32 l August 2013
www.psneurope.com SOUNDBITES live EUROPE
Bosch Communications Systems has partnered with Aktion Deutschland Hilft, (Germany’s Relief Coalition) in a charity auction to raise funds for victims of the recent floods. A DynacordCMS 600-3 mixer worth around €1,200 and signed by German soul singer Xavier Naidoo is available to bid on online at
stargebot.de. The auction runs until 18 August, and the entire proceeds will go to flood victims.
www.dynacord.com
Celestionhas appointed Istanbul- based Ertekin Elektronik as its new distribution partner for Turkey. The company will be distributing Celestion’s entire range, including HF compression drivers, LF drivers and guitar loudspeakers. “We are on target to deliver our strategy of developing a robust and sustainable worldwide distribution business,” said distribution sales manager, Kevin Shove. “The appointment of Ertekin is a key element of that plan.”
www.celestion.com www.ertekin.com.tr
Fineline Media Finance has enabled On Event Production (ON), to purchase eight L-Acoustics ARCS WIDE Constant Curvature cabinets and eight SB18m subwoofers through SSE Audio Group for an
investment of just over £100,000 (€115,000). “We’ve had such great experiences working with Fineline previously, so they were first on our list to call when we decided to make this investment,” said ON’s operations director Paul White.
www.fineline.co.uk
PLASA London 2013will feature more than 30 companies that did not exhibit in 2012, including Pioneer, Samsung and Sony, while many existing exhibitors – including Shure, Martin Audio, Roland, SSE Audio and Harman – have taken bigger stand space than last year. The exhibition takes place at the ExCeL Centre, London from 6–9 October 2013.
www.plasashow.com
Harman licence deal revealed
LAST MONTHsaw outline details of Harman Professional Division’s decision to license proprietary filter technologies from Oxford Digital for use in professional audio products made by various Harman brands. Now John Richards – CEO of Oxford Digital, which was spun out of Sony’s Pro Audio Lab, Oxford in 2006 – has confirmed to PSNEurope the precise technologies involved in the deal. The agreement is limited to
Oxford Digital to provide exclusive access to EQ technologies , writes David Davies However, in several key areas,
Harman will now enjoy exclusivity of Oxford Digital IP in the pro-audio field. In addition to having sole access to MajEq Pro Extensions to MajEq for EQ compaction, Harman will be able to tap into the SmoothEQ ‘freeform’ EQ creation package that also sports variants such as Asymmetric EQ and New Graphic EQ. There will also be exclusive
professional audio and includes access to Oxford Digital’s SmoothEQ, MajEq and Balanced Phase EQ patent families. In the case of MajEQ – an automated frequency correction technology with easy manual override capability – and specific DSP implementations of EQs such as infinitely variable slope LP and HP filters, Harman’s access to the relevant IP will be non-exclusive.
EUROPE Engineers diversify as manufacturers gear up for growth
Despite ongoing economic pressures, the live sound industry – as documented byPSNLive 2013 – is in relatively robust shape, writes David Davies
IN PORTRAYING an industry gradually regaining the lustre that it lost during the post-2008 downturn, the market reports contained in the 2013 edition of PSNLive – the annual live sound industry supplement from the makers of PSNEurope – maintain a pattern of development outlined in their two immediate predecessors. When it comes to optimism,
manufacturers take the proverbial biscuit, with 100% expecting their businesses to grow this year. PA/rental companies were slightly less robust in their predictions, with only 52% predicting an
overall increase in the number of paid rental days during 2013. On the other hand, a small
percentage forecasting a decrease (12%) indicates that sound providers are, at the very least, holding their own. Several of the most interesting findings this year, however, are arguably to be found in the sound engineers report. The early Noughties boom in the number of concerts and festivals led to some golden years for sound engineers, but now many report decline in the importance of live music to their overall workload; increasingly, corporate, conference and other private work is making up the shortfall. It’s too early yet to call this a
long-term trend as such, but it’s certainly something worth keeping an eye on… For full reports on the current outlook for manufacturers, PA/rental companies and sound engineers, see the latest edition of PSNLive – the digital edition of which can be accessed here:
www.psneurope.com/psnlive. Alongside these individual market reports, PSNLive 2013 examines the evermore abundant opportunities for audio-related training, and considers the ways in which performers – many of whom face the prospect of sharply declining income from recorded music – are looking to extract new revenue streams from live work. n
www.psneurope.com
pro-audio access to Balanced Phase EQ, which is a technique for providing EQ chains that have different frequency responses with phase coherence at the output. “Application areas here would include line arrays and transitioning between different EQ set-ups – for example, ‘House Full’ and ‘House Empty’ – so that there are no phase-cancellation effects,” Richards tells PSNEurope.
No details of specific implementations had been released at press-time, but it has been confirmed that Harman has the rights to use Oxford Digital IP in AKG, BSS, Crown, dbx, JBL, Lexicon, Soundcraft and Studer products. Discussions between the
two parties got underway in mid-February and concluded in early June, says Richards, who describes the deal as “a real win for both Oxford Digital and Harman, and one that is expected to lead to a long- term relationship between the two companies”. Following in the slipstream of
two significant awards for Oxford Digital in recent years for its technology for the semiconductor and consumer industries (the British Engineering Excellence Award for Product of the Year in 2011, and the National Microelectronics Institute Award
for Innovation in 2012), the Harman deal will only serve to reinforce perceptions of the UK-based company’s processing prowess. “We are very happy to be
working with Harman and look forward to the deployment of the technology across the Harman Pro brands over the coming years,” says Richards. Mark Ureda, vice president,
strategy and technology for the Harman Professional Division, comments: “Oxford Digital brings many unique filter and EQ feature sets which will augment the capabilities of products across our portfolio... in the installation, broadcast, cinema and tour sound markets. The user interfaces they have developed for these complex processing algorithms are remarkably intuitive to use.” n
www.harmanpro.com www.oxford-digital.com
For the latest live news
www.psneurope.com/live
John Richards, Oxford Digital
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