Skip to content

Product Hits of the 2016 NAMM Show

NAMM 2016 Show Report. Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images

Product Hits of the 2016 NAMM Show

From January 21 to 24, the 2016 Winter NAMM Show welcomed a record number of exhibitors and registrants to Anaheim, CA. And while entire sections of the rest of the country were snarled in blizzards and ice storms, the sunny skies of Anaheim shone on, as a record 1,726 exhibiting companies (including 409 new exhibitors) brought the entrepreneurial spirit to life. Meanwhile, this year’s NAMM netted 101,736 registrants — a 2 percent increase over last year’s record-setting event.

Read More »
Marathon Music Works

New Music City Venues

Nashville’s not just where tours start anymore. It’s become a major performance destination.

Nashville has become the main hub of music touring in the U.S. The metro area offers everything from the lights and the LD and the sound systems and the system techs to the buses and the drivers. Oh, yeah, and there are a few guitar players, too. Ironically, what it wasn’t for the longest time, was a place where touring acts came to perform. As the local weekly put it, “There was a time — and not all that long ago — when it seemed like almost every big tour or vanguard emerging artist skipped Nashville.”

Read More »
Nashville skyline

Nashville Vendor Profiles

Here’s the factoid that sums up Nashville nicely: When we started putting this sponsored section together in November, Nashville ranked 20th on the list of fastest growing cities. Today, in February, as we went to print, it rates fifth. Any one calling Nashville home there will not be surprised by this meteoric rise, pointing to the good (opportunity) and the bad (occasional L.A.-like traffic snarls). And who is living there? Why, production companies and live event personal, of course. Among the dreamers and those in our business seeking a piece of the explosive growth, plus an affordable place to live and raise a family. It’s not just country music propelling this growth – rock, metal, pop, and everything else imaginable is increasingly based or starting tours out of the Music City. In addition to that, there’s this: 70 percent of the North American population is within a 12 hour drive, making it extremely advantageous to warehouse here.

Read More »
The Raleigh First Assembly Church features an L-Acoustics rig and a Yamaha CL5 console.

Recent House of Worship Projects

The pace of technology upgrades in the house of worship market seems unstoppable. And why not, as congregations — both traditional and contemporary — take advantage of modern audio, lighting, video and broadcast systems to help spread the message. With the rise of high-energy praise bands and choirs, these days, a ‘60s Lowrey organ and a couple of well-worn Shure Vocal Master columns don’t cut it when presenting contemporary music services.

Read More »
The Experience, Lagos, Nigeria

Inspirational Speakers and Performers Draw 500,000 to Lagos, Nigeria; Live Event Heard via Outline GTO System

LAGOS, Nigeria — One of Africa’s largest concerts and religious gatherings, The Experience, is an interdenominational gospel concert and word-based gathering organized The House On The Rock Church.
The most recent event, staged Dec. 4, drew as many as a half-million people to Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos. Cytech World Communication deployed an Outline audio system including 30 GTO C-12 line arrays, two GTO-DF down-fills, 16 DBS 18-2 subwoofers and four LAB 21 HS infra-low subwoofers to cover the large crowd.  The lineup of inspirational speakers and performers included Don Moen, Donnie McClurkin, Fred Hammond, Micah Stampley, Kim Burrell, Hezekiah Walker, Jessica Reedy and Sonnie Badu.

Read More »
Passion 2016 used DiGiCo consoles

Passion 2016 Makes Use of DiGiCo Consoles

ATLANTA — With the promise that “three locations will be connected across two cities with a single heartbeat,” Passion 2016 delivered worship sessions, speakers, and praise music through nine Optocore-networked DiGiCo SD7 digital audio mixing consoles at arenas in Georgia and Texas. Rat Sound networked nine SD7 consoles across three different venues for the Christian conference held Jan. 2-4 at Infinite Energy Arena and Philips Arena in Atlanta and Toyota Center in Houston.

Read More »
Nashville Rings In 2016

Nashville Does NYE Right

It’s All About the Music for 150,000 Revelers at This Year’s “Jack Daniel’s Bash on Broadway”

Nashville knows how to bring a crowd out: First of all, name it “Jack Daniel’s Bash on Broadway.” What’s not to like about any of those words? An annual event since 2009, this party keeps getting bigger and better. Making it more so is that Sound Image was brought in to handle the sound — which they accomplished by pretty much clearing out their warehouse for this end of 2015 event (188 speakers were used on the two stages) and bringing out all their top-notch crew.

 

Read More »
Fig. 1 - A fourth-order Linkwitz-Riley filter with point source drivers.

The Science Behind Feedback

Other than dead silence, feedback must be the most hated thing in professional audio. Feedback has been with us since the first microphone was placed in front of a speaker and is something every audio technician learns to manage. As long as loudspeakers are returning sound information back to presenters and performers the potential for feedback will remain. This month, we’ll define the cause of feedback, and then see how some aspects of monitor speaker design can contribute to causing feedback.

Read More »
Shure KSM8 Dualdyne Vocal Microphne

Shure KSM8 Dualdyne Vocal Microphone

In 2004, my friend Harold Blumberg, a product consultant for Shure for more than 30 years, contacted me about a prototype microphone. I rarely heard him speak so glowingly about a piece of gear, but he said Shure engineers created a truly revolutionary condenser live vocal mic. He asked if I was interested in beta testing the then-new KSM9. Always open to experience better performance and more pleasing results from a vocal mic, I enthusiastically volunteered to give the new unit a shakedown on the road.

Read More »
BAMPFA

Berkeley Art Museum (BAMPFA) Installs a Meyer Sound Cinema System

CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY – Recently reopened UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) building, one of the nation’s premier institutions for the presentation of cinema, installed a 7.1 Meyer Sound cinema system in its 232-seat Barbro Osher Theater, which hosts both film screenings, lectures and discussions regarding current films and art exhibits. Elsewhere, CAL column array loudspeakers provide sound reinforcement for a large, outdoor LED screen.

Read More »
DiGiCo S21

DiGiCo S21 Digital Console

Representing a significant departure from what the company has done over the past 10 years is the S21 — the latest offering from DiGiCo. In an effort to reach a new set of customers that can’t afford its higher-end desks, DiGiCo went back to the drawing board to create a console that they hope will redefine the industry’s expectations of what a sub-$10,000 console is capable of. My demo system consisted of an S21 surface in a custom road case, as well as a D-Rack for remote I/O and a Cat-5 snake for connecting the two together. In the time I spent with the S21, it was clear that DiGiCo has something new and special that isn’t just another digital console.

Read More »