage. They will enjoy ‘best practice sharing’ from both sides. With a strong base in Europe and the USA we will strengthen our worldwide position in Installed Sound. We are very pleased that Bruce Howze stays on board as an important shareholder, president and R&D director and that Christine Howze will continue to help us grow the business.

Leadership positions at Community will remain the same with Steve Johnson as CEO.” Audioprof CEO Claerbout told PSNEurope that distribution channels will remain unchanged. “If both brands have different distributors [in a particular territory], it will remain the same,” he said.

The takeover will inevitably enable Apart Audio to make use of Community’s networks in the States, as the Antwerp-based company is not active in the USA currently, Claerbout revealed.

There are no immediate job losses, he confirmed. “As Community remains a standalone organisation, it does not have an impact and there are no overlapping roles. So, it is business as usual.”

With a company from ‘tiny’ Belgium taking control of a major US brand, should it be viewed as a ‘David vs Goliath’ victory?

“We actually see this more as a partnership in which two brands are joining forces,” replied Claerbout. “There is a lot of respect in Belgium for the great heritage at Community!” n www.communitypro.com www.apart-audio.com www.audioprofgroupinternational.com Apart Audio’s HQ in Antwerp

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P7 NOVEMBER 2015

United Kingdom

Five Arrows targeted by Paragon Rothschild sheds its media financing business, reports Dave Robinson

F

ive Arrows Leasing Group (FALG), which includes the broadcast/live sound industry equipmentfinancing division Five Arrows Media Finance (FAMF, formerly Fineline), is being acquired by Paragon Bank plc, a FTSE 250-listed organisation, for £117 million. The transaction is expected to be completed by 3 November.

The sale is in line with current owner Rothschild & Co.’s strategy to “focus on its core businesses”, reports FALG. Gareth Wilding, managing director of FAMF, says: “The whole team is really excited by the new opportunities presented by our new owner, Paragon Bank, who is eager to facilitate our growth and ensure we maintain our position as leading provider of specialist finance to the media industries.

“Over the next three months we will be launching our new brand, but in the meantime it will be business as usual.”

Wilding confirmed that there are to be no staff losses and no immediate changes to procedure for clients. The company will rebrand in due course since the Five Arrows name is not included in the sale.

FAMF has recently provided substantial financial support to facilitate the expansion of Shift4, a digital broadcast and location shooting equipment hire company. Sustained financing aided in freeing up Shift4’s cashflow, allowing the owners to complete an estimated 7-year management buy-out three years earlier than anticipated.

In the past year, the Five Arrows Group secured access to the fourth round of the government’s Regional Growth Fund, and was able to supply grants to the tune of nearly £15m across a range of businesses (including live sound and broadcast), equating to a total funding of between £50m and £100m for SMEs in the UK. n www.famf.com

Gareth Wilding, MD of FAMF, formerly Fineline

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P8 NOVEMBER 2015

PSNPresents

Tickets still available for PSNPresents round 2 PSNEurope’s acclaimed social event returns this month

F

ree tickets are still available for the second PSNPresents at the Soho Hotel in London on 4 November.

At press time, legendary producer Flood, veteran monitor engineer and ‘rock ’n’ roll yogi’ Becky Pell, live sound legend Roger Lindsay and producer and TV composer Dru Masters were confirmed as guests for the PSNEurope-hosted social/networking event.

Focusrite, developer of the RedNet range of modular Ethernet-networked audio interfaces and sponsor of the first event in March, will sponsor the evening. “The previous event earlier this year was a great success and allowed us to network with the right client base that connect with our product ranges,” says Neil Johnston, Focusrite’s UK sales and marketing manager. “The format and style of the event proved very popular for everyone involved.”

Flood is among the most acclaimed British producers of the post-punk era. Beginning with an assistant engineer credit on New Order’s 1981 post-Joy Divison album Movement, his career as a producer came into its own into the late ’80s, when, in 1987, he was forced to choose between mixing U2’s The Joshua Tree and producing Erasure’s The Circus (“I decided that if I remained as an engineer, that’s all I was ever going to be”). In 1989 he began his long collaboration with Trent Reznor on Nine Inch Nails’ debut, Pretty Hate Machine, and in 1990 co-produced Depeche Mode’s Violator – their most successful album to date. He has also continued his relationship with U2, producing Achtung Baby, Zooropa, Pop and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the latter for which he won a Grammy.

He founded, alongside longtime collaborator Alan Moulder, the Assault & Battery studio complex in Willesden, and in 2014 won the Brit Award for best producer.

Becky Pell is one of the few women working in international touring on the technical side of the business.

Having fallen in love with rock ’n’ roll at an early age, she began her career in live music in 1995 as an apprentice engineer at RG Jones Sound Engineering in London. After five years learning her craft, she went freelance and toured as a monitor tech with The Black Crowes, Kylie Minogue and Travis, before moving behind the desk to mix monitors

The editor moderates the live panel at the first PSNPresents in March

for such diverse artists as a-ha, Muse, Sarah Brightman, Il Divo, Anastacia and Westlife. This summer she oversaw monitors on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival.

In 2012 Pell diversified her interests and trained to teach her other passion, yoga. She teaches the artists and bands she tours with, and runs classes and yoga events when she is not on the road.

Roger Lindsay has mixed some of the world’s most successful artists, including Pink Floyd, James Taylor, Prince, George Michael and Sade, and offered live sound consultancy for clients as diverse as Formula 1 motor racing teams, the Arts Council of Great Britain and even the British Royal Family.

TV composer and sometime producer Dru Masters’ career in television began as a composer’s assistant on the

Becky Pell

Dru Masters

BBC drama Howards’ Way. His most recent projects include Peter Moffat’s BBC drama Silk, which was nominated for three Baftas; the Bafta-winning Young James Herriot; and Charlie Brooker spoof A Touch of Cloth, starring John Hannah. He has also written and produced songs for artists as diverse as Mediæval Bæbes and George Michael, and provided the score for the The Apprentice.

To reserve your free tickets – and, for early attendees, your place at the free bar! – email psnpresents@nbmedia.com.

A variety of sponsorship packages are still available for the event. Contact PSNEurope ad manager Ryan O’Donnell (rodonnell@nbmedia.com) or account manager Rian ZollKhan (rzoll-khan@nbmedia.com) for more information. n www.psnpresents.com

Flood

Roger Lindsay

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P10 NOVEMBER 2015

Vocal Channel

Epic, soundtracks are becoming

I ERICA BASNICKI

is a writer and sound designer

am not a Star Wars fan. There, I’ve said it. I blame being born after the first film came out, and therefore missing out on the cinema experience. The confession is important so that you understand I have not been eagerly anticipating Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens, or bothering to look up anything related to its release.

I ended up watching a music-only trailer for the film mainly because – like so many YouTube videos – someone I know on Facebook shared it along with a token reference to it being “epic”. That word is LITERALLY overused, but as this particular friend of mine is more of a grammar pedant than I am, I had reason to believe this claim. So I clicked.

He was right. John Williams’s score is an absolute masterpiece. It was a truly epic two-minute trailer, after which I actually felt sorry for director JJ Abrams.

Williams’s music, like so many good film scores do, presses all the right emotional

buttons so perfectly well that even I am sold on seeing it in cinema. If the other elements don’t hold up, Abrams will probably have to shut down his Twitter account.

After the Star Wars trailer, YouTube suggested another video: Inception Music Makes Everything Epic (literally: overused). There’s more than one, as the title has become a meme in its own right, but they all do the same thing: pair ridiculously uninteresting video clips with clips from Hans Zimmer’s score.

And yes, the emotional impact of a man pulling his hoodie tight over his head, or a cat jumping up on a table, does trigger a much stronger response than it ought to.

I think it’s fair to assume that these videos, along with the music-only Star Wars trailer, indicate a growing appreciation for film music. Especially of the orchestral variety, which has always been tougher to sell than soundtracks composed by mainstream producers

(think Trent Reznor and The Social Network).

It really doesn’t matter what kind of film score it is – the fact that casual film fans are more aware of the music is good for the pro-audio business at large. An increased awareness means filmmakers will need to allocate bigger budgets to deliver a higher degree of musical quality and originality.

This translates to anything from more studio time, more people time, more kit (better kit!)… Just more. Of everything. (If we’re very lucky, maybe even more voices calling out in support of Air Studios, still under threat of closure from a proposed ‘super-basement’ planned by the owners of a neighbouring residence.)

However they achieve it, filmmakers need to start thinking bigger or risk a poor soundtrack taking away from the overall cinematic experience. After all, will film fans care if the music isn’t anything but epic? n

making events significantly more attractive to their direct customers. Everyone will have their own wish list, but here’s a few I think would be generally popular: For starters, the show floor should be conducive to business discussions, ie reasonably quiet, well-lit and with various comfortable spaces where conversations could be had in semi-privacy. Appropriate facilities should be provided for those who wish to deafen and dazzle away from the main event floor.

Events should be staged at venues which are appropriately located, close enough to other attractions that all visitors, and especially those from overseas, will have things to do and see outside the show. They should be easy to reach via road, air and rail and ideally provide ample free parking throughout the event for both visitors and exhibitors plus proper vehicular access for load-in/-out. The cost of power and other utilities throughout the venue should be reasonable, with exhibitors entitled to free

high-speed wireless internet, significant discounts on all food and drink purchased from in-house vendors and low-cost access to data collection systems such as badgescanners.

Events should also provide plentiful, relevant and cost-effective pre-show marketing opportunities for exhibitors to raise awareness not only of the event itself but also of the things to see there, especially new products and technologies.

At least one day could be ‘pro-only’ for preregistered individuals who could prove their credentials.

In particular events must now make commercial sense, with overall show costs being sustainable and offering a range of options to suit most budgets. The new reality is that exhibitors have to be wooed with a package of realistic and cost-effective benefits to rebuild a worthwhile shop window that will bring in the punters. More and better exhibitors equals more and better visitors – and that’s a win-win. n

A design for life

P

DAVE WIGGINS

is a freelance marketeer and pro-audio pundit

ro-audio trade shows used to be simple. They were seen by exhibitors as vital to their businesses and by visitors as enormous shop windows where they could browse an entire industry’s worth of gear in one location. That meant that most shows were replete with both sellers and buyers and a kind of equilibrium was maintained.

That balance started to change when, 10ish years ago, some forward-thinking exhibitors started to look at alternatives and reduced their trade show activities. This meant that the shop window was no longer as full of goodies as previously, so visitor numbers started to dwindle. In many cases that trend has continued.

It’s a classic chicken and egg scenario: if there’s less to see then fewer people will turn up to see it. Fewer visitors equals fewer exhibitors, and vice-versa. Assuming that the fix is to get the exhibitors there first so that visitors will follow, perhaps shows need to re-evaluate their models in terms of

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P12 NOVEMBER 2015

Movers and shakers Sponsored by www.interfacio.com • +442089865002

Winnie is Leung gone as the Eagleson lands New PR manager Jane joins Berkeley HQ alongside director of marketing Amy Huson

M

eyer Sound has strengthened its in-house marketing team with two new hires: Amy Huson as director of marketing, business and programmes, and Jane Eagleson as public relations manager.

Working closely with the sales and business development, Huson will take responsibility for a number of key marketing areas including “the international trade programme, lead generation, channel support efforts, vertical market strategies and website initiatives”.

Eagleson, replacing long-serving Winnie Leung, will be

Malte Polli-Holstein, an audio engineer with 20 years’ experience in cruise-ship sound design, has joined Amptown System Company as key account manager for major projects. www.amptown-system.com

Broadcast infrastructure specialist Axon Digital Design has appointed Bruno Martensson, late of Rohde & Schwarz, as sales director for the Nordic countries. www.axon.tv

the primary contact for pro-audio trade media (that’s us) and will “support mainstream media outreach and drive content development”.

“Amy and Jane bring rich experience to our team as we grow the marketing function at Meyer Sound,” says Karen Ames, Meyer Sound’s vice-president of marketing and communications. “The marketing team is evolving to better meet the needs of both the company and its customers as our robust product line grows and expands into new markets.” n www.meyersound.com

Andy Trott, who served 12 years with Harman in Europe, has moved to Music Group (recently rebranded ‘Music’) to become senior vicepresident of its pro division. www.music-group.com

Powersoft’s new-look sales team comprises Stefano Previtali as regional account manager, EMEA, and Fabio Lanini as account manager for multimedia solutions. www.powersoft-audio.com

QSC has named Joey D’Angelo director of systems solutions.

