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UK - For the third year, DPL supplied Christmas lighting Portsmouth Historic Dockyard's annual 'A Festival of Christmas' international fair. The centrepiece of the show was HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson's famous battleship, aboard which he died during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The Victory - still UK's oldest commissioned warship, and now a major heritage attraction - had its lighting boosted for the event with five Studio Due City Colour architectural colour changing luminaries, which were located on the dockside.

DPL's Darren Parker also added a Space Flower on the rear deck of the ship, positioned carefully so the twisting split beams shot through the vessel's masts and elaborate rigging systems. A large Christmas tree sat on the dockside in front of the Victory, decorated

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Australia - Australian lighting control manufacturer, LSC Lighting Systems, has recently released a new website. The new site has been designed from the outset, the company says, to provide greatly improved navigation, higher resolution graphics and include more up to date product information, including a 'Distributor Only' section.

As the site is primarily technical, no fancy graphics or videos have been utilized, helping in faster loading time. Most product information is available at the click of only one or two button presses. The product section is comprehensive and provides most commonly asked for downloads. The new Help Centre provides the latest Software releases and houses the Product Discussion Forums.

(Lee Baldock)

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USA - QSC Audio has appointed Dennis Goettsch as loudspeaker product planner. Goettsch, formerly director of engineering for Radian Audio Engineering, will now oversee all aspects of QSC's loudspeaker development programs. He brings over 20 years of professional audio experience to the company, having worked in both the manufacturing and production aspects of loudspeaker development. Goettsch has served as manager of engineering at EAW as well as product manager for JBL Professional.

"I'm really pleased to be joining QSC," says Goettsch. "QSC is widely recognized throughout our industry as a leading force in sound reinforcement. The opportunity to contribute to the company's loudspeaker programs is exciting. There's a wealth of opportunity in the marketplace for quality loudspeakers and I look forward to being part of QSC's development process."

(Lee Baldoc

featured content

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 - Direct Imports (UK) group and sister company New Horizons, whom jointly have been supplying and distributing leading brands of sound and lighting equipment to the international dj and nightclub industry for over 25 years, have announced the formation of Fametrack, a new division of Direct Imports (UK) which will offer a one-stop supply of services to the install, touring, studio, broadcast and AV sectors from its North-London base.

Supplying equipment from a number of pro audio and lighting manufacturers, the company says it will offer: " . . . an efficient and helpful design, demo and supply service from a dedicated team of industry professionals."

(Lee Baldock)

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South East Asia - Sennheiser Electronic Asia has just been appointed as the L-Acoustics Distributor to represent the whole L-Acoustics range of products for South East Asian countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.

Michel Brouard, L-Acoustics' director of sales, said: "This exciting new step in South East Asia comes after negotiations with S. F. Ho, director of Sennheiser Electronic Asia. Looking back at the achievements of Sennheiser Electronic Asia, we are confident that they are able to cover Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. They have connections in all these countries, as well as others, and a very good team of qualified people, all specialized in their own field of expertise and market."

Sennheiser Electronic Asia was founded in November 1992 with the target of satisfying the special expectations of the differe

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USA - OptiLED, the manufacturer of LED lighting systems, received an honourable mention for debuting product/promising prototype of the year for its recently introduced LED linear light at last month's LDI show in Orlando, Florida.

"This honour validates OptiLED's leadership in integrating advances in electronics, optical technology and product design to create LED offerings that are setting the pace for the future of this fast-emerging marketplace," said John Nylander, president of OptiLED. "Both our new LED linear light and our CHIP linear optical array have earned the recognition of the lighting industry, a clear message OptiLED is creating new and innovative applications for LED in the professional lighting, architectural and amusement industries."

OptiLED specializes in integrating electronics and high-precision optical technology to enhance the perfo

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Australia - Melbourne's Crown Casino Atrium has been transformed into a massive automated Christmas spectacular. Stage One Promotions, Bytecraft and Lightmoves have worked together to put in place the largest animatronic Christmas display in the world, with Production Manager Sam Redston co-ordinating their efforts.

Using the well-known Atrium at Melbourne's Crown Casino, Crown's creative services manager, Christian Wagner, worked with John Kerr of Stage One Promotions to design the annual display, while Bytecraft's Special Effects department were charged with overseeing the lightshow, which was programmed by Megafun's Keith Tucker. The centrepiece of this year's display is the giant clock, which is suspended below the Atrium's crystals, and is lowered and raised during the show. The clock face also tells patrons when the next show is due to start, so it had to attract attention

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UK - Three high-resolution Lighthouse LVP1650 LED video screens were in action for the half a million rugby fans who flooded central London to witness the England team parade the World Cup on 8 December. As the team's open top double-decker buses threaded through the crowds at Piccadilly Circus, the giant 'Coca-Cola' screen towering over Eros, installed in September, showed footage from the cup final and messages of congratulations to the team from 'Coca-Cola', a major sponsor of the tournament.

