MALAYSIA : This week LEA Professional’s Malaysian distributor, Acoustic & Lighting Systems, hosted an LEA Launch and open day event at their HQ office and show room in Kuala Lumpur. Generation AV’s Dave McKinney and Jeremiah Joseph provided an overview of the LEA Connect Series amplifiers, whilst introducing the latest Half-Rack models to over 50 customers and system integrators who attended the two sessions. With demonstrations of LEA’s Cloud, the latest updates like the new input mixer added to all models, and the exciting new Half Rack Series, it was clear to all that LEA is so much more than an amplifier.
Big thanks to Eugene, Michelle, Rain, and the Acoustic & Lighting Systems team for putting together such a successful LEA event.
Martin Audio and Generation AV team up for APAC Distribution Summit
Martin Audio and Generation AV recently entertained all APAC distributors at their Singapore Experience Centre to celebrate growth and discuss future opportunities.
Dom Harter, Martin Audio Managing Director, was able to convey updates from across the Audio Reproduction division of the Focusrite group, which also includes Linea Research, Optimal Audio and TiMax. This was then followed up with a focus on the significant strides Martin Audio has made in its supply chain operation to help fuel the strong growth in the region.
Harter, along with Sales Director, Bradley Watson provided demonstrations of the premium point source solutions of both FlexPoint and THS as well as a showcase of immersive sound solutions from sister brand, TiMax.
Case studies were shared by distributors including Audio Brains and their work with rental partner MSI across a wealth of live sound events, while Sino Huifeng showcased their success in KTV as well as nightclubs including the latest BEEN club in China, and finally a wealth of examples from TAG, Australia, including the Geelong Arts Centre, Australia’s largest regional performance centre.
Further marketing updates were provided by Marketing Director, James King and the event was fittingly rounded off with Awards where PT Goshen Swara won for ‘Outstanding Performance in Installed Sound’, Vardhaman Megatech secured the ‘Outstanding Performance in Touring Sound’, Anthony Russo from TAG picked up the ‘Most Significant Contribution’ award, while the overall coveted ‘Distributor of the Year’ award went to Sino Huifeng, China.
Martin Audio APAC Distributor of the Year 2023 Sino Hui Feng, China
Martin Audio APAC most significant contribution 2023 Technical Audio Group, Australia
Martin Audio APAC Outstanding performance in Installed Sound 2023 PT Goshen Swara, Indonesia
Martin Audio APAC Outstanding performance in touring 2023 Vardhaman Megatech, India
David McKinney, Managing Director of Generation AV, said, “It was a fantastic week and so good to have all our partners come together to celebrate the successes, and to lay out new plans for the future. Big thanks to all our partners for making the week a major success and having Dom, Brad and James join us made for productive discussions.”
When Belfast Distillery Company set out to preserve the legacy of McConnell’s Irish Whisky—a brand that dates back to 1776—they decided to take over the A-Wing of Crumlin Road Gaol, and convert it into a visitor attraction to run alongside its production activities.
Built in 1845, the Gaol was renowned for housing a number of key figures during The Troubles, but this listed building has now been carefully restored and converted, with a state-of-the-art AV installation—including end-to-end Martin Audio loudspeakers, designed and specified by the manufacturer’s partner for over 40 years, Rea Sound.
Martin Audio had in fact been requested by the clients themselves … notably their Master Distiller & Head of Supply & Operations, Graeme Millar. According to Rea Sound director, Roger McMullan, as a gigging musician, Millar had fallen in love with Martin Audio’s sound when purchasing a first-generation Blackline band PA many years ago.
It had been McMullan himself who was confronted with the challenge of specifying a workable system within a difficult space, to enable guided tours to take place that uncover the unique history of this iconic Belfast distillery brand in a landmark setting.
He recalled the origins of the contract in August last year. “At the time it was a building site as they had taken out the floors and removed the roof to get their distilling tanks in,” he said. “It was obvious to me we should use a combination of Martin Audio CDD6 and ADORN A55 for the speakers, so we drew up a specification and were immediately given the go-ahead. We then had many long meetings debating how we would make this work.”
