USA - When Abundant Life Church in Punta Gorda, FL closed its doors in 2010, falling victim to the economy, a steep mortgage, and rising operating costs, it felt like the end of a beautiful dream for this close-knit congregation. Rather than fall by the wayside, the members immediately rallied together and set about finding a way to continue worshipping together. After some diligent searching, the fellowship decided that instead of building or purchasing a new property, they would rent space from nearby Sally Jones Elementary and pick up where they had left off; thus Real Life Church was born.

Audio quality is key to Real Life's contemporary services, with charismatic pastors and a five piece band flanked by backup singers. The church retained Sach AV of Florida, who recommended a system based on Renkus-Heinz's CF-Series modular point source line array.

"The room is quite

USA - Saville Audio Visual production manager, Gareth Lloyd was a keynote speaker at UNLEASH - the Sonic Foundry Mediasite User Conference in the USA. He was invited to present Using Mediasite in Live Events: An Event Partner's View and pass on his knowledge to a large live audience as well as users around the world joining the conference via the Internet.

As one of the UK's most experienced event webcasting specialists, Lloyd was able to share what he's learned on the road and in the field about using Mediasite to record and stream live events and conferences. He addressed the major differences between installed and touring systems along with best practices and first-hand case studies of how to ensure a successful event.

His presentation was designed to help potential users understand major differences in deployment and the ease of incorporating Mediasite into an ad ho

USA - Genelec will be showcasing the 4040A, a new model in their 4000 Series range of active two-way loudspeakers at Infocomm 2011. The new model, in common with the existing models in the range (the 4020A and 4030A), is designed for the professional installation market, while incorporating new features for use in applications such as larger conference rooms and auditoria.

"We were delighted with the reception the 4000 Series received at ISE 2011," says Terho Savolainen, marketing manager, Genelec Oy. "The excellent response confirms our belief that many in the AV sector are looking to achieve audio excellence in their installations. This new model builds on the strengths of the existing products in the range and adds features that extend the reach of the product to meet the demands of larger and more complex installations.

"Integrators working on demanding

UAE - Optocore distributors, Thomsun Trading, has reported an enthusiastic response to the German manufacturer's new generation products from the Middle Eastern market.

Exhibiting at the recent PALME Show in Dubai, Optocore product specialist, Alok Ghurde says his company has helped to create an awareness in the region - at both this expo (for the live, rental and installation markets), and CABSAT (for broadcast).

"We have been showcasing and promoting Optocore at each of these two shows ever since we started distributing the brand," he said. "Our initial successes have been in the live/rental market, where Optocore is especially suited - but we've recently been working on several exciting projects in the broadcast, as well as the install market, where Optocore has been prominent with high profile success worldwide. We hope to have breakthroughs in this region v

USA - Since its release in 2010, Apple's iPad has seen a variety of handy uses in many different worlds, even the A/V industry. In early 2011, Allen & Heath launched their contribution to the iPad world, the MixPad App. Allen & Heath's MixPad App allows for deep control of the iLive series digital mixers over Wifi. First Baptist Church of Altamonte Springs Florida has integrated yet another technical use for the iPad, personal monitor mixing.

With the help of Byron Connerly and Gil Parente of Entertainment Arts, the church purchased an Allen and Heath iLive T-112 digital mixing console as well as wireless in-ear monitor systems for the entire band. "The iLive-T series has a ton of great options when it comes to personal mixing," says Parente. "There are option cards that allow integration into various 'big brand' personal mixing systems. But we knew that the churc

Germany - The organisers of this year's Eurovision Song Contest, EBU and NDR, used a comprehensive fibre-based MediorNet system from Riedel Communications to distribute video, audio and communications signals at the event. Riedel installed a versatile system comprising of MediorNet, RockNet, Artist and Performer components, turning the former football stadium into a 15,000sq.m TV broadcast studio.

To provide the broadcast infrastructure and the signal distribution backbone, the German specialist for real-time networks installed a comprehensive system that distributed 70 HD/SD-SDI video signals, 1,200 audio signals and 734 communications ports. A total of 70 MediorNet mainframes were used to integrate the various positions and departments into a single system, including the TV compound, commentator positions and the press centre.

MediorNet was responsible for transporting the b

UK/The Netherlands - This year's ABTT, held on 15-16 June at London's Royal Agricultural Halls, sees Alcons Audio once again making an appearance with its comprehensive range of loudspeaker solutions and controller-amplifiers.

