Written by Sting and Lorne Campbell, The Last Ship is a drama with fine songs bound by interwoven narratives. On its recent return to Newcastle, sound designer Sebastian Frost used d&b Soundscape signal processing technology, with En-Scene a sound object positioning and En-Space room emulation.

‘I went to hear a [Soundscape] demo at d&b HQ in Backnang about a year ago.’ Frost recalls. ‘The experience was inspirational because the biggest thing you want from any system is that it doesn’t tie you down or restrict you in anyway. What I heard was much more than simple panning or delay of sound; you were not just placing sound objects in specific places. This was a more scientific approach… this was the creation of a soundfield within which the creative possibilities appear unrestricted.’

Having used its Martin Audio MLA Compact at last year’s Shambala Festival, Stage Audio Services (SAS) invested in a full-sized MLA in time for the 2018 event, which took place over the four day Bank Holiday weekend.

The system arrived literally as the truck was being loaded, recalls SAS MD Kevin Mobberley, whose company has worked the UK event for well over a decade. ‘It provided us with a fantastic amount of headroom and ensured we didn’t need delays.’

Described as ‘the ultimate space adventure holiday’, Cornwall’s Eden Project been taking families on a mission to Mars, inviting them to play mini-golf on Mercury and encouraging them to slide down the surface of a moon.

Enhancing the sonic realism of this trip around the Solar System is a series of Martin Audio CDD-WR (Coaxial Differential Dispersion) weatherproof loudspeakers, including 15 pairs of CDD6-WR and a pair of CDD5-WR– all driven by just a pair of Martin Audio multichannel iKon iK81 eight-channel class-D amplifiers.

Set up in 1981 as a rehearsal room and project studio for Italian owner Ninni Pascale’s band, Walhalla, Polosud Records’ Il Parco studio acquired ‘professional status’ in 1987 and subsequently became a focal point of the Napoli’s music scene.

After a ‘digital switchover’ in the late 1990s – which lasted until 2017 – Pascale says, ‘The analogue is finally back with the purchase of a great console, the Rupert Neve Designs 5088,’ supplied by Rupert Neve Designs’ Italy distributor, MidiWare.

P!nk’s Beautiful Trauma World Tour kicked off in the US, playing at 38 arenas to more than 700,000 fans before moving to Australia and New Zealand for a further 42 shows, including a record-breaking 18-night run at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena. Her hallmark mixture of staging and aerial acrobatics is supported throughout by a Sennheiser Digital 6000 system

Sennheiser has a long association with P!nk through her RF coordinator and monitor engineer for the band, Horst Hartmann. For her 2013 The Truth About Love Tour, he specified an integrated in-ear monitor and microphone system to help facilitate her technically and physically challenging show.