D’Angelo will develop QSC’s market presence in corporate AV “and beyond”. www.qsc.com

Jake Young has been named marketing manager for HHB and Scrub. Young has previously worked on Audio Media and TVBEurope and at Miloco Studios. www.hhb.co.uk

Amy Huson

Jane Eagleson

DEALER NETWORK Miloco Gear, the sales, brokerage and financing arm of the Miloco Group, has been named exclusive EU distributor for studio monitor manufacturer Augspurger. Big in the US but with a smaller profile in the Europe, Augspurger monitors have been chosen by producers including Jay-Z, Timbaland and Paul Epworth as their main monitoring option. www.augspurger.com www.milocogear.com sE Electronics has appointed Focusrite as exclusive UK distributor for sE’s entire line of microphones, Reflexion Filter products and studio accessories. The move follows the split last year of the Chinese production facility behind the sE name run by Ling and Swei Zou with Sonic Distribution’s James Young and Phil Smith in the UK, who have been responsible for marketing the brand and delivering a “uniquely European take on Chinese manufacturing” since 2002. www.seelectronics.com www.focusrite.com Audiologic has been named a sub-distributor for acoustic treatment specialist Universal Acoustics.

British company Universal Acoustics manufacturers system kits, absorption tiles, diffuser tiles and basstraps for a wide range of applications, including recording and broadcast studios, rehearsal rooms, language labs, gyms and offices. www.universal-acoustics.com www.audiologic.uk

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23/10/2015 16:48

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P14 NOVEMBER 2015

InfoComm educates ISE 2016

BY JON CHAPPLE

5 September–19 December

Britannia Row: Live sound intermediate course Twickenham, UK www.britanniarow.com/courses

10 November

InfoComm: The Smartphone and the Evolution of Assistive Listening Systems Online www.infocomm.org

10–12 November

Reproduced Sound 2015: Playing with Fire Moreton-in-Marsh, UK www.ioa.org.uk

23 November InfoComm International’s professional development programme for ISE will be in “a brand-new format, featuring InfoComm Conferences, InfoComm MasterClasses, and InfoComm FlashTracks”, the pro-AV trade association has announced.

InfoComm Conferences are – true to their name – two half-day conference sessions, InfoComm on Campus (on Tuesday afternoon) and the AV Executive Conference (on Friday morning). The former, moderated by InfoComm director of editorial services Brad Grimes, will address audio and AV technology for schools of higher education, and the latter, moderated by Navigate Management Consulting partner Brad Malone, “the importance and necessity of actively creating, fostering and sustaining an aligned corporate culture”.

FlashTrack sessions are bite-sized, 20-minute seminars covering hot topics in the industry, including “a look down the road at future technologies and how they will affect your business” and “a peek into the European market based on InfoComm market research”, while the MasterClasses will cover a range of technical and business topics, such as AV networking, AV/IT security, digital audio, meeting-room design and project management for integrators.

Integrated Systems Europe 2016 will take place on 9–12 February at the Amsterdam RAI exhibition centre. Integrated Systems Events, organiser of the event, revealed last week that the 2016 show has already sold out of exhibitor space.n www.infocomm.org

Wireless Mastered gets Installed

BY JON CHAPPLE

Shure Academy UK hosted its first Wireless Mastered: Installed seminar at its Waltham Abbey, Essex, headquarters on 21 October.

The seminar, part of its Wireless Mastered

series of RF/wireless technology seminars, was “specifically tailored to provide AV integrators with the knowledge and confidence to specify and install reliable, secure wireless microphone systems in today’s challenging RF environment”.

Wireless Mastered: Installed is certified by InfoComm International, and attendees were eligible to register for renewal unit (RU) credits towards the renewal of InfoComm International’s certified technology specialist (CTS) and CTS-design (CTS-D) credentials.

“Changes to spectrum allocation and the complexity of modern RF technology has made wireless audio one of the more elaborate areas when specifying an audio system,” said Duncan Savage, Shure UK systems group manager, before the event. “Wireless Mastered: Installed is essential for AV integrators who are specifying, installing or operating wireless microphones in professional applications, from schools and churches through to major corporate installations.”n www.shure-academy.co.uk

IPS: Lights Out and Away We Go: Broadcasting F1 London, UK www.ips.org.uk

THE ESSENTIALS:

FACTS ABOUT SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY

Spoken and sung words should be intelligible. Unfortunately, it can be technically challenging to retain intelligibility when recording or amplifying the voice. Writing for DPA Microphones, Eddy B. Brixen explains how Language comes from the spoken word, so when recording the voice you should always consider speech intelligibility.

We perceive the voice as natural and with the highest intelligibility when we are approximately 1m in front of the person talking. Each position on the head or the chest has its own sound colour, or timbre. For instance, the spectrum of speech recorded on the chest of a person normally lacks frequencies in the important range of 2–4 kHz, which results in reduced speech intelligibility. If the microphone does not compensate for this you should make corrections with an equaliser. n Read the full article at goo.gl/Q006de

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P16 NOVEMBER 2015

New products

KRK SYSTEMS ROKIT 4 G3

What is it?

A ‘tiny titan’ which translates the power and performance of KRK’s larger monitors into a compact, portable format.

Details: As with all third-generation ROKIT studio monitors, the ROKIT 4 has both high- and low-frequency level controls, along with balanced XLR and TRS and unbalanced RCA inputs.

And another thing…

Each speaker, which incorporates a glass/aramid 4” woofer and 1” softdome tweeter, has its own analogue cCass-A/B amplifier. www.krksys.com

ANTELOPE AUDIO

AUDIO-TECHNICA

BOSE PROFESSIONAL

What is it?

The California pro-audio manufacturer/software developer’s first reverb.

What is it?

An installation-friendly entry-level UHF wireless system.

What are they?

Four dual-channel amplifier models in Bose’s expanding FreeSpace amplifier line.

Details: The software-based reverb leverages the Zen Studio interface’s 64-bit DSP chip and features a unique algorithm designed by Antelope’s mathematicians, including company founder Igor Levin.

Details: The AT-One’s frequency plan is divided into two groups, with four available channels in each group split between the Europe-wide licence-free frequency range and the LTE duplex gap.

Details: The 2 x 120W amps offer amplification for both high- or low-impedance applications, allowing system integrators to spec FreeSpace amplifiers and loudspeakers in a wider range of venues.

And another thing…

AuraVerb is free for all current and future Zen Studio owners, and is fully compatible with other upcoming Antelope Audio products. www.antelopeaudio.com

And another thing…

Available in three configurations, AT-One can be purchased with a beltpack or handheld transmitter, or with beltpack and ATR35cW lavalier microphone. www.audio-technica.com

And another thing…

The IZA models include an integrated audio DSP, while ZAs support sound system expansion when using other Bose products. pro.bose.com

AURAVERB

AT-ONE

FREESPACE IZA 2120-HZ, IZA 2120-LZ, ZA 2120-HZ and ZA 2120-LZ

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23/10/2015 12:09

P17 NOVEMBER 2015

KV2 AUDIO

NTP TECHNOLOGY

PMC

What is it?

The “self-powered evolution” of KV2’s successful VHD 2.21 2×21” subwoofer.

What is it?

A major expansion to the capabilities of the Danish manufacturer’s DAD AX32 interface.

What is it?

A new addition to PMC’s QB1-A Active Reference Monitor range.

Details: Housing two newly developed 21” woofers and using new amplification technology unique to KV2 Audio, the VHD 4.21 active can power an additional passive VHD 4.21 and deliver 14kW of peak power plugged in to a standard 13A wall socket.

Details: The internal signal capacity of the AX32 been increased to 128 I/O channels per card slot, while its internal processing engine is now capable of providing PPM level information and level control for all 1,500 input and outputs.

Details: Larger than any speaker ever manufactured by the British company, the statement QB1-XBD-A is “the definitive main monitor” with “no equal in terms of sheer power and resolution”, says PMC.

And another thing…

The VHD 4.21 was launched at PRO in Birmingham in September. www.kv2audio.com

And another thing…

Other new features include a user-configurable cue mixer and 256x32 summing processing. www.ntp.dk

VHD 4.21

DAD AX32

QB1-XBD-A

And another thing…

The QB1-XBD-A made its debut at the 139th AES Convention in New York from 29 October to 1 November. www.pmc-speakers.com

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P18 NOVEMBER 2015

The Strategic Position

An Olympian effort for PLASA PLASA’s Chris Toulmin tells Dave Robinson how the move to Olympia London for 2016 will inject new life into the annual expo

T

he PLASA Show, the annual entertainment technology event, ran for three days instead of the usual four last month (Sunday 4 October to Tuesday 6 October). While the quality and quantity of audio-related sessions and panels was high, the number of exhibitors from the prosound industry remained low. PSNEurope encountered several exhibitors who were happy with the show, but an equal, if not greater, number of visitors who weren’t.

Dave Robinson spoke with PLASA’s director of the event division, Chris Toulmin, as its three-year contract with the Docklands ExCeL venue expires and the association looks to refresh and reform the show for 2016 PSNEurope: How was the PLASA Show, Chris?

Chris Toulmin: I think it went it surprisingly well. We were concerned because sales have been challenging this year. Coming down from four to three is fairly nerve-racking; finding out if that third day is going to be a tumbleweed day – and, surprisingly, it wasn’t! Not that the numbers were significantly greater [on Tuesday], but the difference was we were literally having to push people out of the door at closing time. Normally there are not many people left other than the exhibitors, so we’re definitely pleased about that going forward as a three-day show.

And the mood on the floor was pretty good: everyone was positive, business was going well. The bottom line is that if they are seeing the right people, then exhibitors are having a good show.

There seemed to be as many negative comments as there were positive ones. One of these being that the audio representation was the smallest its ever been…

In terms of level of content, brand- or exhibitor-wise, this year wasn’t much different from last year: there’ve been a couple of gains and a couple of losses. [But] particularly on the audio side, there’s no dispute that this has been in long-term decline; it’s not something that’s happened overnight.

Through our dialogue with companies, we get various opinions on how they see the profile of the show and which budget the show comes out of. As it has moved away from the international budget for most of them, then they don’t have the money to spend doing a show on this scale in the UK. That’s one issue we have had to deal with.

Also, there’s become an “agreement” not to become involved – “If he does it, we’ll do it” sort of thing – which is frustrating…

What PLASA has continued to do is invest in the

SSE at PLASA 2015

educational content for audio, which again has been because we want to retain that audio market as part of the overall PLASA picture. It’s frustrating because we invest in, and deliver, the [session programme] – and it doesn’t come for free, even though we offer it free to the visitors – and I think that was stronger than ever this year. But I fully appreciate that, while [the sessions are] great – and we know the visitors enjoy them because a lot of them were full – [visitors] are obviously disappointed when they don’t get to see the brands on the floor.

It’s not just about a change of location – it’s a change of how the show will be, to match the changing landscape and expectation of our exhibitors

Chris Toulmin

Do you think the lack of attraction for audio brands has been too many shows, that PLASA is too expensive, the ExCeL location, a lack of ‘local’ pubs and bars, or what?

It’s almost all of the above. We have gone through a significant amount of change over the last three/four years – the venue is a fantastic venue but the location has been a problem.

From a wider point of view – and this is not just the audio section – the show thrives on a sense of community, when the industry comes together. ExCeL doesn’t lend itself to that sort of feeling as it did when it was based in west London.

And now your three-year contract with ExCeL is up and you’re heading back there?

We are taking it to Olympia [in West Kensington, Sunday 18–Tuesday 20 September 2016]. It’s not just about a change of location – it’s a change of how the show will be, to match the changing landscape and expectation of our exhibitors. We are scaling down the event, to about 50 per cent of the current one – that doesn’t mean 50 per cent less companies, just half the space. We’re taking what we learned from PLASA Focus in Leeds and bringing that into to a London event. It won’t all be small shell schemes – it’s about significantly reducing the cost to exhibit with

us, and the important thing is that we expect to bring the same [number] of visitors; because of the location, because of the type of show it still will be. That can only be a good thing.

We’ve had some exhibitors who’ve taken a very large presence at the show, down to the very small booths – so we’re levelling that playing field a lot more. Which is what Focus has always has been about. Also, moving to Olympia gives us the flexibility that we haven’t had at ExCeL: more opportunities to do something ‘hands-on’,

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26/10/2015 10:19

P19 NOVEMBER 2015

Opinion: Paul Hinkly, LMC Audio Systems “For our part at LMC, this PLASA was unexpectedly one of the very best ever, with audio visitors being condensed towards the existing audio exhibits evidenced by LMC sales leads taken being very significantly up over previous recent years. Our fear for future years is that this apparent intensification of audio visitors is not sustainable without an ongoing increasing presence from the remaining audio manufacturers and distributors.

Manufacturer participation as independent exhibitors this year was so poor – hats off to Cadac, d&b, FBT, Nexo and Yamaha on their own stands – that I heard audio visitors describing manufacturers that made no show at all as “disrespecting their customers” by not contributing

at least at some sort of level. And I echo that sentiment, and add that manufacturers making no show at all are also disrespecting LMC and other dealers by staying away.

“Cause for optimism are next year’s [plans, which] should persuade more overseas visitors and consequently manufacturers to attend and exhibit – so bring it on.” www.lmcaudio.co.uk

Leeds, but there is a marketplace in Scotland. We keep close track of the crossover to ensure we aren’t doubling up, and that is remarkably low: between London and Leeds it’s about 350 visitors; between Glasgow and Leeds, 50 visitors. So it’s certainly proved the point that it is worth running these things.

