Since its introduction less than two years ago, Martin Audio’s revolutionary Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array (MLA) has won accolades and nearly every industry award. Horn loading has always been Martin’s hallmark and recent heritage also includes the large-format Longbow and medium-sized W8LC line arrays.
Read More »Now that the Grammys have come and gone we can all go out and buy Adele’s 21, Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light, Skrillex’ Scary Monsters, Taylor Swift’s Speak Now, Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, Tony Bennett’s Duets II, The Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow, Alison Krauss’ Paper Airplane, Corea, Clarke & White’s Forever and maybe even Kanye West’s Twisted Fantasy since they all won multiple awards.
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When the envelopes were opened for the 54th annual Grammy Awards Show on Feb. 12 from the Staples Center arena in Los Angeles, there were few surprises between Adele, Foo Fighters and Taylor Swift. But at the ends of the fiber optic snake, there was a big one. After a decade with the venerable (and recently discontinued) Yamaha PM1D console at the FOH and monitor mix positions for the Grammy Awards telecast, DiGiCo’s SD series desks made their first appearance on “Music’s Biggest Night,” and did so in force. If the Grammy’s tendency to stick with technology platforms consistently for long periods continues to hold true — the Yamahas were there for nine consecutive years — expect to see these British imports in place for some time to come.
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Do you remember the 1980s? Riding along in the back lounge of the audio bus, solving the world’s problems and wishing for a console with “total recall.” Those of us old enough remember the massive effort it took to “chart” an analog console so you could “dial it up” on a different desk. Oftentimes, multiple opening acts would share the same console, requiring the “dial up” procedure to happen during set change, which was always nerve-wracking and prone to mistakes. The idea of a console that could recall a complete setup with the push of a button was a “pipe dream” that defined the distant future of audio mixing.
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Other than dead silence, feedback must be the most hated thing in professional audio. Those little blasts, often at higher frequencies where the ear is very sensitive, disrupt the performance and draw attention to the technology behind it. Feedback has been with us since the speaker first met the microphone, and is something every practitioner of the art has had to face. As long as loudspeakers are returning sound information back to presenters and performers, the potential for feedback will remain. In this article we’ll unpack this pesky beast that forcefully inserts itself into monitor wedges and lapel microphones. We dive into how a monitor loudspeaker’s response can change based on the listening location and how these response changes influence monitor wedge performance.
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The FRONT of HOUSE Theater Installation Showcase profiles sound system installations that made a dramatic difference at the following venues: Human Nature Theater, Las Vegas, NV; Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU, NYC; Eisenhower Hall Theatre, West Point, NY; The Rose Theatre, Brampton, Ontario; Palace Theatre and New Victory Theatre, New York, NY; Star Plaza Theatre, Merrillville, IN; Union Theater at LSU, Baton Rouge, LA; McCallum Theater, Palm Desert, CA; Budapest Cultural Centre, Budapest, Hungary.
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Allen & Heath iLive-T112, Avid VENUE Profile, DiGiCo SD-10, Innovason Eclipse GT, Midas PRO2, Roland M-480, Soundcraft Vi6, Stage Tec Aurus, Studer Vista 5 SR, Yamaha PM5D-EX.
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A continued resurgence in the popularity of passive loudspeaker columns has encouraged manufacturers to improve the art by providing more than just a straight column of closely spaced mid-range drivers. The ability of columns to project sound with wide horizontal and narrow vertical coverage can outperform traditional point-source enclosures, especially in large, reverberant spaces. At the same time, their tall, slim profile helps them blend into the architecture and virtually disappear.
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Lectrosonics offers one capsule for their HH transmitter: the HHC cardioid condenser. It is a warm and crisp, open-sounding element that can be best compared to a C-535 without its HPF engaged. However, OEM wireless capsules with the same thread diameter and pitch can be used, including those from EV, Blue, Earthworks, Heil, Telefunken and many from Shure. Audix, Neumann and Sennheiser capsules can be used with adaptors.
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My best Christmas present this year arrived a little late, shortly after New Year’s Day. Radial Engineering president, Peter Janis, contacted me by email and asked if I would be interested in testing a new Radial product. He hoped I could relate my opinions to him before the NAMM Show convened in Anaheim, where he planned to roll out the unit. Upon further reading, the email described a new Radial tube DI box called “Firefly” that was being readied for production. As a devoted user of Radial products including the JDV, J48, and JDI direct boxes plus the Tonebone PZ-Pre, I was definitely intrigued and immediately agreed to take part in the evaluation process.
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“I’d complain, but it’s a pretty good life,” says Ken Freeman of MSI. “This business has been very good to me and my family, and I am thankful for it.” He smiles and adds: “It sure beats sitting in the office becoming another old fat sound guy.” Freeman is MSI technology sales manager and has been in the audio business since 1986.
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This afternoon, at rehearsal for an upcoming concert showcasing the release of his new CD, Joe Walsh watched me struggling to remember the correct keystroke sequence for taking a screen shot on my Avid VENUE console. Joe asked why I needed the screen shot, and I told him that for the past 10 months I had been writing this column about Waves plugins for FRONT of HOUSE magazine. He then asked which particular plugin would be the subject for this month’s entry. My answer was that I would be discussing the Renaissance Reverb that we are currently using on background vocals.
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