Short Takes is the mix's very own bulletin board - this is the place for dealer information, recording courses, price changes and idle gossip

APRS Announce New Venue For '95 Show

APRS is announcing a new name and venue for the 1995 exhibition. Taking place from the 21st to the 23rd of June, Audio Technology '95 - the APRS Show is to be held in the National Hall at Olympia, London where the show aims to reflect every facet of today's professional audio industry.

More from: Phillip Vaughan, APRS (Contact Details)

SM24 For Scandinavian Concert Sound

Scandinavian Concert Sound of Stockholm has taken delivery of a Soundcraft SM 24 Monitor Console. Concert Sound is one of the leading names in Swedish live sound.

The SM24 has already been used for the Stockholm Jazz Festival, a series of concerts featuring an international array of jazz musicians, and the ten-day-long Stockholm Water festival featuring many of Sweden's top artists. More recent projects have included a Swedish national tour of the musical 'Cats'!

More from: Candy Davies, (Contact Details)

Roland Live At Bristol

Roland paraded its musical wares at the Bristol Music Show on November 13th with live demonstrations of its latest high-tech equipment.

Peter Stone gave the first live demonstration of the new JV-1080 Super Synthesizer Module and its expansion boards, together with the S-760 sampler and the SC-88 Super Sound Canvas.

Guitar based products got the full treatment at the hands of Nick Cooper, with the GR-09 guitar synth, SE-70 multi-effects, ME-X expandable multi-effects and DR-5 Rhythm Unit.

Gary O'Toole took care of digital percussion with a demonstration of the new TD-5K drum kit.

More from: Ian Cullen, Roland UK (Contact Details)

Business booms At Revamped battery NY

The bookings diary is full at New York's Battery Studios, where a major refurbishment programme by UK studio designers Harris Grant Associates has boosted demand for the prestigious Manhattan facility on West 25th Street.

With visitors to Battery over the past few months including Vanessa Williams, Tony Toni Tone, R Kelly and Naughty By Nature, demand for the reshaped facility has been such that a string of other big names have been forced to book time elsewhere.

The studio includes a SSL 4064 G-series console, teamed with a brace of Studer A827 multitracks under control of a Motionworker sync package.

More from: Harris, (Contact Details)

Behringer present awards

Behringer have recently presented another 43 of their prestigious Blue Riband Sound Engineer awards. The awards are given to Sound Engineers who have worked with Behringer products for a long time, or who've relied on them throughout complete tours.

Pictured above, receiving their awards from Behringer UK Director Graham Allen, are Robbie McGrath (Simply Red), Jim Ebdon (Wet Wet Wet), and 'Big' Mick Hughes (Metallica). See Composer and Autocom reviews in this issue...

More from: Behringer (Contact Details)

New dance production Course

Belgian composer/producer, Philip Martens of Sterman and Cook and the man behind 2 Unlimited, recently acquired a Soundtracs Jade 40 channel patchbay production console from Brussels based distributor ASC. Philip has been personally responsible for 2 Unlimited's hits - 'Workaholic', 'Tribal Dance' and 'Maximum Overdrive' to name but a few. He is now in hiding with his Jade somewhere in Belgium!

More from: Sally Haseman at Soundtracs (Contact Details)

Vision From heaven

The Studiomaster Vision 8 powered mixer reviewed in last month's issue comes for £1173, not for the price stated in the review. For that you get the following features:

- 350 watts per channel
- 6 inputs
- 8 XLR mic inputs
- Rackmount option
- MIDI control
- Programmable reverb

More from: Studiomaster (Contact Details)

d-Zone in a different zone

d-zone have a new Freepost address for UK orders: d-zone direct, (Contact Details). New titles include Loopisms Volume Four (CD £11), and Workstation Volume One (CD £11), and a special deal at the moment is all four Loopisms volumes, plus Workstation Vol One, plus a embroidered hat, all for £50.

Top ten rentals november

1 Alesis ADAT
2 Tascam DA88
3 C-Lab Unitor
4 Otari MTR90
5 Atari Mega4
6 Akai S1000
7 Friendchip SRC-A/T
8 Cubase Version 3
9 Atari 1040ST
10 Akai S3000

Info kindly provided by FX Rentals (Contact Details)

HW International To Distribute Camco Amplifiers

HW International have now been appointed distributors of German Camco PA in the UK and Eire, the Camco design encompasses twin toroidal power supplies and bi-polar output circuits. The amplifiers are cooled by a variable DC fan and have built-in adjustable limiters together with switching for in phase/out of phase inputs, bridge and hot pin configuration.

More from: HW International (Contact Details)

AES Lecture: PA Systems - Do They Get A Fair Hearing?

This lecture is intended to demonstrate that in many cases, it is buildings themselves that are the limiting factor to good sound quality, particularly their architecture and their acoustics.

The lecture will look at current systems design philosophy and hardware and will also discuss the critical loudspeaker-room interface and requirement for good speech intelligibility.

Recently developed techniques for measuring and assessing sound system performance and the increasing problems of noise pollution created by entertainment and emergency systems will, amongst other things also be addressed.