And finally: CEO Matthew Griffiths is leaving PLASA. He is! After 17 years. Having shaped and reshaped the organisation it’s come time to reshape it again, and he took the decision it was someone else’s turn to take that on.

He’s stepping aside in the new year, and then he’s off into the sunset.

Will you be stepping into the role?

From my point of view, I’m focussing on the challenge I’ve got ahead. In terms of stability, members of the regional board and the governing body have stepped up to support people such as myself to make sure we can continue to run things smoothly. As the organisation is scaled down, when we have a better idea of who we need to run that then we shall make the appointment. n www.plasa.org At press time, PSNEurope learned that PLASA had taken steps to ameliorate a “crisis cashflow problem” by reducing staff and putting the Eastbourne office up for sale, in addition to the cessation of operations in the USA. PLASA has also “asked for members’ feedback on its next steps as it moves forward into a new phase of its existence”.

something more ‘experiential’ than before.

But! Marked Events’ rival BPM/PRO show in Birmingham will be held the week before, 11–13 September, at the Genting Arena at the NEC. Well… [Pause] That wasn’t done by design. We did want to get back into September because the majority of our exhibitors were telling us that.

In terms of why have we ended up a week apart, it was the only time that was available at Olympia. We have spoken to PRO – [the situation’s] not ideal – and we’re also having those conversations with exhibitors – and some of those, for 2016, will have to make a decision as to which show is most valuable. It’s not ideal having all your marketing spend going out at one time. But it’s an inevitable thing for 2016.

As I say, we are having a dialogue and looking at ways around this in the long run, and from our point of view, from 2017 onwards we will be looking to create as much space as we reasonably can between us and BPM if that’s the way forward – but we want to stay in September, as are the wants of our constituents.

What of PLASA in the USA? The decision has been taken for PLASA to de-merge Europe and North America – that is now official as of a couple of weeks ago. [PLASA and ESTA, a trade association representing entertainment industries in North America, joined forces officially on 1 January 2011. The new association went on to host PLASA Focus events in Orlando and Austin.]

I think it was decided it was in the best interests of both territories. One of the things that had become evident is that, in effect, we all speak the same language but culturally we are different in how we approach business. And bringing those two organisations together involved too much compromise which didn’t best serve either side.

PLASA will remain as PLASA, all the media and properties still belong to PLASA, but we will be concentrating on the core business and taking a hiatus from events over there for at least a year.

What about the Scottish show?

PLASA Focus will be held in Glasgow on 20–21 January 2016. We ran it in December 2014 and that wasn’t ideal. So we’ve pushed it back to January, and that’s received a remarkably good response: we’ve already arrived at the [bookings] point when we ran the show the first time, so we expect to see some growth this year. Not to the extent of

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P20 NOVEMBER 2015

Studio

United Kingdom

High life Elliot Richardson, founder of Highfield Studio, is unleashing a quiet revolution in rural Essex with his melding of traditional recording with video, photography, post-production and parties, writes Jon Chapple

L

ocated in the picturesque Essex hamlet of Bartholomew Green (population: 42), Highfield Studio in many ways epitomises the increasingly diverse nature of the small, independent recording studio. Its owner, Elliot Richardson, is something of a modern Renaissance man – part producer, live engineer, drummer/drum tutor, graphic designer and videographer – and, like Stoke Prior’s Creative Design Studios, featured in PSNEurope in August, Highfield offers a range of non-recording/ mixing/music production services, including a video production, a rehearsal space, a green screen, a photo studio and party experiences (“the ultimate gift for music enthusiasts”). “[T]hese skillsets have been fundamental in earning me a living [since I opened the studio],” explains Richardson. “And the parties are a no-brainer…”

Richardson grew up in Bartholomew Green, near Great Leighs, and originally founded the studio – with a little help from dad – as a rehearsal and recording space for his first band.

“I think other studios generally start from the same place: either owned or run by someone wealthy whose hobby has spiralled out of control, or as a rehearsal room whose owner likes the idea of recording the noise that goes on,” says Richardson, whose current band, Missing Andy, have supported Madness, The Wombats, Pigeon Detectives and The Specials’ Neville Staple, were runners-up on Sky 1 talent contest Must be the Music

and whose most recent albums – Guerrilla Invasion parts 1 and 2 – charted at Nos 9 and 10, respectively, on the UK Indie Chart. “With Highfield Studio, when you walk in you’re entering into the history and development of my own musical career [and] the knowledge I’ve gained through the steps taken with Missing Andy, so I guess – in a good way – we can relate well to the artist and all the struggles they have to go through with the beast that is ‘the music industry’.”

While he tracks the band, Richardson generally steers clear of producing Missing Andy: “We actually have five producers,” he explains, “[and] we all learnt the art of production from our manager, who was signed to Zomba [now Epic/RCA] some years ago, so it’s quite easy for me to just be a drummer and leave the production to everyone else.”

However, he says his being a drummer “definitely shows through in my mixes and productions” when mixing other bands: “I like it when drums are in your face, punchy, like they would be if you were sitting on the stool – that, after all, is what gets people moving.”

Richardson’s production style is also influenced by his background in live sound, which is “very much a part of my work these days. I have a regular gig with [Hertfordshire funk/soul act] Uncle Funk, which consists of an eight- or 10-piece line-up, which is great: I get to leave the studio and remember what ‘the great outdoors’ looks like!

“Live engineering has helped change the way I

Elliot Richardson in the control room at Highfield Studio

approach all my studio sessions. I once watched an interview with Rich Costey, who explained how he flies across the desk with a rough balance first, to get a mix sounding like ‘a record’, then fine-tunes from that point.

Live sound for me is just more practice at exactly that process, meaning I can what I want to hear in the studio much faster.”

The transformation of Highfield from a makeshift recording room to professional studio was inspired by the increasing success of Missing Andy, says Richardson, and his exposure to some of Britain’s leading recording facilities. “As my band progressed I was fortunate enough to record in some of the UK’s best studios: Metropolis, Sarm West, Sphere and Miloco’s Livingstone and Square (Nottingham)” he explains.

“From these experiences and from working alongside our engineer, Adrian Hall, I learnt a great deal about acoustic treatment and studio vibe.

“From this point on Highfield Studio v2.0 was born, and I had to teach my dad to build things […] in a nonlinear way! (Highfield MkI had “perfectly straight walls, unquestionable right angles and office-style décor,” Richardson recalls.)

“All the building work was achieved by my dad and I with regular help from my studio engineer, Warren Woodcraft, whom I met at college and who also happens to have great building skills in addition to sound engineering…”

Is Dad still involved in any way? “Not any more, unless

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23/10/2015 10:35

When you need to hear a pin drop...

SI Centrum Palladium, Stuttgart, Germany

Theatre applications are particularly demanding, the quietest of sounds are often crucially important to the show.

Similarly Orchestral and Jazz performances have huge variations in levels.

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After years of using line arrays in our business it seems that a lot of people including me just have forgotten the advantages of a point source speaker. Together with the offered quality of KV2, the enormous ability of SPL and the harmonic spread, the result is amazing.“

The KV2 Audio ESR Series has been designed to deliver an impressive full range response with extraordinary dynamic range. Every aspect of an ESR system is aimed at delivering total accuracy and audio quality.

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Test the ESR Series in your performance space today - you will be able to hear a pin drop...

ESR215 www.kv2audio.com

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8/14/2015 10:07:30 AM

P22 NOVEMBER 2015

Studio

The live room includes a Rhodes electric piano, which Richardson says ‘sends him to his happy place’

I have ideas for further expansion – and then I’d have to sweet-talk him into thinking it will benefit the business!”

Mixing- and monitoring-wise, Highfield is an allMackie affair, centred around an eight-bus Onyx 24 analogue desk and HR624 active studio monitors.

Outboard comes courtesy of Focusrite (Liquid Channel and ISA220 channel strips), Drawmer (1960 mic pre/valve compressor) and Harman (Lexicon Alex hardware reverb, dbx 31-band graphic EQ), among others, with headphones by beyerdynamic (two pairs of DT770s and four DT150s) and Bower & Wilkins

(P5), a Logic Pro 9 DAW and veritable smorgasbord of microphones – including Rødes and Shures, a Coles 4104, an AKG C12 VR, a Royer R-121 and sE’s Rupert Neve-designed RNR1 – and plug-ins.

“My kit list began after I did work experience at a local studio,” says Richardson, explaining his choice of audio equipment. “I worked two jobs, day and night, to save up enough money to get my first set-up, then went straight to my pal Pistol Pete – the main producer at the studio – who he recommended a set of Event 20/20 monitors, a Mac Pro and a M-Audio Delta

10/10 [soundcard] to get me going. Buying equipment after that has been easy: after visiting the studios I’ve been to, you soon get to know what the big boys use.”

Favourite bit of kit? “Always a tough question, but for me at this point in time it has to be the latest addition to the studio, the Fender Rhodes [electric piano], mainly because it’s just beautiful to play and sends me to my happy place when I’m killing time. After that it has to be our SSL Alpha-Link A–D converter, which has helped improve our sound no end.”

While rural north Essex may not seem like an obvious home to a thriving recording scene, Richardson says there are actually “a lot of studios in this area – in fact my bass player is currently building his own studio 10 minutes away from me as we speak”. Although he admits that there “may be competition” with other local studios – there are facilities near Chelmsford (AT Music Group, AllStar, Plus11, Studio 808), Witham (Soundmagic), Saffron Walden (Threecircles), Harlow (Woodbury) and Southend (Bleeding Ear) – Richardson “prefers to see them as a family network, like brothers from different mothers who are all in the trenches together trying to survive what could well be a dying industry.

“Anyone who can make decent enough money out of a ‘hobby job’ is a friend of mine, plus it’s all just friendly competition – ‘Have you heard the results so-and-so is getting?’ – so I just push harder to up my game.” n www.highfieldstudio.co.uk www.missingandy.com Highfield features an all-Mackie mixing and monitoring set-up

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P24 NOVEMBER 2015

Studio

Italy

More Musings Mike Clark hikes up the Apennines to Tredozio in search of in-demand mastering engineer Giovanni Versari. He’s no drone…

F

ollowing on from last month’s article on engineer/producer Tommaso Colliva’s collaboration with Muse, and in particular on their latest album, Drones (‘Colliva’s travels’, PSNEurope October 2015), PSNEurope tracked down Giovanni Versari, another Italian who played a key role in the album’s production, mastering the project in his La Maestà studio.

As opposed to Colliva, who took the decision to move from Milan to London, Versari did almost the exact opposite: In 2011, following 14 years as a mastering engineer with Milan’s groundbreaking Nautilus Mastering, where he worked on recordings by Franco Battiato, PFM, Ennio Morricone and Mario Biondi – and after considering the global flexibility offered by the web for his work – he decided to open his own facility in Tredozio, a small town of 1,200 people tucked away in the Romagna Apennines.

“I’d already done some work for Muse in the past, such as mastering B-sides or extra tracks, but the decision to choose me for the new album was taken as work on it proceeded,” he explains. “Tommaso is a good friend, as well as a client, and he suggested me to the band. After some blind tests, where they had the same song mastered by various studios, they decided to entrust the work to me.”

Versari added that the band didn’t in fact come to his rural retreat, as their work schedule ruled out the possibility: “They were travelling between London and Los Angeles for the recording, so we couldn’t meet up to do the mastering work together. Everything was done ’remotely’, communicating via Skype, email and phone and exchanging audio files via FTP.” With a Manley Laboratories Mastering Backbone as its centrepiece and Pro Tools 10/11 and a SADiE 6 Sound Suite as DAW, La Maestà (meaning “The Majesty”) has an impressive array of other equipment, among which the most interesting without doubt are vintage units such as the Klein & Hummel UE100 and UE1000 equalisers, Neumann’s PEV passive EQ and NTP 179-120 comps. “The newer gear, such as the Shadow Hills [Vintage King] Class A Limited Edition mastering compressor, contributes to creating the results I want – and the chain they form and how they’re used together are definitely fundamental for the sound I’m looking for,” Versari comments.

In the digital domain, Versari reveals his “secret weapon”: “I’m lucky enough to have another very good friend, Davide Barbi, who’s the owner and chief

Giovanni Versari and his mastering set-up at La Maestà

engineer of one of Italy’s most important [musical] software companies, IK Multimedia. As well as being an exceptional gear maintainer, he developed a limiter – exclusively for me – that’s a real killer!”

Versari explains that Colliva was also extremely helpful when working on the Drones project because, as well as their reciprocal esteem, he was also the person who best understood exactly what the band had in mind for the record, since he’d worked with them for almost 10 years and followed every stage of the new project, “so he was able communicate this to me, which greatly facilitated my work.”

As well as Muse and Collivo’s poliziottesco-inspired group, Calibro 35 (see last month), other bands and artists already mastered by Versari in his Tredozio facility include Vinicio Capossela, Fabi Silvestri Gazze, Samuele Bersani, Verdena, Bluebeaters, Of Monsters and Men and Frankie Chavez.