The panoramic screen, which wraps around the façade of a building overlooking the Circus, was designed by Lighthouse to be capable of interactive video, with a satellite-linked control room feed that allows real-time live video to be delivered direct to the screen from a remote location. Measuring 32m wide by 6.6m high, the screen is made up of 88 standard LVP1650 panels and 170 bespoke

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UK - Andy Reed of APR Audio took personal control of the huge Battersea Fireworks concert last month, using a 32-channel Midas Venice desk to mix one of the biggest events of its kind in London. The annual fireworks display, held on the nearest weekend to Guy Fawkes Night (5th November), attracts 70,000 people to Battersea Park in south London. APR Audio, in collaboration with Major Tom, supplied audio for the event, providing an ElectroVoice X-Line system.

Each side of the soundstage, two large cherry-pickers each supporting a hang of eight Xvls three-way line-array enclosures. Below each crane were ground-stacked eight x X-Line subs. EV's Precision Series remote-controlled amplifiers, the P3000RL, 24 units in all, powered the system. With the pyrotechnics triggered by time code, the music was all playback - with the exception of a saxophone soloist who, using an EV RE-20 wire

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UK - Klark Teknik has introduced the all-new DN100 active Direct Injection (DI) box. This is a ground-up re-design that maintains KT's unswerving dedication to engineering excellence in design and sonic performance.

Klark Teknik international sales manager Dave Wiggins says: "It's easy to overlook the importance of utility items like DI boxes, but the fact is that a great-sounding DI box is a key element of a great-sounding system. It's all too common to see folks plugging thousands of pounds' worth of keyboards, basses or electro-acoustic guitars into cheap DI boxes and then wondering where their sound went."

KT tells PLASA Media is conducted extensive blind listening tests to select the best transformer for the new unit, and then engineered it specifically to withstand life on the road. It is fully certified to IEC60068, which tests the unit's resistance to shock a

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UK - Fuzion has supplied 64 Symetrix 422 AGC Levellers to BBC Technology, the wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC which hosts and distributes content for the BBC online, notably the BBC's award-winning website, www.bbc.co.uk.

When the BBC commissioned BBC Technology to design and build the infrastructure for the BBC's own website, the brief was both straightforward and demanding: design it to exacting broadcast quality standards so that all BBC online content is available to a global audience 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Today, the BBC web site is one of the world's largest public content sites, the second-largest streaming site and one of the most successfully visited sites on the internet.

Virtually all the encoding of the BBC's online content is now processed through Symetrix 422 Stereo AGC Levellers, stereo automatic gain controllers, which also act as peak l

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Worldwide - XL Video has supplied Muse's lighting and video designer Oli Metcalf with video production equipment for their current "Absolution" world tour, which is among the most visually innovative tours to kick off in 2003.

For control of the video, Metcalf is using a Catalyst digital media server run from his WholeHog II console. Additionally he has six camera inputs - three Toshiba 'lipstick' devices, two Sony surveillance cameras on the drums and a handheld DV cam, operated throughout the show by the band's video co-ordinator Tom Kirk. These are also fed into the Macintosh, where Metcalf manipulates and adds them to the overall mix as he would lighting fixtures.

The video feeds are output to three upstage LED screens - hung in portrait format - on motors that track in and out vertically to different positions through the show. The screens are made up from 82 pa

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The Netherlands - At the end of August, over 3,500 visitors attended the Binnenhof Festival in The Hague, which is fast becoming one of Europe's cultural highlights. As in previous years, the organizers of this multi-cultural event chose to rely upon respected local sound company and EV Europool member, Aveq Show & Theatre Facilities, to provide the sound, and Robert van Aalst, Aveq's sound engineer, once again put his faith in an X-Array from Electro-Voice.

The Binnenhof, which is ringed by masterpieces of Dutch 12th and 13th century architecture such as the Ridderzaal, may be one of the most beautiful squares in all Europe, but it also has a reputation for being an extremely problematic venue acoustically. Axel Nagtegaal, head of EVI's Dutch partner, Electric Audio BV, is intimately acquainted with the Binnenhof's quirks, having worked on many different productions there: &quo

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UK - NiteLites, based in North Shields, is enjoying increased success since purchasing a new JBL Vertec rig and eight Crown MA-5002VZ amplifiers. Gordon Reay and James Michael Moore run NiteLites, which aims to offer a flexible production package serving a variety of events including outdoor classical concerts, air shows, exterior architectural floodlighting, musical firework displays, and amateur dramatics to rock and pop concert support.

"Crown was recommended to us as the optimal amplification partner for the Vertec system," says James Michael Moore. The system has been out with a variety of acts, reflecting the current interest in '80s hits, including Curiosity Killed the Cat, as well as Herbie Hancock and Osibisa. Gordon Reay: "We're very pleased with this investment, it's a useful tool that is meeting our needs and pleasing our clients."

(Sarah Rushto

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UK - One of London's most famed buildings, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, has installed QSC amplifiers and loudspeakers into its revered 18th century Faraday Theater. For over 200 years, the Royal Institution has been at the centre of scientific research in England. The Faraday Theater still hosts the famous Friday Evening Lectures, begun by Faraday in 1826.

