USA - The long-anticipated introduction of Germany's Coda Audio to the United States market is here. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Coda Audio International, Coda Audio USA, staffed by American industry veterans, will introduce itself officially during this year’s Orlando show.
Coda Audio USA offers “a fresh alternative to the US pro audio market. Vastly experienced and with deep roots in Europe, Asia and The Middle East, Coda Audio combines these attributes with a formidable reputation for stunning sound, underpinned by revolutionary technologies and company stability. Coda USA’s mission is to bring this proven audio quality, performance and reliability to the US”.
Luke Jenks, managing director of Coda USA comments: “A scientific approach, brilliant engineers


Love Conquers All - The Portuguese are celebrating the fact that an intimate love ballad in their language conquered a Eurovision song contest audience for the first time. Salvador Sobral's success with Amar Pelos Dois (Love for Both of Us) has made him a national hero. Previously Portugal had never got above the sixth place that it reached in 1996.
It was a triumph for "brand Portugal", music journalist and advertising executive Manuel Falcao told the BBC. "The Portuguese language is present worldwide but sometimes it's hard for the national identity to make an impression, so for the brand this is very nice - people are very happy."
The timing was fortunate for Portugal, as the nation shows signs of recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and a massive bailout from its eurozone partners.
Pop-up Opera - Opera and theatre fans can bid

Benelux - FACE has taken on the distribution of SSL broadcast consoles throughout Benelux and the SSL Live consoles in Belgium and Luxembourg.
Sam De Pauw, CCO of FACE comments: “The secret of SSL’s success is its dedication to great sound and its innovative approach to creating outstanding products with absolute power and ultimate flexibility. This entrepreneurship fits perfectly with FACE, so we’re very excited to add SSL Broadcast and SSL Live to our portfolio.”
FACE will distribute the Broadcast consoles in the Benelux area and will distribute the SSL Live consoles in Belgium and Luxembourg. SSL Live delivers outstanding performances in the most demanding applications in touring, installation, house of worship and theatre.
“We’re convinced of the synergy between live and broadcast for live sound TV events like the Eurovision Song Contest or Th
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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

North America - WE Day gives impassioned and empowered young people across Canada, the US, and the UK the opportunity to hear from global luminaries like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai in between performances by major stars like Demi Lovato and Alicia Keys.
WE is an organisation that aims to empower young people to affect positive change in their local and global communities by adopting an inclusive, communal “we” mentality. WE Day is a physical manifestation of that mission, combining the energy and excitement of a live concert with education and inspiration delivered through shared stories of leadership and change.
It’s paramount that the arena full of amped-up youth can clearly hear every word of those messages, and thanks in large part to a substantial Adamson Systems Engineering loudspeaker system supplied by Cleveland, OH’s Eighth Day Sound,


UK - The Princess Alexandra Auditorium is a stunning 750-seat performance venue based on the banks of the River Tees at Yarm School. The final piece of the jigsaw was to upgrade the sound system to one that matches the quality of the Civic Trust Award and RIBA Award winning auditorium.
The space is fully flexible with tiered retractable seating and hosts a varied and versatile programme of material – from school productions and lectures to touring bands and leading comedians.
The existing system was struggling to put across the clarity and detail needed for such work and the decision to audition a variety of loudspeaker brands was taken.
Steering away from the existing distributed speaker concept KV2 were brought in by Richmond based audio suppliers Sound Hire to show what could be achieved by a more simplified Left Right Point Source approach.
Dan

South Africa - Ruud de Deugd visited Johannesburg to present the Prolyte Campus Workshop hosted by DWR Distribution from 14 to 17 March 2017. With his roots securely founded in the engineering office of Prolyte and trained as a mechanical engineer, Ruud has combined his expert engineering skills with the daily practice of rigging projects. For the second year running, he presented the hands-on Prolyte Campus Workshop in South Africa with the emphasis on safety which ended with a practical build-up session.
“There is a health and safety standard in South Africa as found in the South African Bureau of Standards titled SANS 10366 which is general and a guideline to Health and Safety at Events,” explained Ruud. “I believe this will evolve but at least it’s a good starting point. That said, the South African rental companies are not behind Europe in their knowledge and m

Located in the city of Borås, 60 km East of Göteborg, the Borås Stadsteater is a municipality-owned theatre. Founded in 1964, it moved to its current building in 1975. A typical 1970s-style provincial venue, the theatre features a 500-capacity main auditorium with raked seating and a balcony. The main focus is conventional theatre for the most part reinforced by lavalier microphones, but the theatre also hosts musical productions and occasional concerts. The programme of events includes both in-house productions and visiting acts.
By 2016, the ageing PA system had become too small and outdated to meet the demands of modern audiences, so the management team worked with the local authority to find a solution. An Alcons LR7 system was installed, along with a new Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system.
Borås Stadsteater’s head of sound, Tobias Walka, explained the ch

