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DiGio S21 Console is Audio Hub at Mississippi State

Mississippi State University’s Bennie Ashford (white shirt) and Jonathan Ashley at the DiGiCo S21 console in Davis Wade Stadium’s new production facility.

DiGio S21 Console is Audio Hub at Mississippi State

STARKSVILLE, MS – Mississippi State’s new production facility and its two video control rooms will handle all of the school’s sports audio needs through a newly installed DiGiCo S21console. This includes broadcast sound for SEC Network shows, intercom audio for operations, foldback audio for on-air talent and live sound inside the venue. Atlanta-based AV systems integrator Comprehensive Technical Group (CTG) installed the console in the new facility within Davis Wade Stadium.

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The LakeShake music festival brought together more than 30 of country music’s biggest stars, including Lady Antebellum, Brooks & Dunn, Tim McGraw, Jason Aldean, Martina McBride and many more. Photo: Eric L. Friedlander, HARMAN Professional Solutions.

JBL by Harman Delivers at Chicago’s LakeShake Fest

CHICAGO— Thunder Audio deployed their JBL VTX V25-II speaker system for the three-day LakeShake music festival on the shores of Lake Michigan. The festival brought together more than 30 of country music’s biggest stars. Said Thunder Audio’s Greg Snyder, “Many top touring acts include VTX on their rider because of the abundant power and exceptional clarity that the system provides. When it comes to country music events, VTX is our go-to choice.”

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RCF’s TTL6-A — a powered vertical array with two 12-inch woofers, four 6,5-inch cone mids and an HF compression driver — is an example of a single speaker that is good for specific task, rather than piling up a bunch of random boxes together. Offering 90 x 30 degree (H x V) directivity, it can be pole mounted, stacked, suspended or flown in curved vertical arrays.

Coverage Pattern Wisdom

Since the beginnings of professional audio, we have needed more output, coverage, and frequency response than a single loudspeaker transducer could provide. Due to the limitations of loudspeaker drivers, much of the effort in professional loudspeaker design has been expended in combining multiple drivers in a single loudspeaker box, and then combining multiple boxes together into arrays. Even with dramatic increases in modern transducer performance, it would seem that combining multiple loudspeakers together — whether for response, coverage or output — will continue to be a perpetual fixture of the industry.

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Medium-Format Line Arrays

Medium-Format Line Arrays

While it’s true that large-format, 12- and 15-inch line arrays grab most of the attention among pro audio users, the “little guy” mid-sized boxes are the workhorses of the industry. This month, we turn our attention to line arrays based around double 8-inch and double 10-inch woofers, which are more compact than their 12-inch cousins and larger than the “mini” 4- to 6-inch enclosures. Yet, for a majority of applications, these 8-inch wonders are often “just right” — whether for smaller gigs, club/theater/H.O.W. installs or used as front/down-fills, under-balcony reinforcement, delay lines — the list goes on and on.

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The system uses large Multi-touch screens for the user interface.

Waves eMotion LV1 Mixer

Software-based mixers have come a long way in the last five years. The release of the iPad served to solidify what a lot of us knew was an inevitable trend in digital mixing: “surfaceless” mixing consoles. While writing this review and working with the Waves eMotion LV1, I reminisced about the first time I saw someone using Lake Contour with a wireless tablet, and I also thought about discussions I had with other audio engineers about touch screen mixing in the early 2000’s.

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1 Hotel South Beach recently underwent a $100 million renovated, $2 million of which was earmarked for the audio system.

Ashly Provides Room Centric Design for Miami Hotel

MIAMI –  To launch the new 1 Hotel South Beach, Starwood Capital invested in a $2 million audio system upgrade. Advance Home Theatre installed the new system. Dante networking now connects 23 Ashly Pema combined matrix processors and multi-channel amplifiers for system-wide connectivity inside and outside of the renovated luxury hotel.

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The VUE system with the Philly Pops featured two eight element al-8s with four under-hung al-4 elements. Photo: Bachrach Photography

Cirque Goes to the Movies with Philly Pops, VUE Audiotechnik

PHILADELPHI – “Cirque Goes to the Movies” was created specifically for the 65-piece Philly Pops orchestra and required first-class sound design to meet the challenge. Andre Houser, founder and chief engineer of Houser Audio, executed the sound design exclusively with VUE Audiotechnik loudspeakers, with the al-Class of Scalable Acoustic Linearity Arrays at the heart of the event.

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The 16 box/side Cohesion-12 main P.A. hang for James Taylor’s debut performance at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on June 30, 2016.

Inside the Cohesion-12, Part 2

On the road with the James Taylor tour, one learns early about the intensely personal relationship that James has established with so many of his fans. Over the decades he has been performing his songs, he has deeply connected with his audience through his writing, singing and the power of his personality. In my 40 years of touring, I have never witnessed an artist be more free with his time for interacting with the fans. During the intermission at each show, James sits on the front of the stage shaking hands, signing autographs and posing with audience members for selfies before the band pries him away to perform the second set. After the show he usually does a meet-and-greet backstage. Finally, as he leaves the venue and heads to his bus, James spends additional time with everyone who has been patiently waiting at the stage door. Never have I seen James Taylor refuse an autograph request or otherwise deny a reasonable request from a fan. His stamina, devotion and patience are truly remarkable.

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Even with its minimalist design, Dire Straits’ breakout self-titled 1978 Dire Straits LP clearly listed the producer, engineer and recording studio credits on its reverse side.

Who Did What?

As more live shows are recorded, technical credits become more important for careers…

Who engineered Dire Straits’ hugely successful, self-titled 1978 Dire Straits LP, and where was it recorded? That would be Rhett Davies, at London’s Basing St. Studios. It’s right there on the back of the album, or on any number of online sources. Now, who was the FOH mixer and system tech when that album became the biggest tour of the 1980s? Yeah, I thought so.

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The author’s FOH view mixing Blue Oyster Cult at Hellfest in Clisson, France. Festival coordination can be tricky enough, but even more so overseas.

Festival Survival Tips

Here comes another summer — and with it, festival season. You better get some sleep while you can, because the next stop is Labor Day. As a tour manager and FOH engineer, I figured I’d offer a few suggestions to help you survive the ordeals.

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Now in its eighth generation, Smaart (shown here in RTA and spectrograph mode) is a dual-channel, FFT-based Mac or PC software platform from Rational Acoustics that offers a host of powerful analysis tools.

RTA Realities: Advantages and Limitations

An RTA (Real Time Analyzer) is a tool that most of us have used at some point in our audio careers. The proliferation of software-style RTA’s on phones, tablets and computers have made them ubiquitous. Practically every engineer has an RTA in their pocket, or at least has one close by. Although I feel that RTA’s are an invaluable tool for any audio engineer, I’ve also spent many years listening to people knock the use of RTA’s using that old refrain of “we never had RTA’s back when I was learning sound” or “don’t use an RTA, use your ears.” In fact, a simple RTA can be a very useful tool if you understand what influences its measurements and what its limitations are.

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