UK - Clear-Com is showcasing the Tempest 2400 with Seamless Roaming capability and Tempest 2400 MasterBelt digital wireless intercom for the live sound market at PLASA 2012 (Stand I-F29). Tempest Seamless Roaming is ideal for large venues that are separated by sizeable distances, such as multi-theatre environments and/or outdoor venues, says the company. The MasterBelt is suitable for smaller, more mobile applications, including live, outdoor productions and tour-guide setups.

The Tempest2400 Seamless Roaming feature affords crew members the ability to move freely and wirelessly throughout large venues, such as multi-theater complexes, university campuses and sports arenas. This ensures that users can walk from one coverage area to another without interference or dropouts. The Seamless Roaming feature allows BeltStation users to migrate between as many as 16 different Tempest240

UK - Roland Systems Group (RSG) will be making PLASA an 'event within an event' this year with new product and software launches combined with a packed schedule of 'Hands on Live Sessions' hosted by key dealers on their stand throughout the show.

Showcasing new solutions for both audio and video, there will be a series of exclusive PLASA product launches at the show, and the chance for visitors to the stand (1-F34) to be first in line to get 'hands on' with new technology.

Designed to give visitors to the show a truly interactive experience with RSG live, recording and video products, five 'Hands on Live' sessions will take place on the RSG stand each day, with up to 12 places available at each. Pre-registration will be available via the hosting dealer or the RSG website, or more information can be requested by email to Rebecca.peterson@roland.co.uk

Making its debut appearan

USA - Announced earlier this year, the Mackie DL1608 16-Channel Digital Live Sound Mixer is now shipping. To "meet unprecedented demand", Mackie has increased production capabilities and shipments are now leaving their North American manufacturing facility to eager customers worldwide.

"We are extremely excited to get the DL1608 into the hands of musicians and engineers," commented Ben Olswang, Mackie product manager. "We've been addressing customer interest with a series of video podcasts that go over all the cool features. Plus, the Master Fader Control App has been fully updated with great new features that weren't available in the preview version."

The Mackie DL1608 combines the power of a full-featured digital mixer with the unmatched ease and mobility of iPad.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Rubber Box manufactures breakout boxes, stage boxes and audio cables to the same high quality that users have come to expect from the company's power distros.

"As well as a standard range that we will hold on the shelf, we will also build custom units to customer specification. These will be fitted into existing enclosures and there will be a new enclosure which is to be seen for the first time at PLASA on stand 1-F20," says the company.

(Claire Beeson)

UK - Auto-Cue Pro and Auto-Cue Lite software packages are for any performer that performs on stage, but was primarily designed with musicians in mind.

It is essentially an autocue system or a stage prompt system. The software runs on any Windows platform.

From the gigging musicians point of view, Auto-Cue Pro has "every conceivable feature built in".

Auto-Cue Pro displays your music ( chords, guitar tabs, manuscript notation etc ) and the lyrics. The displayed content is easily synchronized to any backing track. There are various way your music and lyrics can be presented on screen.

The software can simply be run on your laptop or tablet, you can of course plug in a larger computer monitor.

Auto-Cue also builds Stage display units to order, from the audience point of view they look just like a fold back speaker, but in reality the enclosure contains the compute

Switzerland - Gurten festival takes place annually on a clearing a top the Gurten foothills on the Swiss Alps by the capital city of Bern. The four-day festival originated in 1977. Access to the festival site up on the mountain is via one street, which can only be travelled in one direction at a time. The entire festival set-up takes about a month, and another two weeks for the teardown.

Artists travel in special shuttles with priority on the road, there's also a heli-pad set up for medical emergencies. The general population also arrives by 'Gurtenbahn' a local equivalent of a cable car. Some people choose to hike the 45 minute trek to the site. Practically all choose to stay and camp for the duration of the show. Due to the site's constraints and access, a limit of 18,000 people per day is set for the festival.

Notably, Gurten Festival has made some efforts to be 'green'. Th

Russia - Euroshow Moscow deployed its L-Acoustics K1 WST line source system at Rock on the Volga, a one-day festival in the city of Samara.

The June event, which drew a crowd of more than 270,000 people, has been confirmed as the biggest open-air festival in Europe and Asia. It featured eight of Russia's leading bands including Leningrad and Alisa, and was headlined by ZAZ, Garbage and Limp Bizkit.

