The new NEXO P18 point source speaker and L20 sub hit Latin America in April 2024 with demos at the SemanÁudio Show in São Paulo and Sound:Check Xpo 2024 in Mexico City, and at a launch event attended by more than 40 Venezuelan audio professionals at NEXO distributor Sun Music Pro in Caracas. With support from the local NEXO LATAM team including Roberto Tschopp and Hely Chirinos who directed the setup and calibration of the system, Sun Music Pro Commercial Manager Valeska Grüber conducted the demo showing the key advantages and characteristics of the 18-inch coaxial point source loudspeaker and…
Author: Alicia Pollitt
Simple Minds took to the road for their 2024 “Global Tour”, with a growing production with Robe iFORTE and BMFL moving lights assisting show and lighting designer Mark Wynn-Edwards. The tour featured 14 iFORTE in the floor package and three iFORTE for follow spot duties plus 37 BMFLs in the flown rig which are the main hard edge and workhorse lights of the design. All kit is supplied by Solotech. The fourteen iFORTES are deployed on the floor are also part of the floor package that will be touring festivals in the summer. Eight are positioned upstage of the band on…
As Celestion celebrated the company’s 100th anniversary in 2024, it shines a spotlight on its longest-serving employee, Production Manager Dee Potter. Potter’s start with Celestion dates back to 1974 when, at the age of 16, she joined her mother on the company’s production line. In those days, Celestion was housed in an old building and conditions were less than ideal. “The roof leaked, and then the drains would leak,” said Potter. “If we had torrential rain, we would get wet from the top and from the bottom. The floors were soaked. It wasn’t a very glamorous place to work. At…
Daze Between New Orleans returned to Faubourg Brewery on 30 April 1 May 2024. Now in its third year, the festival showcased two stages, both powered by Official Sound Partner Meyer Sound. Meyer Sound systems were provided by Upscale Productions of Lake Charles, Louisiana. PANTHER large-format linear line array loudspeakers returned to the main Daze Between stage, paired with the 2100-LFC low-frequency control element. The Jerry Garcia Wellness Stage centered around LEOPARD compact linear array loudspeakers, supplemented by 700-HP and 900-LFC low-frequency control elements. Both stages featured MJF-210 high-power stage monitors; systems were managed by Galileo GALAXY 816 and 408…
Vision: 2025 has launched a crowdfunder to create the third edition of the Show Must Go On report and shape a new climate strategy and practices towards 2030. The Initiative supported by Festival Republic, The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), Arts Council England, Earth Percent, aims to raise £50,000 from organisations working in the festival and outdoor events space to be matched with grant funds. This collaborative project is being hosted by Julie’s Bicycle, chaired by Jon Collins, (LIVE) and convenes a working group of organisations and specialists from across the sector. The Show Must Go On state of the…
Nina Pušlar played a sold-out show in Ljubljana’s 14,400-capacity Stožice Arena which was recorded for broadcast on national TV. Lighting designer Amadej Šuperger from design studio Blackout specified large quantities of Robe moving lights which made up 75% of the lighting. The positions were facilitated by an angled triangular truss in the centre with four bracing trusses flanked by raked grids of crisscrossing trusses in the roof above the stage. Šuperger has been working with the artist for some time. He already had a show designed for smaller venues which served as a basic starting point for this one, but…
Audio Progress is a audio, lighting and staging company based in Palmerston North tucked into the rural heartlands of New Zealand’s North Island. The enterprise is run by Malcolm McKinnon, who founded it back in the 1980s, originally as an audio specialist, and since then, he and the team have built a reputation for delivering productions for all types of shows and events, concerts, and festivals. A recent investment in 16 Robe LEDBeam 350s sees the first Robe moving lights to join the Audio Progress inventory. The new fixtures – delivered by distributor Jands New Zealand – are being used…
Obsidian Control Systems is now offering the NETRON CLU, an easy-to-navigate central utility interface useful in discovering and managing NETRON data distribution devices across a lighting network. When deploying networks that use multiple nodes, or when working with nodes that lack integrated screens, the NETRON CLU makes NETRON data signal devices even easier to configure, eliminating the need to physically access the devices themselves. NETRON devices can be discovered regardless of their current IP address, and all NETRON features can be centrally configured, or reconfigured, without the need to access individual web pages or the device displays. The Windows-based NETRON…
Lauten Audio announced the launch of Tom Mic, the world’s first large-diaphragm FET condenser microphone built explicitly for use on tom drums. Tom Mic has a tailored frequency response attuned to toms and utilised Lauten Audio’s newly designed Supercardioid capsule and powerful dual-bias circuitry, providing up to 28dB of off-axis rejection. Tom Mic is an approach to capturing the sounds of rack and floor toms with its own specific capsule design and frequency response. The microphone is tuned to elevate the key frequencies for tom drums and provide maximum impact, dynamics, and tone with minimal EQing. Tom Mic’s bleed-blocking head…
