Poland - Earlier this year Danish beer and beverage company Carlsberg, with a little help from one of Poland's top lighting supply and design companies, GRODA, organized a party for its Polish employees at Torwar Bowl in Warsaw. The most attractive element of the evening's design was an enormous eight-legged spider truss. The creature was composed of eight legs and round circular truss body surrounding a 5.3m diameter ball.

Four legs, made of transparent tubes, were fixed to the ground. Inside each tube leg GRODA placed a Mac 300 washlight, Atomic strobe, and Jem ZR12-DMX fog machine. The MacC 300s worked to color the tubes while flashing Atomics created the illusion of quick motion. Fog from the ZR12s gave the plastic tubes a more solid appearance.

The spider's remaining four t

USA - Loud Technologies announced today the appointment of Jeffrey Cox to the position of vice president for the EAW brand group.

As the new business leader for the EAW brand, Cox will be responsible for defining and leading all business and product strategies, including collaborating with Loud's sales, engineering, operations and marketing teams to ensure the deployment of these plans worldwide.

Cox brings to EAW a proven track record of introducing industry-defining sound reinforcement products and building highly successful business organizations around them. As the founder and CEO of Cox Audio Engineering, he was responsible for the introduction and manufacturing of the V-DOSC Line Array, a product that caused a paradigm shift in loudspeaker formatting which completely altered modern-day touring and installed systems.

"I couldn't be happier that Jeff has agreed to h

UK - Snake Newton got into sound engineering 'by mistake' 20 years ago, as he thought that giving his band of the time a better sound would get them noticed. And to a certain degree his thinking paid off. The band didn't get noticed but Snake's quality sound did and soon his services were in demand the world over.

He says: "Since 1999 I have done two years with the Pet Shop Boys, three years with Craig David and two-and-a-half years with Duran Duran, who exploded back on the live scene having reformed in their original line up. I have also worked, mixing FOH, on many TV Award shows including the MTV Europe awards, the MOBOs and the Brits, and have supervised the band mix at dozens of TV and radio performances around the world."

His latest tour saw him oversee the live sound for the Sugababes, during which time his Focusrite Liquid Channels came in to full effect. &qu

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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

USA - Celestion has dramatically increased the versatility of its CDX range with the launch of two new compact, lightweight Neodymium compression drivers - the CDX1-1730 and CDX1-1731.

These two models provide designers with a choice of mounting options (the CDX1-1730 is flange mount and the CDX1-1731 screw mount), while specifications for both devices are the same: 75-Watt power rating, 8 Ohm impedance, 110 dB sensitivity, 1.2-20 kHz frequency range, 1.75" voice coil and 1" throat exit.

According to senior project engineer, Paul Cork: "These are very lightweight and compact compression drivers which bring together the best elements of technology used in all of our CDX range."

And, like other CDX compression drivers in the range, these new devices make extensive use of Celestion's industry-leading experience in Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to optimize th

UK - Entec Sound and Light supplied Russian superstar Philip Kirkorov with full lighting and sound production, and also co-ordinated other production elements including video and pyro for his sold out show at Hammersmith Apollo. It was part of an extensive two month European tour.

Entec has experience of working with several leading Russian artists, and for this show, their crew co-ordinated in advance with Kirkorov's touring crew to ensure the busy show day ran smoothly.

Lighting designer Boris Volkov design involved three upstage trussing triangles, constructed from mini-beam and hung off nine points from two rigging trusses, plus two straight A-type front and mid lighting trusses.

His operating style was based on 'beam technology' with lots of dramatic beam and gobo looks from lighting fixtures spread across all of the trussing elements. These included 26 Vari*Lite VL 200

UK - Marquee Audio has recently supplied a KV2 Audio EX 10 active powered loudspeaker system to ITV's London Studios. Marquee's Rob Whitaker explains: "I was initially contacted by Luke Wallace at The London Studios who looks after their AV requirements. Initial discussions were based around a fixed installation but during further investigation, listening to how and what would be expected and taking into account the aesthetics of the room (clean lines, cool steel and lots of glass) it was decided that a highly flexible, but portable system which could be quickly set up and struck down would be the best solution, but without any of the sonic compromises that often occur when taking into account the client's requirements."