Alcons offers a complete portfolio from point-source, through line-source to line-array solutions, all based around proprietary and multiple-patented pro-ribbon transducer technology.

Point source systems on show - the traditional way of reinforcing theatre sound - include the VR8 compact monitor on display, as well as the SR9 front-fill, both two-way passive systems, featuring a 4" pro-ribbon HF driver.

Line source solutions are represented by the QR36 pro-ribbon column array system, a modular array concept comprising loudspeaker modules, one metre in length that can form long arrays for ultimate controlled projection.

Line-array comes in the f

Norway - Pianist Torgeir Kinne Solsvik has just finished a major recording project, releasing three CDs on his own record label, Cheek Piano. All recordings were made with DPA microphones.

"An investment in DPA Microphones was an important step to take, and a requirement for recording at the levels I wanted," says Solsvik. "I use a stereo pair of 4041-S large diaphragm microphones for ambience, which are supreme for this type of application, with their very high sensitivity and low self-noise. They provide an openness and airiness to the mix that is difficult to beat.

"For a stereo pair on the grand piano I use DPA 4003 omnis. They handle the piano's fast transients very well and provide a sound characterised by smoothness and roundness. That in itself is a big challenge when recording the grand piano. When they additionally reproduce the harmonic frequenci

UK - Pro Audio Systems were proud to be closely involved with the recent opening of the new terminal complex at Birmingham International Airport, the latest component in an ongoing £100m redevelopment programme being undertaken at the Midland's leading airport.

The £13m 'One Terminal' development has been designed to unify Birmingham's security checkpoints, creating a single passenger flow and considerably simplifying operations.

Over 300 VIP guests from UK industry and international commerce attended the event, which culminated in the official opening of the new facility by the Rt. Hon. Philip Hammond MP. Birmingham Airport CEO Paul Kehoe welcomed the visitors and paid tribute to the efforts and expertise of its business partners in helping to shape 'Britain's newest global gateway'.

The Pro Audio Systems hire department designed and installed a bespoke sound

France - Digigram has announced a significant OEM deal with digital console manufacturer, Innovason, for their AQONDA EtherSound stagebox. Innovason has released their own version of the 16-in/16-out version called the SR-16.

SR-16 offers all of the AQONDA functionality and unimpeachable audio quality in an Innovason 'skin'. Fully remotely controllable by the Innovason Eclipse and Eclipse GT consoles, both from the console's GUI and the control surface, SR-16 is compatible with existing and upcoming EtherSound set-ups, and there is no limitation to the number of devices that may be controlled.

Alternatively, SR-16 can be controlled using any of the available EtherSound software management programs. By the same token, Eclipse is capable of detecting and controlling a Digigram AQONDA just as if it were an SR-16. It should also be noted that, even in its original factory format,

UK - To promote their latest album, March saw Irish pop-rock trio The Script undertake its biggest UK headline tour so far, taking in 12 shows in most of the major arenas in England, Scotland and Wales. Sennheiser UK supported audio provider Adlib Audio for the band's microphone and monitoring requirements.

The tour took in arenas at Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Plymouth. A highlight was the two London shows - one at Wembley Arena, the other at The O2.

"As the band's first tour of big venues, the first thing we discussed was in-ear monitors," says Richy Nicholson, the band's front of house engineer. "We contacted two of the major manufacturers and Phil Cummings from Sennheiser got straight back to us. He and Mark Saunders came to one of the early rehearsals and they were also really

USA - Sensaphonics recently held the first of three scheduled 2011 Golden Circle seminars, educating audiologists with the specific skills and knowledge needed to work with musicians, audio technicians, and in-ear monitors.

The two-day Golden Circle seminar uses personalised, small-group instruction and includes a tour of the Sensaphonics custom manufacturing lab in Chicago. Another highlight is a trip to a local recording for a live music session, which is used to demonstrate the basics of PA systems, stage monitoring and in-ear systems from the artist's perspective.

"Musicians are totally different from any other client an audiologist is likely to see," notes Michael Santucci, AuD, Sensaphonics president and founder. "The Sensaphonics Golden Circle members are among the few who have the specialised knowledge to serve these clients properly, whether in the offi

Switzerland - A recent rebuilding and upgrading project to a regional Swiss venue has effectively provided a new entertainment and exhibition facility in the town of Thun, just south of Bern. An integral part of the project was installing new induction loops, with Ampetronic chosen for the job.

