There is a gathering realisation within the global concert production industry that it is facing a major skills gap. This is principally caused by the steady departure of a generation of people who, in many cases, could be considered to be the founding fathers of the industry, and who have never worked in any other sphere.
Without suitable people to step in, we have a critical problem...
In today’s world, where technology advances by the day, it is very difficult to choose between software tools and DAWs. Almost have good audio engines and the tools to create fantastic sounding mixes. So it is workflow and add-ons that make the difference.
While each one has its own set of unique features, Ableton Live, along with Cycling ’74, looks to have set a benchmark in DAW innovation.
This week saw the announcement that the SAE Group is to be acquired by Navitas, a broader-based educational (and considerably younger) operation. 'The acquisition represents the next phase in SAE's ongoing growth,' said SAE Institute President Tom Misner.
Fast-and-Wide turned to business analyst Linguabrand for a look into the two companies' brand language...
Last week, in the run-up to his sixth birthday, my son asked me an awkward question – what shape is the internet? With a gift for finding the existential fault lines between the conceptual and the tangible, his questions regularly leave me dithering and exasperated. But the question is an intriguing one and deserves thought...

Taking cult sci-fi figure Dr Who from the small screen onto the stages of nine major UK arenas around the UK was no small feat for events specialist XL Events and sound, lighting and audiovisual solutions company Adlib Audio. Visuals, pyrotechnics and video content were accompanied by Murray Gold’s scores, delivered by a 16-piece orchestra and combined with cast dialogue, choir, additional orchestral stems, VT playback character dialogue and special effects.
With the theme of ‘Turning the City Upside Down’, the Perth 4 Jesus gathering took place in late October near Perth in Western Australia. Inside the Joondalup Arena, 2,500 people gathered for a three-day healing crusade and to hear invited guest speaker Ps Robert Kayanja from Uganda, who is gifted with the power of healing. Essential to the event were the sound and lighting.
I recall a novel demonstration of audio cable given at an IBC show a few years back. Well, it was as much a demonstration of a piece of wet string as what you’d call audio cabling. In fact it was just that – a simple playback system using wet string to help deliver the Eagles’ trade show eternal demonstration favourite, ‘Hotel California’.
We are making a serious mistake with our recycling.
You can come at this from various angles, but probably the simplest is terminology. We have become comfortable with ‘recycling’ as a term that legitimises our use of natural resources. Through it, we choose to believe that we are somehow replacing the natural resources that we are using. And that makes us feel better about our lives and our business.
Had we chosen to use the term ‘down-cycling’, however, we would be far more aware of the true state of affairs.
In my previous Wideangle post, I raised the question: ‘is there any point in trying to be ‘green’ in professional audio? And the conclusion I proffered was that it was, for two main reasons.
First, because of the increasing expectation from society in general that businesses act responsibly. Second, that there’s good evidence suggesting that not being green drives negative perceptions; while being green is strongly associated with leadership and innovation.