FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. — Described by its organizers as, “One bus, one band and a bunch of friends on the road,” the fourth annual Hotel Café Tour, which begins Oct. 9, has named Heil Sound as the official microphone supplier. Heil Sound PR 35s will be used by an eclectic lineup of singer/songwriters including Rachael Yamagata, Meiko, Priscilla Ahn, Ingrid Michaelson and Kate Havnevik.
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Jim Douglas, director of Tour Sound at Sound Image, died from cancer on Monday, Sept. 22. He was 61 years old. Below is a tribute to Jim by Sound Image President Dave Shadoan.
Read More »CHICAGO — Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) presents the latest production as part of its arts-in-education program CPS Shakespeare! — a program designed to bring together students and teachers from each of Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) five designated geographic districts to perform a 60-minute adaptation of a play by William Shakespeare in CST’s Elizabethan-style, Courtyard Theater on Navy Pier.
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LAS VEGAS — Voting for the 2008 Parnelli Awards is currently in progress online at www.parnelliawards.com/vote. This year’s winners in such categories as FOH Mixer,… Read More »Cast Your Vote for the 2008 Parnelli Awards
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BERKELY, Calif. — The first annual Regeneration Tour has been filling arenas across North America, as fans turned out in droves for a jam-packed evening of ‘80s rock legends. Music styles ranged from the electronica of The Human League and synthpop of A Flock of Seagulls and Naked Eyes to power pop from Belinda Carlisle and the blue-eyed soul of ABC. Delivering the musical variety is a Meyer Sound system featuring the MILO line array loudspeaker.
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SCOTLAND — During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the church of St. George’s West becomes The World@St. George’s West, opening its doors and welcoming in the color and vitality of traditional dance forms from around the globe. The shows were the result of a an idea by international show producers Toby Gough and John Simpson with the support of actor Brian Cox and Peter Gabriel, and were the culmination of donations from an array of audio and lighting manufacturers, among them XTA Electronics.
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DiGiCo launches the next product in the SD Series, the SD8. The SD8 has a fixed architecture and employs a smaller Super FPGA than the SD7, but contains the same features and versatility of the DiGiCo D Series, the company says. The SD8 incorporates Stealth Digital Processing, based on the single Super FPGA and combined with Analogue Devices Tiger SHARCS, to bring you the Tiger SHARC FX engine. This is designed to provide audio quality, precision and processing power with a range of built-in effects, reverbs, dynamics, output matrix and more.
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HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — MTV's Video Music Awards adopted the theme of Hollywood movie magic for its special 25th anniversary show from the historic Paramount Studios. Sennheiser microphones were used during the red carpet arrival and performances by Rihanna, the Jonas Brothers and Paramore.
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LONDON — Along with the famously colorful, elaborate costumes, music is a vital ingredient of London’s Notting Hill Carnival. This year, Turbosound Aspect loudspeakers and XTA processing provided sound for several thousand people who attended the event.
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BUENA PARK, Calif. — Long Island-raised signer/songwriter, certified rock ‘n’ roll superstar and four-time Grammy winner Pat Benatar embarked on her first live concert tour in more than two years this summer, and both engineers chose Yamaha consoles for front-of-house and monitors.
I still consider it the day I went from "band guy who owns a PA" to "fledgling anklebiter sound guy." It was an outdoor festival. Two days. Probably a dozen acts total with canned music in between. I had my small collection of typical rock ‘n’ roll mics and — with the addition of a few more lent by friends — I thought I was set. Things went well until the second day when I discovered that my next act was a magician hired to entertain the kids, and he was pretty pissed that I didn’t have a headset or lav for him.
Read More »Color-coding of cabling, road cases, speakers, etc. is one of those “how do you know that?” questions I get all the time. In all honesty, I have to blame my eighth grade industrial arts teacher (in electronics shop) for the lifelong passion into all my esoteric electronics knowledge. But, of course, it was 1974, and my first project was a one-tube AM radio. I remember a lot of both the good and bad habits of electronics from that class; bad things like how to toss molten solder from the iron-tip toward other classmates, and good things like the color code.
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