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Australia - Out Board has announced tm stagetec systems as exclusive Australian distributor and support specialist for its immersive spatial audio and showcontrol products TiMax SoundHub and TiMax Tracker.
As a result of the deal, tm stagetec systems staff have undertaken training for TiMax products in Sydney from Out Board director Dave Haydon.
Mark Lownds, general manager at tm stagetec systems, comments: “We are thrilled to welcome TiMax into the tm stagetec systems’ suite of brands. The fit between our technology-driven ethos and the leading edge, high-quality technology offered by TiMax products is a perfect match.”
(Jim Evans)

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EMEA - Production Resource Group (PRG) and VER have completed their merger in Europe and the Middle East, becoming the largest entertainment and equipment and services provider.
The entities will be controlled by The Jordan Company, GSO Capital Partners and PRG Management.Jere Harris will serve as chairman and CEO of PRG and VER, and Stephan Paridaen will be president and COO.
Harris comments: “For more than 20 years PRG has been diligent in offering its clients the best production service and equipment in the entertainment industry. Growth across disciplines, markets and geographies has always been a key part of our strategy. Now, our ability to support all types of entertainment productions globally will take on new meaning, raising an already high bar to an unprecedented level.”
According to a statement, combining PRG and VER’s strength will now offer

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USA - Ed Grabscheid has joined the executive team at Atlona as chief financial officer (CFO), effective immediately. Grabscheid has spent more than three years at the company as its vice-president of finance and administration. In his new role, he will report to CEO Ilya Khayn and look after all aspects of Atlona’s strategic investments, reporting functions, human resources, and tax and treasury requirements.
Grabscheid’s finance experience spans more than two decades, including leadership positions with several Silicon Valley technology companies. Prior to joining Atlona, he served as VP of financial planning and analysis at ServiceMax; and senior director of finance at Intermolecular, where he built and managed the financial reporting function through the transition from a private company to a successful IPO.
Among other management positions over his career, Gra
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Indochine X PixMob Fan Immersion

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's - 40 thousand LED pixels on a ceiling!!! Indochine's whirlwind tour transports fans to another level of the live experience - immersing them from floor to ceiling with PixMob's X4 wristbands, and an LED ceiling made entirely of its NOVA Minis! With the vision of Indochine's creative team, PixMob used its LED fan-technology to turn attendees and venues into an ocean of effects, and a starry sky of LED magic. Très très cool!

Read more about the Indochine tour in the latest issue of LSi

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UK - Current RMS will be back once again exhibiting at PLASA London in September, where they’ll be showcasing their latest features built for the AV, lighting and staging industries, including a number of new updates.
The team will be on hand to show how simple managing the entire rental process from start to finish becomes with Current RMS, thanks to the convenience and the ease of one cloud-based solution. See the real-time availability of your kit from any device, effortlessly create quotes and orders to send online to your clients, seamlessly scan to allocate and book out your kit, and manage your crew, transport and venues all from one system.
Since the success of last year’s PLASA London show, the team has been working to implement some of their user feedback, based on votes on their open Customer Wishlist. New updates have included Choosing Accessories

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China - Showtec International recently partnered with Harman Professional Solutions to create a visual experience at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition.
Showtec was hired to provide lighting for the biennial auto show in which manufacturers such as Lexus, BMW and Mercedes-Benz showcase their latest luxury models to the largest and fastest growing auto market in the world. In order to ensure an elegant atmosphere with immersive lighting, Showtec relied on an array of Martin by Harman lighting fixtures.
“High-end events like the Beijing Auto Show require state-of-the-art lighting solutions to highlight the importance of the new innovations being exhibited,” comments Henry Ang, managing director, Showtec International, Singapore. “With this goal in mind, the Martin fixtures were a perfect fit, helping to transform the venue into a supercharged visual e

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UK - Theatrical lighting rental specialist, systems integrator and venue installer SLX has invested in nine new Zero 88 FLX range consoles with the purchase of seven FLX S24s and two FLX S48s.
The decision to purchase by SLX was particularly driven by the transition to LED based lighting rigs in so many venues at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where SLX is supplying lighting to the Underbelly.
“We needed a console that was straightforward and easy to use with the power to control a reasonable amount of moving and / or LED fixtures with all their parameters, and FLX was a perfect and cost-effective solution,” comments Ruari Cormack, business development manager for SLX.
He also mentioned that the two companies are near neighbours, with SLX headquartered in Bristol, with facilities in London and Exeter, and Zero 88’s manufacturing plant just across

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USA - Luke Bryan’s current What Makes You Country tour includes stops at New York’s MetLife Stadium, Chicago’s Wrigley Field, and Dodger Stadium (it will be the first country act to headline there).
The tour, which resumed on 31 May before 40,000 fans at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, features a mix of familiar hits and new material. Contributing to the dynamic lighting frame for this free-flowing energetic performance are 100 Chauvet Professional Maverick MK Pyxis and ÉPIX Strip Tour fixtures, supplied by Elite Multimedia.
Justin Kitchenman, who has been Luke Bryan’s lighting designer since 2012, is using 20 floor-positioned Maverick MK Pyxis fixtures to line the thrust and B stage, as well as the upstage side of the set behind the band.
In addition to the Pyxis units, Kitchenman is deploying 80 ÉPIX Strip Tour linear fixtures. The 1-meter RGB units

