Returning to home after ten years in Chicago as a recording/mixing engineer and event coordinator, Josh Haddad learned that Timothy ‘Timbaland’ Mosley’s Thomas Crown Studio complex was up for sale. Confident he could maintain the studios’ session flow, Haddad purchased the facility and rechristened it Virginia Beach Recording Arts.

‘Timbaland’s collaboration with legendary engineer Jimmy Douglass, and their track record with artists like Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg, Katy Perry and Justin Timberlake, coupled with the fact that the studio has a WSDG Walters-Storyk Design Group pedigree, convinced me that high -calibre artists would continue wanting to record in these great sounding rooms,’ Haddad says.

Following a major renovation that involved gutting the main building and constructing an entirely new auditorium inside the old structure, Washington DC’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts has reopened with a performance space using Meyer Sound’s Constellation acoustic control system.

Dubbed The Egg because of its shape, the venue hosts the school’s music, dance and theatre ensembles, as well as guests including the National Symphony and US Navy Band. Whenever direct amplification is required, the new auditorium also provides a house reinforcement system based on Meyer Sound line array loudspeakers.

Staged at London’s O2 Arena, saw Britannia Row Productions use DiGiCo consoles for the entire production of the 2019 BRIT Awards. ‘It was also the first time we’ve ever used 32-bit cards across the whole range of consoles on a live production,’ says Britannia Row Sales Director, Lez Dwight.

‘Britannia Row has worked with DiGiCo for a very long time, as has our worldwide network within Clair Global. It’s the console that the majority of engineers are very happy to use, which is important for a multi-act show like this. The live sound this year was truly exceptional.’

Staged at Munich’s Werk 7 theatre, Die Fabelhafte Welt der Amélie (The Fabulous World of Amélie) is a re-realisation of the musical version of the popular movie, Amélie, incorporating the original score and book by Daniel Messé, with music from Jann Tiersen.

Paul Gatehouse implemented sound design by Simone Linhof, the Creative Producer at Stage Entertainment. As part of the complex design he used a pair of Optocore DD4MR-FX Network MADI I/O Devices to give the quantity of Madi channels required. Stage Entertainment holds a large inventory of equipment and the designer chose KV2 SL412 speakers as the main system, with smaller KV2  EX26, EX6, ESD25, ES6, ES5 as fills and delays.

The difficulty of creating a typical club atmosphere is the main reason why most world-class DJs avoid playing arenas. Specifically, it is the rear of a long rectangular space that defies the ability of the PA system to deliver. With this in mind, Capital Sound Hire’s Technical Manager, Robin Conway, designed an audio system for an in-the-round presentation of Fatboy Slim (Norman Cook) at the O2 Arena in 2016.

The solution involved the use of the company’s Martin Audio MLA sound rig and a unique stage design to bring the DJ closer to the audience. ‘With the DJ booth in the middle, you forget you’re in a big arena,’ he says. ‘We worked out that’s a way of turning an arena into a huge nightclub.’