Hand Held Audio has been supplying the BBC's Fame Academy with all of its wireless requirements since the show's debut in early October. Despite an initial poor showing in the ratings wars, Fame Academy has gained in popularity in recent weeks, culminating in an average of nearly 6M viewers for the live show last week which saw Pippa evicted as well as a live performance from guest celebrity Mariah Carey.

Hand Held began by supplying the show with a total of fourteen Shure hand held systems featuring Beta 58 capsules which were for use on the live performances at the end of the week. For the rest of the time, the students were furnished with a Shure beltpack lavalier system using MKE2 capsules as the cameras followed their progress at work and play. Hand Held's Mick Shepherd pointed out a certain irony in the fact that as the show's ratings go up, the gear requirements go down. "As students are evicted at the end of each week, the wireless systems they've been using get sent back to us. Strangely, the fewer people left on the show, the more people want to watch it ­ doesn't seem right somehow!"

HHA has also supplied the Academy with four presenter systems from Sennheiser comprising SKM 5000 hand held microphones using the new Neuman KMS 105 capsules, and SK50 lavaliers. This means that presenters Patrick Kielty and Cat Deeley have both a full system and a complete set of spares each. In fact, Mariah Carey chose to use one of the spare presenter systems for her performance, but for Lionel Ritchie the previous week HHA supplied a separate Shure inventory including a handheld vocal system, guitar and in-ear system.

In what may appear to be yet another story of soap stardom leading to a burgeoning music career, former Brookside actress Claire Sweeney's leap has propelled her not to teen-star fame, but to the West End and beyond. After a successful run playing Roxie Hart in the hit musical Chicago, Sweeney has been voted the new Forces Sweetheart, following in the footsteps of Dame Vera Lynn. Her engagements will take her to troublespots all over the world where British Troops are currently playing vital peacekeeping and other roles. Hand Held Audio has been approached to provide her wireless requirements.

Sweeney is currently entertaining the troops in Kabul, Oman and Dubai. She has taken with her a Shure PSM 700 in-ear system for which she has a set of custom acrylic ear monitors supplied by HHA. For back-up purposes, she has also taken with her one set of each type of generic in-ear monitor that Hand Held Audio keeps in stock. As HHA's Mick Shepherd put it, "Given the cast-iron guarantee that things will always go wrong in the most inaccessible areas of the world where even carrier pigeons are hard to get hold of, never mind FedEx, we though it prudent to supply as many spares as possible BEFORE she left! We've had no panic calls yet, so we assume that's good news."

Over 10,000 screaming fans packed into the London Arena on Saturday 12th October for the 5th annual Disney Channel Kids Awards. The star-studded event included performances from Blue, A1, Liberty X, Atomic Kitten and many more. Steve Levitt's production company, Production North, turned to wireless specialists Hand Held Audio for all their wireless needs, which was managed on the night by HHA's in-house technical guru, Tarkan Akdam.

HHA essentially provided two systems; a 10-way and an 11-way Shure UHF system. The 10-way was set up to be either a hand held or headset system for the performers, depending on the artists' requirements, while the 11-way system was a hand held system for the presenters including the four hosts and a number of guests presenting the awards. The four permanent presenters also had a Shure PSM 700 in-ear system each for cueing and "crisis management" purposes.

According to HHA's Tarkan Akdam, "Although we had a lot of gear there, our part in the proceedings was relatively straightforward. The only complicating factor was the very large OB presence and a certain amount of chaos that always seems to accompany these big televised events. But I'm pleased to say that our bit went very smoothly! As with so many of these things, it's all in the preparation!"

Orchestral Manoeuvres

Following a highly successful launch at the recent PLASA show, Hand Held Audio has become the first company in the UK to invest in the new APM Series (Advanced Personal Monitoring) hardwired distributed personal monitoring system from Garwood.

The APM Series is designed to provide a simple and cost-effective solution to a familiar problem for sound engineers and production managers: how to provide distributed monitoring for a large orchestra/band setup (such as with a West End muscial or a studio recording session) without the hassle and expense of either a wireless system, battery- or mains-powered headphone monitoring, or open loudspeakers. It also provides a perfect solution to providing large numbers of audio feeds at events such as press conferences.

According to Hand Held's Nick Bruce Smith, the APM Series addresses a very real issue to which they had yet to find a completely satisfactory solution. "We do quite a lot of work with orchestras, even more so now that so many pop acts are using orchestral backing, yet no-one had really come up with a monitoring solution specifically designed for large groups. We ended up putting something together ourselves, but it was far from perfect. However, the APM Series is a tailor-made device for just this sort of application with all sorts of useful features that make it so much more than just a headphone amplifier. We've already sent it down to some TV studios in Cardiff for its first job, and so far it has performed impeccably."

Hand Held Audio has invested in a total of one APM 200 main station that will accommodate up to 200 people, plus ten APM 12 local headphone amplifiers that will drive two pairs of mono or stereo headphones or in-ear monitors with a separate volume control for each output, and an APM 31. The APM 31 powers one pair of headphones or in-ears, but has three inputs, allowing the user (typically a soloist, orchestra section leader, drummer or conductor) to mix in two other sources such as his/her own instrument and a click track.

Garwood's Chrys Lindop comments: "It was great to be able to walk into Hand Held Audio with a solution to problems they have had to deal with since they first opened the business, and which it hasn¹t been possible to address properly until now. As the premier supplier of a range of monitoring solutions for the live music environment, they¹ve shown solid support for Garwood over the years, so this is a great way to begin with the APM Series in the UK."