China/Spain - As well as the Olympics, another sporting event that created high interest in China this summer was the International Full Contact Kick-Boxing championship, which pitted China against Japan's best and received nationwide television coverage. Kick-Boxing, one of the martial arts sport disciplines, has thousands of followers throughout Asia and is extremely popular around the world. The D.A.S. distributor in China, Concord Trading Co. Ltd., was the official sponsor of the event in which the Chinese fighters won by five rounds.

Due to the large size of the venue and the number of people attending, a wide variety of systems were used to provide adequate coverage for everyone. The main PA was made up of ground stacked Aero 28 line array systems. Concord also installed eig

UK / USA - The Ford Motor Company has awarded design and communication agency Imagination with its Q1 2004 status. The certification was awarded after Imagination met rigorous performance and ongoing quality management criteria set out by the Ford quality assessment. Q1 certification is recognized and highly-regarded throughout the Automotive and its related business and support industries as a symbol of excellence, customer satisfaction and on-going high quality consistency. Although Ford has recognized others of its suppliers with the latest Q1award, Imagination is the first marketing services supplier in Europe to obtain this Status.

Ford presented Imagination with the status in an awards ceremony held at Imagination's headquarters in London. Ford's senior purchasing manager Steve Proctor, and its manager of exhibitions Derek Cockerill, presented Gary Withers, Imagination's

UK - Next year's Total Production International industry awards event - TPi Awards 05 - will take place on Monday 31 January 2005, once again at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith, west London. The organizers promise another night not to be missed, with formidable production values, a host of surprises, excellent food and the chance for professionals to network and catch up on the previous year!

Since their inception in 2002, the Awards have attracted the involvement of such celebrities as Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Bob Geldof, Midge Ure, Damon Albarn, TV and radio personality Mike Read, Lemmy of Motorhead, promoter Harvey Goldsmith, soul pioneer Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave fame), Michael Eavis, jazz legend Chris Barber, blues singer/radio presenter Paul Jones, and last year's host, Spandau Ballet bassist-turned-actor Martin Kemp.

Next January's

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

UK - Shure Distribution UK, the exclusive distributor of Shure, QSC Audio, Phonic and Sound Devices, showed new products from each of its represented manufacturers at the PLASA Show. Shure showed its new SLX Wireless Systems, ideally suited to installed sound applications and working bands, delivering superior audio quality in an easy-to-use and quickly configurable package. Offering Shure's patented Audio Reference Companding technology, along with an innovative set-up featuring automatic synchronization, SLX supports up to 12 compatible systems per frequency band (country dependent), say the company.

From Phonic was the new MU range of compact mixers, fully-featured and competitively priced, and ideal for a variety of applications. Also on show, the new RoadGear range from Phonic, which is a fully integrated mobile sound solution. Housed in a stylish, durable, moulded case th

UK / Sweden - Lightfactor Sales has announced a UK distribution deal with Wireless Solutions from Sweden, who's wireless DMX system - W-DMX - won a PLASA Award for Innovation at the Show in London last week. Wireless Solutions' Niclas Arvidsson was looking for a well-known and respected sales company to distribute his product: "We want to work with the best - Lightfactor has a great reputation and is very well connected," he comments. The two companies have actually already been acquainted with one another for some time: like Lightfactor, Wireless Solutions is also a distributor for SGM moving lights.

Lightfactor's Peter Coles comments: "W-DMX fits perfectly into our product portfolio. It was the right product at the right time and the fact that it won the PLASA Award is extremely well-timed and a further boost."

W-DMX - described as "taking wireless

UK - Voice alarm loudspeaker specialist Penton, exhibiting at the PLASA Show's Architectural Audio & Visual on the Upper Deck for the first time, showed off three new products.The PMC4/T and PMC4/TC are high impact ABS plastic enclosures, treated with UV inhibitors and sealed against water ingress. Inside are an 80mm diameter mid-range treated coned loudspeaker and a 4W / 100V line transformer. The speaker has wide-angle dispersion of 180° and a frequency response of 220Hz-12kHz.