To listen to the results of his work, Giovanni uses a monitor set-up that is definitely on a par with the rest of the studio’s top-grade equipment: A pair of ATC SCM200ASL main monitors, a couple of Duntech’s flagship seven-driver Sovereign enclosures and some other smaller models.

Prior to his specialisation as a mastering engineer, Versari accumulated experience in various other fields, including as a live sound engineer at rock, jazz and classical festivals and concerts and opening Bologna’s

first digital restoration facility, where he restored numerous soundtracks for film archives in Italy and abroad.

This in-depth knowledge obviously also contributed to him becoming such a sought-after mastering engineer.

In fact, since opening his new studio Versari has been kept extremely busy, concluding (with great satisfaction): “I’ve mastered an annual average of approximately 100 projects by top Italian artists and bands, including Subsonica, Negramaro, Irene Grandi, Mario Venuti, Almamegretta… oh, and Muse!” n www.lamaestamastering.it

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23/10/2015 12:09

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9/29/2015 9:59:43 AM

P26 NOVEMBER 2015

Feature: Start-ups

Start it up!

As anyone who has been in the position of starting their own business can attest, it isn’t easy.

Erica Basnicki caught up with a few new kids on the block who had the right stuff to succeed...

T

ech start-ups are the talk of the interwebs and the media darlings du jour. Pro-audio start-ups might not fit neatly in the definition of the term, or be as plentiful, or get shared as widely through Instagram photos, but their success is – if anything – to be admired even further.

Why? Compared to the app/mobile technology world, ours is a mature industry and ‘innovation’ is frequently – but not always – a subtler affair.

Incremental, rather than leaps and bounds. Increments aren’t as shiny as leaps and bounds – and those happen less often. So what does it take to catch the eyes of pro-audio’s magpies? Over to three start-up success stories...

Dante spoken here: Klang’s Quelle headphone amp

Klang Technologies The brainchild of founder and chief marketing officer Pascal Dietrich, Klang’s 3D in-ear monitoring system addresses what the company refers to as “unnatural feeling, missing transparency, ear fatigue and disorientation” of traditional stereo monitoring. The company’s audio-mixing technology allows musicians to be placed exactly where you see them in the room, an idea Dietrich started to develop nine years ago as a musician-cum-engineer.

PSNEurope: Describe the challenges and achievements of your first year of business.

Pascal Dietrich: Since we were starting up from a university research background, we successfully applied for a one-year start-up scholarship. Crowdfunding is definitely a very interesting platform [see box], but as the pro-audio market is not necessarily of interest to a

wider range of people we found that this is not the best opportunity for us.

The main challenges were in the development of our hardware and software, and the marketing and distribution of our products. The Pareto principle – the 80–20 rule – [which states that roughly 80 per cent of sales come from 20 per cent of clients] is applicable in many areas, but this is not true for the high-level live sound market. We had to make sure our equipment was running day and night without any problems. All these challenges have been met, but our main achievement is something we were not expecting: seeing the joy on everyone’s face when listening to our 3D technology.

This is the best motivation you can get to push the company and its products to the next level.

PSN: What three things made it possible for you to achieve your current level of success?

PD: The novelty of our entire product. It does not

Massive Attack engineer and Avid live sound specialist Robb Allan demos the Klang app

substitute another brand’s product, but just integrates in between mixing consoles and in-ears.

Being as close as possible to our customers and integrating them into the product development process, which leads to fast improvements and convenient workflows for hectic live-sound applications.

The smile on people’s faces when switching from standard stereo to Klang 3D. Everyone is curious how it works and they keep telling all their friends about what they just experienced.

PSN: What advice would you offer to someone considering a new pro-audio business in 2016?

PD: Get in contact with true pro-audio users from day one to get valuable beta testers and ambassadors, and of course talk to the right sales and marketing people to settle on a good strategy before you even start building the product.

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P27 NOVEMBER 2015

System of a Down drummer John Dalmayan: A Klang fan

Raw Loops Create loops for other producers to use and sell them online? Not really an original idea any more, pal.

All the more reason, then, to admire founder Mike Frade’s success with Raw Loops. With years of music production under his belt, Frade grew weary of a lack of focus on quality control and customer service from some of the bigger web stores which, for the most part, emphasised mainstream sounds. There was also the opportunity “to give the younger or less wealthy producers who don’t have the finances to go out and buy thousands of dollars worth of hardware gear a fair playing field”. Now Frade has hit the ground running with Raw Loops’ underground sound...

PSNEurope: Describe the early days of Raw Loops.

Mike Frade: They were definitely stressful, especially since I don’t know anything about coding a website. It was completely new territory for me, so the learning curve, as you’d imagine, was a massive undertaking.

One piece of advice I can offer is to always get a contract from the web developers on a final price with the exact product that they are to deliver. It’s a really sensitive subject with web developers these days, but I stood firm and eventually got it the way I needed it to minimise my risk.

PSN: What three things made it possible for you to achieve your current level of success?

MF: Delivering a high quality product that people can get a lot of use out of.

The second most important element is definitely the fact that we have a great marketing person behind us who is really doing a great job to spread the word and create awareness about Raw Loops and give us the much-needed exposure for today’s market.

The third is a bit of an oxymoron, but it’s providing both consistency and diversity simultaneously while staying true to our core values for underground music. One, to make sure we are providing something for everyone; and two, because it can be

Raw Loops founder Mike Frade. Not a vampire

extremely beneficial to pull elements from different genres to create either a whole new genre or just something truly different and special within your own genre of choice. It can all be a bit subtle to untrained ears, but as the old saying goes, “the art is in the detail”.

PSN: What advice would you offer to someone considering a new pro-audio business in 2016?

MF: It truly depends on what you’re selling, but one constant thing common to any industry is highquality product with great marketing. Without these

two things working together, it just won’t work.

Also, know your customer: gather data, know what they do and don’t like; invest in growth hacking, conversion optimisation and A/B testing for your business for 2016.

Caught the crowdfunding craze?

It’s not for every product idea, but crowdfunding has certainly helped several audio projects get off the ground, some more ‘pro’ than others. Currently, StudioFeed are looking for money for their wearable SubPac M2 – essentially a device worn like a backpack that allows deaf and hard of hearing users to literally feel the bass. Sound unusual? Last year they successfully raised funds for the original SubPac that adds bass rumble to your car seat.

In San Francisco, construction is underway to install Envelop’s 28.4 3D sound platform in a dedicated space within the city’s arts and entertainment complex, The Midway. Yes, that is a complete 3D audio club, crowdfunded through Kickstarter.

That’s the beauty of crowdfunding; no idea is too daring or high-tech. For a successful campaign that’s a little closer to home, look no further than Flare Audio, who recently launched its R2 headphones via Kickstarter. “The consumer market was a new one for us,” explains Flare’s Naomi Roberts, “and we wanted to get our earphones out there to as bigger platform of consumers as possible.”

“We spent time looking at other Kickstarter campaigns, researching what worked well and planning how we wanted to come across as a company. We could see that there was a high

percentage of Kickstarter backers who had a keen interest in both new technology and also more specifically, audio equipment.”

The campaign’s video also featured big-names producers Flood, Gary Langan and Chris Kimsey, giving the pro-audio manufacturer some added consumer clout.

But for all the claims of crowdfunding being “easy money”, Roberts attests it’s anything but: “Once our campaign was live on Kickstarter it was a matter of replying to all questions and comments from potential backers – as Kickstarter is a worldwide platform it meant that these came in at all hours, and keeping on top of them was a full time job.

“I would say, however, that getting all the rewards sent out was a whole other ball game! In hindsight had we known we were going to sell many more earphones than we anticipated [Flare achieved 77.7 per cent in excess of their goal] we would probably have pushed back our delivery dates to give us more breathing space.

“The sheer amount of time you have to dedicate to a campaign is all consuming; I would suggest to anyone considering Kickstarter as a platform for launching a product that you need to dedicate yourself fully to it and be prepared to be ‘off the grid’ socially until its over!”

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P28 NOVEMBER 2015

Feature: Start-ups

Eve Audio By now Eve Audio’s genesis is familiar to most: former Adam Audio CEO Roland Stenz set up shop to bring to life his own vision and studio monitor product ideas. Kerstin Mischke, responsible for sales and marketing at the company, shares Eve’s creation story...

PSNEurope: Describe your first year of business.

Kerstin Mischke: Prior to the official launch of Eve Audio everything happened behind closed doors and everyone involved kept quiet. That still astonishes me, as my experience is that word in our industry travels fast, and everything you want to keep secret or hide travels especially fast.

Consequently the company’s launch in our industry in March 2012 came for most as a big surprise.

We also launched a complete product range, and that drew a lot of attention to us.

From the attention we created at our first Musikmesse in 2012 we received interest from 86 distribution companies from over 35 countries worldwide. Very quickly we brought our first products into the market, and the distributors we choose to work with did a massive job to introduce

Eve to their markets. This all happened more or less worldwide and at the same time. The company grew fast. We had to speed up production, increased production quantities, hire more people and expand warehouse and production capacities much sooner then we thought that would need to do so.

Inside Eve’s anechoic chamber

PSN: What three things made it possible for you to achieve your current level of success?

KM: The main reason for the results we’ve achieved is the people involved: Roland Stenz has worked in pro-audio R&D for 30+ years now. He started his career in the mid ’80s in the former East Berlin. To do R&D work in pro audio behind the Iron Curtain was very different to how that’s done today – today you can call people to build or deliver parts, but back in the ’80s in East Berlin you had to make everything yourself – you couldn’t go and buy what you needed. I have more than 20 years of experiences in sales, most of them in proaudio.

When we launched Eve I knew what distributors I should talk to in order to establish a strong network of business partners.

The second thing in our opinion is that we launched a complete product range. To offer a

The Eve Audio line-up at PL+S/Musikmesse 2015

Eve Audio’s Kerstin Mischke and Roland Stenz

complete range makes a brand attractive for distributors and dealers. Their nature is to sell products and the more complete a range is the more attractive is your product for distributors and dealers to invest or offer that to your clients.

And the third reason is constant PR work in several channels and setting up a clever roadmap for marketing – which sounds easy, but it’s not!

PSN: What advice would you offer to someone considering a new pro-audio business in 2016?

KM: There is no general advice to give which works for everyone and every product. Start-ups should be aware that markets get narrower. Many countries are in political or economical situations where it’s difficult to forecast business, so you should have the power to adapt quickly and the resources to survive droughts. If you are ready for that, our advice is to go for it! It’s fun to be in the pro-audio business.

If you are not ready for that, take your money, buy a sunny island and a case of whisky or Jägermeister and call it a day. n www.klang.com www.rawloops.com www.eve-audio.com

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23/10/2015 12:19

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P30 NOVEMBER 2015

Broadcast

Starting up new platforms for future radio Radio.co is a new start-up developing station automation and distribution in the cloud. Founder James Mulvany talks to Kevin Hilton about getting started in the business, technology developments and the potential for radio

R

adio has had an uneasy relationship with new and multimedia technology over the last 10 years. The World Wide Web offers emerging and established broadcasters alike access to wider audiences beyond FM and even DAB but there are few in both broadcasting and internet development taking full advantage. One person who is looking to push the venerable medium further is James Mulvany, whose new company, Radio.co, is offering full automation and storage in the cloud.

Since launching in July this year, Radio.co claims 915 streams and 35 million hours being listened to on the platform as of October. At the age of 28 Mulvany is an established high-tech entrepreneur and set up his first company, Igniso, in 2005. There is the perception that young people have no interest in radio, but for Mulvany, both then and now, it still has a future and possibilities for success.

“Far from killing off radio, the internet has in fact made it stronger than it has ever been,” he says.

“Research proves that people are increasingly turning away from on-demand music and content and back to live because, in our busy lives, we tend to trust our favourite DJs and presenters to select or ‘curate’ for us rather than always having to search for ourselves.”

Radio.co is described as a “live streaming platform that allows anyone to build an online radio station and broadcast globally”. Among the early testers and adopters of the system is Sunset Radio, based in Manchester, as is Igniso and Radio.co. Another recent user was pop-up station Radio Everyone, part of writer– director Richard Curtis’s Global Goals sustainable development venture. The system is aimed at a variety

of radio operators, from conventional broadcasters to hobbyists.

Mulvany’s new platform is a move on from Igniso’s first product, Wavestreaming. While he says this “wasn’t particularly innovative”, it did provide the means for early internet broadcasters to get on air and reach an audience, with tools including Shoutcast and Cloud DJ. “But there was more demand for something userfriendly instead of a lot of different services plugged together,” he explains. “I thought I could streamline the experience.”

The Radio.co package includes automation but also with live broadcast capability, with presenters able to cut into the stream from wherever they are in the world. Other features include analytics, online station management, a customisable web player, an optimised stream for mobile reception and integration with social media.

“The tools and players are all built within the system so there is no coding knowledge needed,” Mulvany comments. “For more advanced users there is an API and a player kit, which allows them to go deeper into the web experience.”

