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Sensational Spring Concert

George Petersen, editor, Front of House Magazine

The Spirit of Renovation

There’s a movement going on in New Orleans, where many of the city’s crown jewel venues have sprung back to life after surviving the horror and carnage that was hurricane Katrina and then enduring the economic disaster that followed in her wake. And this aftermath was devastating to this city that thrives on tourism, where the damage to many of the Crescent City’s music venues left outsiders wondering whether they would ever recover.

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Franz Ferdinand 2014 tour photo by Evan MacKenzie

Franz Ferdinand 2014 Tour (First North American Leg)

The British indie rock band Franz Ferdinand is currently packing houses in Europe, having recently completed its successful North America leg, with high-energy sets that kept the audience on their feet. The four-piece Glasgow-based band is comprised of Alex Kapranos (lead vocals/guitar/keys), Nick McCarthy (rhythm guitar/keys/backing vocals), Bob Hardy (bass) and Paul Thomson on drums and backing vocals.

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The FOH system for the 115-foot Main Stage included flown hangs of D.A.S. Aero 40A enclosures and ground-stacked LX-218CA.net double-18 subwoofers

Festival Spotlight: Guatemala’s Empire Music Festival

From an arts perspective, the Empire Music Festival is Guatemala’s biggest show. It was also the country’s first multi-stage festival. Primarily focused on electronica and dance music, it attracts artists from around the world. Held at the Guatemala Raceway in Escuintla over the country’s Easter-related national holidays on April 16 and 17, this year’s festival had three stages. The gargantuan 115-foot Main Stage was reserved for the biggest names on the global electronica scene; the Live Stage focused on various live acts, while the third Back to Basics Stage featured emerging and underground artists.

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Cher’s “Dressed to Kill” tour give her fans the flash they expect. Photo by David R. Carroll

Cher “Dressed to Kill” Tour

Whenever Cher goes on the road, it’s big news, and this year — for her eighth solo tour — you can expect a big production as well. Cher’s current “Dressed to Kill” (D2K) tour, which promotes her Closer to the Truth studio album — is currently underway, having kicked off in March at the US Airways Center in Phoenix it will wrap up in October with two shows at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre. Gross for the 63 mostly sold-out arena dates is expected to top $15 million.

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The Civic Theatre was reborn last year with an all-L-Acoustics system in two main hangs on either side of the proscenium and painted to match the interior.

New Orleans Theaters Bounce Back Post-Katrina

It’s been nine years since Hurricane Katrina smashed into New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (August 29, 2005), killing more than 1,800 people and causing more than 80 billion dollars in property damage. To say that New Orleans was devastated doesn’t begin to tell the story. The catastrophe affected every facet of life in the Big Easy.

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FOH Magazine Buyers Guide, June 2014: Loudspeaker System Controllers

Loudspeaker System Controllers

Thanks to affordable, better sounding DSP, what was once a simple speaker crossover unit has evolved into versatile system controllers offering delay, equalization, dynamics, and more — all from a compact rack enclosure. Most of these systems adapt freely to provide processing of various third party speakers systems; however, we did not cover products that are highly integrated to handle only speakers from a single manufacturer, such as VUE Audiotechnik’s V4/V6 Systems Engines or L-Acoustics’ LA4/LA8 Amplified Controllers. That said, if you’re searching for a processors for your rig, your first call might be to the speaker manufacturer to see what they recommend. However, given the options and flexibility of these offerings, a little customization might be just the ticket for your system.

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Harrah’s Resort Southern California: Anatomy of the World’s First L-Acoustics K2 Install. Photo by Drew Ressler/rukes.com

Harrah’s Resort Southern California

Anatomy of the World’s First L-Acoustics K2 Install

History doesn’t always happen exactly where you’d expect it, which can be both exciting and unpredictable. So when L-Acoustics’ next-generation large K2 line array — which replaces its landmark V-DOSC with a smaller, lighter, more efficient design — made its world debut in a permanent installation application, probably no one guessed it would be in the small town of Valley Center, Calif.

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Antennas such as this Channel Master CM-3679 create a directional pickup pattern by adjusting the number, length and spacing of elements.

Steerable Arrays: An Introduction

Since the earliest days of professional audio, users have needed more output, coverage and frequency response than a single loudspeaker transducer could provide. Even with dramatic increases in modern transducer performance, it would seem that combining multiple drivers together, whether for response, coverage, or output will be a perpetual fixture of the industry. Because of the limitations of 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.

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The PLD family: the 1600W PLD4.2, the 2500W PLD4.3 and the 5,000W PLD4.5.

QSC PLD Series Amplifiers

A year ago, QSC debuted its PLD (for portable/live sound applications) and CXD Series (contracting/installed sound) amplifiers. Available in several power configurations, all are 2-rackspace, Class-D multi-channel amps with slight feature set variations catering to their intended use, but sharing a radical new channel-combining methodology, with flexible onboard signal processing as well.

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