France - The largest MLA Compact rig to date made its French debut at the Paris Bercy recently, when a capacity 17,000 crowd attended a six-hour marathon concert, called La Nuit de l'Outremer (the Overseas Night).

This technical deployment could hardly have provided a more exacting challenge for production company Franck Sono, who have become the first French customer for the new MLA Compact Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array, by investing in a System 36.

This French Caribbean festival saw the appearance of a succession of artists highly popular in the black community, includin

Hungary - One of the largest contingents of pro audio professionals working across Eastern Europe assembled in Budapest recently for a Martin Audio MLA and MLA Compact system presentation.

Earlier this year the manufacturer had hosted a customer convention for MLA at Wembley Arena before formally launching the MLA Compact with an event at The Apollo, Hammersmith. And it was the success of these events that Martin Audio recaptured by rolling both events into a single day at the 17,000 capacity Papp László Budapest Sportaréna in Hungary for the benefit of the East European tech

UK - The new Dolby Atmos implants cinema into a more natural and realistic sound field - providing total immersion for the audience and transporting them into the story with a lifelike sensory experience.

Supporting this dynamic shift in audio, which reinvents the traditional surround sound methodology by offering a new 'objects based' (rather than channel) concept have been Harman JBL Professional loudspeakers, Crown Audio amplification and network technologies, which are already declaring themselves Dolby Atmos ready.

Supplied by Bell Theatre Services Ltd, Dolby Atmos solutions, c

USA - Sinsinawa is a Native American term for 'rattlesnake' or 'home of the young eagle'. But Sinsinawa Mound, Wisconsin is better known as the home of the Congregation of Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters. Since 1847, more than 3,200 women have ascended the Hill of Grace to take their vows as Sinsinawa Dominicans. Today the village is still home to their worldwide headquarters, including more than 600 current and retired sisters of the Order.

In 1964 the campus, with its 1850s-vintage fort, was expanded with the construction of an 800-seat crown chapel, replete with massive 45-foot dome an

Kuwait - Optocore network units played a key role in Kuwait's 50th Constitution Day celebration which took place recently along nearly 5km of beach in the heart of Kuwait City. The final act of the show lasted almost an hour, with a total of 77,282 fireworks, which broke the Guinness World Record for the largest fireworks display ever.

French-based rental company, Gilles Bouvard Events and Entertainment (GB4D) was contracted by the Kuwaiti government to deliver the audio and lighting system as well as video transport for one of the largest shows ever staged in the Middle East. The big

Rolling On - The Rolling Stones returned to the London stage on Sunday night in the first of five concerts to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Sir Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood were joined by their original bass player Bill Wyman at the 02 Arena. Music critics hailed the rockers' return a success. Reviews of the gig described the band as "still leading the pack" and "at the cutting edge of pop".

"They have a combined age of 273, but the four Stones remain an extraordinary live proposition," John Aizlewood wrote in the Even

USA - James River Assembly, Ozark, recently upgraded its aging sound system with Outline's GTO line array loudspeaker cabinets as the sonic centrepiece. The new system, designed and installed by Special Event Services (SES), literally blew away the competition by providing the clarity and punch necessary for sermons, a contemporary house band and concerts. The church seats approximately 3,400 congregants and everyone from the pastor to those sitting in the back row can feel the power of the word through the GTO cabinets.

"We needed to put in a system that conveyed the spoken word

USA - Christian rock band Kutless is playing a variety of venues on its latest tour, from churches and civic auditoriums to an outdoor field and even a Minnesota casino. Regardless of the venue type or size, the band relies on a Meyer Sound MINA line array loudspeaker system supplied by Blackhawk Audio to deliver a consistent-sounding show.

"We pretty much cover the gamut on this tour, which is why I wanted to take the MINA system," says Tim O'Neill, production manager and FOH engineer for Kutless. "It is incredibly versatile."