Arm’s Length headlined a tour across the United States and Canada along with labelmates Carly Cosgrove and Ben Quad. Running front of house for the band is Michael Urbizu, a sound engineer from Florida. Urbizu had done some backfill work on previous tours, mainly working on house consoles. “I did about 15 shows, where every night I was on a new board,” he recalled. When management for Arm’s Length reached out to him, they offered to rent a mic and console package for consistency. “Two colleagues of mine were touring with dLive and had recommended it, so I watched a…
Riedel Communications announced its role in bringing audio clarity and connectivity to one of the U.S.’s biggest 2024 music and arts festivals, undertaken in collaboration with RMi. “Our seamless integration of Riedel solutions ensures that artists, crews, and vendors can focus on delivering unforgettable experiences to festivalgoers, secure in the knowledge that they are supported by the best in communication technology,” said Eddie Marquez, CEO of RMi and communications director at the event. “The ability to do partial saves per artist saves time. To be able to update on the fly and accommodate a constantly changing environment was essential to…
Lighting Daniel Adams-Ray shows for the past 14 years and at his 20th Anniversary concert at the Stockholm Concert Hall was LD Jakob Larsson, of Light It Production – with GLP’s flexible LED tools, and in particular the JDC family of hybrid strobes, regularly a feature of his toolkit. He deployed 68 of GLP’s JDC Line 500 in the Main Hall supported with a handful of the new JDC2 IP. Other than the existing house lighting, the GLP pieces exclusively did all the heavy lifting – although the designer admits with a smile that commandeering the JDC2 IP was something…
Claypaky hosted the students enrolled in the Master in Lighting Design and LED Technology, organized by the Polytechnic University of Milan. The Master aims to equip them with the skills they need for diverse applications such as entertainment venues, interior architecture, urban landscapes, museum exhibitions and temporary installations and residential spaces. The curriculum focuses on the analysis and synthesis of lighting design methods, covering conception, organization, and rigging. Among the esteemed instructors who teach on the Master course is Giovanni Pinna, a renowned lighting designer in Italy, known for his work with artists like Vasco Rossi. Pinna ran the “Lighting…
Within Temptation Monitor Engineer of 17 years, Bennie Veenstra, deployed a KLANG immersive in-ear monitor system to add control and spatial quality. “My journey with Within Temptation began in 2005 when I stepped in as a one-time replacement for their regular engineer,” reminisced Veenstra. “The experience proved to be a success, so when the imminent arrival of his first child meant he decided to tour less, they offered me the opportunity to take over, which I gladly accepted in 2006. It has been a privilege to handle the band’s monitoring ever since.” Veenstra says he has always felt an integral…
HOF has made further investments and now has its own powder coating facility. The powder coating system consists of fully and semi-automated coating lines, which are used depending on the component in order to achieve the best possible result. At the heart of the new powder coating system are the 2.7 metre wide, 3 metre high and 10 metrelong ovens. In total, components weighing over 2 tons can be moved and coated. A special highlight is the new heavy-duty coating specially developed by HOF, which provides the trusses with a robust and resistant HD coating. HOF offers the HD coating…
Absen announced the opening of its first UK showroom, in Theale, Berkshire. The new showroom boasts Absen’s range of solutions which cater to a vast array of markets, including Rental & Staging, Virtual Production, Commercial, Conference, DOOH, and Data Visualisation as well as providing office space for its dynamic team. The European hub also presents a rich display experience through its collaborations with valued ecosystem partners, including: Designer and manufacturer of AV solutions, Peerless-AV providing bracket solutions designed for the Clear Cobalt (CL) Series. The showroom features collaborative displays like the CL0.9 v2 and NX 1.8 proAV solutions. Interactive technology…
Johnny Marr kicked off his Greatest Hits tour at Newcastle’s O2 City Hall on April 2 2024 with Ed Warren at the helm of the lighting design. “Johnny and I have a really good relationship,” said Warren. “We spent a fair bit of time hanging out and chatting before coming up with any kind of plan for this tour. Once we had this decided, I programmed the entire show at home on my MQ70 using Capture over the course of a couple of weeks.” “Since Johnny’s studio is so close, I would pop round to see him every few weeks…
Bob Strakele held down the front-of-house mix position for both Avenged Sevenfold and Slipknot. Strakele used the same mixing console and P.A., and deployed Austrian Audio microphones — including OC818 large condenser, CC8 cardioid small diaphragm condenser and OC7 condenser instrument models — on the drums. Whichever band he’s working with, he said, “I try to develop a relationship where they understand that on the first leg of the tour, we’re going to go through a lot of microphones, just to see what works the best. Thankfully, they trust me to do my thing.” Over the past year, to help…