The steeply raked theatre's impressive architecture seats 430 on two tiers, with a dedicated projection room and 6m screen. Sensitive to the English Heritage listing of the building, Surrey-based Harpers AV installed three pairs of QSC's AcousticDesign AD-S82 loudspeakers in strategic locations within the theater and gallery areas.

Harpers AV project manager Steve Baker also specified a pair of QSC ISA 280 amplifiers and a 24-channel Phonic mixer, with the networked system under Crestron control. "QSC produc

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South Africa - The historic AIDS benefit show '46664 - The Concert', staged at Cape Town's Greenpoint Stadium in association with MTV's Staying Alive on Saturday 29 November, was recorded for broadcast and DVD by south London-based Richmond Studios.A team headed by Richmond Studios founder Toby Alington flew a complete de-rig audio recording and post-production system to South Africa for the event, held in front of a sold-out audience of 40,000 and watched by millions on TV and webcast on World AIDS Day on 1 December.

Named after the prison number of Nelson Mandela, the host of the star-studded event, the show featured memorable performances from stars including Anastacia, Bono, Peter Gabriel, Ms Dynamite, Queen and Youssou N'Dour. Toby Alington, audio producer for the TV recording, said the five-hour main show, which was broadcast live to 27 countries, was edited into a 75-minu

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UK - FX Group technical director Frank Oglethorpe has been appointed to the board of directors of the APRS (Association of Professional Recording Services), joining forces with such industry luminaries as chairman Phil Dudderidge (Focusrite), Dave Harries (ex-Air Studios), Malcolm Atkin (Sphere Studios), Mike Banks (SSL) and David Hamilton-Smith (China Blue).

As part of his role, Frank will focus on generating interest in and awareness of the APRS and increasing its membership, as well as soliciting feedback from current members and identifying ways to improve the benefits of joining. As his job at FX brings him into close contact with a wide range of recording services, Frank will mainly be gauging reactions to the Association out in the field.

It's a great privilege to be involved with the heads of our industry," says Oglethorpe. "The APRS has a long and distinguis

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Australia - Coemar De Sisti Australia has announced its appointment as a distributor for Interactive Technologies, the Florida, USA-based manufacturer of professional stage lighting control products and accessories.

Interactive Technologies' products include the Figment DMX - a Palm OS hand-held DMX control solution designed to bridge the gap between handheld DMX test equipment and full-sized desktop consoles; the Radio DMX - a plug-and-play wireless DMX transceiver which allows the operation of lighting instruments in locations where conventional DMX data cables may be impractical or inconvenient; the Sidewinder DMX - a portable DMX processor with the power of a console built into a miniature package; and MicroTech DMX - a DMX tool with all the features needed to solve tricky DMX problems with digital dimmers, moving lights, colour scrollers and virtually anything else that use

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UK - Lighting designer Brian Livingstone chose Entec to supply the full lighting production and crew for the current Belle & Sebastian 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' tour. His lighting rig is compact and versatile, consisting of 10 VL2000 spots, eight VL2000 washes, four bars of six Pars, 12 ETC Source Fours and 12 James Thomas Pixelline 1044 battens - which were the main special effects lights. Livingstone also took the Pixel battens on the USA leg of the tour, which ran through October and November.

The conventionals are all placed on a front truss, while the rear truss is used for the effects-style lighting, housing four washes and four spots. The rest of the moving lights are rigged onto four vertical onstage truss sections with T-bars. With up to 12 artists on stage, it's sometimes a tight squeeze in the smaller-staged venues.

The busy stage also has certain creative advanta

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China - From 20-22 September 2003, Architectural Audio PTE Ltd (AAPL), the exclusive distributor of MediaMatrix in China and South East Asia, sponsored their 20th, and largest ever, MediaMatrix educational seminar, at the Sun Moon Resort Villa near Shanghai, China.

According to Dr David Law, Director of AAPL: "Over 350 audio professionals from all over China attended the seminar, including Chinese MediaMatrix and Peavey dealers, system integrators, engineers, past and potential customers, as well as professional and academic acoustics and networking experts. Additionally, several professors who are in charge of writing government building acoustical specifications also attended."

Education has been the foundation of MediaMatrix's ongoing success. Since its inaugural session in 1994, the popular MediaMatrix Seminar Series has become an industry event, providing inst

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UK - Summit Steel was called up by production company London News Network, to take care of the production rigging for the Institute of Directors Centenary Dinner at the Royal Albert Hall.

The Dinner - traditionally a top-notch affair - this year featured a performance by the Royal Philharmonic orchestra, introduced by Richard Baker. It was sponsored by Jaguar, who wanted to display two of their top production models above the stage for the occasion. Summit - well experienced in car flying - installed two trussing grids measuring 6m x 3m flown from venue points either side of stage, and then sub-hung four Lodestar hoists to pick up the two custom-built car platforms, which Summit had custom-designed and fabricated to support the 2000kg cars.

In addition to this, Summit flew a 22sq.m Barco D-lite 7 LED screen supplied by SPS, and also installed a large curved truss to mask the o

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