The project cost 24m Swiss francs and saw the main Schadausaal hall at the Kultur und Kongresszentrum Thun (KKThun) completely revamped while an additional hall, the Lachensaal, was added along with a large new foyer.

"We have installed a lot of induction loops before, every time using Ampetronic products, and have had nothing but good experiences with them," says Rolf Aegerter, technical project manager at Kilchenmann.

The existing induction loops in the Schadausaal's two small balconies were re-used, driven by a newly-installed Ampetronic ILD500 loop amplifier. Meanwhile,

Germany / UAE - The beginning of June will see a reassignment of responsibilities at Bosch Communications Systems. To date, as sales director pro audio export, Klaus Seitz has been responsible for the pro sound sector (Electro-Voice, Dynacord) in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), whilst Kamil Swobodzinski has been responsible for the marketing of broadcast and intercom equipment (RTS, Telex) in the same three regions. Henceforth, responsibility for both the brands and the sales regions will be differently assigned between the two. The duties of the existing export sales managers, however, will remain unchanged.

From 1 June, Klaus Seitz, as sales director MEA, will be responsible for the marketing of both pro sound and CCS products in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. To be closer to the customers, Seitz will relocate from Straubing to the Robert Bosch subsidiary in Du

UK - The 12th annual Classic Brit Awards took place on 12 May at London's Royal Albert Hall. Hosted by Myleene Klass and in the presence of the Duchess Of Cornwall, the award presentations were interspersed with performances by Il Divo, Katherine Jenkins and the cast of Les Misérables.

Despite the extensive technical demands of a complex and sometimes unpredictable event, the production proved the capabilities of the design and engineering crew. The audio side was handled exclusively by Britannia Row Productions who deployed a 30-element Outline GTO system flown in three 10-deep columns, each with three Outline Mantas under-hung for near-fills. The two side-hangs comprised 10 Outline Butterfly elements each, and the whole system was driven by Outline T-Series amplifiers run from Dolby Lake system controllers.

The Midas XL8 at FOH was operated by engineer Colin Pi

UK - Sennheiser UK is to host two seminars, which have been developed from last year's successful event in the stunning environment of Hopetoun House, near Edinburgh. This year's venues are no less impressive, with the first of the two days taking place on 7 June at Ashton Court near Bristol and the second, two days later at Knebworth House in the Hertfordshire countryside.

"The seminar will be along the same lines as last year, although the content has been refreshed and updated," explains Ken Morrison, business area manager at Sennheiser UK. "The accent is still on providing information, education - and a little entertainment - for our installed sound, AV and live sound colleagues in the industry."

The choice of venues reflects Sennheiser's desire for the seminars to make a lasting impression, says the company.

"Last year, we decided that, rather t

Recycling Sets - Theatre companies can now advertise and recycle old sets and costumes on a new Freecycle-style website specifically designed for the sector. With the tag line "giving your unwanted set a new home", Set-exchange.co.uk has been launched with the aim of encouraging production companies to share unwanted sets, costumes and props with other theatre organisations across the UK for free. Companies including the Royal Court, Glyndebourne and the Lyric Hammersmith have already pledged their support to the website.

Set-exchange was set up by lighting designer and production electrician Peter Harrison. He told The Stage, "The idea came from me working with some of the small companies as well as the big companies and seeing waste in one and scrimping and saving from the other, so it came out of trying to share resources."

Set-exchange is structu

UK - London-based sound rental company, Capital Sound Hire has invested in an Optocore optical fibre system for the first time to maximise signal transport and flexibility on the current Take That Progress Live 2011 stadium tour.

Project manager Martin Connolly confirmed that in order to eliminate sight-line issues caused by traditional loudspeaker delay masts, this tour would feature a distributed 'ring' delay system with loudspeaker arrays hanging directly from the stadia structure.

"We will be placing clusters of amp racks around the stadiums, picking up AC power locally," he states. "We considered a copper based signal distribution system, perhaps using AES3, but because of the distances involved and the need for electrical isolation we soon realised that an optical system was the correct solution.

"With a project of this magnitude we felt that

UK - Liverpool based Adlib kicked off the 2011 music festival season in style - supplying sound systems to three stages and lighting to Radio One's Big Weekend at Carlisle Airport in Cumbria.

It was the fifth consecutive year that Adlib has supplied equipment and crew to the event, and their team was headed by James Neale on site and co-ordinated by Dave Jones in the office.

