UK - The New Year brings a new Canadian distributor for UK loudspeaker manufacturer, Turbosound. The appointment, which takes effect 1 January, 2008, will see Erikson Pro taking charge of Turbosound's interests in the region.

"Erikson Pro has over 25 years' experience in the industry," says Turbosound's managing director, Simon Blackwood. "They handle a number of powerful complementary brands and being a division of JAM Industries Limited which owns our US distributor, American Music & Sound, this will make for a coordinated approach across the American continent."

Erikson Pro is based in Montreal at JAM's head-office and benefits from a dedicated sales rep force calling on retailers as well as professional sound and lighting installers across Canada. In-house marketing, sales, service and parts departments deliver strong sales support.

"Phase linear

UK - For Joe Cocker's current European arena tour, he and his band benefited from 10 XTA DP324 SiDD processors in monitor engineer Niall Slevin's rack.

"I come from the analogue age and I'm still not convinced that digital sound is better than analogue," says Slevin. "But I'm happy to use digital consoles because digital brings so much to the table. The possibilities are extraordinary and I believe the opportunity has to be grabbed."

Audio equipment for the tour is supplied by Concert Sound and Niall is using a Digidesign Venue D-Show Profile console. He wanted an external EQ which would avoid him going through analogue/digital converters, meaning no degradation to the audio quality.

"It's important to me that I have an EQ which is digital console friendly," he says. "I needed something that was very reliable, that had a good EQ, a limiter

USA - Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna announced his candidacy for reelection in style at a recent breakfast gala attended by over 2000 supporters at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Wash. Working together with the Blue Danube production company and Hollywood Lights, Mills Music of Seattle provided sound reinforcement for the event, deploying a Dynacord Cobra-2 compact line array system.

"The 'Breakfast Campaign Kickoff' started at 8am and we rocked their socks off," says Ric Webb of Mills Music, who supervised sound. "Rob McKenna came onstage to music from Pirates of the Caribbean, which was a great way to get the guests going, and the exit music was Up Around the Bend by Creedence Clearwater Revival. This was our first time flying the Cobra, after a year of stacking the system for a wide range of outdoor and indoor shows, and we fou

USA - Premier Production and Sound Services (PSS) provided full audio and lighting production for Dennis DeYoung's recent concert at the Baton Rouge River Center in Louisiana.

The performance featured classic hits from DeYoung's tenure as front man for Styx including Come Sail Away and Mr. Roboto as well as songs from DeYoung's solo albums. The Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra provided musical accompaniment along with DeYoung's current five-piece rock ensemble.

Premier provided a live sound reinforcement system that included JBL Vertec line arrays supplemented with VRX and SRX Series portable loudspeakers. The main PA system included a pair of 13-element arrays, each including nine Vertec VT4888 midsize enclosures and four VT4887A compact line array enclosures as down-fill support. Two columns of four JBL VRX932LA portable line arrays each were hung flanking the ma

USA - Tony Forman has joined Theatre Projects Consultants (TPC) as a project manager in the group's US office. Forman has over 25 years of experience working in international, regional, and collegiate theatre. His responsibilities at TPC include project management, programming, theatre planning, and advice on both facility management and operations.

"I am excited to apply my accumulated experience in production, administration and community cultural organizing to the work of TPC." says Forman. "Building or renovating a performance space has always been a keen interest of mine, and I now feel well suited to this unique endeavour. I am thrilled to be part of the team."

(Jim Evans)

Australia - ARX Systems has announced the appointment of Sunil Impex as its new distributor for Korea.

ARX managing director Colin Park said: "Sunil Impex is a new distribution company headed by Edward Shim, who has been a key figure in the Korean audio industry for many years. The Korean market has always been an important one to ARX. We're looking forward to working with Edward Shim and his energetic team at Sunil Impex to develop the market for ARX products further.

"ARX has a number of innovative new products slated for release in 2008 which we feel should be well received by Korean live sound and installation audio professionals."

(Jim Evans)

France - Audio Pro Heilbronn has created an imaginative digital audio matrix infrastructure to connect boardrooms within a new Council of Europe building in Strasbourg. In order to implement this, the company turned to Soundweb London technology from BSS Audio.

While Siemens handled the media technology element of the competitively-tendered contract (video and control) it was their sub-contractor Stemin GmbH who took on responsibility for the audio design.

