If you have wandered anywhere near industry tradeshows such as NAB, AES, CES, ISE and this month’s USITT Conference & Stage Expo (Fort Lauderdale, March 14 to 17), you will have been inundated with a lot of buzzwords. Perhaps the hottest term these days is “immersive,” in the form of immersive audio, immersive staging and nearly every other type of immersive experience.
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To anyone that attended, this wasn’t just another NAMM show. Sure, it made its usual late-January appearance (Jan. 25-28, 2018), but this one was clearly different than past expos.
Read More »The 2018 NAMM Show returns — as usual — to the Anaheim Convention Center this month, from January 25 to 28. That part is perhaps familiar, but this time around, it’s going to be a whole new NAMM event. Often phrases like “new and improved” are simply misused marketing tools to denote fewer crackers in a slightly smaller, “more convenient” box. However, this is hardly the case with NAMM 2018, which truly will be expanded, and actually improved with additional exhibit space, more educational opportunities and an expanded focus on the pro audio, lighting, sound reinforcement and event production community.
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No, this month I am not launching into a heated diatribe about restrictions on the freedom of the press, as outlined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Not that I won’t be addressing this topic in some future issue, but at least for the time being, let’s examine a quite different “Free Press” theme, this being the accessibility of FRONT of HOUSE to help promote your company and/or products.
Read More »One of author Peter Benchley’s ideas for a tagline to promote his blockbuster 1975 movie Jaws was “just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.” Ironically, some version of that could today be applied to the safety of attending (or working) live sound gigs. This certainly comes to mind considering last month’s carnage at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas or the May 22 Manchester Arena bombing after an Ariana Grande show. Ironically, both of these attacks came from outside the performance space, where measures such as metal directors and security patdowns are ineffective.
Read More »There is no shortage of signs that fall has arrived. The kids/grandkids are back in school (finally) and in many areas, trees are undergoing their annual transformation of colors with a dazzling display of autumn foliage. However, for the true pro audio aficionado, the REAL sign of fall is the Audio Engineering Society’s yearly U.S. convention.
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Over the past few months, the production industry has been awash in rumors about some big changes afoot among several large players in the biz, who may soon be combining their operations. Unfortunately, we can’t report on these rumors until they are factually confirmed. But if you turn to these hallowed pages in the months (or weeks) to come, we’ll keep you informed just as soon as we can break the news.
Read More »…Or, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”
Don’t get me wrong. Nobody is more addicted to tradeshows than I. After all, what is not to love about being surrounded by racks and stacks of the latest audio technology?
Read More »In traditional audio terminology, “microphonics” typically refers to sounds that can emanate from vacuum tubes that are subjected to vibrations — say, from a guitar amp speaker — and can induce feedback (not the good kind) into a system. But this month, I wanted to rant a bit about microphones and figured “microphonics” seemed appropriate, especially as our “Buyer’s Guide” on page 34 spotlights high-end handheld condenser models.
Read More »I might be showing my age, but I recall as a kid in 1963, hearing Nat King Cole’s “Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer” when it first came out. With its carefree, feel-good theme, it was perhaps the perfect summer song for the time. Of course, no one could have predicted that five months later, the country would be plunged into turmoil with the events of Nov. 22, 1963, when perhaps we all lost a bit of innocence.
Read More »As anyone who has produced a large (or even small) concert event can tell you, there are lots of details to be taken care of. Fortunately, on the audio/lighting/video/staging side, many such technical minutiae can be taken care of with a few phone calls to the right vendors who will handle such details professionally. In fact, if you are looking for a few suggestions, more than 4,500 companies and resources offering expertise in every facet of event production can be found using the Event Production Directory (epdweb.com), a searchable database that is available in print and as a free app.
Read More »Not sure if you believe in the prognostications of a certain groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil, but as of March 20, springtime is officially here — at least from a calendar, if not a meteorological standpoint. Oddly enough, for me, one of the first signs of spring is not new leaves on the trees and flowers starting to spring up, but the arrival of Musikmesse/Prolight+Sound in Frankfurt, Germany. Over the years, like Winter NAMM, this massive event has itself blossomed from an instrument-only show into an all-encompassing meeting of both the M.I. and Pro Audio worlds, with a healthy serving of DJ and lighting technologies thrown in for good measure.
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