Audio is as much of an art as it is a science. And yet, AV and IT managers are expected to magically appear at a corporate theater, boardroom, or university campus and clip mics on presenters, adjust goosenecks, and ensure a solid performance. HARMAN’s Jay Fullmer created this Workbook as your ‘sound reference’ for distributed audio applications, live sound best practices, and every decibel in between.

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A Victorian-era problem was met with modern technology solutions due to the deteriorating windows of a church, circa 1870s, in historic downtown Clarksville.

Leaders of the First Presbyterian Church, whose congregation meets in a prominent Gothic Revival building listed on the National Register of Historic Places, discovered that three rosette windows in the church’s bell tower had fallen into a state of disrepair. As happens with such window frames from this era – which were originally crafted of wood, nail and glue construction – the frames had rotted and cracked. This jeopardized the structural integrity of the frames that were designed to hold hand-colored, stenciled glass within their tracery.
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Fort Knox is perhaps best known for the gold bullion depository that the U.S. Department of the Treasury maintains there, in northwestern Kentucky. But the huge base’s 100,000-plus acres also house the U.S. Army Human Resources Department’s Command Center of Excellence, the Army Cadet Command and the Army Accessions Command. Over 12,000 people reside and work on the base, bringing enormous diversity in all areas of life, including worship. Four chapels on base serve many of them, and they were collectively upgraded recently with RoomMatch® and Panaray® loudspeaker systems from Bose® Professional.

AV systems integrators SKC and AXXIS jointly worked on the project, and they formed an excellent pair: nationally based SKC brought scale to the project and Louisville-based AXXIS, a Bose Professional dealer managed the installation. Keith Stengl, Design Engineer at SKC, the lead contractor on the project, stated, “We always put the customer’s needs first, and it was clear that the challenges that these venues presented would be best served by Bose technology.”

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by Meghann Evans Winston-Salem Journal

More than 2,000 years ago, in the little town of Bethlehem, a baby was born — the one who would be called Jesus Christ. This year, at a church in Kernersville, NC, the Nativity story will come to life in a new way.

Local businessman Bobby Davis has created and produced The Christmas Experience, which uses 3-D projection technology to immerse people in the story of Christ’s birth. First Christian Church Ministries in Kernersville will play host to the outdoor walk-through event, which runs from Friday through Dec. 22. Guests will visit five custom sound stages and sets to watch each part of the story. Recorded actors will be projected onto the stages like holograms.

Two years ago, Davis approached his pastor of First Christian, the Rev. Pete Kunkle, with the bold idea. Now the vision will be a reality.

“We want to tell the Christmas story in a new and innovative way, and Bobby made that possible,” Kunkle said.

The project, which features an original script and music, has been a major undertaking. Davis wrote the script and searched for experienced singers and actors, who recorded music in a studio and were filmed over the summer. Davis and his team have been editing video and marketing the project while crews built the final sets.

“It’s definitely a brand new Christmas experience,” Davis said.

by Brad Gallagher

I have a saying when it comes to technology. It’s often mentioned in a TV show that my wife and I watch religiously, called “Once”. It says, “All Magic comes with a Price”.

Let’s face it. Most technology might as well be magic to the average person. When considering how to best leverage that technology, organizations need to consider both the hard and soft costs. One component that is frequently considered too late in the design process is the audio-visual control system.

Organizations obsess over the hard costs and often fail to fully consider the soft costs – This is often because they do not receive sufficient guidance in this area. Anyway, in these types of systems, staffing and ease of use are the primary soft cost most of the time. A control system is essential, because it is a force multiplier that allows you to leverage the effectiveness of those hard technology costs, while minimizing the soft costs.

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