WE SELECTED ADORN FOR ITS COMPACT SIZE AND VALUE FOR MONEY.
As many as eight different tour groups can traverse the building at a time. After signing in at Reception, where announcements are made and BGM played out through eight ADORN A55, visitors are led on a mazy route by a tour guide — via The Board Room, Mash Room, Tasting & Maturation Room and Experiential Room, finishing at the Bar & Atrium on the top floor of the three-storey edifice. Here they can stand on the glass door and enjoy views straight down over the Reception area two floors below.
In the client’s own board room, the only space not open to the general public, there are a further four ADORN A55 … part of a total complement of 36 of these products.
“We selected ADORN for its compact size and value for money … the quality of the sound is exceptional for the price,” stated McMullan. “We’ve used it a lot for infills and foyers in the past, but this is the first time we’ve really used it in anger.”
All supplied in white, their compact footprint means they can be discreetly tucked away into the furnishings or equally be wall mounted.
The tour itself initially takes visitors into The Board Room that does have public access, and here they are treated to a Pepper’s Ghost introductory video presentation. In order to enhance the presence and realism of the playback video, a Martin Audio SX110 subwoofer has been added.
As the tour guide enters each room, the Audio Technica mic is reactivated via the dedicated remote wall panel where a separate system also caters for the hard of hearing.
The single pair of Martin Audio CDD6s can be found in the Bar area—which marks the end of the tour, and is effectively six former gaol cells combined together. The idea of specifying the more powerful CDDs is with the future idea of promoting live bands in mind. “They will also host special evenings for corporate clients, who can plug in their own mixing desk—so they wanted a bit more quality and coverage,” continues Roger McMullan.
All the loudspeakers are assigned to three of Martin Audio’s VIA2004 amplifiers, which power the entire system, while processing is under the command of an Allen & Heath AHM.
In conclusion, Roger McMullan can reflect on a contract that he describes as one of the most prestigious in the company’s long history. Graeme Millar reciprocated by saying that working with Rea Sound had made the installation extremely easy. “The depth of knowledge and experience has brought together a great overall system for us,” he said. “The ease of use for us has been important, with the adaptability and reliability surpassing everything we asked for. The custom paging system also makes it easy for our staff to announce easily to the required areas.”
Lea Amps For Sports Bar Entertainment | Varsity Ice House
From puck drop to last call—Varsity Ice House sports bar is turning up the volume on the ultimate fan experience with the help of Connect Series amplifiers.
Product Used: Connect Series 704D (1) & Connect Series 1504D (1)
THE VENUE
Founded with a vision to create a gathering place for the community, Varsity Ice House opened its doors to Grand Forks. Varsity Ice curates the ideal environment for any hockey fan to watch their favorite team, with a TV everywhere you turn, great food, and flowing drinks to create an unforgettable experience.
THE INSTALL
Varsity Ice reached out to Paul Hagen at Site on Sound to specify a personalized sound system that fit the needs of bar staff and guests. Based in Fargo and with over 100 years of combined experience, the Site on Sound team was well-equipped to assess the needs of Varsity Ice and install the best solution, which came from LEA Professional.
“I use LEA amps almost exclusively,” said Hagen. “The LEA Cloud allows me to log into the system and make changes when I’m not onsite and lets me keep an eye on my customers. LEA integrates well with everything else, so using them was a no-brainer.”
Hagen installed one CS1504D, a 4-channel amplifier with 1,500 watts per channel to power the bar’s main speakers, and a CS704D, a 4-channel amplifier with 700 watts per channel to run a few fill areas inside the bar as well as to power the outdoor area. Hagen also utilized the LEA Cloud platform to remote control and monitor from afar, improving response times and the overall quality of service for Varsity Ice.
As part of the Dante Connect Series, the world’s first Internet of Things- (IoT) enabled professional-grade amplifiers, the 1504D and 704D provided the power and flexibility Hagen needed for their installation, which was sectioned into two zones on the control system running eight zones of speakers. Also, with three ways to connect, the Dante Connect Series allows integrators the ability to engage the built-in Wi-Fi access point, connect to the venue’s Wi-Fi, or use an existing local area network via Cat5 or Cat6 cable.