Mulvany acknowledges that he was “lucky” already having a successful company running to launch his latest venture. This allowed him to self-fund Radio.co and remain debt-free. His first start-up, Igniso, began to take root while he was studying interactive and multimedia design (“A posh term for web design”) at the University of Huddersfield.

“I was very young at the start, 17 or 18,” he says. “I got things going by bootstrapping, although it wasn’t called that back then. I didn’t have a lot of outgoings and fell into doing this by accident while I was at sixth form. I wanted to go into radio but didn’t want to be a DJ. I got experience working at different stations and saw the demand, which led to starting a website that grew over time at university.”

Although he “umm-ed and ahh-ed” about going to university, Mulvany, originally from Guildford in Surrey, is glad he did because he ended up working in a shared office,

James Mulvany: “Far from killing off radio, the internet has in fact made it stronger than it has ever been”

Aaron Corkin, Radio.co operations manager (left), and Mike Cunsolo, marketing manager, at the Manchester HQ

which he describes as an “incubator” and that allowed him to gain life skills and see what other people were doing. After graduating he moved to Manchester, which is now a major media hub in the UK. While others might see online video and multimedia as the growing areas, Mulvany still views radio as “exciting”, with modern technology bringing both new talent and a wider audience: “There is a push to get stations on to digital radio but there are also lots of people listening on their phones.” n www.radio.co

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P32 NOVEMBER 2015

Broadcast

Immersive audio formats are finding their way into the living room

IBC gets immersed in immersive Call it 3D, spatial or immersive sound, you couldn’t help but notice that advanced surround was a trend at the broadcast techfest in Amsterdam in September. Kevin Hilton kept several ears open and reports.

A

nyone wandering round IBC 2015 could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled into a web show instead. In most halls many stands proclaimed integration of whichever broadcast device with social media in the form of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But this interloper from another world – albeit on that is now very close and important to broadcasting – was not the only trending technology, to use a social media buzzword. Immersive audio is no debutante at the RAI but this year the technology appeared to be gaining real traction in the broadcast industry.

There is now no doubt in broadcasters’ mind that Ultra HD services need more depth in the sound picture to engage viewers in the same way as the 4K images.

This makes the basic requirement for stereo appear sorely lacking and even casts doubt on whether 5.1 is right for the job. John Couling, senior vice president of the E-business group at Dolby Laboratories, which has presented its Atmos spatial audio system to SMPTE as a contender for standard status, observed that the key question in all this was how much adoption of spatial sound there has been.

Presently there are more than 300 films featuring the format, with immersive audio-video games also appearing. The Blu-ray disc (BD) format has been extended to offer Atmos and is potentially showing the way for broadcasting with a suitably aurally encompassing release of Game of Thrones, the first episodic television release to feature spatial sound. This ‘Westeros Effect’ will doubtless go some way

John Couling, Dolby Laboratories

Wilfred Van Baelen, Auro Technologies

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26/10/2015 09:59

Jünger Audio’s Multichannel Monitoring and Authoring system

in pushing the profile of immserive audio but having the right domestic gear is going to be more telling.

Just before IBC started, the IFA expo in Berlin saw Yamaha introduce what many pundits viewed as a convincing stab at getting round the thorny problem of having to install more loudspeakers – including in the ceiling. The YSP-5600 soundbar is described by Yamaha as a digital sound projector, which explains how it can reproduce Dolby Atmos from a single unit. DTS: X is set to follow through a firmware update.

Also speaking at the immersive audio panel session hosted by research consultancy Futuresource, Couling said that IFA provided a “coming out party for consumer electronics and the consumers” in terms of the technology. “Last year was about home cinema but this year it is soundbars, tablets and smartphones,” he commented. During the same session Wilfried van Baelen, chief executive of Auro Technologies, observed that spatial sound had two disadvantages as far as the consumer was concerned: “You need to experience it before you really understand what it offers and when you do, you get used to it very fast.” He added that because it was closer to natural sound viewers/ listeners missed 3D sound more when they went back to ‘conventional’ audio formats.

Geir Skaaden, senior vice president of corporate business development at DTS, cited results from a neuroscience-based study the company commissioned that showed people were 60 percent more engaged when listening to immsersive sound as opposed to stereo, whereas there was “no statistical difference” when the subjects watched between different quality video. Skaaden added that the younger audience was important in the acceptance of so-called 3D audio because they did most of their listening on headphones through smartphones and other mobile devices. “They’re fully engaged with it – it’s not something in the background as TV can be,” he said.

The tricky area of standardisation is always lurking in the background. Hidden away in the Future Zone was Swissaudec with ECMA-407, which it was promoting as “the world’s first 3D audio standard”. ECMA International is the body behind Javascript and accredidates IT and consumer electronics technology. This system uses real-time inverse coding and is claimed to extend any audio codec to produce 3D sound.

Also pushing its technology for standardisation was Fraunhofer IIS with MPEG-H, which is being considered for ATSC 3.0. MPEG-H was developed by Fraunhofer with Technicolor and Qualcomm; it offers both 3D sound and higher order Ambisonics, with interactive ‘sound mixing’ based on objects to give viewers the ability to create their own sound picture. As well as featuring on Fraunhofer’s stand MPEG-H was part of a new product introduction by Jünger Audio.

The Multichannel Monitoring and Authoring (MMA) system for 3D sound is a combination of hardware and software, featuring physical components for I/O, decoding, monitoring and user interfacing, with a control program. Jünger Audio managing director Peter Pörs said MPEG-H was a future format but would be available to TV audiences over the next 12 to 18 months.

The appearance of monitoring systems for any emerging technology can often be an indication that it is starting to take hold. Tucked away beside a giant 8k screen on NHK’s stand in the Future Zone was a demonstration of a loudness meter for 22.2 surround. This has been submitted to the ITU for inclusion in the next revision of the 1770-3 international standard, something that puts immersive ahead of 5.1/7.1 stereo and mono in being covered for loudness from the very beginning. n www.dolby.com listen.dts.com www.iis.fraunhofer.de www.junger-audio.com www.swissaudec.com

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23/10/2015 16:55

P34 NOVEMBER 2015

Live

Johanes Strate of German rockers Revolverhead

Everyone’s a Berliner, baby It’s been 25 years since the wall came down, but it was French PA company Nexo that helped the celebrations along in the German capital

T

he fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 paved the way for German reunification, which finally came into being on 3 October 1990. Now a public holiday, the city of Berlin throws a hell of a party to celebrate the Day of German Unity. This year, the 25th anniversary of the nation’s unification, the official ceremonies were enhanced by a three-day street ‘festival of unity’, sponsored by Coca Cola, running along the Strasse des 17 Juni (often known as the Fanmeile, or ‘fan mile’), and featuring national, international and ‘schlager’ acts, like ELO with Phil Bates, Lena, Jupiter Jones and Revolverheld on the main stage in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

Many of the large-scale events held at this iconic location are handled by organiser Wohlthat Entertainment and sound company auvisign, with technical direction from Steel Visign.

Berlin-based auvisign chose Nexo’s STM modular line-array technology for the main stage’s PA and extensive delay systems, supplementing them with plentiful numbers of cabinets from other ranges of NEXO such as GEO, Alpha and the PS series.

Controlled by Yamaha mixers, the systems were set up over Dante and EtherSound networks to deliver entertainment over 1.5 kilometres to nearly a million visitors.

Nexo’s flagship STM system is distinctive in that it allows users to configure different systems by using varying combinations of four loudspeaker modules,

typically a main and bass cabinet flown as a set, with a separate down-fill box available if required. This downfill module can be used as a main cabinet in its own right, with or without the bass module.

Although auvisign has used STM in several different configurations at Brandenburg Gate/Fanmeile events,

this was the first time that M46 large-format cabinets have been deployed as the main modules. auvisign’s sound designer, Johannes Raack, and specialist STM operator Norbert Bund exploited fully the versatility of Nexo’s modular design. “A vital feature of the Nexo system is the proprietary NS-1 modelling

Crowds on the Berlin Fanmeile

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P35 NOVEMBER 2015

Nexo hangs either side of the main stage

Since Nexo changed its business model in Germany 18 months ago, it has built a network of cooperative users in the rental market software,” says Bund. “At pre-planning stage, we were asked to fly the main PA next to LED panels, but we used the NS-1 projections to demonstrate the strong reflections that would result from such an unfavourable acoustic position.

“A new PA tower was planned, but this one could only accommodate half the load of the previous one!

By leaving aside the separate B112 bass cabinets that would customarily fly with the M46 main cabs, and increasing the number of ground-stacked S118 subs, we were able to achieve the PA weight without impairing the sonic results.”

For the main stage, left and right PA, each deployed 10 STM M46 main modules with one M28 downfill below. Additional M28s were used for nearfill, and 32 STM S118 sub-bass cabs across the front of the stage provided the required bass response. Yamaha CL5 mixers were used for both FOH and monitor control, under supervision by Philip Grygier and Lars Krumpelt, respectively.

Delay towers running the 1.5km length of the Fanmeile comprised a variety of Nexo systems: primarily STM M46 cabinets for the positions at the top of the avenue, with GEO D10, S12, S8 and Alpha used further down.

Sitting at front of house, network operator Peter Sobisiak had the job of coordinating four different networks – Dante for the mainstage PA, EtherSound for all delay lines, EtherSound for the inputs to FOH and Dante for the inputs to monitors – consolidating them in a common Gigabit network, which used fibreglass connections (to meet the requirement for redundant ducting) to cover distances of up to 400m from device to device. Total cable runs stretched over 2.2km. auvisign has forged a strong working relationship with other Nexo STM rental houses in Germany, in particular acoustic NETWORK. Since Nexo changed its business model in Germany 18 months ago, ending a long-term distribution arrangement in favour of direct sales, a network of cooperative users has been built in the rental market.

Nexo’s sales manager for Germany, Reinhard Steger, explains: “The STM modular design is particularly well-suited to inventory sharing and sub-hire among rental companies. Standardised rack design for amplification and control is an essential part

of this. We are seeing a high degree of collaboration between STM owners like satis&fy, Sound Linear and acoustic NETWORK, Limelight, In-Phase and Show’em, which enables them to come together and service large-scale events. The Awakening concert this summer, a satis&fy project, required more than 170 STM cabinets to fill the Grundig Stadion in Nuremberg.”

Drawing on Nexo’s newly created engineering support division, Steger has established a national programme of training and public seminars, spreading

the principles of modular line array, as well as the general Nexo ideology for popular mid-market systems like the GEO and PS series.

“We’ve also focussed heavily on service,” says Steger. “By setting up spare-parts centres around the country, we’ve been able to decentralise our technical support, which has significantly improved speed and flexibility when it comes to repairs.” n www.nexo-sa.com www.auvisign.de

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P36 NOVEMBER 2015

Live

Peter Pan (Jeffrey Italiaander) fights Richard Spijkers’ Captain Hook (Photo: Leslie Artamonow)

World

The Coda Aaaaarr-RAY! For the production of the new Peter Pan arena tour, hire company Studio Haifax invested in Coda Audio’s lowfootprint, high-impact AiRAY line array, reports Marc Maes

A

fter their successful collaboration on the WWI musical 14–18 (see PSNLive 2014), sound designer Guido Olischlager and PA/ event technology company Studio Haifax have again joined forces for Peter Pan: The Never Ending Story, a worldwide musical arena tour based on the classic story by JM Barrie.

“We have grown organically into [using] Coda line arrays,” says Pieter Begard, managing director of Studio Haifax, outlining his choice of equipment for the tour, which kicked off in last month in Doho and will end in February 2016 in Seoul. “For the Peter Pan project, we decided to invest in Coda’s newest AiRAY series; we have ordered 54 speakers to embark on the Peter Pan tour.”

The AiRAY line array, which combines high SPL with a small footprint for maximum portability, was officially launched in July in Wenden, Germany (‘AiRAY vision’, PSNEurope September 2015).

In mid-August, Begard and his team installed Studio Haifax’s new AiRAY configuration in the Ethias Arena in Hasselt for rehearsals. “The AiRAY really marks a new concept in line array,” enthuses Begard. “The speakers are extremely compact-sized but offer the SPL of large enclosures from other ‘A’ brands. The AiRAY’s reach is extraordinary, given the size of the cabinets. The compatibility of the ViRAY – of which we have a large inventory – and the new AiRAY in terms of rigging, acoustic specifications and system components is

Rehearsals with AiRAY at the Ethias Arena in Hasselt

another bonus: that came in handy for the Peter Pan tour, where we used 24 ViRAY cabinets as front fills.”

For Hans Engelen, managing director of Coda Benelux distributor Viladco, the AiRAY’s compact footprint, in combination with the speaker’s output, are key. “The speaker was built to reflect the current economic situation, where transportation and crew expenses eat away a substantial part of the touring

budget,” he says. “The AiRAY speakers are less than half the size and weight of comparable systems.

“A drastic cut in logistics and building time was crucial in the production’s decision to opt for AiRAY. One crew member can build a speaker array without extra help.”