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Norway - Klubben i Røverstaden is a new venue in Oslo offering a broad range of concerts and club concepts. With its 750-capacity it has an intimate atmosphere, but at the same time caters for major touring acts, both national and international. Earlier this year, it took delivery of the first DiGiCo SD12 system to be installed in a Norwegian club, supplied by DiGiCo’s Norwegian distributor Scandec.
Røverstaden, which directly translated into English means ‘city of outlaws’, is situated in the basement of a three-storey building in the city centre, in what used to be the slum of Oslo, an area that was famous for moonshine and brothels and where outlaws ruled. Its proximity to the royal castle prompted the demolition of the entire area, but in the 1960s it became a bohemian hang-out and the building housed Club7, followed by Sardine's. These were iconic venues and fro

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South Africa - Kilowatt AV has taken productions up a notch since acquiring 200 Absen D2V indoor panels. The panels have been on shows continuously for the past eight months on events including Ultra Music Festival, Adidas Product Launch, Food Lovers Market Annual Conference and a long list of others.
“We were the first in Cape Town to see the Absen demo by DWR and the first in the Cape to place an order,” comments Neil Zaayman, chief operating officer at Kilowatt AV. “As with most new products there were initial teething hurdles, but it was more around understanding how the screens like to be programmed rather than product issues. The screens have been amazing and have added huge production value to our events.
“The biggest motivation for the purchase was the pitch, and black face LED. We've seen high-res LED on the rental market for a while, but the Absen sol

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USA - When an artist tours as regularly as country music’s Luke Bryan, and returns to many of the same markets year after year, a fresh lighting design is a must. Bryan’s production and lighting designer Justin Kitchenman gives each tour its own distinct look and for 2018’s What Makes You Country tour is thrilling audiences with an innovative design that features adaptable lighting pods full of compact Elation ACL 360i beam effect lights.
Luke Bryan’s latest tour launched 31 May in Toronto with the country star playing dates in the U.S. and Canada through October, many of them large stadium shows. Nashville-based production provider Elite Multimedia Productions has supplied the lighting, LED video and IMAG video technology for the run.
While keeping past designs in mind, Kitchenman sought to give the 2018 outing an original look while incorporating a m

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UK - A vibrant village of custom-created performance spaces and entertainment zones, Farr Festival recently returned for another successful edition, helped by the sounds of Funktion-One systems used across the festival site.
Woven around a wooded slice of countryside, just half an hour outside London in the county of Hertfordshire, Farr Festival is a wonderland of themed spaces equipped with quality designed sound systems.
Dave Millard, founder and owner of Full Fat Audio (FFA), has been an intrinsic part of the event since its early years nearly a decade ago. In addition to running FFA, he holds a sizeable stock of Funktion-One loudspeakers, which he pairs with his own amps to create sound systems that are a perfect match for Farr’s bespoke aesthetic. Working with supplier support from Zion Audio, Millard uses this Funktion-One/FFA pairing to produce systems for al

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UK - Evolutionary Arts Hackney (EartH) will become the first European venue to install L-Acoustics’ L-ISA hyperreal sound system.
The project, a multi-purpose arts hub to launch in the restored Savoy cinema in Dalston in September, has been created by the team behind Village Underground in Shoreditch, founded by Auro Foxcroft. EartH will be curated to span art forms and a multitude of genres and voices encompassing an international live music programme, performance art, special talks and debates, comedy, and film.
The venue’s theatre has installed the L-ISA system to offer audiences enhanced clarity, more natural sound, and a wider sound panorama.
The L-ISA set up comprises a frontal system of five hangs of seven Kara flown equidistantly across the front of the stage, with a central sub system of four KS28 flown in end fire configuration in front and above

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Music & Politics - Lana Del Rey has hit back at critics defending her decision to perform at Meteor festival in Israel. She tweeted: “I believe music is universal and should be used to bring us together. Performing in Tel Aviv is not a political statement or a commitment to the politics there, just like singing here in California doesn’t mean my views are in alignment [with] my current government’s opinions or sometimes inhuman actions.”
In response, The Palestine Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel issued a statement urging the singer "to reconsider". The debate about artists performing in Israel is still very politicised. Roger Waters, Lauryn Hill and Elvis Costello have boycotted Israel in recent years. But there are also plenty of artists who have played Tel Aviv, including Justin Bieber, Radiohead, Elton John, Guns N' Roses and Lady Gaga