Ireland - Prolyte Group distributor A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has recently shipped Verto truss to Light Source, the first company in Ireland to receive this product.
The Verto truss is based on a new principle of truss connection, where the sections are joined by a rotating coupler system, meaning a simple flick of the wrist will connect and lock the truss sections together. Installation is fast, silent and safe.
Managing director, Billy Mahedy and his team are delighted to be the first users in Ireland of the versatile Verto truss system.
With a long history in the industry, Billy knows how to value a truss system on its merits. Based out of Sandyford, Dublin, Light Source brings a wealth of experience to the custom installation market. They design and install solutions specific to their customer’s needs, always looking to improve and expand on

Germany - Since 1975, audiences have flocked to the Freilichtbühne open air stage in Hamburg's Stadtpark each summer to enjoy an eclectic selection of music - including pop, rock, hip-hop, soul, singer/songwriters, children’s entertainers and much more. Production company Cobra Sound Light relies on Yamaha digital mixers to ensure each night’s programme is enjoyed without a hitch.
Cobra Sound Light has been the season’s technical production supplier since 1981. The season runs from May to September and features performances from high-profile international artists (including, in recent years, Lionel Richie, Simply Red, Wu Tang Clan, Imagine Dragons and, this year, Rag 'n' Bone Man, Norah Jones, Paramore and Alan Parsons), through well-known German performers (this season including Lotto King Karl, Philipp Poisel, Roland Kaiser and Deine Freunde) to local acts.
B

UAE - Abu Dhabi’s annual Mother of the Nation (MOTN) festival is the UAE’s largest cultural celebration. For 10 days last month, over a kilometre of Abu Dhabi’s Corniche beach was the setting for workshops, exhibitions, dining, and entertainment.
A fully integrated A/V and lighting package was provided by Production Technology (Protec) of Dubai, whose careful planning and work was challenged before opening day by Mother Nature. Hurricane-force, 75 mph winds, with an accompanying torrential downpour, could have easily delayed the event, had it not been for Protec’s experienced crew and some quality, IP-rated gear, including 100 of the new, tough and resilient Nuri*Lites Hurricane LED fixtures.
“We used Nuri*Lites Hurricanes in the Happiness Zone of the festival, which also happened to be the most exposed area during the storm,” says Protec’s project manage

USA - The history of Market Square in Knoxville, Tennessee stretches back to 1854, when it was first used by local farmers to sell their produce and wares, a use that continues today. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, its use was (and is) much more than a farm stand, however. Booker T. Washington, William Jennings Bryan, and Ronald Reagan all made speeches at Market Square. And musicians, from Duke Ellington to Steve Winwood, have long used its pedway and dedicated stage for performances.
In recent years, however, lacklustre sound quality from the stage put a damper on enthusiasm for concerts. Local A/V integration firm Stellar Vision and Sound fixed that problem with the design and installation of a stereo pair of Danley Sound Labs SH-96HO point-source loudspeakers, which now fill Market Square with colossal, reference-monitor quality sound.

“During the early days of design discussions with the band and their management it became pretty obvious that the show design should be focused around the stunning video content created by Strangeloop Studios out in Chicago. So, as lighting designer, it was clear that I needed to choose fixtures that could hold their own with such dynamic company.” So declares Tom Campbell, LD for Zeds Dead, one of the biggest names on the EDM scene.
“Ayrton’s DreamPanel TMTwin and MagicPanel TM602 were the obvious choice,” continues Campbell. “My concept was to use fixtures, mapped in with the video content to ‘push’ the content out into the audience and through the band: the DreamPanel with its 8x8 matrix was exactly what was needed.”
The DreamPanelTwin is a hybrid luminaire with a modified MagicPanel on one side and a DreamPanel Shift on the other. This means it can alte

Croatia - Prljavo Kazalište celebrate 40 years of hits and stardom with a world tour which kicked off with a show at the Spaladium Arena in Split, with lighting designed by Sven Kučinić of LumiLas LLC, who has worked for the band for the last six years and is also a big Robe advocate.
Sven again specified Robe fixtures to light this show, where the challenge was on to create a spectacular but scalable design to work for the whole of the upcoming tour which plays various sized venues and is scheduled to run for the rest of this landmark year in the band’s amazing career.
Sven had carte blanch to come up with cool, practical and spectacular ideas, although as always, budget was a consideration and the goal was to create something really impressive without busting the bank!
Known for his imagination, style and ingenuity, Sven produced another great looking resu

USA - Here Lies Love is an immersive theatrical and musical experience. Produced by the Seattle Repertory Theatre with concept and lyrics by Talking Heads founder David Byrne who also wrote the music with British DJ Fatboy Slim, the show charts the life and times of former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, retracing her rise to power and subsequent descent into infamy and disgrace at the end of the People Power Revolution.
The show originally premiered Off-Broadway in 2013. Set within a dance club atmosphere, the disco-musical had no traditional seating and theatregoers mingled with the actors throughout the show. The Seattle production offers seating for those who’d like it in galleries surrounding the main floor area as well as standing-only room on the floor itself which features a central (moving) stage as well as the traditional proscenium stage.

