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The 2008 Parnelli Awards: Watch the Video!

The 2008 Parnelli Awards: Watch the Video!

LAS VEGAS — The 2008 Parnelli Awards may have all been presented. The winners have flown home and they’re already working on gigs that may be considered for next year’s awards. The audio gear for the 2008 show has long been packed up and taken away. But the event lives on, available on FOH-TV (www.fohonline.com/tv), with highlights from the presentation of the Audio Innovator Award to Roy and Gene Clair, the Lifetime Achievement Award to Dennis Sheehan, and an honorary introduction to this year’s emcee, Alice Cooper.

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Ace Audio Relies On Crown for Guitar Under The Stars

HARTFORD, Conn. — Ace Audio provided the sound reinforcement system for the Guitar Under The Stars event, an outdoor concert held at the Riverfront Recapture in Harford, Conn. Guitar Under The Stars has become a yearly tradition that draws thousands to the Hartford riverfront for a full day of music. Crown I-Tech 4000’s and 8000’s were used for front-of-house and monitors while XTi 4000s amplifiers powered the fill speakers.  

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Digital Snakes

Whirlwind E Snake

It's either ironic or just plain dumb, but as the live event audio industry gets more and more digital, the one piece of the signal chain that most lends itself to bits and bytes — the transport of signal between stage, console and speakers — is the part that is having the hardest time really catching on.

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Stewart Godfrey and Ken Homer

Stewart Godfrey

Stewart Godfrey

FOH Engineer
Village Sound Company
Owings Mills, MD
www.villagesoundcompany.com
410.356.2121
[email protected]

Services Provided: Live sound reinforcement, design and installation of AV systems.

Clients: Recent festivals include the Federal Hill Festival in Baltimore and the Projekt Music Festival in Winchester, Va.; Biodiesel, Dr. Fameus, Kelly Bell Band, The Bridge, Basshound, The Cheaters and many other local Baltimore acts.

Quote: “Whatever you do, take care of your shoes.”

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Yamaha IM8 Mixing Console

I first had a look at the IM8 at the 2008 winter NAMM show. John Schauer from Yamaha led me to the secret room where the not-yet-released board was waiting. Yamaha is not the only manufacturer that likes to keep their new products undercover until the moment of release. Just about every mixing console manufacturer conceals their new hardware until they are ready. Whatever the reasoning behind Yamaha's motives, John was definitely in secret-agent mode at NAMM. He told me that this console was designed with houses of worship in mind. It has enough bells and whistles to satisfy a variety of mixing demands and is still very simple to operate. However, as I looked over the board, I thought it would work well in an array of operations outside of worship.

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EV DC-One Processor

The EV DC-One speaker processor is a long-awaited product that is huge in the value quotient (features and performance divided by cost to own). I took delivery of the DC-One and the first thing I noticed was the size of the unit. While it is the expected one-rackspace high, the 14 inches of depth is way beyond the usual amount for these processors. When I inquired about this, the designers uniformly said that customers complained about having to make patches to shallow depth processors when in a rack of full-size power amplifers. Given the go-ahead on depth the designers made good use of the space and concentrated on DSP features and budgets.

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Filling the Void

Midwest Sound Production Manager Cody Seebohm (left) with El Tri’s monitor engineer.

Midwest Sound and Lighting started with regional acts before opening its doors to the political arena.

John Rogers, marketing specialist for Midwest Sound and Lighting, knows that one of the reasons Midwest Sound and Lighting has been around since 1979 is because of the company’s dedication to simply getting the job done.

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AES San Francisco 2008

Meyer SB-3F Sound Field Synthesis Loudspeaker

Great city, great weather, OK gear

If you didn’t make it to the City by the Bay for this year’s AES, you missed out. Fun show. Great chance to see and meet old friends. Lots of new and shiny gear. How much of it is applicable to what we as live audio providers do every day? Well, that’s a different story.

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Radiohead’s Green Rainbow

Radiohead in concert

It’s not only the squints who are going green. Audio is getting onboard as well.

How does sound go green? The best it can do is by being efficient. It’s still a fundamental truth that you have to move air to make sound, and moving air takes power. A lot of it. Recently, Radiohead took a new approach to touring that they hope will inspire others in the industry. Throughout their 2008 In Rainbows tour, Radiohead has been keeping an account of the carbon footprint they are creating and comparing it to past tours. This means that even in the realm of sound gear every choice is weighed against the ecological impact that each piece would have. The equipment chosen not only had to sound good — but it also had to be “green.”

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Generators: Size Counts

When forced with the option to use portable generators for live production, there are aspects that most sound engineers do not understand. While install power connections are reasonably lightly loaded for the audio watts provided, the nature of the current demands will vary with the music intensity of the performance and needs to be considered with portable power.

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