Music industry: sustainability and scalability

Small seems to be the new big. In terms of digital mixing consoles anyway, small footprint desks are taking over.

“The main change in the live industry is the digitalisation of consoles,” Music Bank’s studio technician Charlie Bryson says. “OK, the Midas XL8 is arguably still the biggest and best, but there are a number of manufacturers that have taken the best of some of the oldest digital desks, like the Yamaha PM5D, and created something equally as good, yet drastically smaller. Avid’s Venue revolutionised a lot of things, then there’s Soundcraft’s Vi consoles, which are right up there, and more recently still, Roland’s M480 is looking very impressive.”

And there’s further proof behind Bryson’s theory. The latest addition to Soundcraft’s Vi range, the Vi1, retains much of its bigger brothers’ processing power as well as a Vistonics interface, all in an ultra-compact frame, while the Si Compact is the manufacturer’s smallest digital offering to date, currently being used on tour with Deep Purple keyboard player Don Airey. DiGiCo’s SD9 (Red Snapper) also released last year, is its smallest footprint digital console, and among the most popular in the live market at present, boasting much of the same processing power as the company’s larger SD consoles.

Bright Thinking

But it’s not just consoles that are becoming more compact. For the US boy band reunion tour featuring New Kids On The Block and Backstreet Boys, Butch Allen is using 79 of GLP’s footlight features, miniature LED spots providing improved ‘truckability’.

“Aside from the fact they are super-bright and fast, with a 155ft wide stage I needed a small fixture,” Allen explains. “These weigh just 8kg a piece, but the packaging is also really good, with just six heads contained in a tiny case. Even though the artists move under the catwalk, there is plenty of space for storing the GLP roadcases. This means they can be stripped in minutes when we break down after the show.”

“LED is getting better and better, and moving lights are now plausible. In the last year, they have become that little bit more affordable, and have been gaining serious momentum as a result.”

Tom Warden, Impact Production Services

Tom Warden, project manager at Impact Production Services (IPS), says there has been an increased demand for LED fixtures in the last 12 months too, with more lighting and video collaboration.

“Martin Professional MAC 401s are proving very popular, and the MAC 101s are barely in our warehouse, they’re always out. We’re also seeing more and more AV business, especially in HD plasma screens.” Tom Warden commented.

Be Ready

Next year’s Channel 38 switchover has been another buzzword in the live market, with so many people still up in the air when it comes to the details. Shure and Sennheiser got together with A.C. Entertainment Technologies’ audio division A.C. Audio a few months ago to run a second series of open days in the north and south of the country in a bid to raise awareness.

Tuomo Tolonen, Shure’s applications and product planning manager, as well as a BEIRG representative, believes that five years from now,   an analogue wireless mic because of the surge in digital technology. He says people should be binning their old gear, getting themselves a license, and only purchasing Channel 38 ready equipment.

“Ignorance will lead to many complaints flooding in to manufacturers from clients saying ‘My radio mic sounds horrible’, come the switchover,” he claims. “I fully expect this to happen, which is why we’re trying to raise awareness. We have to educate people on this; surrender your old systems to funding where possible and migrate to the new allocated brands.”

But it isn’t quite as easy as that, Warden says IPS is still waiting on funding from Ofcom. “Some of the Channel 69 gear is still going strong, so it’s hard to know when you have to make the change completely, as a lot of our wireless systems are multi-purpose,” he says. “But we decided recently to invest in Shure’s U4RD wireless system, which is Channel 38 ready, and it sounds great.”

Sustainability

“Venues, exhibition organisers and corporates are starting to demand it, but for businesses to succeed in the current climate, they need to be sustainable,” Darren Poultney, managing director at Smart AV, tells this magazine. “We are the only AV company in the UK that has achieved BS 8901. We had to re-evaluate everything we did, from buying RoHS compliant equipment to how we work abroad, and question every decision we made. Having this standard proves our levels of supply and ensures venues and exhibition organisers are more likely to work with us.”

On a financial note, Poultney says the larger projects are still happening, and that turnover on the company’s year to August 2011 is up 20 per cent on 2010, which is “apparently bucking the trend”. And being a member of ESSA (Event Supplier and Services Association) is becoming more and more important as clients are now looking towards such associations for quality reference.

“A lot of competitors say they lost a job because of budget; I have found they normally lose the job because the client is shopping around more and actually found a supplier with a better service,” Poultney explains. “Freight is also a major issue, which is why we have a stock holding in the Middle East to reduce our customers’ shipping costs. We maintain our margins by investing in the latest equipment such as 138in multi-touch walls, 103in plasma screens and seamless panels. If you’re hiring domestic level screens, clients are just going out and purchasing them themselves.”

Technology

SGM’s new X-5 low emission white strobe has taken the market by storm. It contains 3,000 LEDs with a 50,000 hour lamp life, and rather than the 1,600A required to drive 100 conventional strobes, the X-5 only needs a 300A draw.

“Rental companies can save on two gensets of 150kWA each by replacing 100 conventional strobes with our versions,” SGM R&D director Peter Johansen says. “The X-5 gives the event hire industry worldwide a real opportunity, not only to make considerable cost savings, but at the same time help protect the environment.”

Optocore fibre has also been making some serious waves. Capital Sound premiered the system on Take That’s Progress tour. Using Neutrik optical fibre cable, the Optocore design was constructed around two A and B rings of X6R-FX converters, configured eight mic inputs and eight AES-EBU out, with a redundant link.

Pioneered by Wigwam’s Chris Hill, who was “getting sick to death of spending thousands of pounds every year on cable and transmission systems which were never going to be used again”, the system offers far greater runs and could revolutionise signal distribution in the live market.

“I had been looking for an opportunity to buy into the system as it’s obviously the way that signal distribution will be going,” Capital Sound’s technical manager, Ian Colville, says. “Fibre returns racks are the way forward, especially on big shows with several stages, so we made a certain level of investment and Optocore kindly loaned us the rest.”