The Audio Department has spent recent months investigating new and more creative solutions to serve our clients. As mentioned elsewhere, in the “Insider”, our Staging Conference last July was a huge success. Twenty-four of the attendees were audio engineers who spent much of their time assessing equipment and system design processes to improve themselves as well as Alford Media’s service and support. A few of the equipment highlights of the week were a Meyer M3D line array speaker system, an Innovason digital console and the Macpherson Monolith V2.

Meyer set up a private demonstration of their new M3D Line Array for Alford Media at a local football stadium. The information gained at the demo along with our recent experience with other line arrays such as V-DOSC and EAW made for some interesting conversations at the conference. At the end of the day the overwhelming consensus was that line array systems are great tools but not the end-all-solution for the majority of our applications. Most agreed that when a line array was the right tool, all three are capable systems. However, in most of the ballrooms and exhibit halls that we work in, a multi-point, zoned speaker system design remains a versatile and efficient solution.

The Innovason console was very impressive. Although it looks similar to a lighting console, a fact that we sound folks play down, it has flexibility beyond any analog desk we have looked at. The console package has an integral snake system along with the entire outboard processing built into the operating system. There are multiple formats of the Innovason, but the forty-eight channel Grand Live appears to satisfy our initial needs. We have already had a Grand Live on a show with rave reviews from all involved.

The real excitement came from a listening test of the Monolith Version 2. Randy Robert, one of our lead road engineers, began work on modifications to our flagship speaker box last spring. In April he presented his findings to Macpherson Inc. who took the info and used it as the basis to refine the Monolith. Our entire inventory will be updated to V2 by the first of the year. Congratulations Randy and thanks for your efforts.

With an innovation only a techie could appreciate, Magenta Research has introduced us to the reality of using CAT 5 cable for long video runs. This is exciting because CAT 5 cable is significantly less expensive than the high quality coax cable we currently use. It is also lighter and easier to handle. However, these advantages are not enough if the video quality isn’t there. The quality is there, and it is actually an improvement when used on long cable runs. What this means for our customers is that we can help hold our costs down while making better images.

Folsom VFC 2200’s are not new anymore, but that has not stopped Folsom from innovating. Behind the scenes of their regular software updates, they have been developing new firmware that provides some very exciting new features including moving picture-in-picture and seamless edge blending. Needless to say Alford Media was one of the first in line for upgrading all our units.

New features come with a catch and the Folsom upgrades required that we upgrade our control systems. New to our fleet will soon be Vista Controls’ Screenmaster II 3216 Control Console. Designed specifically to take advantage of the VFC 2200’s new features, the console also boasts many other new techie-pleasing features.

It’s not possible to avoid mentioning projection (because it’s all about projection, you know). Alford Media has chosen the new Barco R6 projector to add to its fleet. The baby brother to the very successful and very reliable Barco ELM R12, the R6 is also an SXGA native DLP projector but boasting 5000 lumens and only weighing 100 pounds.

We could write several pages on all the things the new High End Systems X-Spot can do. Let’s just say that it has to be the most sophisticated moving light ever made. It has a very long zoom, more pan and tilt, remote focus, and more gobo and wheel effects than you could use in a week. The Video folks will be happy that it has a lot of color temperature control so it is camera-friendly. We’ve added a dozen X-Spots to our fleet. We have also upgraded all of our High End Cyberlights to the new Turbo model. Our price to you hasn’t changed so you get more bang for the buck.

There has been a lot going on in the warehouse in the Lighting Department. We have been implementing all the improvements that came out of this Summer’s Retreat. New workboxes for large shows have been built, cable has been repackaged for more efficient load-ins, and we have had to make room for a lot of new gear. Growth in inventory brings growth in staff and Keith Allen has recently joined our Lighting team. He is experienced in moving light maintenance and repair as well as with conventional lights and dimmers.