Room layouts and acoustics vary dra

Europe - A Midas PRO1 proved to be the ideal compact console for Afro beat and Blufunk star Keziah Jones's central European tour.

Monitor sound engineer Mark Portlock says he specified the PRO1 for the tour - visiting Brussels, Geneva and Basel - because, "This is a very short run of dates in small 700-1000 capacity clubs and theatres. We needed a console that was compact enough to go in the bus bay but that would give us the same high sound quality sound as the larger Midas consoles. We recently completed a run of European festivals with a Heritage 2000 on stage and out front an

UK - Sandbach School in Cheshire have found that the Roland VR-5 'all in one' AV mixer provides the solution for their streaming and recording requirements in different areas of the school. Supported in their initial training by UCan Play, who supplied the VR-5, the staff have been able to produce, stream and record several recent live events from the school via USTREAM.

UCan Play is part of UCan.tv, a not-for-profit educational consultancy company that works closely with Roland UK and the Roland Systems Group managing the Roland Champion Schools initiative on behalf of Roland UK.

T

UK - Lowestoft's Marina Theatre, now a newly formed Charitable Trust, has refurbished its 800 seater Edwardian auditorium, choosing HK Audio's revolutionary Elements install system to provide crystal clear sound throughout the venue.

Marina Theatre technical manager Karl Dunnett said, "As part of the refurbishment process we wanted to replace our 20-year-old, wheelie bin-sized speaker cabinets. We wanted a system that not only sounded great but was small and compact enough that it would go almost unnoticed to the eye so as not to detract from the Edwardian features."

The b

China - TC Group International has appointed Timothy Chan to the team as sales & marketing supervisor in Hong Kong & Macau. He will be working closely with TC in China and will be chiefly responsible for overseeing TC's MI/Audio presence in Hong Kong and Macau.

Chan will act as first point of contact for Tom Lee Music Co., one of TC's newest and largest dealers in Hong Kong. Here he will overlook promotion and marketing activities, in addition to offering technical support. Chan has considerable experience in this field having worked with another Hong Kong TC dealer, Uni•Sound, s

UK - British singer songwriter Ed Sheeran is steadily conquering the world; travelling from continent to continent, his appeal seems unwaveringly universal. The speed of his acceptance is matched by the pace of his current tour, which has taken in Australia, the United States and is currently in the UK before heading off to cover the rest of Europe without a pause. With him every step of the way is a Sennheiser 2000 Series wireless microphone system.

Sheeran's front of house engineer is Chris Marsh from Major Tom, the tour's audio provider. "I first got involved with Ed last Octo

USA - With the installation of 40 CAL column array loudspeakers, Memorial Stadium at the University of California, Berkeley has become the world's first sports facility to use Meyer Sound's advanced beam steering technology. The slender 10ft high columns, discreetly mounted around the stadium's outer rim, provide an elegant solution that preserves the architectural integrity of the historic structure - inspired by Rome's Coliseum - while also providing extraordinarily high speech intelligibility despite the crowd noise in the 63,000-capacity seating bowl.

As part of the $321m, two-yea

The Netherlands - For the third year in a row, InfoComm International will host a one-day Future Trends Summit the day before the Integrated Systems Europe 2013 tradeshow.

Running from 11.00am to 5.30pm on Monday 28 January, the Summit programme will be moderated by Clive Couldwell, Editor of AV Magazine.

In a departure from tradition, the day will be divided into three fresh and distinct segments. Part 1, Future Customer Needs, will comprise an end-user panel including AV users from a number of market sectors including corporate, education and healthcare. Part 2, F

France - Nexo has just conducted the first 'official' audio demo of a full STM Series PA, its new flagship sound reinforcement system. Joining forces with Yamaha Music Europe, the sister companies used the JTSE Live trade show event in Paris to demo Nexo's latest concert sound loudspeakers on a Dante network with Yamaha CL Series digital control.

