LiveIn today’s world, where technology advances by the day, it is very difficult to choose between software tools and DAWs. Almost have good audio engines and the tools to create fantastic sounding mixes. So it is workflow and add-ons that make the difference.

While each one has its own set of unique features, Ableton Live, along with Cycling ’74, looks to have set a benchmark in DAW innovation.

This week saw the announcement that the SAE Group is to be acquired by Navitas, a broader-based educational (and considerably younger) operation. 'The acquisition represents the next phase in SAE's ongoing growth,' said SAE Institute President Tom Misner.

Fast-and-Wide turned to business analyst Linguabrand for a look into the two companies' brand language...

BlueFin2Last week, in the run-up to his sixth birthday, my son asked me an awkward question – what shape is the internet? With a gift for finding the existential fault lines between the conceptual and the tangible, his questions regularly leave me dithering and exasperated. But the question is an intriguing one and deserves thought...

Dr Who Live
Taking cult sci-fi figure Dr Who from the small screen onto the stages of nine major UK arenas around the UK was no small feat for events specialist XL Events and sound, lighting and audiovisual solutions company Adlib Audio. Visuals, pyrotechnics and video content were accompanied by Murray Gold’s scores, delivered by a 16-piece orchestra and combined with cast dialogue, choir, additional orchestral stems, VT playback character dialogue and special effects.

Michael TjandraWith the theme of ‘Turning the City Upside Down’, the Perth 4 Jesus gathering took place in late October near Perth in Western Australia. Inside the Joondalup Arena, 2,500 people gathered for a three-day healing crusade and to hear invited guest speaker Ps Robert Kayanja from Uganda, who is gifted with the power of healing. Essential to the event were the sound and lighting.

Music lovers in the Phoenix-Scottsdale metro area are celebrating The Compound, a music venue and local-organic eatery at the northern edge of town. The organisers of the charitable McDowell Mountain Music Festival built the 250-capacity venue to provide a year-round residence for music and community – hosting regional and national acts. Not the sort of folks to go half-way, the owners insisted on a top-tier sound reinforcement system to deliver not just volume, but fidelity. Lyle Vilhauer of local Arizona A/V sales and installer Broadway Music and Jim Hall of Jim Hall Acoustics Research exceeded expectations with a system centred on Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and subwoofers driven by an Ashly processor.

schematicI recall a novel demonstration of audio cable given at an IBC show a few years back. Well, it was as much a demonstration of a piece of wet string as what you’d call audio cabling. In fact it was just that – a simple playback system using wet string to help deliver the Eagles’ trade show eternal demonstration favourite, ‘Hotel California’.

New York-based SIA Acoustics prides itself on creating spaces that work well for both audiences and performers. That ethic comes naturally to SIA consultant and system designer Adam Shulman, and was employed to great effect during the 2010 season of Mad. Sq. Music. ‘When someone asks why you’re recommending a piece of gear or a certain workflow, it’s important to be able to have actual field experience to bolster credibility and to make the right decisions,’ he says. ‘For this reason our team includes designers, engineers, technicians, architects and performers.’

Recycle RedWe are making a serious mistake with our recycling.

You can come at this from various angles, but probably the simplest is terminology. We have become comfortable with ‘recycling’ as a term that legitimises our use of natural resources. Through it, we choose to believe that we are somehow replacing the natural resources that we are using. And that makes us feel better about our lives and our business.

Had we chosen to use the term ‘down-cycling’, however, we would be far more aware of the true state of affairs.

Green WorldIn my previous Wideangle post, I raised the question: ‘is there any point in trying to be ‘green’ in professional audio? And the conclusion I proffered was that it was, for two main reasons.

First, because of the increasing expectation from society in general that businesses act responsibly. Second, that there’s good evidence suggesting that not being green drives negative perceptions; while being green is strongly associated with leadership and innovation.


Full Sail Live

The 30 years since its founding have seen Florida’s Full Sail arts design and entertainment media school has grown beyond its highest ambitions. Today, it offers a broad spectrum of accredited degree programmes encompassing music and sound, as well as film, design, show production, games, animation, web design, and music business.  Three years in planning and a year-plus in construction, its Full Sail Live is one of the largest, dedicated sound stages for live concert training at an educational facility.

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