The Sentry6 / RTC is a vandal-proof loudspeaker in a cast aluminium cabinet, containing a 140mm diameter dual coned loudspeaker and a 6W / 100V line transformer. Further protection is afforded by a steel front chassis and epoxy powder-coated grille. Specifications include wide-angle dispersion of 140° at 1kHz, extended frequency response of 200Hz-18kHz and 92dB at1m sensitivity.

The PWC6/T and PWC

UK - Last week's PLASA 2004 event was the platform for Belgian manufacturer Apex to launch Intelli-X - a new digital speaker-management processor which complements the successful Apex Intelli-Q Real-time System Optimizer. The Intelli-X features four analogue and digital inputs and eight analogue outputs, and houses a large amount of DSP power. Every input has a user-settable delay, a 30-band graphic EQ, a 10-band full parametric EQ and two shelving EQs. The 4x8 matrix has no routing limitations and so can be freely configured to suit all professional needs, say the company. Every output has a user-settable delay, high- and low- pass filters including Butterworth, Bessel and Linkwitz-riley types at all available slopes, two shelving EQs, an 8-band full parametric EQ, a fully-adjustable limiter and phase reversal. All these processes are simultaneously available all the time, there

UK - One of the UK's hottest restaurants and nightspots, Tiger Tiger, has opened its newest location in the Scottish city of Aberdeen. Offering a high-end environment for lunches, happy hours and late night dancing, the club has other locations in London, Leeds, Manchester, Portsmouth, Glasgow.

Club owners, London-base Urbium plc, is also the proprietors of several other leading venues in the UK, including Oxygen, Wax Bar, Warwick, Motion and the Zoo, and has established a reputation for creating environments with exquisite visuals and leading edge sound.

The Aberdeen Tiger Tiger boasts several distinct areas over three floors, including the Tiger Bar, Club, Restaurant, Club Lounge, Lounge Bar and Oriental Bar, each with its own unique vibe and soundtrack. Systems integrators Green-i Ltd. designed the signal routing and remote integration, based on the model it created last ye

Australia - When rock star Jimmy Barnes took to the stage at Star City Showroom recently, the impact of his performance was significantly enhanced by the country's most advanced lighting design, a suite of some 24 show lights from Clay Paky's range. The Clay Paky product was recently installed by Total Concept Projects, the exclusive distributor of Clay Paky product in Australia. Star City's general entertainment services manager Bicci Henderson comments: "The impact of the new lighting on the Jimmy Barnes show was fantastic, with very startling colour saturation and vibrancy. It is Australia's most stunning show lighting system."

Commenting on the lighting set-up, he says: "The lighting set-up was so good that the Barnes' producers just walked in and did the show without having to move a thing. It was great!" Henderson continues: "The Clay Paky lighti

UK - Mackie is used this year's PLASA show to preview its new family of live sound consoles - the Onyx 80 Series. Like the successful Mackie Onyx small-format analog mixers introduced earlier this year, the Onyx 80 Series consoles feature all-new analog circuitry, a full compliment of Mackie's flagship Onyx microphone preamps, and the renowned "British Voiced" four-band Perkins EQ.

The Onyx 80 Series consoles will be offered in four sizes: the 24-channel Onyx 2480, 32-channel Onyx 3280, 40-channel Onyx 4080, and 48-channel Onyx 4880. All four models incorporate features that any hardcore live engineer will appreciate including eight aux sends with stereo link function for up to four IEM mixes; an aux/group flip function; an 10x2 matrix; four mute groups; eight stereo aux inputs; and an optional rack-mountable redundant power supply. The master section and channel stri

UK - At the PLASA Show last week, Midas announced the appointment of Shuttlesound as the UK distributor for all Midas products with effect from 1 October. Shuttlesound already handles all Klark Teknik product as well as Midas Venice; taking on the rest of the Midas range, therefore, is seen as a natural move that will enable UK customers to obtain all Midas and KT products from a single source.

