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UK - Linea Research was formed in 2003 to design, develop and market cutting-edge professional audio technology. Since its inception, the London-based company has been busy developing OEM technology and researching the way forward. Now, Linea is ready for its official launch into the world of pro audio.

Sales director Davey Smalley is joined on the board by Ben Ver (engineering) Paul Williams (R&D) and Pip Wilson (production). For over a decade, Ver and Williams have been responsible for a number of innovations in the power amplifier, DSP and audio networking fields, with Wilson bringing over 20 years' experience in manufacturing and quality control. Smalley, formerly sales manager at BSS Audio, explains the philosophy: "Our potency lies with integrating the key technologies

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UK - The weekend of 25-28 March saw Tidy Weekender 5 descend upon the unusual venue of Pontins in Prestatyn. Four thousand hard-house clubbers were present on-site throughout the three-day event, with sound and lighting packages provided by South West Audio. SWA's production manager Mike Taylor took this opportunity to try out EM Acoustics' flagship product - the Quake subwoofer.

The main arena for the event held 2,000 people, and was powered by a 30kW system comprising 16 EAW KF850 mid/highs and 16 Quake subs. The horn-loaded Quakes were arranged in two blocks of six either side of the stage, with a four-unit block in the centre. EM Acoustics' director of R&D, Ed Kinsella, explains: "Due to the heavy weighting towards lower frequencies in music like hard-house, SWA used more Quake subs than would be necessary with other styles of music to achieve the desired effect. Using

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UK - Sennheiser recently announced the launch of this year's Unsigned Artists Contest. This is the forth year that Sennheiser has run the competition, which aims to track down the best young bands in the UK and give them as much exposure as possible.

This year's six finalists will perform on the big concert stage at the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta and the winners will not only get to perform live at Glastonbury 2005 but they will receive £2,500 cash, £2,500 worth of Sennheiser evolution G2 microphones and £500 worth of Sennheiser headphones. The five runners-up will each receive £1,000 worth of Sennheiser evolution G2 microphones and £250 worth of Sennheiser headphones.

Application forms for the contest will appear in the June issues of Play Music, Music Mart and Fly magazines and are available from any Sound Control store or the Sennheiser website. John Steven S

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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 - The BBC brought live music to Northern Ireland this spring with their BBC Music Live week, which kicked off with 'One Big Weekend' and closed with the 'Beautiful Night' concert. Star Events Group was bought in to provide the staging and rigging services for both events. 'One Big Weekend' took place on 24-25 April, incorporating both a dance day and a band day. Faithless took to the stage on Saturday whilst Sunday's headliners Ash got the crowds bouncing, and were warmed up by performances from Avril Lavigne, Kelis and Franz Ferdinand.

The event took place in a huge Kayam tent, in which Star Events Group created the show's focal point. A 20m x 15m Vertech stage was erected inside the structure with an impressive video and lighting set-up. The stage was branded with BBC Radio 1 and Music Live logos. A crew of 10 built the impressive structure over three days with Pete Englis

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The Netherlands - Lagotronics supported the Dutch version of the Pop Idols TV show with a wide selection of its state-of-the-art LED lighting devices. This was the first time that a brand new product, the DMX-i strip has been used in a large quantity for a live event of this scale.

The DMX-i strips are linear lighting devices, 30cm in length, equipped with 60 COB LEDs and direct DMX processing. Due to the small dimensions of COB LEDs, it is possible to create compact colour changing light lines or neon effects, directly controlled by DMX and per individual strip. The total setup of Idols 2004 included the following LagoLED products: 960 DMX-i strips used in 160 lines of 180cm; 40 USB-i controllers; 152 RGB LumiDOT 3W and 24 Beam.111 SC red fixtures.

This setup also featured a video-to-DMX software package, which enabled the crew to create stunning effects by using video signa

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UK - Supporting Role, the small business support consultancy for the event and entertainment industry headed by Marco van Beek, has appointed Andy Mace as a web and database programmer and IT support specialist. Coming from Star 106.6 FM, the local radio station for Maidenhead, Windsor and Slough, Mace's presence increases the company's ability to support small businesses in the event and entertainment industry by bringing in experience of a different sector of the industry, they say.

Mace also brings his specific knowledge of radio station-specific IT solutions, including TXTMaster, a SMS to website tool which allows presenters to read text messages from mobile phones from a centralized database which includes an address book lookup for frequent callers, and talkshow surveys.

Supporting Role was started over five years ago by Marco van Beek, who says he was frustrated by the

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UK - Immedia Systems has designed and installed an audio-visual infrastructure for the new Iris Murdoch Centre at Stirling University. After extensive fund-raising to raise the necessary £2.3 million, followed by building work lasting more than a year, the ground-breaking Centre was opened early last year by Dame Judi Dench. Having been nominated for an Oscar and won a BAFTA in 2002 for her role as Dame Iris Murdoch in the film, Iris, Dame Judi is well-acquainted with the issues facing those suffering from dementia - and the new Centre sets out to provide information, training, consultancy, conferences and publications for those working in this area.

