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The Smith Center

Reynolds Hall at the new Smith Center in Las Vegas

The Smith Center

A World-Class Performing Arts Venue in Las Vegas

The mere mention of the words “Las Vegas show” usually conjures up a few images. Yet what probably doesn’t come to mind is a stand-alone, performing arts center serving as a home to the Las Vegas Philharmonic and the Nevada Ballet Theatre, a Broadway touring house, classical music venue, jazz speakeasy and rock or country roadhouse. The new Smith Center for the Performing Arts aims to change all that, and to place Las Vegas alongside Vienna, Paris and New York as a city with a world-class performing arts center built for the ages.

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The Jack DeJohnette Group soundchecks during recent the Tri-C JazzFest 2012 at Cuyahoga College’s Tri-C Metro Auditorium, where four ARCS II speakers are employed as the center cluster, flanked by L/R hangs with six KARA and two SB18 subs.

L-Acoustics ARCS II and ARCS Wide/Focus

Innovation — and being first to break new technologies — isn’t always easy. History is filled with examples of pioneers who dared to try something “different” and out of the ordinary, when, years later, their principles were eventually accepted as the industry norm. And such is the case with L-Acoustics founder Dr. Christian Heil, who presented his research on Wavefront Sculpture Technology™ (WST) at the 1992 AES convention in Vienna and followed that up with the debut of the revolutionary V-DOSC line array two years later.

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Radial Engineering JDX Reactor

Radial Engineering JDX Reactor

Radial Engineering has earned an enviable reputation for the performance of its high quality direct boxes, Now from Radial comes the JDX Reactor™, a guitar amplifier direct box that takes a new slant to capturing guitar tones onstage.

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Mogan Elite Series Earset Microphone

Mogan Elite Series Earset Microphone

For the last two decades, I’ve been mixing at churches and installing house of worship sound systems (among other audio adventures). During this time, I’ve seen — and heard — a continuous evolution in the microphones that ministers prefer and use. For years, I would typically be asked to set up a stationary wired mic at a podium or — if the pastor/preacher went wireless — they might use a lavalier model.

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Peter Hendrickson and wife Vicki Rafuse

Tour Tech East Continues Expansion

A stellar history filled with steady growth, a recent move into a 225,000-foot facility, and several awards — including a 2008 Parnelli for Best Regional Sound Company in North America — keep the people at Tour Tech East busy. Owner Peter Hendrickson knows he’s not gotten where he is by accident, and this affable Canadian keeps his sense of humor on at all times and his ego in check.

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Proel 100K Bandwidth Direct Boxes

Proel 100K Bandwidth Direct Boxes

Proel has recently re-introduced its direct boxes to the U.S. market. The affordably-priced line includes the DB1P (passive, $89 MSRP) and DB1A (active, $108 MSRP) models. All feature large, high quality transformers with mu-metal used in both the external shielding as well as the inner cores.

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Fig. 1: Two-voice parameters used on the lead vocal

Waves Plug-ins Part 13: Doubler

Today is Friday the 13th, so I guess it’s only fitting I’m writing Part 13 of these Waves plug-in reviews. I’m also guilty of distracted writing, because the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs have begun and I am hopelessly addicted to both playing and watching hockey. My Los Angeles Kings are definitely a long shot, but they won their first game on the road against the mighty Vancouver Canucks and are playing up there again tonight.

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The 3 Redneck Tenors resume their three-year run at Branson’s New Americana Theatre this month, after completing facility repairs caused by recent storm damage.

Branson Sounds Better Than Ever…But Now That It’s Built, Will They Still Come?

Branson, Missouri has been a musician’s punch line long enough. Long considered music’s equivalent of an elephant’s graveyard (and the actual home of The Beverly Hillbillies’ Clampett clan), this Ozark town is actually an entertainment destination that many in the live concert and event business would envy. The town is hardly huge — it’s barely 21 square miles with a population of 10,500, yet it welcomes more than 8 million visitors a year — some 80 percent of whom come for the shows at Branson’s 50 theaters with 64,000-plus seats — more than you’d find on Broadway. The city was formally incorporated in 1912, so it’s fitting that for Branson’s 100th anniversary, we take a look at what makes this town such a draw for live sound.

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The Klark Teknik DN360 graphic equalizer has been a mainstay in the industry for more than two decades. It has 30 rather than 31 bands, but includes a switchable 30Hz low-cut filter.

Mind Your PeQs

It’s almost become a rule that you’ll find a “system EQ” patched between the main L/R outputs of a mixing console and the subsequent stage of a PA system. Even in cases where digital mixers already incorporate onboard “patchable” software EQ, many system designers provide an outboard hardware EQ to facilitate quick and easy adjustments, especially in festival situations where not all engineers may be familiar with a particular desk.

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Soundcraft Vi6 at Parkview Christian Church, Orland Park, IL

Large Consoles

Last month, I wrote about the uses of small format consoles in houses of worship. So it would only make sense for me to focus on large format consoles this month. Actually, I will be writing about large and mid-sized consoles. For the purposes of this article, I’ll assume that you are looking for — or at least dreaming about — a bigger board for your sanctuary, and preferably a console with more channels, more aux sends, more features and generally more bells and whistles.

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Illustration by Andy Au

Dressing Up the Neurons

An engineer friend of mine (now retired from the business) started his audio career in the early 1970s and spent the most part of the ensuing 30 years traveling throughout the world, mixing front of house and monitors. As well as being an excellent engineer, he is endowed with a charismatic charm, wit and a talent for networking. He was in with the Rock ‘n’ Roll elite and always had work with top-name acts in the business. In the latter part of the last century, he navigated a glamorous course that took him on an odyssey via the world of towering platform boots, big hair and colossal snare drum sounds to the north country of plaid shirts and ripped jeans. After a final bit of touring — which took him across an ocean of lip-synching divas to the lucrative strip-mined fields of boy-bands — he finally hung up his shoes and decided to settle down.

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