Atlona promotes Shamir to VP role
Atlona has announced the promotion of David Shamir to the role of VP of product management. The company said that the new role combines “product management and engineering leadership into a single role streamlines Atlona’s internal processes, increasing the company’s agility and responsiveness to rapidly evolving market needs.”
Shamir will report to the company’s co-founder and CEO Ilya Khayn and will continue to lead the company’s product strategy while expanding his responsibilities to oversee engineering and product development.
“Our industry was already very dynamic and constantly changing, but the pandemic has accelerated many existing trends while making AV more critical in environments such as small and home offices,” said Shamir. “With COVID-19, things are changing by the minute, making it challenging to accurately predict how the AV market will evolve. We will stay as nimble as possible to address our customers’ changing needs, while offering flexible solutions that help them adapt to world conditions and whatever their ‘new normal’ becomes.”
CEO Ilya Khayn, added, “David’s insight, experience and process implementation have been major factors in Atlona’s growth and innovation over the past five years,” said CEO Khayn. “We look forward to his expanded leadership as our company tackles the new challenges faced by our customers, and we thank Michael for his exceptional contributions in making Atlona what we are today.”
New York’s Public Theater takes its shows on the road
Clear-Com has been discussing its work with The Public Theatre in New York, and how its Agent-IC mobile app and FreeSpeak II wireless intercom helped to enable remote productions, event troubleshooting and communications while the theatre was shit down due to Covid restrictions.
The theatre organisation pivoted to running remote productions, recording projects and live streaming during the lockdown period and has relied on Clear-Com’s FreeSpeak II intercom as the main source of theater communications during shows and rehearsals.
“During technical rundowns and previews, it allows easy and clear communications among stage managers, designers, backstage crews and technical teams,” said Corrine Livingston, audio supervisor at The Public Theater. “The wireless aspect gives everyone so much more freedom to move around without being connected to a cable. At The Delacorte [theatre], our 16 channels of FreeSpeak allow our teams to walk around that 1800-seat amphitheater and focus on getting their jobs done: props, handoffs, automation, whatever they need to do.”
As shows grow more elaborate and complex, Clear-Com said the FreeSpeak II system has kept pace with the theatre’s expanding production requirements.
“Audience expectations are increasing. There’s more video and multimedia now incorporated into shows. We’ve seen our design teams grow in numbers,” Livingston added. “Comms used to be just a designer and A-1 [primary audio engineer] talking to the stage manager. Now it’s full design teams, programmers and others who also need to be in contact on a system. Our level of communications had to progress and FreeSpeak gives us the flexibility for this growth.”
Powersoft takes star turn at reggae venue
Also releasing details about its recent installs has been audio specialist Powersoft, which has played an enabling role in the renovation of the Star & Garter venue in the UK city of Bristol.
The pub which has been saved from closure twice in recent years, most recently following the death of former landlord Louis Hayle, has now reopened through the help of local music figure Malcolm Haynes with a new audio system installed by Qualitex Sound System (QSS).
The install was overseen by ‘Powersoft evangelist’ Linford Bailey. “I only ever recommend Powersoft to QSS customers,” he said. “Obviously the size of the job determines which models I’ll specify. I linked up with CUK Audio about seven or eight years ago and, since then, I’ve been able to get access whatever is required, whether that’s T Series or X4L for live gigs or Quattrocanali and Ottocanali for fixed installs.”
The Star & Garter’s new sound system was required to cover a number of rooms, including a lounge, dance floor, the main bar and a chill out area.
“We were told to order 12 Biamp Community W2-228’s (2×8″ loudspeakers), and after installing the first two we realised that 12 was a bit too far. We ended up only using four of them across all of the rooms. It’s usually running at quite a low level but with a very clean sound,” he added. The system is driven by one Powersoft Duecanali 4804 and two Quattrocanali 2004.
On his relationship with Powersoft, Bailey said, “I’ve been using their products and telling people about them for decades, all quite unofficially of course. I went to demo day in London a few years ago and spoke them about different things, but most of my feedback goes to Stuart at CUK Audio, who relays findings back to Powersoft. When the X8 came out and we had so much success with it that I wanted a sub amp; lo and behold the X4L came out. Stuart leant me one and I’ve already told him that he’s not getting it back as I’m more than pleased with it.”