UK - NEC Display Solutions will open the doors of Victoria House, Holborn on 17-18 May to present fully-integrated, readily-deployable display solutions in collaboration with over 35 partners at the NEC Solutions Showcase 2017.
Addressing the needs of specific markets, the NEC Showcase presents the power of collaboration and partnership to perfectly meet the needs of its customers.
The Corporate Zone sees the trend towards multi-usage workspaces with huddle rooms, cloud-based working and live collaboration alongside solutions for employee outreach and motivation.
The Education Zone focuses on higher education with solutions for student-centred collaborative learning in the classroom and in the lecture theatre, alongside campus-wide IPTV signage and security.
Moving to the Transport Zone the emphasis is on innovative passenger communications at the airport,

Europe - Barco has added a 7mm pixel pitch model to its range of 'digital media canvases' –LED screens that radically differ from traditional LED displays. The R-series provides more creative freedom, and greatly reduces setup time and cost thanks to their thin, lightweight and bendable design, says the company. Designed for retail, advertising, venues, and visitor attractions applications, the R-series frees customers from the limitations of traditional LED displays when digitising their visual communication.
"Venue owners, advertisers, and retailers are faced with the ever-challenging task of catching the attention of consumers and visitors. At the same time, they want to reduce installation time and cost. The R-series' unique design not only allows for cost-savings, it also frees designers from the limitations of traditional LED displays – so their message stands out

Having released Automaton - the band’s first album in seven years - at the end of March, Jamiroquai are soon to embark on a world tour of arenas and festivals. A Yamaha Rivage PM10 console will be mixing the front of house sound at every show, beneath the experienced fingers of engineer Rick Pope.
Rick has worked with the band and its frontman Jay Kay for 23 years, both live and in the studio, and with Yamaha digital consoles for almost as long. So he jumped at the chance to show the world what the company’s new flagship console can do.
“I grew up on the Yamaha PM1D and then the PM5D,” he says. “I have always liked the workflow and the way that Yamaha digital consoles have their own operating system from the ground up. It makes them incredibly stable - I’ve never had a single fault in the 20-odd years I’ve been using Yamaha digital boards, which you can

Portugal - A new quality control programme has been implemented at NEXT-proaudio´s factory.
This new quality control philosophy implied great changes within the factory, with the implementation of inspection and structured testing on each stage of the entire production line, reducing the common fails on the final test at the end of the production line in more than 97%.
It starts with incoming materials and parts, which are subjected to thorough tests and evaluations to check the components before they are embedded in the product.
To monitor and control this new process, NEXT-proaudio has designed a custom software that “follows” each unit since the first stage of the production. The constant comparison with the standard, and an associated feedback loop confers a trustable error prevention for the future.
At the end of the line, each finished product pa

Poland - One of Poland’s leading bands, Golec Orchestra, recently staged six concerts in the biggest halls across the country, travelling with two dLive S Class mixing system from Allen & Heath.
Rented from Konsbud Audio, the systems comprised two DM64 MixRacks with a S3000 at FOH for engineer, Damian Kubacki, and a S5000 for monitors, with engineer, Michal Mika.
”dLive is a great board. The huge capabilities of the system, and the number of available inputs and outputs allows you to manage really big artist events,” explains Michal Mika. “The ability to use a large number of built-in FX and dynamic processors eliminates extra outboard gear for wedge and in-ear monitoring, and the control surface is designed with great thought, and I am convinced that after 2 or 3 concerts, every engineer can use dLive without any problems.
“Finally, the number of e

USA - The 2017 Ultra Miami dance music festival drew a diverse line-up and some of the biggest international DJs and producers to the Bayfront Park site in downtown Miami, transforming it from a cool shorefront public space to a pleasure dome for around 150,000 electronic music fans for the weekend, enjoying the warmth, good vibes and music.
Robe moving lights were specified for four of the main performance areas – the Carl Cox & Friends Arena, Main Stage, Live Stage and Arcadia - the world’s favourite giant spider made from recycled industrial waste, which is newly lit with Robe after a major investment by Arcadia Spectacular.
The production lighting design for the Carl Cox & Friends Arena was created by Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting, celebrating 18 years in the Ultra Miami ‘hot seat’ - the festival is 20 years old next year.
For Carl Cox &

Peru - It’s been four years since Justin Bieber performed in the Peruvian capital, and fans of the Canadian superstar have built up quite a case of Bieber Fever during that time. Some 30,000 of them jammed into Lima’s National Stadium when the singer’s worldwide Purpose tour stopped in Peru this spring.
Setting the visual tone for the concert and reflecting the growing maturity of Bieber as an artist was a Cory FitzGerald-designed multi-faceted Purpose tour lightshow. Providing some intense crowd and stage illumination for the tour’s Lima stop was a collection of 60 Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Hybrid moving heads, supplied by DBLUX-SAC, which provided audio, lighting, video and power for the concert.
Andrés Cuadros, who co-owns the company with Guillermo Riera, was confident placing the Maverick fixtures at this concert, which was produced by Move, becau

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