HOLLYWOOD, FL — Sound Media, a sound and lighting production company based here, has expanded its inventory of Turbosound products this year with eight TFA-600HW (100-degree dispersion) Flex Array elements along with eight NuQ-8DP and four Aspect TA-500 loudspeakers. The new gear joins the TFA-600H system the company purchased in 2011.
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It’s hard to believe that December’s already here and 2013 is right around the corner. That, of course, is unless some ancient Mayan astrologers were right in their assessment that the planet would end on 12/21/12, in which case, all bets are off. If for some reason, that happens to be the case, try to get paid up front for any holiday gigs you book.
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For the last four months, this column has focused on the physical behavior of horns and the drivers that are attached to them. We intentionally tried to present these subjects with enough technical meat to be interesting even to very experienced pro sound practitioners. This month, we step back and re-examine frequency response, something that’s common in pro audio, and displayed on most equipment datasheets.
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No matter your musical predilection, there’s no denying that Barbra Streisand is one of the biggest talents in show biz. She is the epitome of élan and elegance, bringing a level of detail and sophistication to every aspect of her professional presence, from motion pictures to Broadway to concerts. As for the latter, the notoriously stage-shy artist’s performances have been few and far between; the beginning of her 2012 Back To Brooklyn tour marked only her 82nd performance in a six-decade career.
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“Portable PA” could refer to a lot of things, because in a sense, anything that’s not in a fixed install can be considered “portable,” from a 128-box line array rig to a simple, compact single-driver powered enclosure mounted on a mic stand. But over the last few years, the portable audio genre has been more closely associated with the speaker on a stick (SOS) category, where a mostly full-range system can be pole mounted on a tripod stand or above a subwoofer box, creating a powerful, versatile system that’s easily broken down into its basic parts for transport. In fact, this SOS category has become incredibly popular with both M.I. and pro users to the extent that there are literally thousands of possible available combinations and permutations on the market today.
To download a copy of the Dec. 2012 Buyers Guide, CLICK HERE.
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Roland Systems Group has long been established in the pro live sound industry, going back to the initial debut of its Roland Digital Snake at the New York AES convention in 2005. Once production units became available some months later, I was blown away on hearing an A/B comparison between analog signals running over 300 feet of copper cabling (which sounded dull, with nearly no HF sparkle) and the pristine sound of the Roland system, with 40 channels of 24-bit/96kHz audio running over a single Cat-5e cable. If that wasn’t enough, that S-4000 Digital Snake also offered the additional ease of “splits” using Ethernet switching hubs, simple redundancy setups, expandability to 160 channels, remote-controllable preamps, low latency performance and PC/Mac software for configs and monitoring.
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For more than 30 years, Third Ear Sound has served the San Francisco Bay Area and grown with the technology supporting the needs of its clients. The staff of eight has an average of more than 20 years of industry experience. “Everyone is our audience” is the company slogan, and they mean it.
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I’m not really sure if this is a review of a product or a phenomenon. Since it was unveiled at the 2012 Winter NAMM Show, the industry has been talking about Mackie’s DL1608, an iPad-enabled digital live mixer, to a level that hasn’t been experienced since the Alesis ADAT hit the streets some two decades ago. Part of this stems from the mixer’s impressive price/performance ratio and part comes from simply offering a cool — and convenient — way of working in the live environment.
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Holiday Gift Ideas for Sound People
Hopefully we have all survived the annual gastronomical excess known as Thanksgiving, so it’s time to start working on that holiday gift list. If there’s an audio engineer lurking on your list, maybe it’s time to break away from the clichéd multi-tool that always seems to appear under the tree. How many Leathermans or Gerbers does one really need? Plus, one always runs the risk of losing these tools to a lapse of memory that results in sheepishly handing the tool to that smug TSA person who noticed that you hadn’t removed it from your carry-on.
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When I first took on this month’s column, the editor of this publication counseled me not to write about recording studios in this space. “Live and recorded music are two different worlds,” I was told. Going back that far, it was a sensible admonition: with the exception of a relative handful of professional remote-recording trucks, recorded and live music were for the most part distinct realms. Many — if not most — FOH mixers started out in recording studios, but apart from the basic physics of audio, the differences in skillsets and environmental factors were substantial.
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A lot of people take DI boxes for granted. After all, what’s the big deal? You plug them in, and they work. If not, you rummage through the utility drawer until you find one that does work, and off you go. Most people never give any thought about whether or not they are using the best DI for a given application. Of course, we’re here to help.
Read More »If you’re a regular reader, you know that every holiday season, I give my personal insight and advice. This year I will be doing the same, but I also want to add my views on portable speakers and how I have used them during this time and beyond. The Christmas season (or Hanukkah season for many of you) starts for me right after Halloween. I always have a gig on Oct. 31 and, right after that, I start to schedule my duties for the holiday season. The last few years I have limited my actual mixing commitments to one house of worship on Christmas Eve and one on Christmas day. That said, there are still a lot of potential gigs (mainly holiday parties) leading up to the big day. That is where having a healthy assortment of speakers on a stick (tripod) in my arsenal comes in very handy.
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