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USA - Allen & Heath's American distributor, American Music & Sound, chose therecent NAMM show in California to announce the winner of their 'Great UK Giveaway' competition.

Unprecedented for a pro audio promotional campaign, the coveted grand prize was a brand new Mini Cooper, awarded for U.S. sales of Allen & Heath's ML Series of VCA mixing consoles - the ML3000, ML4000, and ML5000.

The lucky winner was Dave Kenagy of Hoffman Music, Spokane, WA, who exclaimed:"The ML Series consoles have incredible sound and offer tremendous value. It has been a pleasure to be responsible for so many successful installs; and WOW, I can't believe it, a Mini Cooper! Thanks Allen & Heath!"

Second place went to Tim Huff of Entertainment Arts, who was presented with an Allen & Heath MixW

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UK - Stage Electrics reports their first year as sole UK distributor for Dutch company Ice World went like clockwork. After supplying lighting, generators and PA systems for rinks for a number of years, the company had the knowledge to make the next step in this ever-increasing market.

The company provided the ice and infrastructure, including lighting and PA equipment for venues ranging from shopping malls to parks across the UK including Gloucester, Hampstead and Windsor. A more unusual location for one of the rinks was on the roof of a shopping centre in Victoria which posed some interesting challenges including pumping the cooling fluid up two storeys through a pipe run of 30m.

Stage Electrics worked closely with clients and partner company Aggreko and reports that there was no single day's skating lost due to equipment failure and all rinks opened on time. Using a highly

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USA - On 28 January one of the true architects of rock 'n' roll music, Chuck Berry, performed at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas. Lighting design company ILIOS Lighting of Austin designed the show lighting using a Martin MAC 250 rig under Maxxyz control.

The rig consisted of 10 MAC 250 Wash, eight Mac 250 Entours and Source Four profiles and Pars with haze from a Jem ZR 24/7. The Mac 250 Wash were ground based and arranged in a straight line across a backdrop cyclorama. The Entours were located at the base of three triangular scrims on small risers. LD Bryan Azar of ILIOS Lighting commented on the choice of Entours: "Chuck Berry currently doesn't have a regular on-the-road band so we didn't know how to approach focus until the day of the show. We needed something quick and flexible that could still provide some good artistry and punch."

On the control side, sh

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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 - After successfully trialing a NEXO GEO S rig at last summer's huge Pride gay rally in London's Trafalgar Square, Camel Event Production have now purchased a full 12-hang GEO S805/S830 system from dealers, A.C. Lighting, along with a number of NEXO CD12 sub bass units, NEXO NX242 TDcontrollers and Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers. The company will be able to run their new system on a Camco EtherCAI wireless network.

For the York-based technical services company it was an easy decision to make. Their managing director Kevin Wilson said, "I had been aware of the NEXO pedigree for a long time and our first chance to use a system came in front of 17,000 people in Trafalgar Square - with assistance from NEXO's UK distributors Fuzion and A.C. Lighting."

Pride had struggled to achieve even coverage at past festivals, and following complaints about the sound distribution, Camel

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USA - Cadac Electronics Plc reports that the original Cadac A-Type console that opened with Phantom of the Opera on Broadway in 1988 has become the longest-running console on a Broadway show.

In January 2006, Phantom of the Opera took over from Cats to hold the title of the longest-running show ever on Broadway. The A-Type, supplied and serviced over the years by Masque Sound Inc, has proved itself as the most enduring element within the sound system, requiring no more than regular maintenance to maintain its performance night after night.

Estimates from The Really Useful Group indicate that the show has been seen by more than 80 million people worldwide, bringing in over $3.2 billion in ticket sales. Looking back over the years, Masque Sound's director of technical services, Dennis Short, regards the A-Type as the lynchpin in the show's system: "Phan

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USA - Three new faces join the Robe America team, as the company's buoyant sales trends continue. Craig Gaff joins Robe America's California offices as a senior sales associate. Craig's impressive resume includes many years of lighting production and design work, collaborating across the world with the industry's best known companies, designers, and performers. He's an accomplished lighting programmer with a flare for design. Craig will start by setting up shop in the CA office and then in the FL office for a week or two for training.

At the same time Wendy Medrano and Melissa Santiago join Robe America's California office as administrative assistants. Speaking fluent Spanish and with over 10 years' experience in office management and customer service, Medrano will support the west coast sales force and other Robe sales staff. She is responsible for maintaining customer records

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UK - Automation specialists Kinesys worked on their third successive Brits event, staged at Earls Court 1, dealing with all the automation and movement systems for the upstage video screens.

These were moved throughout the show creating different looks for the live performers, which included Coldplay and Paul Weller and separated the stage area from backstage. They were also used as stage entry and exit points for artists. Kinesys were brought in to handle this specialist aspect of the production by main rigging contractors, Outback Rigging.