The lecture will be held in the conference suite (Southside Main Teaching Room), Imperial College, Princes Gardens, off Exhibition Road, London, SW7 on Tuesday 13th December. The lecture starts at 7pm (refreshments at 6.30pm).

More from: AES British Section (Contact Details)

Roland and Apple Computer Agree Sound And MIDI Standard Partnership

Roland and Apple have signed an agreement over the application of MIDI and sound within Systems 7.5. Apple's new operating software now includes a software synthesizer (with sounds derived from the Sound Canvas family), and the ability to synchronize GM SMF with Quicktime v2.0 moving images courtesy of Roland.

More from: Roland UK (Contact Details)

Beatfarm Studios Re-open

Beatfarm studios near Waterloo have re-opened after a 3 month refurbishment period. This 24 track studio has been specifically designed to accomodate dance music.

The studio boasts a large collection of vintage synths, all accessible via MIDI and CV gate. The studio also contains a custom Atari computer system with Cubase, Notator and Creator and, of course the studio also has a live room.

They have had a special ATC monitoring system fitted with the demands of dance production in mind. This, they say, enables the studio to take on the authentic feel of a dance environment, so artists can experience first hand what their music will sound like through a club PA system.

The first to use the newly refurbished studio was New York record producer Arthur Baker...

More from: Beatfarm office (Contact Details)

Price Cut on Yamaha Digital Audio Recorder

Yamaha has announced a dramatic price cut for its CBX-D5 desktop hard disk digital audio recorder. Previously priced at £2499, the D5 now provides 2-channel recording and 4-channel playback with powerful on-board digital mixing and effects and integrated MIDI recording and playback at only £1599.

The D5 owes its audio quality to Yamaha's 18 bit D-to-A converters and 8x oversampling filters. 82 algorithms offer a variety of reverb, modulation and other treatments and in dual mode, two effects can be used simultaneously.

More from: (Contact Details)

In-House MPEG-1 Service Launched By Nimbus

An investment of £1/4 million to launch an industry-leading MPEG-1 compression suite has been undertaken by Nimbus Information Systems.

The suite will offer a unique one-stop-shop service allowing clients to transfer full motion, full screen video onto CD, providing a complete mastering and replication service.

The MPEG suite offers a tape to disc facility with high quality digital encoding and video processing to ensure a consistent high quality product.

More from: Emil Dudeck, Nimbus Information Systems (Contact Details)

Digital Frankenstein

Kenneth Brannagh's new movie, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which opens on the 4th of November, features a soundtrack recorded by Ivan Sharrock on the Nagra-D.

Among the best known film sound recordists in the business, with over 60 major credits to his name, including Bertolucci's 'The Last Emperor', Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' and Karel Reisz's 'The French Lieutenant's Woman, Ivan's endorsement of the format is highly significant.

Having previously hired Nagra-Ds for some of his most prestigious projects, he in fact purchased his own recorder, prior to commencing work on Frankenstein.

More from: Nagra Kudelski (GB) LTD. (Contact Details)

New Sound System At ECI

The new club ECI on Farringdon Road, London has recently taken delivery of an Eskimo Noise 20K sound system. The club, with a capacity of 700, promises to be one of London's top venues with full DJ and live facilities.

The opening night there went off with a bang with the 'Lifes A Bitch' promotion and will continue to bring in the punters with 'The Dove Club', 'Not Forgotten', 'Fat Cat Records', 'Children's TV' and Andy Wetherall's 'Sabresonic' amongst others.

The sound system is loud and bassy, the club has full air conditioning and the lighting and visuals are no less impressive. With two bars, great premises and friendly security, this venue is worth taking a look at. It is now available for hire at a competitive rate.

More from: ECI (Contact Details)

Lighting Enhancement software

HM have just released a new disk to enhance MIDI lighting rigs. Light Tech contains almost 100 files including strobes, chases, fade ins, fade outs, pans, explosions, as well as a few combination files. The files can be loaded into any sequencer that accepts MIDI files then copied, cut and pasted to suit individual needs. The price is only £8.95 plus £1.00 p&p.

HMQY300 phrase disk vol 2 is out now with many more on the way. Volume 1 (melodic) contains bass, keyboard, and guitar phrases as well as a wide selection of arpeggio effects while vol 2 is strictly drum and percussion based. The price is £19.95 plus £1.00 P&P.

More from: Heavenly Music MIDI Software (Contact Details)

Beyerdynamic, Björk and Evelyn Glennie On The Telly!

A concert featuring Icelandic artist, Björk, accompanied by classical percussionist, Evelyn Glennie, was recently recorded for MTV an transmitted during November.

Greg Malcangi of Heritage Studios, Evelyn's sound engineer, used Beyerdynamic's MC740 Studio Condenser Mic to record the Marimba, which is a difficult instrument to mic due its full frequency range and both loud and subtle timbre, he was yet again impressed by the versatility and transparency of the microphone, and says that the excellent results will speak for themselves when the programme goes out.

More from: Stephanie Scrape (Contact Details)