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UK / Germany - Allen & Heath will be showing its latest products at the forthcoming Pro Light & Sound show in Frankfurt, 29th March - 1st April 2006, with primary focus on the iLive digital mixing system and Xone:3D mixer/controller.

The heart of the iLive system is the iDR-64, a 19" rack-mounting modular mix engine, providing 64 channels into 32 mixes, which is a stand-alone mixer comprising 8-channel audio interface cards, DSP processing, and communication ports. The unit is controlled via an Ethernet network and can be connected to a variety of controllers, including a range of newiLive control surfaces, Allen & Heath's PL range of remote units, or a laptop/PC.

Two EtherSound ports are provided for low latency remote audio distribution, connection of an additional unit t

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UK - Audio specialist Orbital was appointed by London-based project managers Populus UK to design and install the key integral audio guide element to The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association's new interactive exhibition, Moving Forward Together.

Featuring as the main element of a year of celebrations, marking 75 years of guide dogs in the UK, the showcase exhibition was launched on the Isle of Dogs Museum in Docklands by David Blunkett MP.

Through a range of three-dimensional, touch-sensitive and audio features, the history of guide dogs is brought to life, along with up-to-date information on current campaigns and services provided by the charity Guide Dogs. Moving Forward Together will tour shopping centres, airports and public spaces throughout 2006.

To enable blind and partially-sighted people to appreciate and understand every part of the exhibition, Howar

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Belgium - ISE spread its wings even further at its third event, held in Brussels at the beginning of February. The show which broadly styles itself 'The European meeting point for AV systems Integrators' is proving to be just that: with a huge increase in both exhibitors (about 50%) and visitors (in excess of 30%) in 2006, it's an undeniable force on the installation technology circuit.

With regard to the elements particularly of interest to L&SI (i.e. installed audio and lighting, show control and display technologies for professional, as opposed to home markets, and with the emphasis on entertainment and leisure, rather than industrial applications) the growth was perhaps less significant, although still worth a look.

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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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German manufacturer KME showed its latest loudspeaker products including the Pano mini line array and the RCM V2.0 remote control module for its self-powered speakers - the follow-up to the TCP/IP remote control module. Hardware improvements include a Power Over Ethernet circuit which gives the user a redundant power supply for added reliability in installations, and an automatic speaker impedance control system.

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Lighthouse introduced its highest-ever resolution LED screen (in a pre-production version). The 4mm pixel pitch P4 and R4 screen offers high quality viewing from as near as 3m, say the company. The design adopts the fanless approach of the company's P10 and R10 screens, making them ideal where silence is a requirement. Features include light weight, wide vertical and horizontal viewing angles, 2000 NITS brightness, and remote monitoring of LED failure, power failure and temperature. Of interest to display designers, the screen modules are of the same dimensions as the company's 6mm and 10mm pixel pitch screens, allowing displays of varying resolutions to be created.

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Evolvision offered eye-catching screen products designed to surprise, challenge and trick your brain. Displayed to great effect was the pyramid screen - literally a pyramid-shaped screen surface (viewed point-on). Content is distorted over the four planes to create an image from the optimum viewing angle that appears to be flat, yet 3-dimensional in depth. Alternatively, this multi-dimensional screen can project four different images at the same time, using only one projector. Various-shaped screens work on the same principle, but in different forms. The pole, for example, has a 360° viewing surface, requiring two projectors.

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The Netherlands - The Black Eyed Peas are touring Europe this winter with a vibrant lighting design by legendary LD Marc Brickman, stage design by production manager Anthony Randall - and full production lighting from Flashlight of Holland including a CyberHoist/InMotion 3D motion control system.

The band has seen its latest album, Monkey Business, ride high in the charts in the second half of 2005 and tickets for the new London shows in December were hot property.

The shows feature a versatile lighting rig complete with advanced motion control, designed to focus attention directly on the dynamic Peas themselves. The central upstage area is occupied by two vertical circles, a large one in front while the rear circle occasionally frames a backdrop of a smiling monkey, taken from the album cover.

Each truss carries an array of Vari*Lite luminaires - the tour carries a total of

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Stardraw told us that day one of ISE was more successful for them in financial terms than all the exhibiting they did in the whole of 2005 put together - and they did a lot of exhibiting in 2005. No small boast then, and it's all down to Stardraw Control, which now seems to be reaching its tipping point.

