News

ANAHEIM, CA – From Toronto’s Air Canada Centre to the Honda Center in Anaheim, Dane Cook’s 25-city transcontinental “Rough Around the Edges” tour blazed new trails for comedy acts.  It was a one-man stand-up show, yet the tour packed arenas that normally host NBA franchises and rock music supergroups.  Audio production for this sold-out tour was no laughing matter. Every syllable of the rapid-fire comic banter had to be fully articulated at every seat, a serious challenge in massive arenas jammed with more than 20,000 fans.

MORRISVILLE, NC – Faced with a traditional problem that many churches encounter with their audio systems, Cooper Cannady and the installers from Raleigh Music Brokerage came up with a simple but unique solution.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Originally a chapel known as Grace Church built during the gold rush year of 1849, Grace Cathedral has survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and several incarnations to become the third largest Episcopal cathedral in the nation. Well-known religious figures such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Billy Graham and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have all spoken there.

ANAHEIM, CA — In a high-profile tour that demonstrates the versatility and unmatched performance of JBL Professional VERTEC line arrays, audio rental company Audio Analysts is currently providing the live sound system for the Blue Man Group’s “How To Be A Megastar Tour 2.1.” The world tour is expected to continue through May 2008.

DESTIN, FL – Blessed with a 1,400-seat worship center, Village Baptist Church in Destin, Fla., schedules an ambitious calendar of dramatic productions, multi-media activities and services that span traditional to contemporary. Unfortunately, their wireless microphone collection, which didn't work well even when it was new, reached the end of its useful life and began distracting the focus of their services. Instead of praise for God and lessons from the Bible, annoying crosstalk between microphone channels and, worse, periodic interference from nearby Eglin Air Force Base captured the attention of church members despite their best attempts to ignore it.

ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION, MD – FiberPlex Inc. has announced that the company’s LightViperTM audio transport system was recently acquired by Precept Ministries of Chattanooga, Tenn. The international Bible study aids organization installed the advanced fiber optic audio system from their main auditorium, which is used as a production studio for their TV and radio production control rooms and various audio/video production suites located in a separate building on the 32-acre pastoral campus.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – International and regional celebrities took the stage each night with Sennheiser and Neumann microphones at the recent inaugural Live & Loud Kuala Lumpur 2007. Live & Loud KL '07 is said to be the largest and longest festival in Southeast Asia, with an estimated attendance of 65,000. The ten-day music and concert extravaganza drew the likes of Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Shaggy, Rick Price, James Morrison, Zhang Zhen Yue and Zhang Hui Mei (A-Mei) through nightly performances showcasing different genres and themes. The event was supported by the Malaysia Tourism Board and is expected to be an annual affair.

Providing system-wide design, control and monitoring functions within a feature set built for the QSControl.net platform, QSC’s Venue Manager V3.0 will be make its first official industry appearance at this year’s InfoComm.

OKLAHOMA CITY – In a high-profile event that reinforces the reliable performance and easy setup of JBL Professional VERTEC line arrays, staging production company Alford Media Services recently provided the audio and video systems for the Oklahoma Centennial Spectacular at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Oklahoma’s statehood, the event featured performances by many legendary Oklahomans including Carrie Underwood, Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Vince Gill and the Flaming Lips.

NEW YORK – When it comes to daunting audio gigs, few can match the challenges presented by the annual New Year's Eve Show in New York City's Times Square. With a live audience in the hundreds of thousands and a TV audience in the 10’s of millions, this is one of those gigs where the whole world really is watching. Long-time audio provider Maryland Sound International (MSI) pulls off the seemingly impossible every year, but the most recent show was made better and easier with the addition of Studer and Soundcraft digital mixing technology.

MONTGOMERY, AL – Like many churches around the country, Landmark Church of Christ in Montgomery, Ala., is undergoing a slow shift from services that are completely a cappella with no supplemental media, to services that are driven by instrumental music with support by CDs and other media. When church members began noticing that their decade-old sound system wasn’t as ready for the change as they were, the church contacted commercial sound designer Chad Edwardson at All Pro Sound in Pensacola, Fla., to explore ways that they could bring their sound system up to speed with their ambitions.