This is it for hall 8.0. From next year, it’s all about halls 3, 4 & 5 as the show moves to a larger area, which is going to cause a great shake-ups in who goes where and there will, no doubt, be the haters and the lovers, as it were.
Let’s discuss that all later but this year, we were certainly in with the “lovers”. We loved it – our stand looked great, with APA front and centre attracting all sorts of great attention.
Before…
…and after!
Set-up went very well, with the gamble on hanging a 6 foot screen running an animation of the APA meters designed to overlap a wall graphic, all designed “on spec”, coming together beautifully, even if I do say so myself! You can see it in action here…
APA generated a lot of interest, and it was great for both us and Funktion One…if you watched that short video to the end, the eagle eyed amongst you will have spotted that we had APA on demo in the F1 listening room. Originally they had agreed to have APA powering their formidable floor standing DJ monitor system – a beast in its own right.
What we ended up with, was APA powering their brand new Evo-6 system, making its debut at PLS 2015! It’s a testament to how good the amplifier sounds that they were happy to use it on their brand new system – it was running in 4 ways a side – 4 x F121s on a single channel, plus the 3 way Evo-6 box on the other three channels – and one APA per side.
After seeing the amps in action on the stand, it was great to be able to direct people to the demo room and let them have a listen to them in action – we had many unsolicited responses to them (and to the Evo-6 system which was sounding fantastic – the combination clearly worked well!) and all were wholly positive.
You obviously won’t be able to appreciate the quality in this video, but it’s still cool to see the amps at work in the room, and if you’ve never visited Funktion One’s demo room at PLS, it’s a suitably slick affair, all powered with XTA processing 96 channels in use this year) and using MC2 amplification (and some APA too this year!)
The other aspect of APA that was raising eyebrows, in a good way, was our demo of the remote software. We had two systems running- one on a Windows PC, and one on a Macbook Air – this was pleasing a lot of poeple to see that we were developing natively on both platforms and both were at the same stage.
APA and PC
APA and Mac
With APA set to power some serious summer stages and clubs this coming season, it seems as if it’s gaining a great reputation already for top class sound quality as well as high power delivery and performance. Our theme for the show was “Processing Power” and this is exactly what APA does!
Going full circle now, the powers that be in Frankfurt have decided that the Pro side of things has run out of space (I would beg to differ as there was certainly extra divided off areas in hall 8.0) and wants to move not just the show, but the dates for 2016. This will mean four days still, but running Tuesday to Friday, and changing the times from 9-6 to 10-7. Ultimately, this doesn’t change the overall period the show is on for, but what might be significant is that the overlap between ProLight and MusikMesse will now be reduced as the all things musical instrument related show will now run Thursday – Sunday instead.
Only time will tell how much impact this will have on overall attendance. The move to halls 3,4 and 5 might be a good thing as they all open directly onto a central square, so inviting more outdoor sessions, which traditionally haven’t been that well attended.
Whatever happens, we will see you there next year, somewhere….!