The automation consisted of three Barco ILite 6 XP video screens supplied by XL Video, each of which measured 5m wide by 7m high, weighed 2.5 tonnes and tracked horizontally along a 55 metre wide StageCo 'goalpost' construction. This had an I-Beam fitted on the underside, onto which tracking beam trolleys were attached to hang the v

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UK - Longney C of E Primary School has solved all their public address problems with the purchase of two RCF Move100 wireless speaker systems and hand held microphones from Stage Electrics.

Peter Andrews PTA member said "Every year we hold a number of events to raise funds for the school and each and every event there was always the hassle over the public address."Back in June, Stage Electrics were on site to demonstrate the Move100 system to the PTA during the School Fete. The school were so impressed with the system that an order was placed with very little discussion.

The powered speakers are light weight and very portable, but the major benefit is wireless operation for both power and audio signals, allowing you to get speech and music where mains is not available. The robust transportation bag provided allows you to hand-carry the cabinet easily and safely, offe

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Sweden - Lab.gruppen will show its popular fP Series of touring amplifiers, plus the recently introduced C Series amplifiers designed specifically for permanent installation, at ProLight + Sound, Frankfurt (29 March - 1 April 2006). In addition, the compamny will hold its first ever International Distributor Awards ceremony live on its stand at the show.

.The event will take place at 15:30 on 30 March. "Lab.gruppen sales have risen at an exceptional rate, particularly in the past three years," says Thomas Mittelmann, Lab.gruppen's international sales manager. "And a great deal of this success can be attributed to our extremely professional, hard working distributors. We felt it was time to honor those who have excelled in their geographic regions." All of Lab.gruppen's worldwide distributors have been invited to attend.

The C Series of four-channel, 2U inst

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USA - Eastern Acoustic Works is pleased to announce the addition of Bob Muniz to its engineering team.

Muniz joins EAW as senior electrical engineer and is the first hire into the newly announced system electronics design group. The new group will be responsible for the design and development of electronic components for future EAW products.

"As we develop more and more integrated systems, the need for a dedicated amplifier development group has grown," commented EAW's vice-president of engineering, Jeff Rocha. "Bob represents a significant first step in our path to high output, proprietary amplifier designs. We look forward to lots of innovative market-focused products that will result from Bob's contributions."

Muniz brings to EAW over 17 years of design experience in professional audio, working most recently as senior power systems designer at QSC, wh

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USA - The exclusive 2-channel Oceana is the newest Chauvet DMX effect, suited for large venues and long nights. Generously outfitted with 40 light and dark blue lenses, Oceana projects a multitude of azure rays that create a wave-like pattern, thanks to an exclusive S-shaped, 800-watt linear lamp rotating on a horizontal axis. Its wavy patterns are a refreshing addition to any club, lounge or DJ lighting system.

One DMX channel controls the speed of the bulb's rotation. The second DMX channel controls black out and strobe-like effects. In the absence of DMX signal, Oceana responds to sound with a dynamic combination of beam rotation and strobing. Multiple units can be linked and synchronized. The voltage is switchable between 110V and 230V.

(Chris Henry)

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Denmark - Nordic Rentals A/S, based in Vejle, Denmark continues to make headway in its market, with two notable recent examples including the provision of full production for the Nordic Music Awards 2005 held at the Copenhagen Forum on 29 October and then for Duran Duran's tour date at Forum Horsens on 8 December 2005.

The Nordic Music Awards took place after the Eurovision Gala, where Nordic Rentals had a sound system already set up at the Copenhagen Forum. It required only minor adjustments from the Eurovision set-up since the event had a similar format. Both were live, televised events with speeches, music and elaborate visuals. The main live reinforcement consisted of eight Y18s per side with six SpekTrix and two SpekTrix Wave's as down-fills. Elsborg used EV XLC's as delay clusters. Nordic Rentals supplied the entire technical production, which featured Coldplay, Shakira an

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UK - Celebrating its 10th Anniversary in 2006, the annual JHS Event, to be held over four days this year from 18-21 June inclusive, offers the first opportunity for music dealers and the music press to assess the many new product additions being introduced to the JHS catalogue, the company says.

Dealers and press can also take the opportunity to discuss these items with representatives of the suppliers who will be on site to assist with such queries and information. The JHS Event 2006 will again offer its informal mix of business, including attractive show-only offers, and socialising on this 10th anniversary year. Held at the JHS Garforth head office site, Event is easily accessible at literally two minutes' journey from M1 Junction 47, and already confirmed trade attendance figures are starting to multiply, say JHS.

Product demonstrations and musical entertainment will again

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The Netherlands - Sound Projects have developed the Dreamline, a prefab line array housing. Initially meant for the fixed installation market, but soon also available as a plug-and-play touring system.

Each Dreamline is individually configured by Sound Projects to match the location parameters such as chair plan, the shape of the auditorium and the desired acoustic pressure. This is affected by 12 completely adjustable full-range line source modules, based on the patented Sound Projects' Wave shape transformer. Normally 12 single loudspeaker systems would be necessary. Moreover, each unique Dreamline is self-powered and equipped with multiple Sound Projects' Micro-Amp modules with an integrated speakermanagement system fixed in an optimum pre-set. This combination ensures that the system can be taken down as well as rigged up easily by practically anyone, even with hardly any te

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UK - The 1995 Disability Discrimination Act was designed to enhance communication for the hard of hearing in public places - something normally achieved either through induction loop or infra-red systems. Both of these require specialised engineering techniques in the planning and installation, to ensure complete coverage of the area in question as well as intelligibility.