Engelen, who has 20 years of audio experience under his belt, admits to having been somewhat sceptical during his initial introduction to the AiRAY speakers,

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P38 NOVEMBER 2015

Live

but says he was overwhelmed by the new system.

“The directivity and constant dispersion for specific frequencies are the result of innovative research by Coda’s engineers. This, together with the speaker’s excellent sound quality in the long-throw, makes it the perfect solution for live audio applications.”

Peter Pan has AiRAY arrays flown on either side of the stage and in front. Each hang of consists of nine enclosures.

Thirty-six Coda SCP-series subs are placed in front of the stage in a cardioid set-up. Peter Pan’s head of audio, Guido Olischlager, designed a dolly facilitating the loading: “We have put together clusters consisting of three subs, two ViRAY front fills and [pointing at the back] one G712 monitor. All of this is strapped together on a dolly and is easy to connect via multicores.”

In addition to the Coda AiRAY and ViRAY speakers, powered by 32 Coda Audio LINUS10 dual-channel and four LINUS10-C four channel amplifiers, Olischlager made use of a DiGiCo SD8 console at FOH, and DPA cardioid microphone headsets using a Sennheiser Digital 9000 wireless system and Sennheiser 2000-series in-ears.

Olischlager was also left with positive impression of

the AiRAY’s performance. “With a normal soundcheck in an arena, the empty seats are bouncing back the sound to the stage,” he concludes. “With the AiRAY speakers, we still get a perfect projection with low volume: pushing up the throttle there’s almost no reflection from the hall,

which is quite remarkable.” n www.codaaudio.com www.studiohaifax.be www.musichall.be www.peterpan.is Arrrr! Peter Pan’s cast of low-down, no-good, dirty, rotten pirates

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23/10/2015 12:10

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

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P40 NOVEMBER 2015

Live

ITALY

The gospel truth A 500-member choir gets the Butterflys in front of a huge audience.

Mike Clark got into the spirit of things in Milan

I

n September a 40,000-strong crowd packed into Piazza del Duomo, the huge square in front of Milan cathedral, for a unique concert performance.

The bringing together of a 500-strong Italian gospel choir, the 12-piece Italian Big Orchestra with guest director Donald Lawrence and MC Nick the

Nightfly, one of Italy’s best-known FM radio personalities and a recording artist in his own right. made the night special; the fact the concert was performed on the cathedral steps, for which obtaining permission is no easy job, just added to the magic.

Audio contractor Cipiesse, from Rezzato, Brescia,

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supplied audio, lighting and stage/support systems. To get the songs and Nick’s wisecracks over to the huge crowd, Cipiesse set up two main hangs of 12 Outline Butterfly each and a front fill system with 16 Outline Eidos positioned in pairs along the steps (used as a main stage).

Only four Outline Subtech 218 subwoofers were flown on either side, alongside the Butterflys, as the limit set on the towers’ height prevented more subs being deployed. (It was decided not to add others on the ground, as they would have been too close to the public and the band.) The entire rig was powered by Outline T-Seven amps and controlled by an XTA448, chosen by the rental firm for their quality and ease of use.

Cipiesse’s Marco Riva says: “This system allowed us to ensure even coverage up to a distance of approximately 50 metres. The main problem was that the towers were 50m apart, and we had to cover the area practically up to the front of the stage. Then there was also the fact that the ‘stage’ was only 80cm high, so the front fills’ contribution was useful, but not decisive.

This compelled us to turn the main arrays in slightly towards the centre, ensuring good coverage of almost all the stagefront area, which was completed by the front fill enclosures in the central zone – but sacrificing the side areas, which would have ideally required additional side fill clusters.”

The end result was reportedly excellent coverage of the whole 50 x 50m zone in front of the stage, which gradually fell off in the stage-side areas.

PA manager and FOH engineer was globe-trotting veteran Carlo Gennaro, assisted by Raffaella Gatti, one of the very few female sound engineers on Italy’s live scene. Gennaro explains: “We used 108 channels for the event, divided between a Yamaha M7CL, used to create premixes, and a DiGiCo SD8, used as a master console.

Of these channels, 33 were for the band and solo singers, and the others handled the 100 Shure SM58 microphones dedicated to the front rows of the choir and the Schoeps MK4 for the rest.”

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The view of Milan Cathedral from the crowd

FOH engineer Carlo Gennaro with Raffaella Gatti (left)

Donald Lawrence leads the choir

Other difficulties were due to the tight schedule for move-in, set-up and rehearsals, and a limited budget, which resulted in a considerable part of the audio system being handled by a mixed analogue-digital set-up.

Gennaro states: “I’ve used various Outline products frequently in the past, and I’m particularly familiar with their Butterfly system, which I’ve used on high-profile events such as a celebration in Jordan with the Pope and a huge festival in Nigeria. As always, sound quality was very good and precise, with great intelligibility.” n www.outline.it www.cipiesse-bs.it

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P42 NOVEMBER 2015

Live

Setting up the main stage on a Sunday morning

UNITED KINGDOM

A proper sound bite Nick Lythgoe, for SSE Audio, got the festival bug at the Wilderness Festival – in more ways than one. Dave Robinson reports

T

he ideal time to do your technical festival interview is late morning/early afternoon on the second or third day. The punters are still in their tents and the crew are anything but tense: the grind of getting in and setting up a memory from a few days previously, and all that needs to happen is the engineers to turn up on time, and the weather to stay fine.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case with Wilderness Festival this summer; and despite PSNEurope’s exceptional lunchtime vigilance in attempting to track down SSE Audio’s systems tech Nick Lythgoe – twice – it wasn’t until several days afterwards that we spoke.

“I spent those two mornings in A&E with a swollen arm!” he explains. “I suffered some form of infection from a suspected insect bite, is what they think…”

A distinctly boutique, civilised and (whisper it) middleclass affair, Wilderness offers talks, arts and crafts and fine dining alongside the music, which itself is restricted to one main stage and a handful of smaller tents and performance spaces.

In spite of being savaged by an unseen miniscule malevolence, Lythgoe’s stint at the Cornbury Park Estate in Oxfordshire was nothing out of the ordinary, even though it was his first time working there.

Lythgoe: “We were using one half of a flip-flop system – that size of festival didn’t warrant having the full flip-flop system.” Just the ‘flip’ half, one would hope. Definitely not the ‘flop’ – though, Björk’s headline performance on the Friday night was a little slow and

ultimately, disappointing to PSNEurope’s eyes and ears. Dave Bracey, of course, did a fine job of mixing the Icelandic innovator, on his own DiGiCo SD9; other guests desks at the Wilderness main stage mix position included an SD7 (for Ben Howard) and an Avid S3L. “A lot of the bands at Wilderness aren’t at the level where they bring their own desk,” says Lythgoe, “so I mix them on the Avid Profile. It’s SSE’s standard festival desk.”

How does he get on with it? “I love it. Everyone knows it, everyone’s got a [show] file for it. If visiting engineers haven’t got a file, it’s very easy to get around it and write one. It’s compact, and you’ve got the flexibility of the plug-ins – because we don’t take an outboard rack to festivals.”

Lythgoe, a long-time tech on the dustbin-clanging Stomp! tour and a regular name on SSE’s roster, helped design the PA too. This time it’s 10 boxes of L-Acoustics K1 per side, with three KSUBs at the top of the array, and four KARA underneath. Three lots of two KARA stacked serve as frontfill, with a pair of KARA as outfill per side (looking distinctly lonely). Nine stacked SB28 subs per side provide the grunt.

SSE’s standard ‘festival system’ has evolved with the times: AES outputs from the Profile run to the drive racks (two Lake LM44 and an LM26); processed audio is transferred to an optical Dante network running down to the stage; that’s picked up by two more Lake processors (26 and 44), and then distributed to the L-Acoustics amplifiers via AES. “It’s a complete digital path all the

FOH and systems tech Nick Lythgoe preps the Profile

way to the amps, where it becomes analogue again,” explains Lythgoe. “The whole thing is protected with an analogue redundant back up.”

And of course, wheeled in for the show is the ‘Shout’ system (of which SSE Audio MD John Penn is particularly proud, it should be noted).

“Our ‘Shout’ system is fully digital; it sits on the Dante network as well. We have a Yamaha LS9 16-channel at FOH and a 32-channel on stage. Not only does our ‘Shout’ feed us presenter mics, changeover DJs, anything we might need to put into the PA while we’re using the house desks – emergency mics, evac mics – but it’s also the [inter]comms so we can talk to each other while we’re setting up, from the mix position to the patch guys on stage who are all on [Clear-Com] Tempest

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P43 NOVEMBER 2015

The secret of the silent changeover Changeovers between acts at festivals tend to be fairly quiet these days – no persistent snare thwacking or ‘One, two, one, two’-ing.

SPOILER ALERT! Lythgoe shines a light on the magic...

“Behind the screen at the back we have the next act set up, and as we roll them around we plug them all in. There’s no soundcheck as such; we do a line-check on headphones so we know all the [outputs] are working. Nobody wants to sit listening to a drum kit; it’s not a good audience experience.

Also, the music playlist between acts is not just a random list, it’s a proper DJ set programmed by the

organiser, and they were very specific and didn’t want it disturbing.

“So what I do is mix together on headphones and then as a bit of a reference point, I will hear a kick drum or lead vocal through the PA, just a quick ‘one, two’ or a single kick. That gives you a starting point.

I know the PA so well, and I mixed a lot of the bands myself, so I know what sort of level I need.

“An experienced engineer will always ease into a mix rather than coming out hell for leather and then start pulling faders down.

“By the second number you should be somewhere close.”

sets. So did anything unexpected at all crop up during that balmy August weekend? Other than the hospital visit, of course...

“Not really. The weird act was the aerial show on the cranes after Björk on Friday night. Even while we were doing it we weren’t quite sure what was going on! We had an opera singer dangling from a crane wearing a DPA mic, singing away… you’re never sure what’s going to happen when you have a mic right in front of the PA…” While Wilderness fell fairly late in the festival calendar, Lythgoe still had enough to keep him occupied for the few weeks following, prepping a system for the celebrated Cropredy folk beano and then the somewhat more sedate Shrewsbury Festival.

And alongside his Leatherman and torch, you can be sure he’d be packing the repellent and the Anthisan. n www.sseaudiogroup.com

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SSE rolled out the L-Acoustics K1/KARA combo for the show

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P44 NOVEMBER 2015

Feature: Mid-size touring

Live_Transmission, an electro-orchestral reinterpretation of Joy Division, at the L-Acoustics-equipped Cambridge Corn Exchange

Rent in twain

Mid-range touring is becoming split down the middle between hire and purchase, finds Phil Ward. How will the sector respond?

I

n August, as part of a discussion about Bose’s RoomMatch loudspeaker solution, these very pages made the observation that: “The higher specifications demanded by venues of every type today are creating an entertainment technology landscape in which, put simply, it looks like the rental company has left the PA behind after the gig.” (PSNEurope August 2015, ‘Game, set and Match’.)

For most venues, this means a fully or partly fixed installation, as opposed to the good old-fashioned in-andout of traditional trucking. Nowhere is this more true than in the once-solid market sector that we shall call ‘mid-range’ (often referred to as the ‘academy circuit’), where chiefly the rocl and roll business would pluck a regular crop of fortunate acts out of the local pub and set them on their way, all being well and with a strong tailwind of record sales, to the Holy Grail of stadiums and arenas.

The picture is changing, and it’s getting complicated. With gathering pace, established venues are installing speaker systems of very high quality – exactly the sort that would be found on board the trucks of leading rental companies in the service of household-name rock and pop acts – in order to attract custom from the touring circuit, offer a competitive rider and lighten the load of the travelling production.

This is a development with far-reaching consequences for the rental sector. Responding to it, most leading rental companies have diversified into sales, becoming resellers somewhere in the dealer network, while others have simply

dropped out of rock and roll touring altogether and turned their attention to a wider concept of event management.

Many of the same skills and experience are used, but the traditional world of regular roll-on, roll-off has been left to a few big PA companies and cross-channel ferry operators.

Meanwhile, there are now signs that new business start-ups are re-thinking this again, with increasing noise regulation and squeezed budgets suggesting a possible saturation point at venue level and a renaissance for not only tour hire packages – but point-source and analogue ones, too.

It’s taken us 10 years to fill each level of application with a suitable digital console option

Andy Brown, Soundcraft

Event horizon “We find there’s hardly any money in mid-range touring any more,” says Shaun Pearce, founder and MD of Peterborough-based Pearce Hire. “Most of our stuff consists of one-offs: festivals, corporate events and things that we promoted ourselves – for example, at the recent Showman’s Show at the Newbury Showground in Berkshire, which is an exhibition for outdoor event services.

There’s a huge variety of events requiring sound, lighting and staging these days and we’re happy to do it. But a lot of the venues for live music at our level have bought their own systems.”

