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Michael Conner and Howard Page. Photo by Steve Jennings

Paul Simon and Sting: On Stage Together Tour

“Combining the shows is going wonderfully well,” Howard Page declares, as the current Paul Simon/Sting tour was getting underway in early February. He’s an honest man so there’s no reason to not take him at his word, but on paper, the current Paul Simon/Sting tour sure looks complicated and daunting. First, you have two very different performers with different styles of music (though both share a devotion to great songwriting). They perform together. They perform separately with their respective bands. Their bands perform separately and apart. Simon does Sting songs. Sting does Simon songs. At one point Simon’s guitarist joins Sting for a tune. It’s a spin-the-bottle of possibilities.

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“Queen of the Night” in the Paramount Hotel’s newly refurbished Diamond Horseshoe, offers an interactive experience for the senses.

Recent Theater Projects

There’s definitely an upswing of interest in live theater and performing arts centers, both in terms of new construction, renovations of historical buildings and transformations of existing structures into new venues. Along the same lines, facilities have also seen the benefits of upgrading sound systems to meet increasingly higher standards set by audiences who expect hi-def clarity, vocal intelligibility and punch from live music and theatrical presentations. With that in mind, we looked into a number of interesting new projects and found a range of successful approaches designed for both production flexibility and great sound — in venues of all sizes.

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DPA Microphones headquarters in Allerod, Denmark by Jacob Coakley

Clear Vision, Clear Audio

Christian Poulsen of DPA Microphones has a plan to take over the world with good audio

On December, 17, 2013, renowned microphone manufacturer DPA announced that the Riverside Company would become majority shareholders in the company. It was a startling move to many observers of the fiercely independent Danish company, but this manufacturer has been making sweeping changes under its relatively new CEO Christian Poulsen, and his latest move only bolstered his mission to make sure DPA becomes one of the top three microphone companies in the world — by any standard.

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Two Typical Antennas: Fig. 1: Two typical antennas used in wireless applications. On the left is a passive 1/2-wave omnidirectional attached to a compact antenna amplifier and mounted on a mic stand. The antenna on the right is an active directional paddle-style, log periodic design.

Antennas for Wireless Systems: A Practical Guide

This article is adapted from Wireless Systems Guide: Antenna Setup, a Shure educational publication available from shure.com. —ed.

We’re all familiar with transducers, such as speakers and microphones. Yet antennas, which also convert one form of energy to another — in this case, radio-frequency electric current to radiated electromagnetic waves (and vice versa) — are another form of transducer. And with any transducer, following certain guidelines helps ensure maximum performance.

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Actual and predictive results from Albert Thuras’ landmark 1930 laboratory research on vented speaker enclosures. The black line here shows a traditional sealed speaker box design. The green line shows what he expected from his bass reflex design and the red line shows the actual response he achieved in the lab, with a significant increase in low frequency response below 50 Hz.

Understanding Vented Enclosure Designs

The majority of low frequency sound reproduction is from vented loudspeaker enclosures — that is, loudspeakers that have a port in the enclosure. Nearly all modern professional loudspeaker enclosures are vented to improve their low frequency output, and numerous programs are available to predict the frequency response of vented boxes.

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