LAS VEGAS — Voting for the 2008 Parnelli Awards is currently in progress online at www.parnelliawards.com/vote. This year’s winners in such categories as FOH Mixer,… Read More »Cast Your Vote for the 2008 Parnelli Awards
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BERKELY, Calif. — The first annual Regeneration Tour has been filling arenas across North America, as fans turned out in droves for a jam-packed evening of ‘80s rock legends. Music styles ranged from the electronica of The Human League and synthpop of A Flock of Seagulls and Naked Eyes to power pop from Belinda Carlisle and the blue-eyed soul of ABC. Delivering the musical variety is a Meyer Sound system featuring the MILO line array loudspeaker.
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SCOTLAND — During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the church of St. George’s West becomes The World@St. George’s West, opening its doors and welcoming in the color and vitality of traditional dance forms from around the globe. The shows were the result of a an idea by international show producers Toby Gough and John Simpson with the support of actor Brian Cox and Peter Gabriel, and were the culmination of donations from an array of audio and lighting manufacturers, among them XTA Electronics.
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DiGiCo launches the next product in the SD Series, the SD8. The SD8 has a fixed architecture and employs a smaller Super FPGA than the SD7, but contains the same features and versatility of the DiGiCo D Series, the company says. The SD8 incorporates Stealth Digital Processing, based on the single Super FPGA and combined with Analogue Devices Tiger SHARCS, to bring you the Tiger SHARC FX engine. This is designed to provide audio quality, precision and processing power with a range of built-in effects, reverbs, dynamics, output matrix and more.
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HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — MTV's Video Music Awards adopted the theme of Hollywood movie magic for its special 25th anniversary show from the historic Paramount Studios. Sennheiser microphones were used during the red carpet arrival and performances by Rihanna, the Jonas Brothers and Paramore.
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LONDON — Along with the famously colorful, elaborate costumes, music is a vital ingredient of London’s Notting Hill Carnival. This year, Turbosound Aspect loudspeakers and XTA processing provided sound for several thousand people who attended the event.
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BUENA PARK, Calif. — Long Island-raised signer/songwriter, certified rock ‘n’ roll superstar and four-time Grammy winner Pat Benatar embarked on her first live concert tour in more than two years this summer, and both engineers chose Yamaha consoles for front-of-house and monitors.
I still consider it the day I went from "band guy who owns a PA" to "fledgling anklebiter sound guy." It was an outdoor festival. Two days. Probably a dozen acts total with canned music in between. I had my small collection of typical rock ‘n’ roll mics and — with the addition of a few more lent by friends — I thought I was set. Things went well until the second day when I discovered that my next act was a magician hired to entertain the kids, and he was pretty pissed that I didn’t have a headset or lav for him.
Read More »Color-coding of cabling, road cases, speakers, etc. is one of those “how do you know that?” questions I get all the time. In all honesty, I have to blame my eighth grade industrial arts teacher (in electronics shop) for the lifelong passion into all my esoteric electronics knowledge. But, of course, it was 1974, and my first project was a one-tube AM radio. I remember a lot of both the good and bad habits of electronics from that class; bad things like how to toss molten solder from the iron-tip toward other classmates, and good things like the color code.
Read More »Since I have been writing Sound Sanctuary, I have spent a lot of time in houses of worship, mixing live sound, installing sound systems, tuning up systems and interacting with the people that operate and volunteer at worship houses. The one theme that seems to be common among the different houses that I have visited is the lack of volunteer training.
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I have this one annual gig in the LA area that I should really give up. But I like the people, and the nature of the event lends itself to trying new gear, so it is a great Road Test opportunity. In fact, in the five years I have been doing the gig I don’t think we have used the same speaker system once. This year, the boys at Spectr Audio got the call. After going back and forth a few times on the requirements of the gig, we agreed on a configuration.
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Electro-Voice has revived the PL series of pro audio microphones, and brought forth a promising crop of both vocal and instrument microphones that are value priced, but professional in performance. The PL Series is currently on the road with STAIND, Finger Eleven and ZZ Top (on drums). The mics have also proved roadworthy on this summer's Vans Warped Tour. With three-year warranties, EV is making a promise that the quality is worthy for road usage. I received one of each model for this road test review.
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