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USA - DAS Audio of America has appointed Edwin Guerra to the position of US marketing manager. In his new role, Guerra will be responsible for all US tradeshow coordination from concept to execution, social media management and content creation, supporting the company’s sales staff with a variety of marketing initiatives, and overseeing the creation of related marketing collateral. Guerra is stationed at the Miami office.
Prior to joining DAS, he served as production director for Battlefrog Race Series of Miami, where he consulted on all audio equipment purchases in addition to overseeing the deployment of equipment for events. He was also an AV installation technician for AVED of Miami.
Reflecting on his new role with DAS Audio, Guerra comments: “I’ve been very fortunate to work with music and sound in several different areas and, with DAS Audio, I now have the

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The Netherlands - DMX control specialist ELC Lighting has launched the DLN8GBXSL eight-port slave node, a new concept designed “to revolutionise ethernet/DMX network distribution”.
The DLN8GBXSL serves as a substitute for a DMX splitter rack, where all DMX ports are fully programmable as output, input, merge, backup and more, as node ports. This slave node forms part of the ELC GBX Distribution System, of which the dmXLAN switch (GBx10 or GBx18) is the backbone. This switch is the master, and up to 15 slave units can be daisy chained via the ethernet ports. The system supports all open protocols including sACN, Art-Net and ShowNET.
When connected, and loaded with ELC’s advanced dmXLAN software, the system transforms how DMX can be distributed from an ethernet network. It is specifically tailored for live entertainment applications where a mixture of data protocol

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Australia - Chameleon Touring Systems has re-designed its website as it marks 30 years in business this year.
The new website, www.chameleon-touring.com.au, features a comprehensive inventory list as well as a news section and gallery. Various 30th anniversary celebrations are in the pipeline, according to the company.
(Jim Evans)

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Lithuania - Audiotonas, Martin Audio’s Lithuanian distributor, recently installed one of the manufacturer’s newest line arrays - the Wavefront Precision Compact (WPC) at Jonava Cultural Centre.
The venue, which seats almost 700 people, organises various events, which have already become annual fixtures in the calendar, such as the Midsummer Day (Joninės), contemporary art forum Homo Ludens, national festivals of choirs, street musicians, children’s pop choirs and others. Thus, the demand for a good PA system was high.
After surveying the site, Audiotonas’ sound engineers, under the project management of Vytautas Stasiukaitis, considered that eight flown elements per side of the WPC array would provide the best solution because of its optimised coverage and outstanding overall performance.
The WPC is a new breed of optimised line array featuring scalabl

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Europe - Belgian creative engineering specialists WIcreations are involved in the design and fabrication of three bespoke set elements - all optimised for air freight - to be used on a series of epic outdoor shows on Roger Waters’ current Us + Them world tour, which launched with two seminal shows in Rome and Lucca, Italy.
A pair of 16.6m-high circular PA towers grace the stage, complete with integral tracking systems on the onstage side for the rigging of 10 moving light fixtures, and on the downstage side for the sound cluster’s wind brace.
The second WI object is an industrial style stage roof - ‘roofette’ as it’s known on the tour - comprising a set of imposing cantilevered steel beams which can be fitted with clear roof skins in case of rain.
The third area in which WI is involved is a truss and beam rigging system, devised to securely rig

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South Africa - The South African Roadies Association (SARA) hosted its fourth Annual Live Event Technical & Production Conference (LETPC 2018) at The Sunnyside Park Hotel in Parktown, Johannesburg, the current home of the LETPC. The three-day event attracted over 120 delegates from across the globe.
The LETPC conference has become one of the foremost platforms for international live event professionals to meet, network and discuss critical issues that are affecting the sector with topics such as such as health and safety, production, event management, venues, artist challenges, DJ and producer issues, technical advances being interrogated by the speakers and audience alike.
LETPC 2018 featured a range of local as well as international guest speakers, and as was intended once again, to expose the South African live event, technical and production sectors and practit

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USA - Founded in 2012, Opera NEO hosts 30-35 aspiring young performers each summer, providing intensive operatic training, mentorship, and invaluable performance experience.
The 2018 Opera NEO Summer Opera Festival included performances of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow and Mozart’s Idomeneo, each presented with a live orchestra in a unique open-air amphitheatre in the hills of San Diego, California. The 2018 season marked the first year the festival utilised Coral Canopy for sound design and audio production services, which centred around an Allen & Heath SQ-5 digital mixer at front of house.
“The SQ is a beast and I continue to be amazed at the capabilities of the console,” says Alan Chang, principal of Coral Canopy. He adds: “With mics across the orchestra and a large chorus of performers on stage, I relied heavily on the Chromatic chann

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USA - Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Peta Murgatroyd, and Valentin Chmerkovskiy epitomised the elegance of ballroom dancing on their recently-concluded Confidential Tour. The trio, who are noted for their roles on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, also told moving personal stories during their 90-minute show. Supporting the choreography as well as the biographical narrative of their performance was a multi-faceted lighting design by Peter Morse that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied by RK Diversified Entertainment.
“In recent years, I have done the lighting for a number of tours produced by Faculty Management that included both the Dancing With The Stars Live tours, and Dancing With The Stars alums Derek and Julianne Hough,” says Morse. “When Faculty and Butch Allen, who did the production design for this tour, invited me to come on board, I wa
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