“The Dante Connect amplifiers simplified everything,” added Hagen. “With the Dante amps and the Dante encoders, the only other hardware I had in the whole place was the jukebox. It made programming and installation easier.”
CS704D
THE CONCLUSION
“There’s nothing quite like cheering on your favorite team alongside other fans, and we’re proud that we get to elevate that experience for Varsity Ice guests,” said Nathan Ridgway, National Sales Manager at LEA Professional. “This installation proves the power of innovative, top-quality audio, can turn an already exciting experience into an unforgettable one.”
We would like to thank everyone at Varsity Ice House and Site on Sound for choosing LEA on this install and we hope to provide quality sound for many years to come.
Will spotlight the unique capabilities of the SoundHub spatial audio engine and the TrackerD4 stagetracking platform along with recent developments at the event on March 12-14.
TiMax, the most recent addition to the Focusrite Group, will make its debut appearance at the first set of this year’s Martin Audio Open Days that’s running from March 12 to 14 at High Wycombe, UK and will be highlighting the unique capabilities of the SoundHub spatial audio engine and the TrackerD4 stagetracking platform, including new product offerings introduced earlier in the year.
The presentations, by TiMax director Robin Whittaker with applications specialist Dan Roncoroni and new Martin Audio colleagues, will also highlight the synergies between the product offerings of the group. In addition, the event presents the opportunity to hear previews of the new multi-channel live production spatial reverb feature for SoundHub that was featured at the 2024 ISE Show. The plugin option, available to all existing HARDCore FPGA-equipped SoundHub units, adds up to four individual 1-input/16-output high-quality reverb engines that give sound designers control of all parameters as well as access to an advanced 3D room reverb-builder application.
The TrackerD4 stagetracking platform will be in use to automatically localize presenter microphones in real-time and follow them with moving-head light fixtures driven by TrackerD4’s PosiStageNet protocol, in parallel with OSC into the TiMax SoundHub. In addition, OutBoard’s LV Motor Control will also play a role during the Open Days, handling all the PA systems heavy lifting, alongside a display of the RCX SMART Remote digital handset rigging controller.
Commercial director Dave Haydon says, “It is a great pleasure to be involved with the Martin Audio Open Days and demonstrate both the new TiMax involvement with their premium loudspeaker systems as well as reinforcing its robust market position as the leading independent spatial audio platform.”
Marketing director James King concludes, “I’m delighted that these Open Days are now very much a multi-brand affair, with the opportunity to demonstrate everyone’s respective disciplines, as well as synergies across the group. This is our most ambitious content program ever so that anyone in the pro audio industry has more reason to come along and enjoy their day.”
Several holes at new family-focused golf courses in Gateshead enhanced with spatialized sound environment generated via a SoundHub-S32 processor with Dante networked I/O.
The latest Treetop Golf venue, newly arrived in the town of Gateshead, England on the River Tyne and offering two 18-hole family-focused golf courses — one a Tropical Trail and the other an Ancient Explorer Trail — is equipped with a spatialized sound environment centered around a TiMax SoundHub processor in a project by sound designer RavenAV with installation by Reading-based Full Production Ltd.
Specifically, one TiMax SoundHub-S32 with Dante networked I/O manages the three holes per course where the themed appeal is brought to life with lighting and animated immersive audio. On the Tropical Trail area, the scene is set with localized audio objects such as birdsong which travels from shrubbery up to tree level and down to another area of low shrubbery and back again – as well as placed insect and animal noises and actions that are enhanced with tree shakers.
Dan Roncoroni of RavenAV explains, “We used TiMax just to make it special and believable: when you shut your eyes you are in the middle of a jungle. You can hear the content localized accurately anywhere you are in that space, as TiMax does a really good job at handling audio objects. It’s more immersive, the loudspeakers disappear, and you just hear the content. You don’t hear where it’s coming from.”