Immedia's Dave Pritchard specified a dnp 130" New Wide Angle High Contrast Screen, with a focal length of 3200mm, provided by UK distributors Paradigm Audio Visual. This was cut to 2495 x 1880mm and recessed into the back wall

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UK - Leading audio specialist Autograph Sales has supplied and installed a complete Meyer Sound loudspeaker system at the Queen's University, Belfast, in its brand new and unique Sonic Arts Research Centre.

(see previous news).

The Sonic Laboratory Concert Hall, where the installation took place, has a steel mesh floor to allow diffusion from speakers above and below the audience, all of which are driven independently by ProTools. The system was set-up by Autograph Sales' technical department using Meyer Sound's SIM IIanalyzer to align the system.

A total of 32 Meyer Sound loudspeakers were supplied - comprising 16 UPJ-1Ps and 16 UPM-1Ps. Four 'rings' of eight speakers are either suspended or mounted on stands at different heights, while an additional four Meyer Sound UMS-1P subs were strategically placed around the venue. Fu

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USA - Lumileds Lighting is opening a new plant in Malaysia to meet growing demand for its Luxeon LEDs, possibly the world's brightest solid-state illumination sources. The new facility will replace the current factory in Penang this summer, tripling floor space to permit a corresponding increase in manufacturing capacity.

The plant will be located in a 200,000 sq.ft building that Lumileds purchased a short distance from its current rented space. The company expects to more than double its manufacturing workforce when all production lines are fully deployed. The new facility will also allow Lumileds to expand laboratory services such as calibration, reliability testing and failure analysis, and will include a state-of-the-art Luxeon Experience Centre to assist in hosting customer visits.

"Market demand for our Luxeon product line is accelerating as manufacturers and lighti

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This relatively young company was launching the new version of its popular A-16 personal mixer, which enables the performer to create a custom monitor mix tailored to his or her personal needs. The monitor enables control over channel volume, grouping, pan, stereo spread and master volume and can create a unique monitor mix for any individual performer.

Up to 16 personal mixes can be saved and recalled as presets and it can be used to drive either floor wedge monitors, in-ear monitors, headphones or spot monitors. Further recent developments have resulted in the Aviom16/o-Y1 output card for the Yamaha digital console. This is a mini-YGDAI format card that fits into an expansion slot in Yamaha digital consoles. It allows the FOH engineer to assign and send 16 mono or eight stereo channels of audio in the digital domain to each performer on stage or in the studio directly from the consol

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UK - Dimension Audio, the audio division of the Avesco Group, has relocated from Wandsworth to Avesco's new corporate headquarters in Crawley, Sussex. Under new general manager, Mark Boden, the 12-year-old company has wasted no time in bringing an upgraded inventory to its new warehouse.

Boden took over from his long-time colleague - Colin Duncan - at the helm, when the latter departed recently to pursue his interest in flat-panel technology. "We had worked together for seven years, joining Dimension at the same time," Boden reflected. Of the new development, he rationalizes: "We are a highly-specialized audio company but being back in the bosom of the Avesco, alongside Creative Technology, will enable us to raise our profile. The CT office environment is great, with good back-office support and transport - in fact all the facilities we didn't have we now have ac

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beyerdynamic (GB) announced it had taken on the distribution of two brands new to its distribution portfolio - Altec Lansing Professional and Powersoft - while at the same time showing some new developments from beyerdynamic itself. These included the first acoustical boundary microphone with USB connection - the MPC 70 USB - which features a low cut filter, adjustable gain and easily selectable operating modes such as Mic On/Off, PTT (Push-to-Talk) or PTM (Push-to-Mute). Also new from beyerdynamic and serving the conference market, is the SIS (Simultaneous Interpreting System) 1202 interpreter station - developed to allow two interpreters to work in the same booth, using either headsets or headphones and microphones.

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This year's show saw the launch of MC2 Audio's E45 power amplifier, the third in its E-Series of lightweight, touring/rental amplifiers. Aimed directly at the national and international touring market, it follows the successful introduction of the E25 and E15 last year. The E45 is rated at 2250W per channel into 4 ohms, built in a 2U chassis, and has all the sonic qualities and reliability of the MC and T Series amplifiers but without the physical weight, an advantage for touring. The switch-mode power supply is capable of delivering high peaks without any perceptible bass 'sag' at very low distortion and is kept within its safe operating area by the new, MC2 'intelligent' limiter, making it ideal for driving high power PA systems.

Main features include a digital power supply with a large power reservoir, proprietary-designed progressive switching rail output, proprietary current drive

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Alcons showed a range of new products, aimed at both touring and installation applications, including the LR16 line array module, featuring the RBN601 pro-ribbon HF driver on a 'morpher' waveguide. In addition to 'the Ribbon' system, the LR16Bass is a bass extension to the LR16, which can be flown or stacked.