Euroshow used 16 K1 and four Kara per side as the main system, supplemented with eight K1-SB subwoofers flown per side behind the main array. Out-fills were a further eight K1 with four K1-SB per side, front-fills were four stacks of two Kara cabinets with six stacks of four SB28 subs per side in cardioid mode. Stage monitors were provided by ZAZ alone in the form of 12 115XT HiQ, three ARCS and three SB218 subs per side performed as stage side-fills. The entire system was powered b

UK - Staged annually at Turnpost Farm, the Glastonbudget Festival is Europe's largest and best-known festival for tribute acts. Every year, around 9,000 fans make the pilgrimage to the farm in the East Midlands between Leicester and Nottingham for the three-day event. There they are regaled by talented and often authentic-sounding clones of Bryan Adams, Queen, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and other top acts. Since its inception in 2005, the festival has also established itself as an attractive platform for up-and-coming acts in other genres.

As in previous years, the 2012 organisers commissioned OneBigStar of Nottingham to implement the sound, video and lighting solutions for the event. "With 160 bands over the three days, we had our hands full," says Simon Taylor, OneBigStar's commercial director, "so we needed a sound system that would sound great, was utterly r

UK - Alfie Boe is the English tenor who has achieved popular success bringing opera to new audiences as well as giving Tony-winning performances in musical theatre. From Les Miserables to La Boheme, from London's Royal Opera House to a full UK tour, Alfie Boe is that rare creature - a true crossover artist from classical to pop music.

For his current British tour, playing festival and outdoor dates as well as theatres, Boe is carrying a Nexo 45°N-12 stage monitor system for his own use. Whether he's performing in front of his 32-piece orchestra, choir or a small band, Boe is happy with a cluster of the distinctive N-12 wedges, arrayed four wide.

The Nexo N-12s were suggested by Boe's monitor engineer Paul Hatt, whose company CS Audio is the sound rental provider for the tour. Hatt was tipped off about the radical line monitors by Tristran Mallett and Chris Wi

UK - At PLASA2012 Out Board (Stand 1-H9) will debut the powerful new TiMax2 SoundHub PanSpace graphical sound-effects pan programming map which works in conjunction with the TimeLine editor. Users can create multiple fully editable pan trajectories in any Cue, which can operate on internal or external sources and be triggered by the Timeline or a variety of external showcontrol interfaces.

Also, new iPad and iPhone apps for the TiMax2 SoundHub system matrix, playback server and audio showcontroller will be featured. Simple factory-default setups are user-configurable, and a bespoke service provides GUI's tailored to individual systems integration and sound-effects projects.

Also introduced with Data Strategy are the CAB-5 Cable Tester and RCD-T modules which work with the PAT-4 Test Processors to provide automated cable test, RCD test with detailed logging and reporting at an

UK - Orbital Sound has appointed Richard Knott to its growing sales team with immediate effect. Joining Orbital from TMC in Bradford, Knott is responsible for general pro-audio sales at Orbital, working alongside the company's other sales staff, under sales director Tom Byrne.

"Richard is an important addition to our company, and it's great to have him on the team," says Byrne. "He has a broad mix of skills - exactly what we look for in our staff - that combine highly relevant product knowledge with practical project work, ranging from broadcast to live sound. We will be using his sales skills to the maximum, extending his enthusiasm for d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers across our other brands, while assisting him to integrate with the wider Orbital team. We are sure that he will make a valuable contribution to the company - helping to drive our sales forward and ens

USA - Chicago-based Reed Rigging provided production rigging support and hardware for the series shooting and promotional campaign for season two of the award-winning Starz drama series Boss starring Kelsey Grammer.

Season two of Boss wrapped at Cinespace Chicago Film Studios last month and premiered last night on the Starz channel. "There's no better city in the world than Chicago," said Michael Reed, Reed Rigging's founder and owner, "to portray the ruthlessness and drama of the political machine."

Boss stars Kelsey Grammer as Chicago's fictional mayor Thomas Kane. Grammer won a Golden Globe for his portrayal. The city of Chicago provides the backdrop for this dark political drama.

"Reed Rigging is pleased and honored to be able to support the production of this show as well as to provide the rigging hardware for the menacing a

UK - HK Audio's Elements Plus and Elements Install, the latest additions to the Elements system will be showcased at PLASA 2012.