For the first time, the Nexo team put its STM Series sound reinforcement system into action in a public arena, with front of house control provided by the Yamaha CL5 console over a Dante network - another first for both Nexo and the team from

UK - Orbital Sound has just completed a major installation at one of the UK's premier concert halls, Fairfield Halls, in Croydon, south London.

Forming the first part of a technical upgrade, Orbital has installed a new sound reinforcement system into the Concert Hall, with the principal components comprising d&b audiotechnik Q1 line arrays, augmented by flown 27A cardioid subs, ground-stacked B2 subs, and a Yamaha M7CL console with DME64 mix engine. The Q1 array is complemented by a T-series centre-fill cluster, using three Ti10L d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers.

Fairfield Halls' 1800-

France - Innovason has announced the signing of an important partnership with Sennheiser France for the distribution of all Innovason products throughout France with effect from 1 December 2012. Announced at JTSE 2012 in Paris, the move further strengthens Sennheiser France's presence in the live digital technologies market, taking advantage of the existing synergies between Innovason digital consoles and Sennheiser's digital microphones by Neumann.

In order to fully optimize the opportunities presented by this new partnership, Sennheiser France has taken on Axel Brisard, an expert in

UK - Studiomaster is now shipping its new high performance, ultra-portable XPX Series PA. Shown earlier this year at both NAMM and Prolight+Sound, the injection-molded PA is the company's most advanced, powerful portable reinforcement series ever; a product category in which the famous British marque is a long time market leader.

Available in both active and passive variants, The XPX Series employs the company's latest design and engineering innovations in an ultra-lightweight, high performance portable PA cabinet, offering unrivalled standards of quality, performance and cost competi

USA - Meyer Sound Laboratories Incorporated, a Berkeley, Calif.-based professional audio equipment manufacturer, announced that it has settled the lawsuit it filed last June against VUE Audiotechnik, LLC of Escondido, Calif.

The lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California. In its suit, Meyer Sound alleged VUE infringed Meyer Sound's iconic wave trademark, and asserted other claims against VUE and a former Meyer Sound employee currently working for VUE.

"This legal action was necessary to protect Meyer Sound's intellectual property rig

UK - Researchers at the University of Salford have been awarded £249,719 to develop new technology which will greatly improve the modeling of the acoustic performance of buildings and open spaces.

The grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council will enable the Salford team work with global design and engineering firm, Arup, the University of Reading and BBC R&D. Together they hope to solve the problems associated with demonstrating to clients how building designs for large spaces like concert halls, sound once they've been built.

In practice, designers pr

USA - Since its Amsterdam debut in 2000, Sensation has grown to become one of the world's most successful and respected indoor electronic dance music (EDM) festivals. After producing more than 70 events for over two million people in two dozen countries, creator ID&T recently teamed up with promoter Live Nation to bring Sensation to North America for the very first time. As with all of its other productions, ID&T specified the deployment of a full L-Acoustics system to keep the high-tech party hopping well into the night.

Quickly selling out Brooklyn's stunning new Barclays Center on

UK - Roland Systems Group (RSG) is joining with some of its biggest dealers to put on a series of video training events across the UK with the next scheduled for 12th December at Wigwam Acoustics. The afternoon event will be free to attend and will cover web streaming, HD video switching, conversion and much more - showcasing the RSG video product line up including the V-800, V-1600HD, VR-5 and VR-3 - as well as the brand new V-40HD released earlier this month.

The informal event will be packed with information, expert tips and real world advice, says the company, and registrants will

Japan - Located in the lively Shibuya Ward near the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, the Toho Gakuen Performing Arts College has recently been visited by one of its old Alumni; Shinichiro 'Yone' Yonekura. Yonekura is better known to the professional audio community as the head of d&b audiotechnik Japan, but it was in 1990 that he graduated from Toho Gakuen and he has carried the reputation of that college with him ever since.

"Toho Gakuen was originally established as the Tokyo Broadcast School in 1979 and was approved as an educational foundation establishment a year later," he

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