The room has to be used in several different ways including, green room, canteen and conference facility. Whitaker says: "The room is used in jus

UK - Orbital has made the regenerated Novello Theatre in London's Aldwych "music-ready" to allow the Tristian Baker / Mark Goucher production of Footloose to take up residency in the West End following its successful provincial tour. In so doing, Orbital have broken new ground being the first to deploy Digidesign's new V2.0 D-Show software for the Venue digital desk.

Orbital had long selected this digital environment for the Footloose tour of duty. Feedback on the desk which the production company provided following last year's production of Annie Get Your Gun has largely been incorporated into the new D-Show operating software, giving it the same cachet in the theatre world as it has been enjoying in the rock 'n' roll environment.

"A lot of minor issues have been addressed, predominantly to do with Snapshots, which now make this desk awesom

USA - After their month long Ear Candy contest and along with the announcement of the winner of Serial #001, API Audio is pleased to announce it's new product called the A2D.

The A2D integrates two 312 discrete mic preamps with API's new proprietary analogue to digital converters into a 1U rack space unit. It represents the first digital offering in API¹s successful line of microphone amplifiers and signal processing modules.

"When we began design of the A2D, we wanted to do it right. We knew the analogue to digital converters had to be the best possible to fully complement two of our 312 discrete mic amps, one of our most popular mic amp designs for over 25 years," says Larry Droppa, president of API. "And at the same time, we felt it was important to avoid the typical delays of announcing a new product and then shipping it much later. We're pleased to

USA - Tim Eldridge of dBA Acoustics, a respected consulting and design services firm, recently helped raise the roof of the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum to allow for bigger audiences and better sound throughout. Initially a 10,000-seat indoor stadium, primarily used for events such as hockey games and various traveling shows, the venue's owner felt it was time to fully renovate and increase seating capacity by a third. This required the removal of the venue's roof. It was cut free and raised with cables while upper seating sections and suites were built underneath.

Today, the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum is a 13,000-seat - and far more welcoming - live event destination. It even sounds better than before, thanks to Eldridge and his simple, yet capable acoustic measurement system featuring an Earthworks M30 microphone, SIA SmaartLive software, the TerraSonde Audio Too

USA - Vari-Lite is pleased to announce the hiring of Rich Booth as brand manager for the complete line of Vari*Lite automated luminaires. With an extensive and exemplary marketing background, Booth will manage all Vari-Lite marketing and brand imaging campaigns. Booth joins technical marketing manager Heinz Roy, product manager George Masek, and public relations manager Bryan Matthews to complete the Vari-Lite marketing team.

"I am very pleased to have Rich guide our marketing team," says Steve Carson, Vari-Lite vice president and general manager. "He has shown a tremendous aptitude for leadership and his marketing knowledge is second to none. Through his supervision, I know that Vari-Lite will once again lead the industry with fresh and unique marketing campaigns."

"When I first began to look into Vari-Lite, I knew instantly it would be marketing prof

TC Electronic's press call detailed numerous products about to hit the market. Amongst these was the C300 Dual Stereo Gate/Compressor, a dual engine dynamics processor providing compression/limiting and gate/expansion, and which begins shipping in May. Also from TC, VoiceSolo is a new range of near-field voice monitors, optimized for easy setup with conventional microphone stands and booms. The range consists of the passive VSM-200P monitor, the active VSM-200 monitor, and the active VSM-300. All models are now shipping.

German manufacturer K.M.E. launched two active professional stage monitors, the CLP 320 and CLP 350, to add to its Cluster Series. The CLP 320 is equipped with 12" + 1" neodymium loudspeaker, the CLP 350 with a 15" + 1" speaker combination. Both models have a 350W class D amplifier for high quality audio. Both monitors feature an optimized dispersion, due to the 80° x 60° rotatable horn. The low profile casings are equipped with an angle of 45°.