Themed characters, such as Baron Von Batwing (a vampire bat) in the Ancient Explorer area, have a selection of comments to make about golfing performances. The AV content – 80 percent of which is new for the Gateshead site produced in 4K for spatial audio by sound designer Dave Shepherd – is executed in randomized loops scripted in QLab on this occasion rather than in TiMax to help keep the content fresh for customers and staff.
Roncoroni’s involvement with Treetop Golf started when Full Production managing director Steve Richardson approached him for assistance with audio improvements at an existing venue in Birmingham. Full Production had already taken the lighting and visual elements at the Midlands attraction to a new level in order to provide a enhanced experience, and pushed for audio quality to match.
With audio spills between holes cleared up and the themed characters’ speech made more clear and intelligible, Roncoroni was brought in again to up the game with spatial audio for the new Gateshead venue, before the venue’s design was actually finalized. With only rough architect course outlines to go on and no contractor drawings, he planned out the first audio design using educated guesswork.
“Thankfully it translated to an almost completely successful design,” he notes. “We had to move some elements of the equipment at the last minute, but it’s pretty much unchanged.”
Richardson adds, “Dan did a great job, as he always does for us. We were keen to push the spatial audio elements on this project following our work together in St Michael’s Cave in Gibraltar (also with a TiMax system).
“The installation on this site ran for around eight months and a lot came down to design and build after system designs and schematics were submitted. Having the flexibility of the TiMax system in our minds gave us a whole other level of confidence that last-minute changes could be dealt with efficiently. Ultimately, we are proud of the product we have delivered – it truly does sound breathtakingly good.”
“India in Fashion: The Impact of Indian Dress and Textiles on the Fashionable Imagination” in Mumbi accompanied by immersive soundscapes designed by Kapil Thirwani of Munro Acoustics utilizing dual SoundHub-S64 processors.
The inaugural exhibition of “India in Fashion: The Impact of Indian Dress and Textiles on the Fashionable Imagination” at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai was supported by an array of immersive soundscapes that segued from zone to zone in an audio designed utilizing the TiMax SoundHub platform.
Kapil Thirwani, director of Munro Acoustics, fulfilled the audio brief, calling upon the expertise of distributor, Alphatec, which recommended SoundHub for the project.
The exhibition is curated by Vogue global editor Hamish Bowles and presents a multi-zone exploration into the impact of India on global fashion and vice versa. Thirwani was contacted to deliver the audio approach in a very tight timeframe. On advice from Alphatec, and he had just enough time to fly to ISE in Barcelona to discuss the project in detail with Out Board.
Out Board director Dave Haydon explains, “Alphatec showed Kapil various ways TiMax could handle this project, which involved playing spatial music and effects across 15 different zones, starting and stopping it all automatically without anybody having to touch it. He worked out that TiMax was the only thing that could do it all at once.”
Thirwani’s final saw two 64 i/o TiMax SoundHub-S64s, each handling half of the exhibition, playing out a mix of stereo and multi-stem spatial music as well as soundscape tracks to 128 Genelec 4430 IP loudspeakers across 15 zones. The Genelec 4430, like TiMax, connects to a Dante network and supports external control via third-party hardware or software. Each running on a single Cat-5 cable, the self-powered Genelec units were not only discreet but avoided the use of more than 20 Km of hard-to-conceal copper wiring.
The soundscapes for the individual exhibition zones were originated by Goa-based musicians Sandunes. With some multi-channel spatial audio advice from Haydon in hand, the duo created audio content in the same key which served to prevent musical clashes from one zone to another. Various show content stems were sent to the UK where Haydon could begin programming the showfiles, and he subsequently visited Mumbai to help Sandunes bed in the immersive content on-site.
Without walls between the exhibits, overlap was unavoidable but once the audio installation was complete, the team started auditioning the soundscapes over the various zones of loudspeakers, walking from zone to zone with a Mac to fine-tune them.
Following this process all the settings were saved and the SoundHubs locked. Set to fade up at 10 am and then slowly fade out at the end of the day, it simplified client control for the TiMax-controlled system provided via a TouchOSC iPad for each SoundHub. Changes could be made to master level and individual zone levels for out-of-hours VIP visits, press and TV interviews without impacting the saved setup.