“Our customers are talking about this all the time,” adds Paul Hinkly, LMC Audio’s managing director. “The installation of house PAs is a huge factor now, creating what we now refer to as the ‘bus’ tour: the band and crew are on a bus without the need for separate trucking. Very

often they’ll have a pre-programmed monitor desk and in-ears, plus mics, but the actual sound reinforcement and even FOH mixing can be dealt with from venue to venue using what’s there. It’s backed up by the phenomenon of engineers purchasing their own console, mics and monitoring, if not the bands themselves. It’s changing the

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Amber shoot of recovery We’re seeing really dynamic growth in mid-range venues, with more and more of them looking to install high-end sound systems

Cédric Montresor, L-Acoustics

face of touring.”

Léon Phillips, product manager at Allen & Heath, sees this from the manufacturers’ perspective. “We see bands, more than venues, buying their own consoles at least,” he says. “They’re touring Europe quite heavily, sometimes a bit further afield, and they’re buying consoles mainly for monitors. Having compact monitor solutions is really good, and management companies like Raw Power are teaching their bands to become self-sufficient by carrying their own desks, mics and in-ears. They later risk a FOH option, but monitoring is more crucial because it takes a lot more time to set up and musicians are becoming very sensitive to consistency. ‘Mid-range’ now means at least carrying your own monitors, and probably buying them to do so.”

It’s no surprise, then, to find deep-rooted rental operations being drawn into sales, alongside service support for all the issues surrounding consultancy, design and installation. Jamie Gosney of Stage Electrics points to two telling projects of late.

“The Bristol Hippodrome and the King’s Theatre in Glasgow are great examples of how venues are diversifying with their programmes and trying to make money seven days a week, including lunchtimes,” he says. “The systems need to be permanently installed, but not in the way if you want to fly in an L-Acoustics or a d&b line array. At these venues we matched K-Array boxes with the prosceniums and décor, and they work phenomenally up to a really high level of power and reproduction.”

The rental sector may be fighting back. Joe Turner is production manager at recent start-up Amber Creative, and he believes that the time is right to offer discerning clients a choice and not to be swept away with turnkey, off-the-truss solutions.

“As a new start up we’ve chosen to take a different approach to most,” he says. “The touring market is saturated with digital solutions, be it consoles or PA systems, and with such a resurgence around vinyl and all things analogue we feel it necessary to provide our clients with realistic options so that they can make a choice between the two. We stock line arrays due to current preferences of production managers but the centrepiece of our audio stock is the fully refurbished MkIII Turbosound Flashlight system from Formidable Audio.

“To hear this system in all its glory is literally Others believe that – given that working around a permanently installed system is a compromise; and that it would cost the same to take it down as it would to rent it for the night; and that it will have been, presumably, installed in the optimum locations for the venue – using a house system should, in theory, be ideal. When UK national treasures Squeeze arrived at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on 17 October, they found that the installed L-Acoustics KARA system had been taken down for a short while. So, the crew simply placed the system they did have on the truck exactly in its place, like for like. Oh yes, and the system on board the truck was… L-Acoustics KARA. Just coincidence, but Chris Norton, senior technical officer at Cambridge Live Trust and under whose screwdriver the Corn Exchange operates, believes that it was simply essential for the venue to invest in this way.

“We found ourselves on that very circuit but without a PA,” he reveals. “There’d be a 12-date tour with two holes in it – us and Ipswich! Now we’ve got it, it does go up and down like the proverbial fiddler’s elbow. That’s because it’s not included in the deal: if you want to use it, you pay for it…”

“You have to look at the installation of L-Acoustics K2 into Hammersmith Apollo and wonder how that affects business models,” adds Jamie Gosney. “The Apollo is now charging people to take it down, and if someone arrived with a d&b or a Meyer kit and is faced with that cost, chances are they’ll go with the house system. It’s tuned to the venue, so it’s a compelling argument.”

Alex Penn, sales director at SSE Audio Group – which installed Hammersmith – reveals the delicate balance this creates while adding a note of caution.

“If they do buy, venues want to have the rider-friendly solutions to attract the right bands for them,” he says. “Plus

breathtaking, and really makes you question how far audio production has come in the last 20 years in regard to the fundamentals of ‘good’ sound. With a point source system, we have been able to overcome many acoustic related issues in venues and, more importantly, achieve a greater perceived volume where noise management is a concern. Despite common misconceptions, a system like this fits seamlessly alongside our digital options, but admittedly is enhanced further by analogue counterparts.

“Rental is key to us. I see less venues now seeking installation, many of the smaller ones being forced out due to noise regulations. Touring can be big business at all levels now, I think. Record sales don’t hit the figures they used to, and artists are making their money through performing. I feel the need for high quality production at competitive rates is increasing.” ambercreative.co.uk

An intelligent purchase is no longer based on the power of a loudspeaker, but rather the quality of sound and its ability to direct sound dispersioN

Daniele Mochi, K-array

it’s another revenue stream for them, and they’re starting to catch onto this – they can rent it out instead of us! Ultimately, this is an evolution of the market and a big factor behind the establishment of SSE Sales.

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Feature: Mid-size touring John Hughes, Adlib audio director

“A lot of the venues for live music at our level have bought their own systems,” says Shaun Pearce of Pearce Hire (shown, left, with Richard Oxley)

“But it’s not all about the products you use: rent or purchase, not everybody can offer the same service. The mid-range should be wary of investing in K2 or [Meyer Sound] LEOPARD and skimping on the personnel, the crew and the expertise. It won’t sound any better than the lower range products if there’s no one to look after it properly.”

“There’s a growing trend for mid-size venues across Europe to invest in an audio system, but this does not replace rental companies,” considers Leonardo D’Andrea, K-array’s EMEA sales manager. “Permanent installations are more of an occurrence so that the venue has a ‘residential’ system. This system must be flexible enough to accommodate different applications at the venue and discreet enough so as not to interfere with the various events. However, if a show is visiting the venue and has a specific system on their rider, the venue must rent out the required products and swap them out for the permanent fixture for the time being.”

Scale models The manufacturers continue to create options for almost every eventuality, and the mid range has latterly been treated to an astonishing new generation of modular and scalable adaptations of core DSP templates.

“It’s a good time for clubs – who aren’t already – to go digital, because the first wave of mid-range digital consoles now needs updating,” says Léon Phillips, while Andy Brown, Soundcraft’s Vi Series product manager, points to the long journey into digital that has brought Soundcraft to this point.

“It’s taken us 10 years to fill each level of application with a suitable digital console option,” he says, “and the mid-range has been served by, firstly, the Vi6 and the Vi4 and now the Vi3000. We sell plenty to ‘regional’ touring companies, as well as venues – and, although Harman tends to view install as a totally different vertical market, it’s not always the case.

Of course, there are JBL boxes painted white for certain fixed installations, but the line arrays go into both markets.

If it involves performance, there’s an overlap. With consoles, though, there are no specific products for install.”

Unifying the console market are the ever-encroaching

tentacles of networking that bind the products into the fabric of the building. Here’s Tim Shaxson, technical sales manager at DiGiCo: “In the UK we have a number of convention centres that have our desks: Dublin, with SD7s and SD8s; Birmingham, with SD8 and SD9; Edinburgh, with an SD8; SECC Glasgow, with SD9; and Liverpool Waterfront.

“In most cases, our desks are specced because of their flexibility and audio quality and because so many engineers are familiar with the range now. File session compatibility across the six consoles in the SD range has been a great benefit to visiting engineers, and our ability to interface with most of the standard protocols such as MADI, Dante and Optocore is liked by consultants.”

“In today’s market, an intelligent purchase is no longer based on the power of a loudspeaker, but rather the quality of sound and its ability to direct sound dispersion,” says Daniele Mochi, project consultant and product specialist at K-array. “In K-array’s experience, most mid-size venues are surrounded by areas that have noise restrictions or space limitations, such as town squares in the middle of a residential area, houses of worship with a long and narrow setup, wide horizontal coverage of theatre stages and so on, which is why we develop problem-solving solutions that address this issue.

“Sound dispersion capabilities make the loudspeaker more effective and create clear listening by reducing noise pollution outside the concentrated area. K-array’s Concert Series KH2 and KH3 demonstrate this capability in the mid-size range. Their digital steering feature allows the user to focus the sound beam to a desired area, concentrating sound throughout the entire frequency range. The advantage to this innovation is that customers are able to direct energy to where sound is needed, suppressing audio in spaces outside of the desired area which subsequently reduces noise pollution drastically.”

So: power is transferring to the venues, and the cowl of management, charity and local authority purchasing that surrounds them. Will they ultimately take over from the rental sector?

“We’re seeing really dynamic growth in mid-range

In Liverpool, Adlib Audio has mastered the balance of rental and sales by responding to a new economic climate, says director John Hughes.

“Due to our long history supporting venues with short and long-term rentals it was no surprise to us that, in time, venues would install systems permanently,” he explains. “Although we’d developed sales and installation in the ’90s, it was the relationship with Academy Music Group that began in 2008 that really propelled us to being a frontrunner in the install market for live venues.

Yes, by doing this we’ve cut off our nose to spite our face – as hiring equipment to these venues had been our bread and butter for years – however, if we didn’t do it, someone else would have…

“I suppose it was a couple of years after the financial crisis that it started feeding down into live music. The culmination of increased transport and crewing costs, and drivers’ hours crewing makes in-house production a viable and competitive option for promoters.”

The technology only helps mid-range venues get rider-friendly, adds Hughes. “Over the past seven or eight years we’ve seen a consistent requirement on riders for premium brands such as L-Acoustics, Soundcraft and DiGiCo at not only the top-end, but in the mid-level of the touring market.

Therefore it’s a pretty safe bet for live venues to invest in products from these manufacturers.” www.adlib.co.uk Adlib installed the Cambridge Corn Exchange’s L-Acoustics system

venues, with more and more of them looking to install highend sound systems,” confirms Cédric Montresor, director of applications for installation at L-Acoustics. “These venues have a lot of competition in their communities – both in attracting important artists and attracting a loyal audience.

It can be a very good business proposition to install a proper sound system, allowing the venue to stand apart from their competition. And since these venues see different artists coming through, it’s also easy for them to survey the different rental PAs that have been used in their room over recent years, assess which PA is the most rider-friendly, and choose to install that PA to attract bigger and better artists. This is what we saw happen last year with the Hammersmith Apollo install – they went for the very riderfriendly L-Acoustics K2.

“For touring artists, this trend allows them to travel light, with just a console and microphones and using the house system, so it’s a time and economic savings for them. From the artist perspective, a mid-size venue can be a more riskfree choice as it’s easier to sell two or three nights in a midsize venue than to try to sell out a larger venue, which is an all-or-nothing proposition. So this, I think, is contributing to the dynamism of the market for installs in mid-size venues right now.” n

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P48 NOVEMBER 2015

Installation

Nottingham is the location of this brave new cultural venture

United Kingdom

Game on!

Rob Harris, designer of the sound system for the National Videogame Arcade in Nottingham, talks Jon Chapple through his ultra-complex yet idiot-proof Yamaha/Dante audio installation – and explains what on earth an Axonic Cascade is

T

he National Videogame Arcade (NVA) in Nottingham is the world’s first cultural centre for video gaming. Designed as both a games museum and an educational resource to get young people into programming and games design, the NVA, which opened on 27 March this year, is described by The Guardian’s Simon Parkin as gaming’s own ‘national gallery’.

Created as part of the EU Regional Development Fund-backed CQ Connect initiative, the NVA is located in a converted lace factory in Nottingham city centre. It features four floors of playable galleries, plus a cinema, café and lecture/event space, covering over 3,000m².

“We built the NVA because the world needed a place to celebrate and explore the extraordinary creative potential of videogames,” NVA co-founder Jonathan Smith – best known in the games world for his work on the Lego series for TT Games – tells PSNEurope of the project’s genesis. “We want everyone in the world to understand how interesting games can be, and we want as many people as possible to be able to play them together, so we needed a permanent building which could house a continually changing set of exhibitions and playable exhibits; be a social space and venue for games-playing; bring families together; and be a base for our educational work with schools and students.

We get people to play new games, we treasure and rediscover games from the past and we teach people to make entirely new games.”

Rob Harris, the owner of audio/technical creative

Videogames, videogames everywhere (and not a drop to drink)

agency Red Brick Red, was commissioned by Smith to design, specify and install the NVA’s ambitious sound system, based on products from Yamaha’s Commercial Installation Solutions (CIS) line. “It’s a complicated building, basically in two halves with a courtyard in the middle, with each having a variety of different spaces and corridors,” explains Harris. “We needed a system that would effectively route any audio to any room or combination of rooms, but one of the fundamental remits of the design was that the whole system had to be controllable by non-technical users.”

Harris is a long-time user of both Yamaha processors – he describes himself as “a big fan” of the DME series, which seem to sit tirelessly in venue back ends” – and Dante AoIP networking – “I also do a lot of live multitracking, so I work regularly with Dante devices; in my opinion, it is the best audio networking protocol”. Harris says that when he discovered the Dante-enabled MTX processor line, “I asked Yamaha to let me have a play!”