Stemin needed a digital matrix for audio transmission of the discussion and interpreter systems in each of the six boardrooms set within the new construction.

Audio Pro project manager, Stefan Beck commented: "We had to make it possible to transmit the original source and four interpreter signals from each room to any other room and the two control rooms."

Along with Stemin, Audio Pro devised an alternative Cob

UK - Donny Osmond performed a series of show dates in the UK this winter in support of his current release, Love Songs of the 70s. For the fourth tour in a row, Osmond worked with UK-based Major Tom, which provided a powerful Meyer Sound system of Milo curvilinear array loudspeakers.

"Donny is very knowledgeable about sound, more so than many artists," explains Major Tom's principal, Lars Brogaard. "He records his shows to Pro Tools every night, and he loves the Milo system."

The touring system comprised two arrays of 15 Milo loudspeakers and one Milo120 high-power expanded coverage curvilinear array loudspeaker per side, augmented by two side-hangs of 12 Mica loudspeakers each. 12 600-HP compact high-power subwoofers were flown, six per side, next to the Milo arrays, and four more 700-HP ultrahigh-power subwoofers were stacked next to the stage. Sev

UK - A choir of nearly 9000 school children formed part of a series billed as 'the largest school concerts in the world'. Entitled Young Voices, it toured six major UK arenas including London's 02 this Christmas.

Guest artists on the tour include soul and R&B singer Beverly Knight and UK beatboxing champion Beardyman. With soloists, a 14-piece band and the choir, the on stage inputs soon rose to over 70. This gave monitor engineer Jamie Hickey an opportunity to put the new Yamaha DSP5D through its paces alongside a PM5D-RH, supplied by Britannia Row.

A relative newcomer to the PM5D-RH, Hickey first used the console while doing monitors for a recent series of David Gray concerts. "The David Gray gigs were relatively straightforward with only six separate mixes, so it was a good way to learn the desk," he says. "For this show, it couldn't be more different.

Latvia - 48 channels of ARX MSX 48 16-in, 48-out ISO-transformer microphone /line splitter featured recently at the popular Cabare Plin Plin Show in Riga.

Edmunds Zazerskis from ARX Distributor UBS (Universal Baltic Sound) said that the MSX 48s were used by system engineer Aldis Vingris to split between Yamaha PM5D-RH and M7CL house / monitor consoles and an OB Van.

"All the units performed flawlessly, and the sound is just excellent," said Zazerskis.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Blitz has been commissioned by sound designer Mike Walker to provide the sound system - including a Cadac J type mixer - for the Aspects of Love UK tour.

Mike Walker comments: "Working on a new show is always exciting as it creates new challenges for the technical team. With a show that has such powerful songs and conveys deep emotions, it is essential to ensure that the sound equipment is able to bring the story to life for the audience and surpass their expectations."

Chris Jordan, head of theatre at Blitz, adds: "Aspects of Love is a passionate love story and its music and sound help to ignite the passion from the stage to the audience. It is paramount that our equipment is able to support the emotion of every performance. We are committed to providing the highest quality of sound and video equipment and we look forward to ensuring that the

UK - Adlib Audio supplied sound production and crew for the Kaiser Chiefs arena tour featuring a JBL VerTec system specified by FOH engineer Chris Leckie.

Leckie was the first UK- based engineer to use a VerTec system in the UK, purchased by Adlib in 2001.

The touring rig featured 16 VT4889 cabinets per side for the main hangs with another 14 per side for the sides, complete with eight of the new VerTec VT4880A subs in the air and another six on the floor, making a total of 14 per side.

A series of the smaller VT4887s were utilised for front in-fills, carefully positioned around the downstage edge of the stage. Delay hangs for the larger shows consisted of four 4889s per side.

The 4889 and 4887 cabinets were driven by Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers, with Crown i-Tech 8000s for the subs. For processing, crossovers, EQ and system delay Adlib used its special custom engineered Dol

Mexico - As a result of rapid growth in Latin America, Meyer Sound Mexico recently expanded its facilities by 50 percent. Now located at its Mexico City headquarters, the larger space will accommodate a growing staff of customer support.

