Singer-songwriter John Grant continues to build on the success of both his recorded music and live performances. His recent UK tour involved a unique collaboration with the Royal Northern Sinfonia orchestrated by Fiona Brice, delivering material from 2013’s Pale Green Ghosts and 2010’s Queen of Denmark.

Accompanying his regular electronic band – comprising drums, guitar, bass and keyboards/synthesisers was 29-piece orchestra. Technical production, meanwhile, was by rental specialist Entec with equipment from Yamaha, Soundcraft, d&b audiotechnik, DPA Microphones and Shure.

One of the most sacred texts in the Buddhist religion, the story of the Mahajanaka has been told in many different ways over the centuries, but for a spectacular recent live production in Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej commissioned an interpretation that would be readily intelligible to a contemporary audience – Mahajanaka the Phenomenon Live Show.

The resulting multimedia spectacular marked His Majesty’s 87th birthday at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre besides the Lake of Benjakiti Park in front of 200,000 people.

While many venues look to their sound systems to help create their identity, Avalon Hollywood has its own namesake speaker series. No stranger to conceptualising game-changing speakers, club owner and audio expert John Lyons is responsible for installing sound systems at some of the world’s leading nightclubs. ‘It’s a matter of being louder, cleaner and clearer,’ he says.

The historic Hollywood’s new sound system features Powersoft’s M-Force technology – and is the world’s largest subwoofer club installation to date. The design and build of the installation fell to Lyons and audio engineers at EAW and Powersoftt, who have worked for two years to perfect the technology.

Having recently completed her first full production headline tour, American singer-songwriter and musician Sara Bareilles is set to score a new theatre musical, record a studio album.

The tour took her across the US, and then to Australia, New Zealand and several Asian cities. Trey Smith, who has worked with her since 2008, was particular in his choice of audio system: ‘Bobby George at Spectrum talked me into taking a d&b audiotechnik V-Series system,’ he explains. ‘I spoke to a couple of sound engineer friends of mine to get some alternate opinions – everyone just raved about it. It proved perfect for the type of rooms we’d be playing, a mix of indoor theatres and outdoor sheds; anything from four to ten thousand people.

With its technical infrastructure more than ten years old, Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) has begun refurbishment of its master control room with a new server based around Lawo equipment. When complete, a Lawo Nova17 MkII routing systems will take KBS into a new era of radio operation, along with VisTool workplaces for visualisation and control.

The project will a establish fully-redundant system of core radio broadcast facilities, along with user-friendly and efficient operation, and sophisticated monitoring and alarm management. An additional benefit is that certain functions no longer need to be accessed via external devices, but are integrated within the Lawo equipment.