This all-singing software package, which allows system integrators to create control systems which can address any piece of equipment via any protocol now seems set to fulfil the promise it made when it picked up its PLASA Award in 2004. Over 3,200 downloads of the free software have now been made, and new users are signing up at the rate of around 250 per month. Meanwhile, agreements with manufacturers such as 3touch and Simply Reliable Software, both of which were announced at ISE (see news, page 8), open up whole new avenues, bringing potentially thousands of new users to the fold.

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UK - Hebden Sound Ltd, the British company with a reputation for its high quality condenser microphones, has recently taken over Accusound, which will continue under this name and will still benefit from input from founder Griff Jones, say the company.

Director David Anderson explained, "We felt that this was a very positive step for us. Both companies are known for their attention to detail and customer satisfaction and we can now offer a wider range of products to meet our customer's requirements.

The Hebden Sound mics provide a high quality, natural sound for use in studio and live locations. The Accusound range offer individual, instrument mounted mics for all acoustic instruments particularly for live performances, these are available as either wired or wireless systems."

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - ArKaos VJ DMX is the DMX- and MIDI-compatible software now available from Stage Electrics, which the company says enables the user to "set up outstanding video shows in a matter of seconds". A few simple video loops from your hard drive, can be mixed and manipulated using more than 100 real-time effects, say the company.

ArKaos VJ DMX lets you control every aspect of your live visual show from within your console: assign visuals to be displayed, trigger effects, use camera inputs, drive effect parameters - all live and directly from the sliders and buttons. You can now seamlessly integrate a professional video control system into your existing lightshow architecture either direct via ArtNet or using a DMX USB Interface, say Stage Electrics.

On top of its 60+ original effects, ArKaos VJ DMX supports additional FreeFrame effects (an open cross-platform real-time

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KEF Audio, known more for their high-end home entertainment loudspeaker products, showed the latest pro custom installation speakers, including adjustable, motorised in-ceiling and in-wall units. Among them was the Ci3-80QT - a quiet, motorised 3-way, 4-driver system, incorporating a 75mm Uni-Q drive-unit array, plus two 75mm LF units in a sealed white enclosure. Mounted in a rectangular flush baffle, it's designed for in-ceiling applications.

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Meyer Sound, showing examples of its own installation speaker products as well as its Galileo loudspeaker management system (its first time live and functioning in Europe), reported much the same thing as Martin in terms of visitor interest in their installation products: the two reports taken together are perhaps an indication that on the installed audio front, ISE hasn't made the ground with visitors that it has in other areas, such as home entertainment or industrial display solutions, for example.

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Spain - Vieta Pro's commercial loudspeaker business has increased more than 10-fold since the company's last visit to the ProLight+Sound Expo, a dramatic rise which is all the more impressive when it is revealed that the company is still looking out for new distributors in many international territories.

Most of the growth has been delivered by the popular Do Line of compact full-range installation speakers. Two new additions to this range will be unveiled in Frankfurt, packing even more punch into small weather-proof cabinets that are ideal for use in challenging environmental conditions.

But the main draw will undoubtedly be the launch of Vieta's radical new So Line, a range of uniquely-styled speakers and accessories which use Garwood-specified wireless technology and state-of-the-art battery power to provide clear, controllable sound in situations where conventional speake

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UK - Zumtobel Staff has enhanced its PANOS range of downlights with the introduction of PANOS PSP+, a pure silver plated reflector. The technology used by PANOS PSP+ increases light output ratio by up to 21%, thus reducing overall quantities of downlighters required but also extending the maintenance cycle.

Designed by Sottsass Associati, PANOS is a complete range of professional, modular downlights. PANOS PSP+ is a highly polished reflector for the H (high) and L (low) models, H being a high general downlight, and L being designed for shallow recessed depth. Having ideal glare control, H is suited to all types of applications including office environments. L is ideal for specification in retail applications, corridors, reception areas and restaurants.

Zumtobel Staff's innovative coating technique produces the PSP+ reflector with an extremely durable, robust reflector surface.

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UK - White Light, the exclusive UK distributor for the range of DMX test and networking tools from ELC, has recently put ELC's Sidekick onto active service on two high profile tours of hit musicals Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Tonight's The Night.

Sidekick is a universal faderboard designed to add real faders and easy-access buttons to the increasing range of PC-based lighting controllers. Sidekick offers ten faders, thirty-seven buttons, one rotary encoder and an LCD display. All of the faders and buttons are configurable, and can be set to output DMX commands, MIDI commands, serial data or other protocols. Sidekick has a DMX output, MIDI in and out connectors, USB ports and an RS232 port, allowing communication with a wide range of lighting control systems.

