Claiming to be ‘one of the largest, most progressive and versatile professional audio teaching/production/performance complexes in the US’, Berklee College of Music has opened its 160 Massachusetts Avenue centre in Boston.
More than three years and US$100m in the making, the facility occupies four floors in a striking, 16-storey building housing ten studios from the Walters-Storyk Design Group.
With the reopening of The Church and F&W’s interview with Miloco’s Nick Young, the history of London’s recording studios makes good and topical reading. First published 1997, this exploration of it origins, its equipment and the engineers who tracked the music that they produced, gives a unique perspective. It begins here:
On the 50th anniversary of the APRS, Tim Goodyer and Dave Harries trace the origins of London’s recording studios and its music recording scene.
Re-opening on its 20th anniversary, the Great Gallery of Evolution at the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris seeks to offer a ‘hi-fi’ audio experience throughout.
Going beyond the familiar sound system design process, this features site-specific loudspeakers that have been devised to provide performance and specifications that were not to be found in any manufacturers’ catalogue.
The FIA couldn’t have asked for more when Nicolas Prost and Nick Heidfeld collided on the final corner and allowed Lucas di Grassi to win the inaugural Formula E fully-electric single-seat race.
After 25 laps of the 3.44-km Beijing circuit at speeds topping 250mph, the race had proven Formula E’s ability to deliver the performance and drama of high-performance combustion engine racing.
Arriving off the back of a 20-date North American leg, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are now on the road in Europe with their ambitious Bonnie and Clyde-themed stadium tour, On The Run.
Musically thrilling and immaculately choreographed, the show calls on Sennheiser’s Digital 9000 wireless microphone system to survive in the harsh RF environment created by the extemsive use of video and lighting systems.
Now a music and broadcast tradition, the Proms in the Park celebrations attract thousands to outdoor venues in London, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, and is broadcast live on TV and radio. Each event centres on a live concert with its own high-profile artists, BBC orchestras and presenters.
Capital Sound took on the Hyde Park event, providing an Optocore fibre-optic audio network infrastructure and Martin Audio MLA loudspeaker system.
While centred on the stage, preparations for a major theatre production put sound operators on an equally steep, if not steeper, learning curve than that of its actors. Not only do they need to learn every actor’s lines and cues, but they need all of the show’s effects in their head and at their fingertips.
Andrew Bruce lifts the curtain on the action at front of house, from first rehearsal to the premier and beyond.
Following an in-depth look at the development of DiGiCo’s theatre-specific mixing software, Andrew Bruce follows the story of the stage and the mixing console, and plots the development of technologies that are now familiar both in the West End and on Broadway.
Although many members of the cast will be familiar to you from their other audio adventures, their roles here may hold some surprises.
‘I've worked in a lot of weird and wondrous sites, but it’s seldom one comes across a place quite like this,’ says sound artist Thor McIntyre-Burnie.
He’s describing the wind tunnels that helped shape the Spitfire’s elliptical wings and guided the design of early supersonic aircraft. Now open to the public for the first time, the tunnels provide the setting and the acoustics for his Flying Into The Dawn sound installation.
‘I said I’d done some work with Soundcraft and Cadac, and I had a big folder of information. Would they be interested in evolving something specifically for use in the theatre?
‘James put me in touch with the people who write DiGiCo’s software. They came to London and we went to see several shows that night – and I watched while the colour drained from their faces…’
Nick Cohen believes that broadcast is on the cusp of being hit by the storm that has previously ravaged the print publishing and music industries.
If he’s right, it’s going to be a doozy – ‘the most exciting time in the history of broadcasting’s evolution’, according to Jay Scanlan. With future and access to a connected world, the most fundamental tenets of broadcasting stand to be dramatically rewritten.
