German recording studio and music label Hicktown Records has added eight modules to the Neve Genesys console in its main control room, bringing the desk up to G64 32-channel specifications.

Based in Rosenheim, Bavaria, Hicktown Records installed its Neve Genesys console in 2009 when the studio facility first opened. From the outset CEO, A&R Manager and producer Reinhard Gross had his eye on the future with the studio’s G48 console with G64 dimensions, certain that he would want to expand it at some point.

The ongoing partnership between Dutch DJ Hardwell, loudspeaker specialist Genelec and studio designer Jan Morel has delivered a third recording facility, with the completion of the DJ and producer’s holiday home studio on the Caribbean island of Curacao.

The new facility offers an alternative different look and feel from Hardwell’s main studio in the Netherlands, but with the same reference sound quality and low end control thanks to the use of Genelec studio monitors and subwoofers.

Tokyo’s Cé la Vi is a new luxury dining, bar and club lounge complex occupying the rooftop floors of the revitalised Tokyu Plaza Shibuya Fukuras shopping mall. With Enter Sandman assigned responsibility for the sound systems, company director Shintaro Dobashi looked to Martin Audio’s specialist ranges.

‘The customer’s request was to connect all three sections of the venue,’ he explains. ‘We had to create a restaurant that could be used commercially or privately – to make it ideal for a cool Tokyo clientele, and a place that lived up to the reputation of the Cé la Vi brand.’

Conceived as a two-room facility and since expanded to three, composer/songwriter Jim Funk’s Funk Studios can handle projects of all styles and types, from vocal overdubs and mixing to orchestral and choral tracking. Funk engaged Jerry Steckling of JSX Audio to design the complex, whose flagship control room has a Solid State Logic Duality δelta Pro-Station SuperAnalogue console as its centrepiece.

Along with the Duality δelta, Studio A features a Pro Tools rig and LCR ATC soffit main monitors, and is served by a 1,300sq-ft Studio A tracking space, dubbed The Stage, with 23ft-high ceilings, custom variable acoustics and four iso booths, one housing a Yamaha C7 grand piano with Disklavier.

Early April 2020 sawBelguim’s French-language broadcaster RTBF take delivery of the first of two groundbreaking, full-IP OB trucks. Due to the covid-19 lockdown, the 12m-long trailer was configured remotely using TeamViewer remote desktop software, a few web cameras and microphones for confirmation purposes, and VPN in order to be delivered on time. The second, identical, OB truck is scheduled to arrive on 1 July.

Conceived by Geert Thoelen of NEP Belgium and Dirk Sykora of Lawo, the vehicles were built by Broadcast Solutions in Germany and will be leased to RTBF for eight years.