However, according to the Institute of Sound and Communications Engineers' president, David Hopkins OBE: "This has been a charter for the opportunist to install ineffectual systems - a little like the Emperor's new clothes, but in this case it is only those with impaired hearing that can tell the difference. By the time that such inadequacies have been discovered it is usually too late."

At the Institute's ISCEx2006 Conference and Exhibition at the Park Inn Hotel in Watford on 28 February, this is

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UK - For the fourth consecutive year, XL Video were the video screen suppliers for The Brit Awards, providing a high resolution Barco iLite 6 XP LED screen measuring 15 metres wide by 7 metres high for the 2006 event. It's the first time that The Brits has used HD, a move prompted by Gorillaz' performance which specified a high resolution screen of 2048 x 1024 pixels.

The screen split into three sections that tracked horizontally across stage (via a Kinesys Vector automation system) and into different positions and configurations to provide a variety of different looks for the 10 live artists performing, who also included Coldplay, Kanye West, KT Tunstall and Prince. XL also provided two 16 : 9 aspect ration Sony 15 mm pitch IMAG side screens, each measuring 7 x 4 metres. The screen element of the Brits was project managed for XL by Paul Wood, working for productio

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France - Daslight, the producer of user-friendly DMX lighting controllers, is releasing its new professional software package, the next generation DVC 2. Improvements to the system include new functions, buttons, windows and a more intuitive user interface that will cut programming time by half, say the company.

Adding to already popular functions, the new tools include: group window, ordering fixtures and scenes, preset pallets, global multi-selection, powerful LIVE control, DMX universe managementa and more. Further new features will be added in the coming months.

The official release of the new software will be in April 2006, and a preview will be available atProLight & Sound in Frankfurt (29 March - 1 April), where the company can be found on stand B.81, Hall 9.0.

(Lee Baldock)

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Australia / Turkey - ARX Systems, the Australian based manufacturer of Professional Audio Equipment is very pleased to announce the appointment of AVS Global as their new Distributor for Turkey.

ARX's managing director Colin Park said: "The Turkish Audio Industry has always been important to ARX, we're looking forward to working with Osman Celik and his team at AVS Global, one of Turkey's pre-eminent Distributors to further develop the market for ARX's current and future products, especially in the Turkish Installation, Broadcast and Sound Reinforcement sectors which are now growing very strongly".

Along side ARX, AVS Global also represents manufacturers including D.I.S, KV2 AUdio,DiGiCo and Lab Gruppen.

(Lee Baldock)

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Australia - The Palace in Bay Road Brighton, home to Brighton Bay Cinemas, recently received a complete redevelopment at the hands of building owners Manaroy Properties. Included in this makeover was a stunning lighting colourwash on the front façade of the building; visible from several blocks away.

Having witnessed what results they had achieved at the Royal Exhibition Building and Chadstone Shopping Centre, Manaroy Properties owner Ralph Toranto sought Lightmoves out specifically to transform the front of their building. "We weren't sure exactly what we wanted; we just knew that we wanted to make a bold statement and bring some new attention to the somewhat forgotten Bay Street."

After lengthy discussions between Lightmoves' Steven Woloshenko and Manaroy Properties consultant Dale Smith, it was decided that an external colourwash was the best solution. Lightmoves

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UK - Lighting designer Giles Mayall specified an Avolites Pearl 2004 console to control lighting in The Ice House, a promotional ice dwelling constructed by UK based ice artists, The Ice Box, for the Dutch-German IMG Diba Bank.

The Ice House project in Germany was handled by production company Fact & Fiction. The structure was used to highlight the bank's mortgage products and services at trade shows including their Ideal Home Show. Mayall was working for UK-based JVC Events, who take care of the technical and logistical needs of all of the Ice Box's installations.

The Ice House was an 100 square metre single story building measuring 18 metres long by six metres deep and 3.7 metres high, and Mayall's task was to architecturally light the space - inside and out - in the client's blue and green corporate colours.

It was an obvious choice to go for LED light-sources - their low

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UK - Eclectic Breaks and Seltron Components have formed a new partnership. According to spokesman Michael Williams the new company, Ebsel, was developed as a direct reaction to the lack of creativity, practicality and innovation within the marketing, design, promotion, manufacture and distribution of DJ components and products. "When we were designing our acclaimed Pro X Fade analogue crossfader, which took two years to develop, we found any number of manufacturers and component suppliers with what I'd call a decadent approach to important aspects of new products and in particular, a distinct lack of support for existing products and components."

Ebsel will show its Eclectic Breaks Pro-X-Fade analogue crossfader at the Pro Light& Sound exhibition in Frankfurt (29 March - 1 April). Also showing will be the full range of Seltron/Sellmark electromechanical audio component

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