At the Harris booth (2342) InfoComm faculty member Lyle Bunn will moderate a case study panel on Harris’ digital signage installation for the Orlando Magic. It will look similar to today’s panel on the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center installation (pictured). Harris has dedicated this InfoComm to emphasizing its work in digital signage installation and workflow design. The sessions cover the deployment process, business objectives, supplier selection, technology, content, and funding.

On the booth you’ll see the range of powerful broadcast- and IT-driven technologies and systems that Harris is bringing to bear on the emerging digital signage industry.

We all know what acoustic panels look like, right? Pretty.

On the other hand, this is Auralex’s Sonic Print. What you can’t see in the picture is the way they feel—they are not screen prints where the ink sits on top of the acoustic fabric—these fabrics feel like fabric, touchable texture,rich and saturated colors. Managing Director Dave Paxton calls them “lifestyle panels.” That’s because interior decorators like them for home theaters, home gyms, even kitchens and dining rooms. As well of course in the range of commercial installations. more…

At a press conference late today, Powersoft, the Italian supplier of lightweight space- and energy-efficient power amplifiers for the pro audio market, announced the release of Audio Suite control software for its Powersoft Amps. Available now, the visual software provides PC-based control for parameters on the current range of amplifiers (all K series and remote Q, D, and QTU series amps) and represents the control protocol for other current and future products. It will be downloadable free from the Powersoft website (it’s not there yet as of Thursday morning).

Also at the press conference co-founder Carlo Lastrucci and John Lee, President of Powersoft USA pressed their success in the U.S., most recently at the New Orleans Jazz festival (some 120 amps).

Wireworks held a little birthday celebration at the booth this afternoon, celebrating 35 years of cabling the world—including most of Broadway, the White House, the BeeGees White Tour, the Pope’s tour, churches, theme parks, and more. Of course most famous for introducing the world to colored cable, Wireworks also introduced removeable multipin cables and a host of other innovations we now take for granted. President Gerald “Jerry” Krulewicz is a charming host, and it was short and sweet—no agenda, just an acknowledgement. For more see a story by Linda Said Frembes.

Wireworks is having a 35th birthday. So is Ashly Audio. Birthday sounds good for 35. But what if you’re 75? Atlas Sound is going with anniversary. Actually they’re not going with anything, Andy Dixon just mentioned it on the booth, just as he mentioned that the booth next door (IED) was also now an Atlas sibling in the MiTek family.

More to the point, when you have a 75-year track record, you have to keep moving and changing. For Atlas Sound that lately means focusing the Atlas brand beyond sound. For example, while the core Atlas products including speaker and amps continue apace, if you had never been to an Atlas booth in past 75 years, you might not think you were at a speaker company. You would notice the new power products: conditioners, sequencers, supressors, etc. more…

OK, it’s not a great picture. The Infocomm Innovation Award statuette looks very nice in person. The important thing to Andy Fliss is that Aurora got one, for the first time, for the V-Tune Pro HD, a kind of universal tuner that supports NSTC, ATSC/QAM, and is also LAN addressable and IPTV ready (decodes MPEG2, MPEG4, and H.264). It means that every source is simply a channel whether you got it out of the air, from the Internet, or over a network. You can use the V-Tune alone or ganged. You can simultaneously support RF and IP. (On the booth it was interfacing with a virtual server in the cloud, hence the dropouts and artifacts?). This is the kind of product you should really not leave InfoComm without seeing. It’s simple, it’s purpose-built to solve an annoying problem, and if it’s right for your install you could save yourself a lot of headaches.

It’s a legitimate question. And yet Shure decided to have a go at building a better headphone. “It’s so personal,” Shure’s Chris Lyons offers. “People are looking for subtleties of sound and comfort, and they need reliability … ” he trails off, but I’m distracted by all the people lined up at the listening station on the booth. People seem to be shopping for headphones. And XLR to USB convertors (more on that in a minute).

Shure never made headphones before, but felt qualified to try. In another twist on the theme, Shure has also returned to the ribbon microphone business, a business they had long ago left behind. more…

Yes, yes, we’re all going online. I’m online right now. I’ve cancelled my Los Angeles Times subscription. But not my Architectural Digest subscription. We’ve all got things we like to own in print. Print possessions. Here’s one you might like to have (and it’s free, though it looks like it should be expensive).

Steve Savanyu is proud of Audio Technica’s 2009/10 catalog coffee table book (the Installed Sound Resource Book), in part because he helped write a lot of it.

Half the content is like the Audubon book of birds–a page dedicated to each of Audio Technica’s products with a nice picture and a detailed description, with a few clues about how you might see the product in the wild. The other half of the content is schematics and tutorials. They looked like good templates and starting points. (And they’re fun to look at for those of us who like that sort of thing).

Savanyu said it could be ordered on the Audio Technica website. I tried and couldn’t figure it out. I’ll work on getting a link and update when I do.

Press release

Powersoft, Italy, a world-leading manufacturer of superior quality power amplifiers for the professional audio market, is proud to announce the official release and immediate availability of Powersoft Audio Suite software at InfoComm 09 (Booth 6384). Audio Suite provides total PC-based control of the numerous parameters found in Powersoft amplifiers and represents the framework control protocol for current and future products. Visually representing all control and signal processing features, the software is downloadable free of charge from the Powersoft website and will allow users to manage and monitor all K-series and remote versions of the Q, D, and QTU series amplifiers. Read on at The Briefing Room

More InfoComm 09 news from The Briefing Room

Among the celebratory awards given out today by InfoComm International to launch the exhibition was the first ever InfoComm International Pioneer of AV Award, and it went to a long-deceased single mom who started what would become the Da-Lite Screen Company exactly 100 years ago—about eight years before should could legally vote. That woman is company founder Adele de Berri who, divorced and seeking an income, used her knowledge of paint and its reflective qualities to launch what was then called the De Berri Screen and Scenic Company around the same time that Thomas Edison and George Eastman were busy inventing the technologies that would give birth to the motion picture industry.

To celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary, Da-Lite has a cool historical exhibit at its booth (4401) about the life and history of Adele de Berri, and the historical achievements that led to her becoming, truly, a pioneer of the AV industry.

Incidentally, Da-Lite officials report good and interesting success with the new web site they started in March—the Da-Lite Design Center, which offers virtual design expertise for custom configurations for all sorts of applications such as trade shows, special events, and recently, a unique star-shaped screen for a boardroom at the headquarters of Macy’s.

—MG