Also new, the LR14, Alcons' ultra-compact line-array module, featuring the patented RBN401 pro-ribbon driver and double 6.5" cone transducers. Designed as either ultra-compact line-array system, or as an under-fill for the LR16, the LR14 has a dispersion pattern of 120° x 15°. The 800W peak power handling offers similar dynamic response as the LR16.

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Renkus-Heinz celebrated its 25th Anniversary on 1 April - and broke out the bubbly to mark a quarter century of audio innovation. They also unveiled a new three-way, high output line array combining - for the first time - the company's proprietary line array technology with its pioneering CoEntrant Waveguide Topology.

Ralph Heinz, VP of R&D, said: "We have had amazing reactions to the PN102/LA, our first foray into line array design. Based on that experience, and to meet customers' demands for a very high power but reference quality system, we developed a unique Renkus-Heinz solution, combining two technologies with lightweight, high power amplification to build a new standard in high performance line array design."Also from Renkus-Heinz, the STLA/9 is a lightweight, 'full-size' self-powered line array module (the STXLA/9 is the passive version). With 139dB peak SPL broadband

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Outline showed the new H.A.R.D. 115 SP. This self-powered, low-profile stage monitor employs a 15" woofer and a compression driver with a 2.56" diaphragm, loaded by the same parabolic acoustic reflector (patent pending) used on the H.A.R.D. 212 monitor, used on tour by Eric Clapton, Steve Howe and by top Italian artists such as Claudio Baglioni (see L&SI next month).

It's a two-way enclosure with a passive crossover and high-powered single-channel amplifier with DSP control. It offers high performance (135dB peak) and weighs just 25kg; it also has the same sound quality of H.A.R.D. 212, say Outline, with wide vertical and narrow horizontal dispersion, as well as the range's characteristic resistance to feedback. Just 39cm high - despite its components being vertically aligned, the unit offers a symmetrical horizontal dispersion, enabling artists to hear the same sound balance

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For the majority of us who sadly aren't part of the fitness community, the specialist audio needs of this group may not be immediately obvious. If you think that musical theatre performers are hard on their audio gear, imagine what kind of stress is placed on a microphone that's used all day for classes in a fitness centre. Sydney-based Aerobic Microphones (Aeromic) make waterproof microphones that are guaranteed to survive seven classes per day, every day, for their first year of use. Available in more than two dozen countries, in all regions, Aeromic also produce a variant for use in musical theatre.

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It's good to see the recently-reborn RCF back on the trade show circuit, and not just for the excellent Parmigiano Reggiano and San Giovese di Romagna which are so copiously dished out at its press gatherings.

Just three months on from his re-acquisition of the brand from Loud Technologies, RCF's Arturo Vicari was able to introduce new ranges of loudspeaker and amplification products for both commercial audio and pro audio applications. These include eight new compact speaker systems in the Art Series - a combination of both active and passive systems making for a flexible range of options for live, PA and band use, as well as AV applications and fixed installations. The R&D team has addressed the need for varying requirements for these applications: consequently, alternative full-grilled models are available for fixed installation, with the 'MI' versions offering pole-mount options, w

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Tannoy announced the set-up of its own dedicated sales team covering the pro audio (commercial products) and residential audio markets in Germany. Matthias Exner, formerly of Peter Strüven GmbH, will be responsible for sales and marketing of professional products for the sound reinforcement and installation markets.

Product-wise, the company showed the latest additions to its V-Series of installation speakers - the compact V6, which was first seen at PLASA last year, but is now in full production.

New at Frankfurt was the 5.1 Sub15 - a multi-purpose active subwoofer with five additional powered outputs which, depending on the application, can drive five single or five pairs of speakers such as Tannoy i5 or i6 installation models or Reveal monitors. The 5.1 Sub15 is an active150W RMS sub with a substantial 15" (380mm) bass unit with on-board 5-channel amplification (5 x 75W RMS)

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Previewed at SIB's Soundpower demo in Italy during March (see L&SI April), Proel's new Axiom vertical array system received its official launch at Frankfurt. The full-range AX 3210P cabinet is a passive, three-way, bi-amped system engineered for live concerts and fixed install sound reinforcement applications.

The cabinets feature two 10" woofers featuring ISV, or 'interleaved sandwiched voice coil' technology - and feature a die-cast aluminium basket with double ventilation for improved heat dissipation and reduced power compression. The HF section is internally divided into two sub-systems: an annular 4" film diaphragm handles the mid-range and a coaxially-mounted 2" diaphragm the high range. Frequency response is given as 63Hz to 20kHz. The cabinets measure in at 79.5cm in width, weigh 48kg each and feature a built-in flying system.

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The Australasian Lighting Industry Association is a body formed barely two years ago with the aim of bringing together all the Australasian participants, in all aspects of lighting. Their tiny stand, donated by show organizers ETF, and fitted out with gear scrounged from more than a dozen member companies, served as a meeting point for members, and an information station for those interested in a career in lighting.
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