Guitar Center Professional Sources New Sound System for Blues Alley, Washington, D.C.’s Legendary Jazz Club

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, WASHINGTON, D.C.— Blues Alley is one of the country’s most prestigious jazz clubs. Since 1965 the legendary venue has hosted a who’s who of jazz greats including Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Tony Bennett, McCoy Tyner and dozens more.  Blues Alley was in need of a new soundboard and was referred to Scott Schwartz, Guitar Center Pro Account Manager based at the division’s Rockville, MD location who deployed an X32 digital console, as well as, new audio components.

NASHVILLE – Luke Bryan’s “Kill The Lights” tour and his touring partners — Little Big Town and Dustin Lynch — are all using SD consoles from DiGiCo. Production manager/FOH engineer, Pete Healey notes that Bryan’s show is mixed with an DiGiCo SD5 at FOH and an SD7 at monitors. Little Big Town is using two DiGiCo SD10s, one each for FOH and monitors. Ditto for the crew for Dustin Lynch. Pictured here, with the SD5 at FOH, are Pete Healey; Dustin Lynch production manager/FOH Engineer Erik Rogers; and Clair Global system engineer Jim Ragus.

ASHLAND, MASSACHUSETTS – The Blue Angels, Navy aerial demonstration squadron, recently improved the range and reliability of their wireless audio system with antennas from RF Venue and design from Atlanta-based In Concert Productions. Their routines partially rely on radio communication between pilots in the air and a pilot on the ground and they were running into problems getting enough distance.

PUTNAM, CT – Rational Acoustics projected that Smaart v8 will be released on March 15, 2016.  Designed with the needs of modern audio engineering and system alignment professionals in mind, Smaart v8 promises greatly expanded control of the software environment while simultaneously providing easier and more streamlined measurement configuration, control and data handling.

ATLANTA / HOUSTON – RAT Sound Systems from Camarillo, CA provided staging for a three venue simulcast of The Passion Conference, a college worship event with a line up of concerts and speakers. The conference was held simultaneously at three venues in two different cities, the Infinite Energy Center and Phillips Arena are both in Atlanta and the Toyota Center in Houston. Each venue had an identical system: three DiGiCo SD7’s with four SD Racks and a Mini Rack, connected together using the Optocore fibre optic network.

BOTHELL, WASHINGTON – Exhibiting for the first time since ratification of Open Control Architecture (OCA) by the Audio Engineering Society as the AES70 standard, the OCA Alliance experienced its busiest ever trade show at ISE, reflecting a heightened interest among AV industry professionals in a common remote control standard. The alliance’s booth was effectively a walk-on rolling OCA seminar, hosting a live demonstration of OCA (AES70) control interoperability and continuous advanced technical discussions between OCA Alliance member company representatives and the AV industry at large.

ABILENE, TX – Originally constructed in the late 1960s, the Abilene Civic Center is a spacious, multi-purpose venue with a live performance theater, an exhibit hall and a large conference center that can be subdivided to accommodate as many as four simultaneous events. Marsh PMK designed a flexible system with wireless iPad setup and control. Auto-mixing, signal processing and control are provided by a BSS London DSP with iPad interface and the system includes seventy-eight Community D SERIES model D8 two-way coaxial ceiling loudspeakers powered by Lab Gruppen amplifiers.