Turbosound Milan MI5

As I was walking around my back garden, I saw wafts of smoke coming from the Partridge Green area of West Sussex.  I pulled out my Smoke Signal Decoder 1000 and translated the signals into something truly amazing.

On the 1st October, 2009 – Turbosound will be launching a brand new product aimed at the Mobile DJ market.

Here’s the blurb…

For almost three decades Turbosound has enabled the passion, energy and emotion in live music to be enjoyed by vast numbers of people around the world. Now get yourself some of that in-your-face Turbosound attitude in a great-sounding, portable, durable and stylishly attractive powered loudspeaker that will raise your live sound to a new level: introducing the Milan MI5.

Milan stands out from the crowd: its integrated 450w Class D amplifier gives the most output from a compact package, while the sophisticated DSP provides frequency-dependent limiting for maximum audio quality and drive unit protection. The two-channel mixer accepts both mic and line inputs on jack/XLR to easily balance all your instruments and music sources, and the Mix-Out function provides the versatility to daisy-chain to further Milan cabinets to expand your system.

Don’t think of Milan only as PA speaker. It’s also a great keyboard amp or powerful wedge monitor. Its 43° wedge angle is derived from the world’s most popular monitor wedge – the TFM-450 – and is optimised for stability and best coverage.

Milan benefits from Turbosound’s advanced acoustics technology: the Converging Elliptical Waveguide provides great intelligibilty and excellent coverage over a wide audience area, aided by the ingenious dual angle pole holder which provides an additional 12° downward tilt.

Get the whole Milan package at www.turbosound.com on October 1st.

Technical Blurb…

• Two-way digitally self-powered loudspeaker
• 15″ neo LF, 1″ neo HF compression driver
• 131dB peak, 23Hz – 22kHz ±10dB
• 90°h x 60°v
• 720h x 470w x 400d
• 22kg

Now, we are hoping to get Turbosound in early next year (probably March) to showcase the MI5.  I will be getting a couple of units in the coming weeks to try out on the road so I will be posting the review here and of course hopefully it will be printed in Pro Mobile for all to see.  I should have a verbal review ready by November ShowNight all being well, so it should give you something to look forward to.

For more information, check out www.turbosound.com or download the Milan MI5 brochure here!

PLASA 09

Plasa opened its doors once again this year at Earls Court in London to host the annual entertainment technology tradeshow. Over 300 exhibitors were present this year, with a wide variety of products on show from moving heads to truss systems and from LED panels to CDs.

This year SEDA had a presence at the show (for the first time in many years) to promote the association and its benefits of joining. Paul Forsyth and myself ran the stand in Earls Court for the run of the show with other help from other SEDA members. The show was a great success for the association which held lots of networking opportunities with DJs and manufacturers alike.

At the show this year the usual brands were present including Martin, Sennheiser, Function One and Robe. The usual quantity of freebies could be seen including the famous Martin bags and lanyards as well as the more unusual stress balls other items to grab your attention. However there was a definite decrease in the number of DJ manufactures at the show. Maybe this is due to success and timing of the DJ based show, BPM, in October.

Mastermix, Mixmash and Promo Only all had stands with discounts available at the show with some free CDs being given away too. Kam and Chauvet both had stands demonstrating their LED products and more. Kam took the chance to demo their new range of lasers which are very impressive, especially for the price. Numark had a large stand again this year, showing off their flagship product, the NS7, several units were available for a hands-on testing further to their launch back in May, which I was lucky enough to attend.

The noise boys, Function One and Void once again exhibited at the show. Function One were also available to listen too in one of the upstairs demo rooms whilst Void had on show their high-end and touring speaker systems. Denon also had a presence with Allen and Heath, although the majority of the stand was taken by the A&H professional sound desks.

S&H launched a new product at PLASA this year that will interest some mobile jocks, the new S&H mini DJ booth. The smaller booth measures 4ft instead of 6ft and is ideal for discos with a smaller setup, or those that want a smaller booth as an option for those gigs where space is at a premium. The new booth, as ever is available in both LED and pea light variants. For more information please contact S&H direct. Also on show from S&H was a very nice LED, video dance floor. This new dance floor is able to process video from a standard PC DVI output and transforms the floor into a big TV.

Overall, the show was missing some important DJ brands, which was a shame. However the show was still well worth visiting and was enjoyed by those who did. PLASA still continues to be a good show, let’s just hope a few more DJ manufacturers exhibit next year. The exhibition shows DJs one thing very well and that is what we can expect to see in our market in the next few years. This was proved a few years ago with the use of LEDs. In fact I would be very interested to know how many LEDs were actually used at the show, recording breaking figures I’m sure. Needless to say I enjoyed PLASA once again this year and am looking forward to my next stop, BPM.

Pioneer CDJ-2000

Well, the secret is finally out, and here it is!  This is the brand new CDJ-2000 from Pioneer.  A hybrid of the best the CDJ-1000 MK3 had to offer and everything the MEP-7000 has to offer.  Pioneer also launched a brand new replacement for the CDJ-800, named the CDJ-900, a baby brother to the one above, but more about that later.

So…what does it do?  Well, first of all, pop over to DJsounds.com where some of the biggest names in the industry will show you exactly what this unit is capable of.  Several SEDA members are lucky enough to make it to the official launch tonight at the Ministry Of Sound in London, so whilst we wait for their official report, here are a few videos for you to watch.

Here’s another picture for you to drool over…

Full report and pictures from the launch party….TOMORROW!

Plasa 09 – Photos

Just a few photos from my trip to PLASA 09 on Sunday.

Dawn of a new species

Dawn of a new species….

Pioneer are without a doubt the manufacturer of choice for playback and mixing devices in the professional DJ industry.  For years their CDJ-1000 CD turntables have dominated the DJ booths of this world’s clubs, and rightly so.  The user experience, innovation and reliability is second to none.

Now is the time for Pioneer to unveil the next generation for the Pro DJ, the ultimate tool in their arsenal.  Believe me, it is going to be awesome, and it will change dramatically the way I DJ.  The user experience of the control surfaces are of the same high quality, and there are a few amazing new features too which will allow us to concentrate more on lifting the crowds we play to.  Preparation of our music and connectivity are also key areas where you will see great features and changes.

The Dawn of the new species is here ……  Standby for 17th September 2009 when all is revealed

For an insight into what is to come, see the Pioneer DJsounds.com site.