Ministry of Sound refurbishment
Recently refurbished, the main room at the UK’s iconic Ministry of Sound is now home to a KV2 Audio sound system designed by Technical and Production Manager Oscar Zammit and integration specialist, Louis Jemmott.
Case Study: More Sweetly Play the Dance
Amadeus has collaborated with South African artist, performer and director William Kentridge on an immersive sound environment for his latest multi-sensory installation, More Sweetly Play the Dance, at France’s Les Champs Libres centre.
The exhibition evokes the concept of celebration in its broadest sense, as ‘a place to rejoice, resist, make a claim for social, identity and cultural rights, and catharsis – a place where spectacular and intimate meet’.
Case Study: ArtYard
Set on the Delaware River midway between New York and Philadelphia, ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey, was founded six years ago with a remit to be ‘an incubator for creative expression and a catalyst for collaborations that reveal the transformational power of art’.
In fitting out its recently completed 162-seat McDonnell Theater, ArtYard chose an Alcons Audio pro-ribbon systems for sound.
Case Study: 5G Festival Showcase
Almost prescient in its timing, the 5G Festival project sprang into life in 2019, just as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic was shaping up to impact the world and decimate the live entertainment industry.
Together with growing calls to action over environmental concerns, an exploratory venture into the world of remote entertainment technology couldn’t have been a more welcome endeavour.
Case Study: The Angeles
Turning a 125-year-old Fort Lauderdale church into a modern restaurant and nightclub provided hospitality and venue operator David Cardaci a further opportunity to demonstrate his tenacity and vision.
More than two-and-a-half years in the making during a global pandemic, The Angeles nightclub and Holly Blue restaurant recently opened their doors to a capacity audience and high praise from club and restaurant goers, and critics alike.
Case Study: One Last Time
When John Harris and Jody Elff recruited to engineer the recording of CBS’ One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga shortly before Bennett announced his retirement from live performance, they immediately understood the musical and cultural significance of the event.
‘We knew this would be a big show on so many levels,’ says Harris. ‘We had to capture magic in a bottle.’
Case Study: G4F
The growing popularity of gaming is seeing audio facilities flourish – particularly under the global pandemic and lockdowns. One such, G4F in the French city of Angoulême, ranks among Europe’s leading gaming production houses.
At G4F, designers find some of the most highly skilled and experienced professionals in the business. With Focusrite RedNet hardware throughout its multi-studio facility, everything game audio might require is available in one place.
Interview: Mateusz Woźniak (PSP Audioware)
Our thirst for bringing the saturation characteristics of analogue audio electronics and magnetic tape to digital audio recording continues seemingly unsated. Almost every week brings word of a new ‘saturation’ plug-in of some kind, summoning the distortion found in old recordings to add to new ones.
One such is PSP Saturator – hardly ‘just another’ saturation plug-in, however, this has a history and pedigree worth exploring.
Interview: George Vlad
From the winds that blow through the freezing Romanian Carpathian Mountains to the sounds of the searing heat of Ethiopia’s deserts, Romanian sound recordist George Vlad has taken a childhood love of sound, and built an expansive career in location recording.
His constant companions on his far-ranging ventures around the world are his Sennheiser microphones and headphones.
Case Study: Bauer Studios
With Bettina Bertók-Thumm and Michael Thumm taking ownership in 2017, Bauer Studios in Ludwigsburg has entered a new phase in its history. Both German and international artists record here – Udo Jürgens, Herbert Grönemeyer, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan and Miles Davis among them.
‘We have a tradition of looking forward,’ says MD, Michael Thumm. ‘We enjoy exploring new things, and I think that’s why we’re still around after 70 years.’
Obsolescence: An Index of Possibilities
As a Tyrell Corporation Nexus-6 replicant, Blade Runner’s Roy Batty had a predetermined life span of just four years – and he wanted it extended. Remonstrations with his creator, Eldon Tyrell, brought only the commiseration that he had ‘burned so very, very brightly’.
Comparable built-in end-of-life issues are increasingly impacting our music, musical instruments and music production. How brightly have we chosen to burn?
Telefunken Elektroakustik at 20
US microphone manufacturer Telefunken Elektroakustik is marking 20 years – founded by Toni Fishman in 2001, it represents the twenty-first century revival of the original German company founded in 1903, and faithfully follows a tradition of excellence and innovation established more than100 years ago.
‘Telefunken pioneered a new era in transducer technology and held the top position in microphone design throughout most of the twentieth century,’ Fishman says.
Controlling Interest
The very first synthesiser I owned was a Moog. And my second; and my third. I still have two of them, a Micromoog and Minimoog, but sold the third, an Opus 3, to help fund a Jupiter 8. Somehow, along the way, I’d borrowed an ARP Axxe and an Octave Cat, and would dearly have loved to get my hands on the Minimoog’s early contemporary, an ARP Odyssey. I was an East Coast man – I just didn’t know it.