PLASA 2022 welcomes a rich mix of visitors

Under blue skies of late summer, with Covid seeming like a distant memory, visitors gathered at Kensington Olympia for PLASA 2022. The show staged a successful comeback last year, and its timing, coming after the Northern Hemisphere’s summer holidays, has always been crucial in kickstarting the year’s second tradeshow season. Footfall may have declined since the exhibition’s heady days at Earls Court, but the retention of its early September slot provides a springboard for the rest of the year. Unlike in 2021, overseas visitors were back this year, with delegations from as far afield as Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand.

As befits a show focussing on live sound, Sennheiser was targeting performers with a display of Neumann instrument mics and a range of IE series in-ear monitors, while Audio-Technica showed its 3000 and 5000 wireless series, sharing exhibition space with Allen & Heath’s SQ5, dLIve and Avantis consoles. The SSE/Wigwam/Solotech booth was showing ranges from DPA Microphones and Shure among products including an L-Acoustics LA7.16i processor and DiGiCo Quantum 338 control surface.

Unsurprisingly, UK brands were out in force. Heralding from Maidstone in Kent, Glensound is increasingly finding its traditional audio broadcast solutions sitting on IT networks such as Dante in live sound applications. British speaker brands EM Acoustics and Inspired Audio reported steady streams of visitors interested in their Reference and IQ Series loudspeakers, respectively, while Bishop Sound was extolling the virtues of its Alpha, Delta and Gamma enclosures.

Under Olympia’s glass canopy, streaming sunlight somewhat mitigated the lighting displays in the hall. Robe was demonstrating Tetra X, SpotSystem, iPointe, iBar, iSpiider, Forte, Esprite and iBeam moving heads. Chauvet highlighted several IP65 fixtures including the Maverick Storm moving head. In addition, the ChamSys Magic Q Mini Compact Connect and Mini Connect lighting control interfaces made an impressive debut. Joining a lineup of Source Four and Color Source fixtures, ETC presented the Lone Star.

Having previously shared a booth with Yamaha, Nexo was flying solo this year to showcase the GEO M line array, iD14 4-inch coaxial and iD84 column together with the P+ series of loudspeakers. Alongside the DQOR installation cabinets and IDA424 processor, LD Systems hosted a UK launch of the MAILA modular all-round intelligent line array.

L-Acoustics’ open booth facilitated networking for a wide range of customers who could also assess the latest Soka colinear speakers, SB6i compact subwoofer and L-ISA Studio software. “Sunday used to be characterised as DJ day at PLASA, but as that part of the exhibition has gone, you never know who’s coming,” commented applications design engineer, Jason Kelly. “We’ve welcomed a steady flow of visitors today and updated them on our latest in-wall and on-wall installation hardware.”

Italian manufacturer RCF demonstrated the ninth generation of ART series and TT515A speakers. “Marketing our new products during the pandemic has been limited to social media and talking to dealers,” explained MD Dean Davoile. “The time has now arrived to promote these latest releases at an in-person trade show. The pandemic taught us to communicate regularly with our customers – perhaps we have all been complacent in previous times when the economy was favourable.”

Next to the RCF demo room, KV2 Audio invited visitors to listen to the ES1.0 point source cabinet, VHD4.21 subwoofer and ESM312 three-way monitor, while also up on the first floor level, AED Audio showed users how to set up 23 various configurations from five accessories including the FLEX6 and SOLID28.

Two onsite seminar theatres hosted panel discussions of a wide range of industry topics, while d&b audiotechnik’s Soundscape Theatre just inside the main entrance held 10-minute Soundscape Snapshots, as it did in 2021.

PLASA 2022 continues until 7pm today and 4pm on Tuesday 6 September.

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