Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival Deploys Digidesign

TOKYO — Recently installed with a versatile Meyer Sound system, the 1,324-seat Akasaka ACT Theater in Tokyo is a multi-use venue designed to host a wide range of shows, from Broadway-style productions to symphonies, opera and dance. It is also part of the city-within-a-city of Tokyo Broadcasting System’s Akasaka Sacas as other large corporations successfully created complexes that are essentially micro-neighborhoods surrounding their headquarters in the high-density environs of Tokyo, including Fuji Television’s Odaiba, TV Asahi’s Roppongi Hills and Nippon TV’s Shiodome.

Sennheiser is introducing the evolution e 965 microphone at the 125th AES Convention in San Francisco. The new microphone is the company’s flagship product within the evolution range and also its first large-diaphragm true condenser microphone.

CARSON, Calif. — The new PL Series microphones from Electro-Voice got the punk rock seal of approval on this year’s Warped Tour, as new additions to the heavy-duty EV sound systems deployed annually for the tour’s Ernie Ball “Battle of the Bands” and Hurley Stages.

MELBOURNE, Australia — The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology ( RMIT University) in Australia is one of the country’s leading educational institutions. It offers a vast range of technical courses and has a reputation that is global in its reach. One course that elicits a high demand for entrants is the Music Industry course. The University aims to offer its students the most relevant products available to equip them for life out in the real world, and the recent opportunity to get hands on experience with a DiGiCo SD7 has helped to do just that.

NORTHRIDGE, Calif. — Wassmann Audio Video has installed of JBL Control Contractor loudspeakers and VRX line arrays in 10 Six Flags theme parks across the country. While each location poses its own acoustical challenges, JBL Control 29AV surface-mount loudspeakers and VRX932LA compact line array loudspeakers are prevalent in each park.

ENGLAND — Dave Bracey was one of the first engineers to appreciate the benefits of DiGiCo consoles, having put the D5 through its paces on tour with Robbie Williams back in 2003 and continuing to use it with a variety of acts since, and is as well versed with DiGiCo’s D Series as just about anyone could be.

BEIJING — Managing to connect a thin bat with a small round ball has been an athletic pursuit for a great many centuries, and it will take on new significance when women’s softball teams from around the world converge on Beijing to play in the Olympics Softball event. The large stadium complex, which consists of two ball fields and one training field, with a seating capacity of 13,000 will require sound commensurate with its scale.

BEIJING — Few sports test an Olympic athlete the same way that cycling does.  It requires maximum strength and endurance for the cyclist to perform at the highest level. At the Beijing 2008 Summer Games, cyclists are competing in the new Laoshan Velodrome, whose sound system is only matched in excellence by the Olympians themselves. 

BUENA PARK, Calif. — Kool & The Gang's story starts in the Jersey City, N.J. projects. They were teenagers, studying Miles Davis albums and James Brown singles while jamming in basements. In 1969, they made their first record. Still teenagers, and full of confidence, they named that first record after themselves. Their confidence and creativity produced a string of loose-but-tight records, culminating in the Pop Chart smash Jungle Boogie. Kool & The Gang found a special sound at the unique intersection of jazz, r&b, funk and pop. The group’s current monitor sound, and for the past seven years, can be attributed to Alfred ‘AL-Tee’ Williams who for the past four years has been using a Yamaha PM5D digital audio console.

NHA TRANG, VIETNAM — Eighty contestants competed this year at the Diamond Bay Resort's Crown Convention Center in the 57th Miss Universe beauty pageant. Broadcast globally on NBC, the event was the first major U.S.-based television production originating in Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War. Bringing audio to the event proved to be a logistical challenge managed adroitly by Red Hook, N.Y.-based Firehouse Productions Inc., which assembled the components needed for an entire PA in the U.S. and then shipped them to Vietnam with the aid of Rock-it Cargo USA. Purchased outright for permanent installation by the convention center, the system included a microphone package delivered from Shure Incorporated’s world headquarters in Niles, Ill.