Arriving at the completed project shortly before it opened to the public, Haydon says, “The integration and design were amazing, and all the equipment was up and running to provide totally automated, hands-free, fully integrated show-in-a-box operation.”
The CONNECTSERIES amplifiers offer limited control and monitoring capabilities through QSC’s Q-SYS system through the use of the CONNECTSERIES Q-SYS Plugin.
To Download and configure the Q-SYS plugin, follow the steps below.
How To Configure And Use The CONNECTSERIES Q-SYS Plugin
First, download the CONNECTSERIES Q-SYS Plugin to your PC from the link below.
Go to the folder where the file was downloaded and un-zip the file.
Double click on the file to install it
Open Q-SYS Designer
Navigate to the bottom right of the screen to the “Plugin” section and expand the “User” folder. Here you will find the newly installed “LEA Amplifier” plugin.
Click on the “LEA Amplifier” and drag it over to the design page
With the plugin selected adjust the properties for the correct number of channels and if the Amplifier is a Dante Connect Series or not.
Click on the “File” drop down menu and select “Save to Core and Run” or just press the F5 key on the keyboard. Now double click on the plugin that was added to open the control window.
Click on the IP Address field and type in the IP address for the amplifier that you want to associate with this plugin and hit “Enter”. After hitting enter the plugin will populate all fields with the correct information and you can control and monitor the amplifier. To add more amplifiers just add more plugins to the design and associate all the amplifiers following the previous steps.
Amp Information displays some info from the Amp Settings Menu of the WebUI and will also display the network mode of the amplifier.
Amp Status section will display whole amplifier fault status and “Thermal” and “Power OK” status from the Power Supply section of the WebUI.
Remote On/Off will enable or disable the “Channel Ready” for all channels.
Displays important information from the Monitoring section in the WebUI
Output Channel Attenuation & Mute Control, Channel Fault, Output Clip, Limiter Status, Input Signal Presence, and Ready Status
Input and Output Level Meters with Clip Indication
Festival celebrating theatre arts equipped with system incorporating ESP1000 amplifiers driving 16 KV2 ESD Cube loudspeakers and EX1.5 subwoofers working with a 64-channel SoundHub audio matrix.
Now in its 15th year, Sound Kitchen, held at the Prague Quadrennial international festival that celebrates theatre arts in an interactive way in providing an opportunity for the “audio-curious” to perform their work and exchange ideas, featured a system incorporating KV2 Audio loudspeakers and amplification in a sound design centered upon a 64-channel TiMax SoundHub spatial audio matrix with Dante.
The collaborative exploration project is organized and co-curated by sound designer, Peter Rice, and Out Board’s Robin Whitaker, with support from a selected team of international sound designers, engineers and artists, as well as manufacturers, committed to the high-quality audio reproduction.
Specifically, analog output from TiMax supplied six KV2 Audio ESP1000 amplifiers driving 16 KV2 Audio ESD Cube full-range loudspeakers and six EX1.5 subwoofers. KV2’s ESD Cubes were distributed through the length of the venue, five per side and five overhead, with subs positioned in pairs at the front, middle and end of the room.
Out Board/TiMax director Robin Whittaker sates, “SoundKitchen is a very special event and an important, safe and fun space for budding and established sound artists and designers to come together. Every year it’s enlightening. We were honored that KV2 Audio accepted our invitation to join us at SoundKitchen. I have the highest respect for KV2 loudspeakers and have been continually impressed with their excellent sound quality. Many thanks to them: their guys were amazing, the ESD Cube loudspeakers sounded fabulous, and the subs were very musical.
”KV2 Audio CEO George Krampera adds, “It’s great to be part of an event like Sound Kitchen that encourages experimentation and pushing the boundaries in audio and performance–ideas that very definitely resonate with us at KV2–and especially here in Prague on our home turf. We were also happy to note how good the system sounded with the TiMax analogue outputs. We hope to be able to collaborate again soon.”