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Showco Inc, provider of touring sound reinforcement equipment and services to the concert touring industry, is marking the 30th anniversary of both the company, and the industry it helped pioneer in the early days of major arena rock shows. Co-founded by Jack Maxxon and Rusty Butsché, Showco grew from the humble origins of a garage-based business into one of the first sound equipment suppliers to the post-Woodstock concert industry. Later forays into stage lighting led to the 1981 formation of sister company Vari-Lite, Inc. The company has won numerous awards for its products, most recently for the Showconsole and the PRISM sound system.

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Preparations are now well underway for this year's Theatrical London event which will run directly after the PLASA Show in London from Wednesday 13th September through to Friday 15th September. Although certain parts of the programme are still to be finalised, shows already booked include The Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre and the Witches of Eastwick at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. As with previous events, Theatrical London will include a number of backstage visits to venues of interest to this industry. Full details available shortly.

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Earls Court and Olympia is working with Land securities, one of the UK's largest property companies, to develop an on-site hotel at Earls Court, home to the PLASA Show. Planning permission has been approved for a 513 room, four-star hotel in the Empress State building, adjacent to Earls Court 2. The two companies are now working closely to select an operator to develop the hotel, with a decision due in the next three months. The hotel will then be operational by spring 2002.
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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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Dial Sound & Lighting has just announced the launch of ShowMagic 128, the latest addition to the ShowMagic range of lighting and sound controllers for the PC. To coincide with the launch, both Dial and distributors Cerebrum ran a series of workshops to introduce the new 128 to a wider audience. In essence, the latest release is an entry-level version of the flagship 512 channel version. The software enables you to control literally all the technical aspects of any performance or presentation that uses sound, lighting and special effects equipment from a single PC. It uses a 'Virtual Desk' - the software equivalent of a lighting control desk, sound playback and mixing desk all rolled into one. With the new version, the virtual desk enables control of up to 128 DMX512 channels and six stereo audio channels and comes with upgrade versions which feature RS232 control and a seven-day auto-sch

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Designed to be the only device necessary between the mixer and power amps, dbx's new DriveRack is an all-inclusive loudspeaker management system versatile enough to suit any sound reinforcement, monitoring or install application. At the heart of the DriveRack system is the dbx 480. The 480 provides four inputs and eight outputs which can be tailored for any configuration. The 480 includes every form of processing necessary to drive signal from the mixer output to power amp. Controls available are pre-crossover EQ as either one 31-band graphic or nine band Parametric per input channel, up to five notch filters per input, speaker delay, multiple crossovers, speaker compensation EQ, driver alignment and compressor/limiter with PeakStopPlus, VariKnee and OverEasy. Two real time analysers can run simultaneously with RTA source inputs capable of being remotely switched on the fly.

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Neil Riley has joined Stage One as systems manager. He will develop and maintain all the electronics and data information systems across the company’s two sites as well as offering assistance to clients, suppliers and freelancers with their IT requirements.

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A weekend of celebrations will mark the opening of the new Lowry Centre, the first purpose-built centre in the UK to integrate the visual and performing arts. Based on Salford Quays, Greater Manchester, the stunning steel and glass building will receive its official opening on April 28 with a major programme of music, dance, theatre and fire. The Lowry, a national millennium project costing £98 million, will host a 1650 seat lyric theatre, a 400 seat flexible theatre, as well as a purpose-built gallery for the City's comprehensive Lowry collection. In partnership with the University of Salford, there will be an adjacent national industrial centre for virtual reality. At the heart of the opening weekend is a specially-created production - To You - which involves the local community and professional artists. The audience will then be drawn into the 1,728-seat Lyric Theatre, which boasts t

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Four days of professional design and technology workshops in lighting, production techniques and audio highlight the second annual ExpoLatina running from 22-25 May at the Miami Beach Convention Center, USA. A series of lighting and sound seminars will run alongside the show with Making the Music highlighting the audio seminar programme presented by a panel of top Latin record producers and engineers. Other audio sessions range from Dubbing Music for the Latin Market and Getting the Best Live Mix to explorations of applications for loudspeakers, microphones, mixing, sound system design and studio design. The 'Beyond the Light' programme represents three days of presentations for stage, screen and special events, showcasing lighting designers, technicians and consultants from around the world. Sessions include roundtables on industry standards from ESTA, film and television lighting techn

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ARRI and Strand are among the first companies to take space at Showlight 2001. To date, 15 of the lighting industry's most famous names are taking advantage of the opportunity to be a part of the event which allows lighting designers, manufacturers and suppliers to meet and discuss ideas. The current list of sponsors includes ADB, ARRI, Avolites, Cirro Lite, DedoLight, DHA Lighting, ETC Europe, High End Systems/Flying Pig, Howard Eaton Lighting, Lee Filters, Northern Light, Optikinetics, Philips, Strand and White Light. Taking place every four years, Showlight is organised by lighting professionals for lighting professionals and allows attendees the opportunity to mix with some of the top names in theatre, film, television and architectural and themed lighting design.

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MAD Lighting is to launch two new products. The new Axis 250MR is a single-arm moving head effect: everything you expect from a moving head unit is fitted as standard including E size indexable rotating gobos, trapezoid dichroic colours, a shutter and selectable Fresnel lens. The ITM 250 is available in scanner, star effect and colour changer versions. All fixtures have E sized gobos, rotating on the Scan 250R version, a separate shutter, trapezoid dichroic colours and digital address system.

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LA Audio has announced a new partnership with Expotus which aims to increase sales in major worldwide territories. LA Audio, owned by the SCV International Group, has coupled the change in distribution with the re-engineering of the British-based signal processing range, which will be on show at the Frankfurt Musik Messe. Martin Capp, MD of Expotus told PLASA Publishing: "Expotus made its name through being at the forefront of international exports for over 30 years. Adding LA Audio to our portfolio enables us to strengthen our distribution network and offer project solutions."

