10 l December 2013
www.psneurope.com
reviewoftheyear Antony David at the launch of the SSL Live PRO SOUND AWARDS
product manager at Ravenna developer ALC NetworX, confirms that 2013 was a significant year for the technology: alongside the demonstration of commercially available Ravenna-enabled products at NAB, Hildebrand draws attention to the publication of the AES67 standard (formerly X192), with which Ravenna is fully compliant. “Currently, 25 companies have entered into a Ravenna partnership, with MTS, WorldCast Systems and Archwave added in 2013,” he says. Looking ahead, Hildebrand expects to see “the deployment of Ravenna-enabled products into major key projects” soon, and highlights plans for a “manufacturer-independent management layer” to manage and administrate all Ravenna devices/ streams in a selected network area. But for all the undoubted
progress in making networking more accessible to the wider world, the results of this year’s industry survey by annual PSNEurope special publication PSNLive couldn’t help but give cause for pause. Only 64% of engineers
canvassed expected networking to have a substantial impact on their daily lives over the next two-to-three years – a drop of 8% from the previous year. Simultaneously, the percentage of those in the group that we might label the ‘hardcore cynics’ rose by 12%. Somewhere, somehow, the educational effort isn’t quite doing the trick…
CONSOLE COMPETITION INTENSIFIES From the Soundcraft Vi1 to the Midas PRO series, the recent-years trend in favour of miniaturisation is undeniable. Priced competitively, smaller- format consoles have brought multiple benefits to road-warriors and install customers alike.
Simultaneously, manufacturers have sought to address the need for multi-functionality by introducing new features – most imaginatively in the form of Soundcraft’s DMX lighting control-enabled Si Performer. Speaking of Soundcraft, the
Harman brand made one of the year’s most significant additions to the compact console offer in the form of the Si Expression range. Each model in the three-product range offers a capacity of up to 66 inputs to mix by connecting any Soundcraft stagebox, including the newly launched Mini Stagebox 16 and 32. Elsewhere in the console
firmament, other manufacturers consolidated their presence in existing markets – and even ventured forth into new ones. From Calrec, the live broadcast-
oriented Callisto is designed for those broadcast professionals not requiring as many resources as users of the company’s Apollo and Artemis consoles. Another
Lawo mc2 56 console put
through its paces at Rock en Seine
SEPTEMBER 2013 marked the launch of the Pro Sound Awards at London’s Ministry of Sound nightclub. Regarded by many of those attending as a resounding success, the Awards recognised achievement across and contribution to the pro-audio landscape, in the disciplines of studio, broadcast, live sound and installed sound. Andy Munro received a lifetime achievement trophy for his services to studio design, and the BEIRG founders picked up the Grand Prix for their efforts in managing and preserving the radio spectrum in changing and turbulent times.
Winners pictured here (clockwise from top right) are Andy Munro, Riedel’s Nick Williams, Conrad Fletcher and the Mixbus Audio team, engineer Toby Alington, British Grove’s David Stewart and Sennheiser’s Mark Saunders (right) with event host Alistair Williams.
broadcast market stalwart, Solid State Logic, surprised Prolight + Sound visitors by announcing its entry into the live audio market with the appropriately-named SSL Live console. Shipping got underway in late September, with the first three consoles to hit the road accompanying Britannia Row on Peter Gabriel’s So-revisiting tour (see page 36). “The first tour has completed with the Peter Gabriel production team putting [the SSL Live] firmly through its paces and affirming that it passed without a single major problem,” says SSL MD Antony David. “Commercial tours are just getting underway in France, Italy and Mexico, while we are now in the closing stages of developing a global reseller partner network which includes some of our long- standing partners and some new ones. We have doubled production to keep in step with the significant demand and the order book for Q1 next year is already filling up.” In France, Lawo flexed its
Innovason-honed live-sound muscles and spent the summer touring, road-testing an mc256 console – built for broadcast – at music festivals. Intelligence gathered may well
feed into a launch into that market for the German giant. Watch this space… Apart from the steady flow of
new product elsewhere, the console market witnessed a flurry of major league personnel transfer ‘action’. In particular, several former ‘star strikers’ at Midas Klark Teknik (MKT) moved on to positions at other console makers. In May, SSL announced that Jason Kelly, formerly product manager at MKT, was to become product manager for its new Live console. A few months later, Cadac confirmed the appointment of two former MKT staffers, James Godbehear and Richard ‘Fez’ Ferriday, to take respective responsibility for brand marketing and brand development. So that was the year that was.
The wave of refocusing and downsizing confirms that it’s still tough out there – but it certainly isn’t stagnant, as is the case in so many other professional market sectors. With the flow of new product
at a greater intensity than at any time since the 2008-10 economic cycle, pro-audio is more than holding its own against the pressures of the prevailing climate. Roll on 2014!
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