After also being impressed by Yamaha’s newly launched VXS series of surface-mount speakers, and exploring the scalability of the MTX, he specced

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the kit for the NVA, purchased directly from Yamaha Commercial Audio UK. What Harris calls the “heart and mind” of the NVA system is a pair of Dante-networked MTX5-D matrix mixers, two redundant network switches and two XMV4280-D and two 8280-D power amplifiers, which drive over 70 Yamaha speakers, including VXC ceiling models, VS4, VS6, VXS5 and VXS8 full-range units and a selection of VXS10ST subs, all in a mixture of 70V, 100V, 8Ω and 4Ω configurations.

System control comes from six wall-mounted DCP4V4S wall-mounted units, while an additional three PA2030s power amplifiers drive systems in break-out teaching spaces, and the system also integrates with some existing AV technology.

“The audio brief was actually incredibly complicated, as” – as mentioned above – “they wanted anyone to be able to run events with no technical knowhow or any kind of musical ear,” Harris continues. “As I’m involved in the venue/studio world this gave me all sorts of worries, as events always have a house technician present.”

Using a selection of Yamaha DCP panels, Harris created custom patches which allow any user to turn devices on and off and the volume up and down: “For instance, in the venue there are two panels that control four mics, house music, HDMI-extracted audio, send to Skype and iPod in. The end user sees a lovely shiny panel, but in the back end I’m hacking out the room modes […], dropping in comps and feedback suppressors, creating crossovers, re-voicing speakers, creating local volume limits and implementing duckers for announcements.

“All this is going on in the back end without the end user knowing anything other than that the mics go loud and don’t squeal!”

The second part of the brief was no less complicated: “They also wanted to be able to create numerous local zones of audio, announce to the whole building, have layers of automation and have a system that can be tweaked and addressed by other devices.” This was achieved via a redundant Dante digital bus connecting both sides of the building, along with a Yamaha YDIF I/O for internal system bussing and additional routing.

Aside from “addressing the need for ‘non technician’ events [where no sound engineer is present]”, Harris highlights “getting cables and services around the building” as the greatest challenge when speccing the system. “There were so many sound, light, power and networking services that we actually came up with a system that would expose the wires and allow people to see the systems in play,” he explains.

“It’s been dubbed the ‘Axonic Cascade’, but is essentially a four-story scaffold sculpture that we built in the middle of the old stairwell which allows cables to tumble in free-fall before shooting off to their respective floors. On other levels we erected a huge network of flying tray that meant cables feed out of the cascade and essentially reach from anywhere to anywhere. This

Looking up at the Axonic Cascade

also allowed us to distribute mains electricity in a new way and provide perfect high platforms for lighting and computer systems.”

Axonic Cascades aside, how difficult would it be designing a system like the NVA’s in a pre-Dante/digital audio networking world? “I actually don’t think it could be done in the same way. I think even older matrix systems had to have more of a set design/usage brief at the beginning, and then that was more or less that.

“Using Dante as the core distribution system has meant I could design a fully redundant system which can be expanded and tweaked as the building evolves.

I’ve hooked up visiting [Behringer] X32s and multitrack recorders all without touching the main core systems, as well as bringing other areas online as the NVA explores new room uses and event types.”

However, having such a versatile audio system has its drawbacks – not least in the sheer amount going on behind the scenes. “The system has so many different uses that a huge amount of processing is needed,” explains Harris. “People think that pressing a button on one of the DCP4V4S wall units is just switching a microphone on and off, but it’s also causing the system to set compressors, EQ, gain levels, inputs, outputs and so on. And that’s all going on behind the scenes, without anybody being aware of it.

“Nearly all the available sends, Dante channels and DSP are being used. The system is also fully redundant and has facilities like automated, scheduled overnight amplifier shutdowns and switchovers.”

The NVA set-up is configured so its designer has remote control – “I have secure access and, on one

occasion, configured the system for an event on my iPhone while sat in the pub!” – but, fortunately, Harris hasn’t had to spend too much time propping up the bar since the install: “I am very rarely onsite, and considering there are thousands of visitors and events most nights, I have had to make almost no repair visits other than to implement new ideas and workflows, which the system allows. We are addressing about 80 speakers and around 33,000sqft of space, all in a very esoteric way, so I’m really happy how it’s turned out.”

Harris says he’s also satisfied with the mix of both analogue and digital patching present in the install: “Every zone is like a mini venue, with ties that feed a studio patchbay and then the digital I/O, so with a combo of presets and hard patching we can turn zones into remote event spaces with very little notice and work.”

Harris’s hard work hasn’t gone unnoticed: Jonathan Smith is full of praise for both his sound system design and the performance of the CIS equipment. “Sound creates emotion [and] music brings people together, and the ability to put on a show was always integral to our plan for the building,” he says. “We have this incredible former lace factory spread over five storeys, and right from the start we wanted to add AV layers that were both exposed and accessible to creators.

“Rob’s design and installation of the Yamaha system gave us an incredible level of power to shape and control our visitor experience. We couldn’t be more thrilled with the outcome.” n www.yamahacommercialaudio.com www.redbrickred.com www.gamecity.org Education and learning is important at the arcade

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P50 NOVEMBER 2015

Installation

What a glorious photo this is!

Germany

Smart thinking, more drinking!

Dynacord triumphs in the Munich Oktoberfest’s biggest marquee

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avarians in traditional costume – lederhosen for the men, dirndl dresses for the women – litres of beer and grilled chicken in abundance: it has to be the world’s largest popular festival, the Oktoberfest. No fewer than 5.9 million hedonists headed over to Munich this year. The festival began, as in previous years, with the traditional tapping of the first keg in the largest tent of all: the Schottenhamel Marquee.

Broadcast live on television throughout Germany, this ritual was not only the starting gun for the two-week festival in Munich’s Theresienwiese; it also represented the first test for the sound-reinforcement system installed in the marquee. “When the traditional words ‘O’zapft is!’ [‘It’s tapped!’] are spoken, the 10,000 revellers want to hear them,” explains Michael Wittenzellner, MD of StereoMike Veranstaltungstechnik. This was the seventh year running that the Straubing-based company had been charged with the planning and implementation of the marquee’s sound reinforcement solution; however, the ceremony – and, indeed, the entire fortnight – posed a particularly tricky challenge to Wittenzellner and his team this year. On the one hand, high sound pressure levels and homogeneous coverage throughout the marquee were essential. On the other, strict decibel limits had been imposed by Munich’s District Administration Authority – 85dB(A) during the day and 90dB(A) from 6pm onwards – and these were on no account to be exceeded.

As in previous years, Wittenzellner and his team relied on equipment from Dynacord: To the right and left of the main aisle, four Cobra-4 tops and three Cobra Subs were deployed as line arrays; the sound for aisles were provided by 14 Dynacord CXM 15 loudspeakers distributed evenly throughout the marquee. Sixteen Dynacord D8 loudspeakers and 12 Electro-Voice ZX1s covered the reserved boxes, the balconies, the open-air beer garden and the toilets.

Michael Wittenzellner in the Schottenhamel Marquee

Power was provided by eight Dynacord LX3000s, five DSA 8410s, two SL 2400s and one EV Q44 amplifier. The installation was controlled by four Dynacord DSP 244s and one NetMax N8000 digital matrix with 24 auxiliary outputs for loudspeakers, emergency announcements and the media. An individually configured IRIS-Net user interface offered a bird’s-eye view of the entire installation from a PC, as well as full remote supervision and control.

An amusing detail concerned the ladies’ toilets, which were equipped with six Electro-Voice EVID 4.2 loudspeakers. Whenever the queue for the cubicles became too long, Wittenzellner turned up the sound level in the toilet area. Why, you may ask? “Because we’d noticed that women spent less time in the cubicles if the sound level was high enough to prevent them using their mobile phones,” he explained, adding with a smile that “the trick worked. Whenever we did this, the queue began shrinking immediately.”

Wittenzellner was satisfied with the results: “Because of the strict sound emission limits, we needed a

Tapping the first keg!

5.9 million visitors came to drink in Bavaria

sophisticated sound-reinforcement system capable of delivering masses of sound pressure without overstepping the bounds,” he stated. “This we were able to do. Our clients, the guests and the musicians were all delighted. We even earned plaudits from the District Administration Authority, as the Schottenhamel marquee turned out to be the only one in which the sound reinforcement had been realised without exceeding the limits the authority had prescribed.” n www.dynacord.com www.sm-vtech.de

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P53 NOVEMBER 2015

Hither & streaker Elvis, Hanuman and two nuns walk into a bar…

Festivals always generate an ocular spectacular, and the fifth Wilderness Festival (see p42) was no exception. Here are some of the editor’s favourite images from the summer event – including the (now) traditional streakers during the Sunday morning cricket match. The total count was around 11 nifty naturists, we’re told, including this fine fellow (above and below) and his (pregnant) maiden

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P54 NOVEMBER 2015

Backtalk

Thomas Schäfer Jon Chapple talks speccing and skydiving with N&M’s resident Hamburger

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s Niederlassungsleitung – that’s branch manager for us non-germanophones – of German event company Neumann&Müller’s Hamburg office, Thomas Schäfer is a jack of all trades – and master of all of them.

Born in 1978 to a telecoms technician father, Schäfer started his career in live events as a teenager, founding an audio rental business in his parents’ cellar. He has since worked as an electronics technician for power systems and a freelance live sound engineer, on musical productions and for industrial conglomerates, and in his spare time kicks back with such leisurely pursuits as motorcycling, snowboarding and skydiving.

As manager of all aspects of technical production at N&M Hamburg, including audio, rigging, video and lighting, we thought we’d ask him to tell us more about a German success story which has 18 branches, 450 employees and over 1,600 freelance specialists worldwide.

Neumann&Müller is a hire company, sales company, used-gear dealer, consultancy firm, developer of conferencing solutions… have we missed anything?

Neumann&Müller began modestly in 1981 when two sound and video engineering students, Jürgen Neumann and Eberhard Müller, founded the company in a 40sqm office and storeroom in Düsseldorf. They started out providing PA systems for outdoor radio productions.

Over the years, N&M has established itself as an expert in planning, conception and execution, providing these services for events of all kinds and sizes. We have experts in audio, lighting, video/AV, conferencing, media production, event IT, rigging and stage construction.

You have had a long relationship with d&b…

We have collaborated with a number of different manufacturers for many years and developed some innovative solutions together – for example, with Kling & Freitag and, as you say, d&b audiotechnik.

d&b is one of our company’s oldest system suppliers anywhere in the world and does indeed still supply our main audio kit. We mainly use Yamaha digital desks – we’ve been doing so ever since the early years of their development – and Shure wireless technology, which in the last three years has also increasingly been digital.

What’s the secret to great live sound?

Exact knowledge of the location is extremely important: It provides the basis for our detailed planning, which is supported by planning software such as EASE or [d&b’s] ArrayCalc. The attainable degree of sound localisation, perfect speech intelligibility from all seats in the audience and exact knowledge of the signal sources are all included in our planning.

When we last time we spoke to sound companies in Germany this time last year, the response was almost universally positive. Is business still good for you?

Yes, we can only echo that sentiment: looking back, 2015 was exceedingly successful. That goes for all areas of N&M, as well as for all of our company’s branch offices [throughout Germany, and in eastern Europe, Brussels, Dubai and Nottingham, UK]. We are very satisfied!

What are the biggest markets for N&M at the moment, and where are you targeting for future growth?

We have always been strong in Germany – it will certainly remain the focal point for our orders, and we don’t believe that the [German] market’s potential has yet been fully exploited.

One thing that has changed, due to growing internationalisation, is that many of our clients are starting international projects from Germany and we then work together with them to realise the technical aspects. That brings us orders in eastern European countries, and luckily we have a specialist in the team with excellent knowledge of the region. Despite all the

political upheaval, we are confident that the area still holds potential.

Our branch office in Dubai is a key element in our international strategy. This is another region where we see a good deal of potential, as it is becoming ever more attractive as an event location – for example, as a result of the Expo 2020 [world’s fair].

Talk us through some of your recent event highlights…

There is a whole string of highlights – and a lot of longstanding collaboration with clients.

We lend our audio expertise to Klassik am Odeonsplatz in Munich and the Schlossfestspiele Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, two renowned open-air festivals for lovers of classical music. We created the multimedia shows for the 20th and 25th anniversaries of German reunification, commissioned by our parliament [the Bundestag] – where we acted as general contractor for all technical disciplines [see the cover story for more].

Outside of Germany, we realised the technical systems for the ‘Living Medals Table’ at the Volkswagen pavilion at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and we have our own branch office in Dubai, which works for both corporations and government institutions and which has been involved in events like the New Year’s Eve show at the Burj Khalifa [skyscraper].

Anything exciting coming up in the near future?

Lots, especially in the world of sport: The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the Euro 2016 football tournament in France, to name just a few.

Finally: Müller or Mueller? Which is it?

Well, our international market presence is as Neumann&Müller Veranstaltungstechnik [roughly ‘Event Technology’]… just like in Germany! n www.neumannmueller.com

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