The Elements Plus E 835 mid/high unit provides even greater flexibility and power than its older brother (the E 435) when you want to set up bigger systems, says the company. Loaded with eight speakers, it can handle 300 watts at 8 ohms' impedance, and it comes highly recommended if you want to minimise the number of mechanical connections in your rig. The E 835 and E 435 mid/high units' design and tuning are identical, so combining them is easy.

The new E 210 Sub AS system subwoofer comes with two 1,200-watt amps in its engine room. Power amp number one drives the two internal 10" woofers, with plenty of juice left over to run an external passive type L Sub 1200. The second power amp delivers 900 watts at 2.6 ohms to drive up to three E 835s (o

UK - Designed for hotels, wedding and event venues, marquees, bars, restaurants and nightclubs, the JBN SoundCeiling is billed as "a revolutionary directional sound system that solves noise disturbance problems faced by entertainment venues while still delivering quality high-level sound".

The JBN SoundCeiling is a modular-based speaker system installed in or suspended from the ceiling above the dance floor, or any required area, that directs sound straight down to the audience where it is needed. With the SoundCeiling, sound pressure drop-off can be heard as soon as you step outside the column of sound created, not only lending itself to the reduction of noise escaping the site but allowing zoning of areas within any venue.

With a guaranteed 10db reduction only a couple of metres from the dance floor, the JBN SoundCeiling allows you to increase volume, improve sound

Operatic Moves - The arm of the Royal Opera House dedicated to commissioning and producing contemporary opera and dance is to close. The company revealed it had decided not to continue with ROH2 as a distinct entity after Deborah Bull, who had creative responsibility for the strand, and Alison Duthie, the department's head, left to take up positions with King's Cultural Partners earlier this year.

Two positions from ROH2's eight-strong team have been made redundant, including that of head of opera development, a role held by John Lloyd Davies. The post of manager of the On the Road programme, which oversaw projects around the UK, has also been axed.

Following Davies' redundancy, an ROH spokeswoman said director of opera Kasper Holten would head the team responsible for new operatic work, to run in the Linbury Studio Theatre and Clore Studio - spaces traditionally associ

UK - Roland Systems Group will be showcasing the dedicated iPad application to control their award winning M-480 Digital Console at PLASA 2012. This much requested 'App' has been designed to control the parameters of the M-480, as well as giving the user practical features such as the ability to store scenes and edit the Channel Strip (EQ), GEQ and Sends on Fader.

Connecting the new Roland Wireless Connect USB adaptor to the M-480 USB port will enable the M-480 to appear on a wireless network so that the iPad can connect to and control the M-480 remotely. Then by simply using the wireless LAN to connect, the user is able to make the necessary level adjustments from different locations within a venue, rather than being restricted to the position of the console.

As well as the obvious benefits of ease of use and mobility, this dual screen set up can also be utilised by the radio

USA - Community's Distributed Design Series has been expanded to include a standard black version of the 6.5-inch D6 for nightclubs, bars, restaurants, or any other application requiring a black ceiling loudspeaker.

The new D6-B, like all Distributed Design Series ceiling systems, provides exceptionally high quality sound with very wide, uniform coverage. The face-only assembly and optional accessories for the D6 including the Face Adapter Ring and Can Adapter/Trim Ring are also available in matching black finishes.

The D6-B is a true coaxial loudspeaker, with a compression driver concentrically located so that the high frequencies emerge through the centre of the low-frequency driver via a precisely contoured Tru-Phase HF waveguide. This provides consistent, wide dispersion up to 16kHz.

(Jim Evans)

Capotion: The D6-B now in black

Japan - Martin Audio's award-winning MLA system is continuing to wow audiences in the Far East, having completed a successful tour of duty at Japan's largest festival, Rock in Japan.

Promoted by music magazine publishers, Rockin'On, and an annual event since the year 2,000, this three day extravaganza pulls over 100 of Japan's leading rock bands and artists and draws a crowd of around 60,000 daily to the venue (the Hitachi Seaside Park in Hitachinaka).

Rental company, MSI Japan, who provide front line sound reinforcement for the event every year, now has the luxury of fielding the MLA for the largest of the six stages (Grass Stage) - specified by the company's president, Shuzo Fujii.

The promoters were already aware of the power of the MLA system, having experienced it on the second stage (Lake Stage) at last year's festival, where the system enjoyed its Japanese debut. Such

UK - A full-volume demo area dedicated to the demonstration of loudspeakers will give visitors to PLASA 2012 the chance to listen to products in a real-world environment.