Sales and marketing director for Midas and KT, David Cooper, commented on the decision: "By moving distribution to Shuttlesound, we're effectively doubling our resource base for Midas service and technical support. In other words, in addition to everything we already offer the customer out of Kidderminster, we can now offer the same facilities from Shuttlesound's London base," says Cooper. "That is to say a huge demo facility, stock of emergency spares and a fully trained

UK - Dutch manufacturer Prolyte has just completed one of its busiest PLASA shows ever, where it launched its latest product, the Prolyft hoist. The launch of a new product always brings a feeling of nervous anticipation but, the company reports, it can now look back on the PLASA Show as being a successful introduction for the new hoist.

Not only did Prolyte add six new Prolyft Service points to its existing network of 10, but the company says it received many positive reactions on the new hoist and the whole service program. In addition to the Prolyft hoist, the Soft steel was greeted with enthusiasm by many technicians, who could see the advantage of not having to attach a secondary steel if normal round slings are used.

Contributing to an already bustling stand was the presentation of the Crowd Barrier demo. This aluminium, lightweight crowd control barrier also received

UK - The PLASA Show was the launchpad for the latest offering from French company InnovaSON, the compact and lightweight Sy48. "The Sy48 has been tailored to meet the needs of those looking for a mid-priced digital live mixing console without wishing to compromise on power or flexibility," commented Nick Cook, sales and marketing director at InnovaSON. "It also has the benefit of being designed by a company with 10 years' experience of producing digital live boards, and over 400 consoles on the road around the world. We've combined functions and features from our large format Sy80 with new ones added in response to user feedback and packaged them in a compact and lightweight surface to create what we believe is the digital live mixing console the mid market has been waiting for."

The Sy48 incorporates major features from the large-format Sy80 digital mixing

UK/Greece - Creative Technology was contracted by Sportsmark, the American event management and marketing agency, to provide a full technical staging service, including lighting, audio, video projection and indoor Barco iLite 8 LED display, during the Olympic Games in Athens.

Nick Whitehead and Rob Merilees managed the project, with lighting design by Nick Whitehead. Six venues were used as hospitality suites for Sportsmark's clients, including Visa, Xerox and Bank of America for the duration of the Games, with additional special events.

The lighting design incorporated effects from CT's LED lighting inventory, including its latest acquisition - the Colorblaze 48 LED batten from Color Kinetics - and the Colorblast 12 fixture, which is extremely useful in view of its low power consumption and heat output.

(Sarah Rushton-Read)

UK - Having made its inaugural appearance on the Prize Stage at the PLASA Show, the first DiGiCo D1 Live left Earls Court immediately after the show to go out with Concert Sound for Katie Melua's European tour. Matt Manasse, Melua's FOH engineer, was on hand during PLASA, helping to demonstrate the D1. "Obviously there's not been much time for me to work with the console prior to this," he said. "But as with the D5 Live, it's an incredibly intuitive interface, so I'm already confident in my ability to go out there and use it. I think it's going to be a great asset on the Melua tour."

"DiGiCo is a very agile company," adds Concert Sound's Tim Boyle. "David Webster really pulled out all the stops to get us the console in time for this tour. They're constantly reacting to what the market wants and needs and I think they've come up trumps again wi

UK - The Institute of Acoustics (IOA) marks its 30th anniversary at its Autumn Conference Dinner to be held on 6 October 2004 at The Oxford Hotel, Oxford and has arranged for Dr Leo Beranek - "father" of acoustical consulting and the Internet - to speak at the Dinner.

In 1948 Beranek co-founded the American consulting firm Bolt Beranek and Newman, later BBN Technologies, famous for its wide ranging influence in many aspects of acoustical engineering and computing and credited with establishing what is now know as the Internet.

Now in his ninetieth year, Dr Beranek continues to pursue his consulting interests in concert hall and opera house design. His breadth of knowledge and experience will surely result in a fascinating address. Members of the Institute and others can reserve seats at the dinner separately from attending the conference.