"As the standards for audio equipment have risen at high-profile events and installations throughout Latin America, the demand for Meyer Sound products has increased dramatically as well," says Antonio Zacarias, managing director of Meyer Sound Mexico. "The new facility enables us to continue to provide the high-level of customer support for which Meyer Sound is known throughout the world.

"We can now keep a higher quantity of products in stock locally, which will allow us to fill customers' orders quickly."

(Jim Evans)

Canada - Named after Shakespeare's birthplace, the small city of Stratford, Ontario today hosts the largest classical repertory theatre in North America. Offering theatrical fare rivaling the best of New York and Shakespeare's Stratford, the Stratford Festival of Canada hosts an annual audience of 600,000 over the course of eight months. 14 productions were staged this year, with plays by the Bard of Avon taking top billing, along with Broadway-style musicals that added depth and variety to the repertoire. To deliver the classics to the Festival patrons, more than 80 Meyer Sound loudspeakers were used, along with Matrix3 audio show control systems and a fully integrated LCS Series CueConsole control system, which was recently installed in the largest venue at the Festival, the 1,826-seat Festival Theatre.

A key proponent of the LCS Series solution was resident sound designer Pet

UK - Following the opening of The Harrogate Grille within the town's Balmoral Hotel in June 2007, owners John Pallagi and Simon Wright of the restaurant group Room Restaurants are continuing with their rapid growth plans of positioning stand alone restaurants within hotels.

With units in Liverpool, London, Manchester, Harrogate and Leeds, Room Restaurants have now opened their sixth restaurant The Lincoln Grille within the White Hart Hotel - located alongside Lincoln Cathedral and the imposing walls of Lincoln Castle.

Owned by Ambar Paul, son of Lord Paul of Marylebone, the 50-bedroom White Hart Hotel is operated by his company, Contemporary Hotels. The new refurbishment of the Hotel has cost over £1m - with Room Restaurants' contribution over £350,000.

The ground floor of this hotel, which dates back to the 14th century, comprises three units. This month the sec

Sweden - Following the PLASA 2007 launch of the PLM 10000Q, the first in its series of Powered Loudspeaker Management (PLM) products, Lab.gruppen has followed up with a number of worldwide training events for its distribution network. The first Powered Loudspeaker Management system training session took place at Lab.gruppen's Kungsbacka facility in Sweden, followed closely by sessions in Italy and Macau, China.

With the advent of the new PLM Series, training is now a major factor for Lab.gruppen. Headed up by technical applications specialist, Thomas Vestergaard, topics covered during the day-long programme ranged from a basic grounding in Dolby Lake processing presented by freelance Dolby Lake processing specialist Miguel Hadelich, through practical system design using racks of PLMs and understanding the breadth and depth of front panel control, to creating LoadLibrary fingerpr

USA - Symetrix has released version 2.1 of the Integrator Series Zone Mix 760 paging and music management system, which is designed to deliver the optimal feature set and I/O count needed for restaurants, hotels, sports bars and nightclubs.

With version 2.1, Symetrix solidifies external control by adding full support for the entire family of Modular ARCs, including the K1, SW4, SWK, MIC and XLR models. Both the ARC-MIC and ARC-XLR - which respectively offer a built-in condenser mic and an XLR input source - are totally integrated into the system's Page Station functionality under version 2.1. Each wall panel can function as a self-contained paging station with zone groups and push-to-talk.

All Zone Mix 760 hardware units shipped since December 2007 include an RS-232 port, and version 2.1 software brings a fully-documented third party control protocol for use over IP or the new

India - Aerosmith delivered a high-energy show in India for the first time ever, performing at the open-air grounds of the historic Bangalore Palace. To ensure every dB of power reached fans with ample clarity and presence, Bangalore-based Reynolds Sound and Lighting Services supplied a massive system based on Meyer Sound Milo family curvilinear array loudspeakers.

Reynolds has supported countless large-scale shows at Bangalore Palace through the years. With more than 20,000 eager fans set to attend Aerosmith's inaugural concert, technical director Mike Furtado knew he had a busy night ahead. "We needed a system that could deliver around 110 decibels across the grounds," he says. "The band also required a whole lot of low end."