The stages were In New Music We Trust (stage 2), unashamedly rocked on Saturday night by headliners the Swedish House Mafia, ahead of their upcoming tour for which Adlib is also providing sound; and stage 4, The BBC Introducing Stage which showcased some of the hottest new talent.

On INMWT, Adlib's new CODA Audio system made its Big Weekend debut, configured as two flown left and right main hangs each comprising 10 CODA LA12 speakers, together with 16 LA8s for front- fills and 16 ground stacked SC

UK - Capital Sound has carried out a complete overhaul of its Martin Audio W8L Longbow inventory in preparation for the Take That Progress Live 2011 tour, which opened at Sunderland's Stadium of Light on 27 May.

Once Martin Audio's line array system had been chosen by the band's FOH sound engineer, Gary Bradshaw, the rental company took the unusual step of having its entire W8L Longbow fleet (including complementary WS218X subs) finished in black, to create stage uniformity; at the same time they purchased eight further enclosures.

All of which received unconditional approval from Gary Bradshaw. Two days into the show, the sound engineer reported, "It is still early days but I'm very pleased with the results we have been getting with the Martin Longbow system, which is very smooth but very powerful."

Since Production decided to dispense with large delay towers in f

UK - The weekend of 20 - 22 May saw the inaugural edition of the Friends Of Mine festival held against the stunning backdrop of Capesthorne Hall near Manchester. FOM Fest boasted an impressive line-up for a first-time festival. Organisers had no hesitation in drawing from the rich pickings of the Mancunian music scene over the years with acts such as Kid British, Badly Drawn Boy, The Buzzcocks, The Fall, Dutch Uncles, Bad Lieutenant, Wakefield's The Cribs and of course the inimitable Charlatans amongst many others.

The weather might not have been too kind, but it didn't dampen the spirits of festival goers who braved the elements to support the cream of the crop of 'local' bands who, for once, were all playing in their own back garden. Paul Nicholson from Red Square Audio / Midas ProSound handled the audio requirements across the festival's four main stages, including a fleet of

UK - Ethix Management has announced the expansion of its digital mixing facilities with a 70k investment in a SoundCraft Vi6 desk. Thanks to swift competitive finance from Azule Finance, Ethix Management, who have regularly worked in Trafalgar square, this year alone on Chinese New Year, St Patricks Day, Holland House and Vasahki as well as several festivals lined up this year, will use this mixing desk in the forthcoming festival season.

Paul Jones, owner and director of Ethix Management comments, "The SoundCraft Vi6 has an excellent reputation in the industry as an intuitive digital mixing desk. It is incredibly quick to re-patch and its user friendly interface makes it easy for any sound engineer get on board and start mixing, which is vital at festivals due to the sheer volume of artists and engineers using any one deck. Azule Finance's understanding of the production i

Russia - Situated in the In far Siberian city of Yakutsk, located just 450 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, a new entertainment complex known as Europe opened this spring.

The complex is set over five floors and the technical infrastructure was designed and installed by MS-Max - drawing heavily on components from the EAW catalogue.

Above the ground floor pub and sports bar, are an Italian restaurant, a billiards room and café; the Striptease nightclub spans floors three and four (along with a Karaoke bar) - and up on the top floor are bowling lanes.

MS-Max supplied a punchy EAW dance system in the form of the purpose designed Avalon Series. This consists of a pair of enclosures, complemented by 10 rectangular UB82, eight BH760 bent horn subwoofers, four LA212 monitor speakers, four FR129z 12in LF and four SM129z compact single 12in speakers. EAW's CAZ Series amp

UK - Queen recently celebrated their 40th anniversary in spectacular style with Stormtroopers in Stilettos, a major retrospective exhibition held in London. Celebrating the band's first five albums, the exhibition took place at the Old Truman Brewery with Genelec 8030A 2-way active loudspeakers playing album tracks in the background in separate, themed areas.

Created by Island Records, Universal Music and Marmalade London, a design and production agency, the exhibition takes a comprehensive look at the early part of Queen's career, from before the band's formation in 1971 right up to their spectacular free gig for over 250,000 fans in Hyde Park in 1976. The large 1250ft² warehouse space was split into five zones, with graphics and music to match each stage in the band's career. Supplied and set up by Source Distribution, 30 Genelec 8030A loudspeakers were used in all are

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