Details are available from

UK - High-end amplifier manufacturer MC2 Audio has reported having an extremely successful PLASA Show last week, with interest in its new E45 lightweight, switchmode amplifier surpassing expectations. "There's been a lot of interest in our E Series range of amplifiers since their launch last year," comments MC2's Ian McCarthy. "The demand for a high quality amplifier suitable for the touring market was something we were confident we could fulfil. We've had an astonishing uptake on the E Series and the only thing we need to do now is keep making them as fast as we can!"

The E45 (2250W/channel into 4 ohms) features 2250W/channel into 4 ohms; Mono bridged mode - 6400W/channel into 4 ohms; Proprietary designed, progressive switching rail output; All-new low distortion limiters with adjustable threshold points for extra speaker protection; Sophisticated power con

Finland - FogScreen Inc has been chosen as a winner of the IST prize, which is awarded to European innovations with most business potential and technical excellence, among other things. The European IST Prize is organized by the European Council of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering, with the sponsorship and support of the Information Society Technologies Programme of the European Commission.

FogScreen has been asked to participate in the IST event (held in The Hague from 15-17 November), where three IST Grand Prize Winners will be selected from among the IST Prize Winners. "We have taken part in three competitions: InnoSuomi, VentureCup, Laval Virtual Awards and IST Prize, and we have every time been chosen either as a winner or a finalist. That implies the ingenuity of our invention. Perhaps the biggest outcome of this prize may be increased possibility for fu

UK - Salisbury-based Stagecraft has been awarded UK Independent Dealer of the Year 2004 award by specialist lighting manufacturer Zero 88. Presented to Stagecraft at PLASA 2004 last week, the award recognizes the company's expertise and knowledge of the Zero 88 product range. Stagecraft's sales and project manager, Martin Palmer, was presented with the award.

Graham Eales of Zero 88 commented: "Stagecraft has surpassed its previous efforts on behalf of Zero 88. It has grown its sales of our products by over 100% in 2003/2004. We believe this growth has come as a result of Stagecraft's focus on us as its sol supplier of lighting control products, a good stocking policy, excellent PR and staff trained in our products."

Stagecraft was one of the first companies to install new Zero 88 touch screens in a £100,000 lighting refurbishment for Salisbury nightclub, The Chap

Ireland - Dublin-based AV Rental Company CAVS has recently incorporated a Subsidiary Company called Celtic Sound Ltd. This Company has been established to handle the management of the recently purchased V-Dosc concert system. The initial inventory of 24 V-Dosc, 16 SB218 Subs, plus LA Amplification and XTA DSP sees a new direction for CAVS - hence the establishment of Celtic Sound.

Fran Quigley, managing director of CAVS sees this development as follows: "We have experienced a huge increase in our audio contracts over the past two years and some of these projects prompted the idea for the purchase of a large format concert system. Ireland is a unique market - and as we saw a gap in that market, we decided to fill it. Celtic Sound Ltd is a dry hire audio company, providing equipment for rental only. We present V-DOSC as a turnkey system package including the cabinets, amplifi

UK - d&b audiotechnik has just released information about the latest addition to its Q-Series, the Q10 loudspeaker. The Q-Series applications stretch from single loudspeakers right through to large multiple cabinet line arrays all sharing the same fundamental requirements; precise control of directivity maintained to the lowest possible frequency. A single Q10 loudspeaker, with its wide horizontal dispersion pattern, is ideally suited for use in the near field. It may also be used for this application in larger Q-Series loudspeaker systems.

The Q-Series now consists of four loudspeaker types; the Q1, Q7 and Q-SUB launched last autumn and the new Q10 loudspeaker. The Q10, along with the Q1 and Q7, are passively crossed over two-way loudspeakers sharing the same physical size, shape, weight and driver compliment (a 1.3" exit HF and two 10" LF drivers), whilst the Q-SUB i

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