For the Chitty tour, lit by Mark Henderson and programmed by Stuart Porter, Sidekicks are being use

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Worldwide - Depeche Mode's Touring The Angel is among the most visually creative shows on the road this year. With XL Video supplying equipment worldwide, the tour is under the artistic direction of Anton Corbijn, who has designed the set and overall visual concept. Early pioneers of touring video, Depeche Mode have always had a fresh and experimental attitude to new media ideas, and so video director Blue Leach has been in his element.

Leach was asked onboard after his innovative work with REM last year. He and Corbijn got their heads together and came up with the idea of six upstage moving screens, just off-centre and all hung at slightly jaunty angles, three in portrait format and three in landscape. "The weirder it becomes the more sense the whole video design makes, and the closer the whole medium becomes to the music," says Leach.

XL Video has serviced D

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UK - The former Atlantic Bar & Grill, one of London's most enduring and treasured landmarks, has reopened as the Astor Bar & Grill.

When Oliver Peyton's famous restaurant went into administration last September, a new operational team led by Channel 4 chairman, Luke Johnson, restaurant consultant Simon Wright and Gary Ashworth (collectively Adriatic Restaurants Ltd) took over the magnificent Grade-II listed art deco building within weeks and renamed it. The Astor name is designed to merge the great 1920's art deco Gatsby era with the edginess of the 1960's and the Profumo scandal.

After running it as a corporate party venue they have now laid out a versatile operating blueprint following a £200,000 refurbishment; this will incorporate a mix of live music, art exhibitions, sophisticated comedy, cabaret, record company showcases and high profile DJs. The weekly Live At

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The Netherlands - Seven years in the planning, design and realisation, the De Waerdse Tempel in Heerhugowaard, the Netherlands, is finally set to open. Whether it's a theatrical production or a heavy metal concert, the new multi-function venue satisfies the highest standards - using pro audio systems from EV, MIDAS and KT

The De Waerdse Tempel can accommodate up to 2,500 visitors at a time, and already two weeks before the opening it is clear that it will set new standards on the Dutch club scene.

The planning of the team led by Marcel Appelman triggered a hotly contested competition between the leading pro audio suppliers. Richard Verheugd and Remco Verhoek, responsible for the equipment in the De Waerdse Tempel, and club manager Harald Dijksstra chose in favour of Electric-Audio B.V. and MIDAS Consoles Holland, comprising an EV XLC system, MIDAS consoles, and a variety of ot

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UK - The Hammersmith Palais maintains its status as London's flagship live venue as The Shockwaves NME Awards return for the fourth consecutive year.

2006 sees the ceremonies technical production growing further in ambition, combining complex requirements from TV and bands to live audience. The TV show, produced by Remedy, is recorded live, and after the show has been recorded, the team have just an hour and a half to turn raw footage into a fully-realised TV programme, ready to air.

Nine cameras inside the Palais feed directly into three generator powered broadcast trucks, provided by Fleetwood Mobiles. A stunning homage to 60's science fiction and B-Movies, constructed by GTMS Event Solutions, will transform The Palais' main stage, themed as 'attack of the monsters of rock' and featuring Ian Brown, the recipient of this year's 'God-like Genius' Award'.

A ground bar

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UK - Bandit Lites is once again supplying lighting and rigging equipment to the British Fashion Council (BFC) Tent main venue at London Fashion Week.

The tent is pitched in the grounds of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, and is hosting over 20 shows - many of them back-to-back - from a crop of major international designers.The BFC tent is also staging the final of reality TV series, Project Catwalk.

Lighting designer for this action packed site is Simon Tutchener, who's been involved with LFW for the past 10 years. It's Bandit's fourth season on the runway - for production company S2 Events - project managed for the Bedford based lighting company by Lester Cobrin, who has been involved for eight years on this prestigious event.

The 30m catwalk has to be lit completely evenly and at the same levels all the way along, primarily for photographers and broadcast ca

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UK - Do you make a lighting control desk? Or a dimmer? Well, if you were worried about the effect that the upcoming Restriction of Hazardous Substances Regulations (RoHS) may have on your business then it'll be in your best interest to read on. As the current regulations stand, RoHS applies to eight broad categories of electrical equipment:
Large Household Appliances; Small Household Appliances; IT and telecommunication equipment; Consumer Equipment; Lighting Equipment; Electrical and Electronic Tools;Toys, leisure and sports equipment, and Automatic dispensers.

With two others being exempted:
Medical Devices and Monitoring and Control Equipment.

It was previously thought that lighting desks and dimmer racks came under the fifth category of 'lighting equipment' and the scope of the exempted 'Monitoring and Control Equipment' category has been unclear in the past. Howeve

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