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The ABTT is launching a series of lectures by people who are known for their contribution to the technical aspects of the Entertainment Industry. Organised by the North Region Committee of the ABTT, the lectures will be held in major venues across the North. The first of the lectures, accompanied by lunch, will be held at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester on Thursday April 27th. The first speaker in the series will be lighting designer Howard Eaton. Eaton has worked on several large shows with David Hersey including Cats, Song and Dance, Starlight Express and Nicholas Nickleby. As a lighting designer, he lit the first tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, and went on to work on productions in the West End and at the National Theatre. He started making lighting equipment for shows like Phantom in New York and all the motor control gear for the fledgling Unusual Rigging. From this work he

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HW International, sole UK distributor for Shure, have been awarded the title of International Distributor of the Year. Each year Shure honours one international distribution centre for its contribution to the company's global sales and marketing efforts. This year the award was presented to HW's managing director Dennis Harburn at a Shure celebration dinner held during the recent Winter NAMM in Los Angeles.

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France's premier subscriber TV giant, Canal+, has launched i>television, a news-based channel offering news bulletins every fifteen minutes interspersed with lifestyle features and music slots. EVI Audio in Paris has supplied i>television with two Midas Heritage 3000s mixing desks, one for each of their studios. Mathieu Ninat, sound engineer and audio specifier for the new channelexplained his choice. "I was already familiar with the XL-3, having seen it in a variety of applications. I know that the preamp and EQ sections are excellent and obviously it¹s a highly versatile product, so when Midas launched the Heritage 3000 with even more features, I was extremely interested. EVI Audio arranged for me to visit the factory in Kidderminster where I was able to examine the desk in detail, and I must say I was extremely impressed."

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QSC is to introduce a new Digital Signal Processing accessory module at the NSCA Expo 2000, April 27-May 1. The compact module offers two channels of independent DSP and attaches to the back of most DataPort-equipped QSC amplifiers - without taking up additional rack space. Each channel handles digital signal processing functions including high- and low-pass crossover filters, high- and low-pass shelf filters, signal delay, compression, peak limiting, six parametric filters, two-to-one mixer, signal splitter and more. DSP configuration is made simple with an advanced "drag-and-drop" software graphical user interface. Users can access a DSP "toolbox" with icons and simple drawing tools to configure processing functions and signal flow. QSC will also announce major upgrades to QSControl at the NSCA Expo. QSControl, QSC's Ethernet-based computer controlled amplifier man

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Following four years in the product manager’s chair, Bryan Waters has left Allen & Heath to pursue his own business interests. He has founded Audace Technologies, specialists in control solutions for installed systems and audio web authoring. The new company will be based is Redruth, Cornwall.

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Application Solutions has appointed Peco Electronics as the exclusive UK distributor for the brand new Integra range of high performance amplifiers. The two companies worked together on the design of the new system, combining ASL's expertise in electronics with Peco's market intelligence. First to appear will be the Integra MA 6-120, a 120W mixer amplifier.

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Some 2,500 children from all over the country arrived at the Millennium Dome recently to celebrate Children's Promise. The event gave the Dome the opportunity to use its newly-installed Soundcraft K1 console, which is connected into the central show BSS 9088 Soundweb network.The day was rounded off in Skyscape, with a 'Voices of Promise' concert, with a Soundcraft Series 5 desk on monitors (mixed by Mark Crawley). As a full 57-piece orchestra, a band, and child choirs of varying vocal timbres all had to be mixed, the decision was made to split the FOH mixes. While the resident 48-channel Series 5 FOH desk was assigned to band, radio mic, Genex and VT mixes, one of the Dome's roving 32-input Soundcraft K3 desks was brought in to handle the orchestral mixes, with Pete Bartlett and Matt Napier on respective engineering duties. 10 Soundweb DSP networking devices are used in Skyscape, switche

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Britannia Row Productions masterminded the audio production for the BRIT Awards 2000 which took place at Earls Court 2 in early March. The Wandsworth-based company worked with sound designer, Derek Zieba, for the event. Chris Coxhead and Bob Lopez controlled the front-of-house sound, with Vince Sharpe and Andy Ray covering monitoring world. For the loudspeaker reinforcement Brit Row drew exclusively from its large Turbosound Flashlight inventory. The main system consisted of TFS-780 and 760 LCR clusters, with LCR delays and various audience and pit fills. This will be the fourth consecutive year that Derek Zieba has chosen Brit Row and Turbosound for the BPI's premier event.

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A new series of microphones will be released by beyerdynamic at the Frankfurt Messe - the first major microphone product introduction targeted at the MI and project studio market since the launch of the Tour Group range. The range will include studio and live performance microphones and will be manufactured entirely at the beyerdynamic factory in Heilbronn, Germany. The new range will be ready to ship by the end of April and full details will be available at the Frankfurt show.

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Giant outdoor screen specialist Screenco is celebrating its 15th anniversary this Spring . . . with brand new, much larger premises in Hampshire, UK. The company, which was founded in 1985, has grown to become one of the world's leading suppliers of giant CRT and LED outdoor screens and screen mobiles, with offices and associated companies based in the UK, Holland, Germany, Australia and the USA. The new HQ is at Fareham in Hampshire, around 10 miles from the former Eastleigh base. The 13,000sq.ft facility gives the company more than double the warehouse space of the old building and greatly improved office and workshop space. Screenco has also unveiled a brand new website which includes full details of the company's range of rental video screen, camera and portable production unit (PPU) services, equipment and key team members.
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