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Apogee for Independent Film Producers' Spirit Awards Telecast

Apogee Sound International, renowned for state-of-the-art sound reinforcement products for the professional audio industry, announced that Apogee's new digitally-controlled APL-500 DSP Self-Powered Arrayable Loudspeakers and ADAM (Apogee Digital Audio Management) software were used to provide live sound at the Independent Film Producers' (IFP) ‘Independent Spirit Awards’ ceremony. The prestigious event, held this year on February 28, annually attracts 1,300 guests and 350 members of the international press in a large tent on a beach in Santa Monica, CA.

The Apogee equipment was selected byveteran Hollywood sound designerBruce Burns of Innovative Audio Technologies, Inc. Burns serves assound designer and audio coordinator for the Independent Spirit Awards show. "This is a challenging event," Burns said. "We couldn't use trusses to hang the speakers, and we couldn't have any of the speakers appear on camera. These limitations on speaker placement can make it hard to provide good sound across the entire audience. But thanks to Apogee's outstanding coverage and exceptional intelligibility, we were able to achieve excellent results."

Eight Apogee APL-500 DSP loudspeakers were among the speakers used to provide sound for the audience. ADAM was used to set delay and to EQ the system from a remote laptop computer running the ADAM software at FOH. This was the first live televised show in which these new Apogee products were used.

"This was an extra difficult environment because it was in a tent at the beach," said Barry Grzebik, Director of Engineering for Apogee Sound. "The ambient noise was higher than in a real theater, with traffic noise, wind noise, the tent walls fluttering, and low flying aircraft from a nearby field."

Said Burns: "We used Apogee's AE-5's last year, which were wonderful, and this year we chose the APL Series because ADAM allows us to control each speaker individually from the FOH position. Barry was terrific — he quickly showed us how we could manipulate EQ, delay and even turn each speaker on or off from his laptop computer. It is an amazing system. The director came out and told us the sound was just wonderful, and the sound mixer, Doug Nelson, who did a tremendous job, also thanked us profusely."

The Apogee APL-500 DSP is a bi-amped, two-way arrayable loudspeaker that provides the same superior sonic quality and performance as Apogee's flagship speaker, the AE-5, but in a self-powered format with an internal networkable DSP Processor. The APL-500 features dual 400-watt, all digital amplifiers operating at 300 kHz and providing high power levels with extremely low distortion.

The Apogee Digital Audio Management Software (ADAM) creates and controls a digital network of Apogee's APL Series DSP powered loudspeakers. With ADAM, any PC can provide loudspeaker status information, monitoring, level control, EQ and delay for multiple loudspeaker arrays.

Since the 1990s, Burns has selected Apogee for large scale events including the Grammy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards, and a concert attended by world leaders at the Summit of the Eight. In 2003, for the Spirit Awards, Burns chose Apogee's AE-5 and SSM loudspeakers to replace other manufacturers' speakers used in previous years. "There was a noticeable improvement,”

he said. "The old system was good, but as the show grew in viewership and prestige, I really wanted better sound."

The Independent Film Producers' awards ceremony honors the year's finest independent films and most talented crop of independent filmmakers. It is hosted annually on the Saturday before the Oscars. The event is televised to audiences in over 70 million homes via Bravo Cable Network, and to 33 million homes via the Independent Film Channel.

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Apogee for Independent Film Producers' Spirit Awards Telecast

5th April 2004

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