To meet both requirements, Furtado and crew supplied a Meyer Sound system comprising two front line arrays, each consisting of two

The Netherlands - Dutch Concert Hall Popstage W2 has undertaken a complete renovation of its sound system and has chosen an L-Acoustics ARCS line source array system. The Hertogenbosch club typically programmes 15 bands on a monthly basis. This busy schedule brings a multiplicity of production requirements and needs.

L-Acoustics distributor, Sennheiser Netherlands, the production company DVS and W2 teamed up for the project and a complete turnkey system consisting of 2 x 3 ARCS - horizontally stacked, with 2 x 2 SB218 subwoofers per side.

Nico Smidt, product manager, Sennheiser Netherlands, says: "The L-Acoustics ARCS system simply offers the best possible blend of coverage and SPL for the room. Moreover, the rider friendliness of the system is definitely an asset for the venue."

Arjen van den Oord, sound technician at W2, declares: "The technical support prov

UK - Take That used an array of Sennheiser and Neumann equipment on their recent UK and European tours.

Front of house engineer Gary Bradshaw comments: "I did two UK and one European tour in 1993 and 1994. I was happy to be asked back for their first reunion tour 12 months ago, which led onto this one."

"There are seven musicians in the band, plus four string players," continues Bradshaw, "eight dancers, two of whom sing backing vocals, backing vocalist Lloyd and the four guys from Take That. We have a total of 67 inputs from the stage, 21 of which are radios. These include the main handheld vocal mics and two headset mics worn by two dancers, guitars and bass guitar, sax, all the strings and two radio percussion mics. Most of these radios also get used on the B stage which is usually positioned in the centre of the arena."

The choice for all of

UK - Alan March has joined Sennheiser UK as Business Development Specialist after twenty-one years in various roles at HW International and Shure Distribution UK. Having spent his years in the Pro Audio field working in marketing, sales and engineering roles, March arrives at Sennheiser UK with a wealth of experience and a broad knowledge of the industry.

"Coming to Sennheiser UK is a tremendous opportunity," he explains. "The role of Business Development Specialist is a new position and that excites me. Through the years I've done many different things ¬ sales, marketing and most recently applications ¬so I feel I'm very much suited to the role. This is a chance for me to move on and create something new, which is very appealing."

"My role at Sennheiser will be to develop business, particularly with regard to the Pro and Install side, which will, no

UK - Britannia Row Productions used its Butterfly Outline array for sound reinforcement at the show staged on the occasion of the naming ceremony of the Queen Victoria, the cruise liner built by Italy's Fincantieri shipyard for Cunard Line (Carnival Group).

Twenty-four CDH 483 Hi-Pack units, supported by the customary Subtech 218 for the ultra-low frequencies, amplified the London Philharmonic Orchestra and performances by tenors Alfie Boe, Jon Christof and Gardar Thor Cortes.

The show included a presentation, during which Sir Derek Jacobi told the Cunard story, accompanied by pieces played by the orchestra, including Rule Britannia.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Technomad Associates has announced that new versions of its Vienna 16 and Paris 616 weatherproof outdoor loudspeakers are now available and shipping. The Version8 models include upgrades that maximise the loudspeaker output while retaining broad dispersion and clear audio, says the company.

Technomad Vienna 16 and Paris 616 loudspeakers are part of the company's MP Series, a range of weatherproof loudspeakers designed for permanent installation, indoors and outdoors. Popular applications include city walkways, public spaces, tourist attractions, hockey and ice skating rinks, cruise ships, municipal swimming pools, and outdoor community amphitheaters.

The Version8 models add compression drivers that provide an added 3dB of maximum continuous SPL and an added 10dB of dynamic range, ensuring voice intelligibility and musical output at all volume levels.

"These upgrad

USA - Stage Research will hold two one-day training sessions in London to introduce UK-based sound designers to SFX 6, the new version of the company's live entertainment sound playback software. The training sessions will take place 29 and 30 January at the Central School of Speech and Drama located in central London.

"UK sound designers have adopted SFX, and we're headed to London to support their transition over to SFX 6," says Carlton Guc who is partnered with Brad Rembielak in Stage Research. "Central has been a valued institutional customer since 2002 and it is the pre-eminent theatre sound design training institution in the UK. They have an advanced theatre and sound system into which SFX fits very well. It is the perfect place to introduce SFX 6 to the marketplace."

Gregg Fisher, sound designer and senior lecturer in theatre sound design at Central,

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