This year's seminars took place in early June at Ashton Court, near Bristol and (most appropriately for the live music industry) Knebworth House in Hertfordshire. With a bare minimum of advertising, news of the events was so well-received that Sennheiser UK had to freeze the online registration site several days before the first one.
"Hosting last year's event at an attractive venue which people would remember worked very well," says Ken Morrison, business area manager at Sennheiser UK. "We wanted to reach a greater number of people in more areas this year, which is why we chose Ashton Court and Knebworth. We had a very pleasing turnout, outstripping our expectations by a fair margin."
Morrison's welcome and introduction was followed by Alan March, Sennheiser UK's business development specialist, giving a comprehensive update on the UK Government sell-off of radio frequencies and the entertainment industry's switchover from Channel 69 to 38.
"Many of our visitors had specifically come to hear what Alan had to say and we were pleased that they all went away armed with the knowledge and information that they needed," says Morrison. "They were also very impressed with the presentation by Steve Macatee and Dean Standing of Rane about networkable DSP. Both had flown over to the UK from Seattle especially for these events, and despite neither having slept for about 36 hours, their presentation was excellent and very well received."
The Rane presentation focused on the company's new HAL range of processors, which weren't due to have their official launch until InfoComm in Florida the following week, so it was a world first.
The sessions continued with lunch and a prize draw, at which Gordon Ferguson of Rhythm Base in Glasgow and Bill Daniels from Leisuretec were both fortunate to win a pair of £1000 Sennheiser HD 800 headphones, with runner-up prizes from APart and Rane ensuring that other participants also went away very happy.
Following independent consultant Roland Hemming's presentation on the dos and don'ts of managing an audio installation project, everyone was invited to hear the quality of K-Array loudspeakers, demonstrated by Dave Wooster.
"We always enjoy demonstrating this equipment, because it knocks people for six every time, leaving them wondering at how so much big sound can be produced by such small speakers," says Morrison. "Ashton Court and Knebworth were no exceptions, as our guests checked they actually were listening to a room full of sound, courtesy of two four inch long line array elements and a couple of miniature subs."
There was no wondering where the sound was coming for the final part of the day, however, as led the participants outside to introduce them to two brand new systems - the K-Array KR400S and AERO 8A line array from DAS, which were both being demonstrated in the UK for the first time.
"Both sounded absolutely amazing," says Morrision. "The KR400S produces an astonishing sound - both in terms of quantity and quality - for its compact size, while the DAS system blew everyone away. It is the smallest system of the AERO2 series, but the consensus was that it would give systems costing three times the price a serious run for their money."
(Jim Evans)