Apollo Design Technology's Keith Kankovsky and Milad Khouli were in attendance. The company reports that it is now a leading supplier of gobos to European moving light manufacturers - quite an achievement for a company from Indiana, especially considering the abundance of European gobos on offer. They found the show fairly busy, with most interest directed at their high resolution glass and steel patterns, and at the Smart Color scroller. Apollo also experienced strong international interest at this show.

"The Earth is covered largely by water," pointed out Sennheiser's Rolf Meyer, helpfully. "But a much larger area is reliably covered by Sennheiser RF." And with that, cue the introduction of Net 1, the first steps in the company's next generation of RF. Net 1 is a hub for up to 10 Sennheiser wireless systems, but is designed not to render the existing million-or-so channels of Sennheiser RF redundant overnight.

"You can count on Sennheiser RF forever," continued Meyer playfully. "I was recently in an environment that was inaccessible to most of us until the early '90s - where 15 years ago you'd have been shot, in fact, without authorization. But it had a 1036 Sennheiser RF system - deep in the recesses of the Kremlin! I can't tell you how it got there, but when I asked the sound guy if he wanted to upgrade to a newer system he said, 'WhyΩ It wor

Clay Paky always has a major presence at SIB, and this year was no exception. The large stand, with its hands-on demonstrations of its leading Alpha range of moving head luminaires - not to mention its hospitality - was a hive of activity throughout the show. The Alpha range, first introduced at SIB two years previously, now offers lighting designers a choice of 10 units. The latest models added to the range are the Alpha Profile 1200 and the Alpha Wash 1200.

Baldwin Boxall displayed brand new voice alarm products and a new range of microphones, as well as pouring a good pint of real ale at this year's show. Vigil EVAS is a range of DSP controlled voice alarm products, Vigil Eclipse2 is a cost-effective wall-mountable voice alarm or public address system, and BDM400 is a networkable range of paging microphones. If these products are as good as their hospitality is warm, then they are onto a winner.

USA - Renkus-Heinz will showcase its CF/CFX Series of high value, high performance loudspeakers at Infocomm with a live demonstration in demo roomW-203A. The self-powered CF Series incorporates the company's new PF-1 Intelligent Digital Amplifier, while the CFX Series is designed for use with external amplifiers.

The CF/CFX Series brings world-renowned Renkus-Heinz innovations, along with the brand's natural, balanced sonic performance, to a lower price point, says the company. Built to the company's stringent quality standards using the finest components and materials, each CF/CFX Series loudspeaker is rigorously inspected before shipping. To achieve cost efficiency, the CF/CFX Series uses simpler cabinet designs and offers fewer options than the product lines that have established Renkus-Heinz as a world leader in loudspeaker technology.

The CF/CFX Series includes six produc

Look Solutions had several foggers on display with some new products including the Low Fogger, exhibited as a prototype and shipping in a couple of months. The new Unique2 was also featured on the stand.

Studio Due's Graziano Carosi was keen to talk about the company's new factory in China, stressing that the factory, working closely with the company's Italian staff, enabled prices to be reduced whilst quality had remained unchanged. The company presented a new model of the City Color, with 2500 or 1800W of power. A new asymmetric bracket gives the head more inclination, and the unit is IP54-rated. Also presented was the Shark 250 and 150 units as well as the CityLED, which with RGB DMX-controllable LEDs offers a cost-effective graphic solution for architectural applications.

Behringer kicked things off with another 10 new products to add to the 32 launched at NAMM. "We continue to be all about value for money," said Michael Leidel, sales manager for Behringer's European Business Centre, which makes no distinction between pro audio and MI sales channels. "We're still very strong in small mixers and 19" rackmount units, but computer-based recording is the big future for us." Leidel also dismissed the recent news about Behringer being fined $1 million in the US as purely a local issue, with no effect on - or relevance to - European trading conditions. Moving on, then . . .

The team from Pulsar reported a busy show, with lots of "important" people and overseas visitors attending. As seen in the March issue at ARC, the new Chroma Range has just begun shipping and includes: the ChromaBatten 50, ChromaStrip X3 and ChromaBankIP.

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