"The famous Funktion One demo room has got some company at this year's show as we take over a whole new space at Earls Court for large scale demonstrations of the latest loudspeaker technology," comments event manager, Sophie Atkinson.

Martin Audio took huge strides forward with the launch of the award winning MLA System at the PLASA Show two years ago. They return this year to take over the AudioLab, on Monday 10 September.

Approaching the problem of controlled coverage in poor acoustic spaces, Martin Audio Engineers came up with the concept of OmniLine, where rather than applying DSP to a traditional column loudspeaker, OmniLine's vertical beam-forming is achieved by physically articulating indi

New Guinea - Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea based rental and production company Nextof Kin Productions Ltd has recently taken delivery of a sizeable quantity of ARX signal processing products to expand and update their sound reinforcement systems.

ARX products added to Next of Kins rental stock include Pro-DIs, QuadcompIIs, Sixgates, EQ260s, USB DIs and iDIs.

Next Of Kin's Fred Uraru comments, "There really is not much option in PNG apart from the "cheap brand" products which really give me a headache, I believe nothing should compromise quality and reliability. That will be my strong selling point and why we chose ARX."

Next of Kin specialises in live concerts and corporate events in the very active PNG music and entertainment scene.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Midas digital consoles delivered a rock solid sound foundation at this year's rather wet and muddy T in the Park festival, Scotland.

As the rain fell in sheets, bands including Snow Patrol, Florence and The Machine, The Stone Roses, Kasabian along with hundreds of other acts kept things lively and upbeat on the a disused airfield in Balado, Kinross-shire.

Ensuring sound quality on the Radio 1 / NME Stage was Scottish rental company EFX Audio, headed up by engineer Steph Fleming, who supplied two Midas XL8s and a PRO2C at FOH, one PRO6 and one PRO9 on Monitors.

Working alongside Fleming on the Radio 1 / NME Stage was Midas' Jason Kelly: "I think pretty much every T in the Park headliner used Midas," says Kelly. "Two Door Cinema Club brought their own PRO2C, however almost all of the other acts including David Guetta, Professor Green, and Swedish House Mafi

Denmark - The end of June saw the annual Thy Rock festival held in Thisted, north-west Denmark. Celebrating the best of Danish music, this year's festival saw a Coda Audio PA system and multiple DiGiCo consoles feature.

Audio equipment for the festival was supplied by DPA SoundCo and included a main Coda Audio AIRLINE LA12 line array system. This comprised 28 LA12 three-way high output line array modules, four G712-96 three way front fills, 16 SCP sensor controlled subs and eight RC Racks amp racks with Coda processors.

The festival's house console was a DiGiCo D5T, but many of the high profile acts on the Saturday brought their own, so the festival also saw five SD8s, two SD7, an SD9 and two SD11i's in use.

Mads Staerke was the Front of House engineer for rapper L.O.C. and pop singer Sanne Salomonsen. Two very different acts, but Mads was very impressed with how the Coda sy

UK - Saturn Audio Visual has recently completed the installation of Audica Professional MICROseries sound systems for the new guest rooms at The Pigs in Edgefield near Holt in Norfolk, England. The award winning 17th century The Pigs establishment incorporates bar, restaurant and accommodation facilities.

For its seven new suites The Pigs wanted to create guest rooms with a real difference. Situated on the ground floor and decorated in stylish, neutral tones, each of the light and airy spa rooms comes with a private two-person sauna, dual bathing oak-clad bath and their own courtyard garden with a fire pit and modern outdoor seating. The new rooms are located off a sunny central corridor and the seven suites boast high ceilings, wooden floors, and beautiful marble bathrooms.

Technology also plays a strong part in the new room's facilities, as Olly Smith of Saturn Audio Visual

UK - To help its channel partners drive revenue opportunities from top quality audio installations by firmly putting the 'A' back into AV, RGB Communications is committed to making sure that the content and format of its already successful Audio Essentials training course continues to give delegates the knowledge to meet the demands of their customers in the commercial and residential audio markets.

"Our Audio Essentials course, the content of which is constantly evolving, gives delegates a firm foundation of the first principles of audio installation. This foundation means that they understand how and why audio installations either succeed or fail," said RGB's CTO, David Webster.

"From the all important revenue generating perspective, the Audio Essentials course will help delegates to expertly highlight to potential customers the superior levels of sound qualit

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