USA - The growing number of users of digital projectors in entertainment and events share a common problem: When the projector is projecting black, it is actually a dark grey that is quite obvious and distracting on a dark stage. The Projector Dowser from City Theatrical is an electromechanical device that sits next to or on top of a digital projector and swings a flag in front of the beam to change video black to a real blackout.

The Projector Dowser utilises a stepper motor controlled by one channel of DMX to swing a flag through an arc of up to 90 degrees. The flag is adjustable on a rotating shaft to allow users to position the flag and the control box in a convenient location. The included mounting kit features a flat base with screw holes, rubber feet, Velcro, and an Allen k

The Netherlands - With the delivery of a complete Alcons LR16 pro-ribbon line-array system, Amsterdam-based Focus Showequipment has chosen Alcons as main sound system brand for their rental inventory. The system consists of 18 pcs. LR16 ribbon line-array modules, 6 pcs. LR16B line-array bass complete with accompanying ALC4 2x 2kW controller-amplifiers and processing.

The choice for Alcons was made on basis of a number of comparison tests and on basis of their experience with a large number of brands from Focus' own rental inventory. Most important decision criteria were performance, logistics, but also a wide acceptance of the brand throughout the different application areas.

Paul Lassooij, co-owner, and responsible for the rental equipment, says: "Important for a large organisation as Focus, is to serve a largest possible range of applications with a smallest number of d

Greece - Christie partners AVC Productions recently provided complete technical support for a multi-venue Global Symposium on Vision Correction in Athens, on behalf of McMenemy Hill Live Communication, whose client is the eyecare specialists Bausch & Lomb.

Working with Bausch & Lomb's appointed communications agency McMenemy Hill, AVC supplied reinforcement for fifty presenters over the three days, using four of their newly purchased Christie (SXGA+) S+12Ks. These 12,000 ANSI Lumen, 3-chip DLP devices projected in 4:3 aspect ratio onto two butted displays, were soft-edge blended to create a widescreen canvas measuring 6m x 2.37m.

Fitted with 4.5-7.3:1 long-throw lenses, the S+12K's, ground-stacked at the back of the room on 10ft Dexion mounts, were able to provide the perfect solution, delivering razor sharp images over the 22m distance, and capturing the stunning detail of th

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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

Belgium - Barco, a pioneer in creative LED technology, is delighted to announce the first permanent LED installation on a building façade. The Uniqa building in Vienna, Austria stands at an impressive 20 floors and has been fitted with 45,000 LED blocks covering a staggering 7000sqm. The LED blocks, attached to profiles in between the window panes, bring the building to life and make it one of the most striking towers in Vienna.

Designed by lighting designers Licht Kunst Licht, the installation is a fantastic example of how LED can be used creatively to transform buildings and identify them as distinctive landmarks. Licht Kunst Licht understand lighting design as an integral part of architecture by emphasizing its effect on spatial quality as opposed to stressing the formal lighting fixture design. At night the tailor made content for Uniqa brings the building to life and ensur

Europe - Hailed as one of the key pop lyricists of his generation, he made his name as the vocalist of the highly influential British rock group The Smiths. Morrissey's latest tour of Europe has been carrying full production provided by SSE Audio Group, featuring a Nexo Geo T system with Camco amplification.

The tour, which started in Sweden, has visited a diverse list of venues, from well-known arenas to town halls. Used in full at the largest shows, for example at London's Alexandra Palace, Morrissey's Nexo Geo T tangent-array sound reinforcement system comprised left and right arrays of 12x T4805s and three T2815s, with a centre cluster of two T4805s plus three T2815s. Sub bass was delivered by Nexo CD18s and the entire system was powered by Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers, with Vortex 4s to power the stage monitor system.

FOH engineer Dave 'Milky' Millward explained: "It's

Hungary - DiGiCo's ongoing worldwide sales expansion has recently enjoyed a significant boost with the appointment of Chromatica as the brand's distributor in Hungary.

Chromatica is a relatively young but fast-growing company, with founder Makkay Imre setting himself the challenge of bringing the very best audio brands to the eastern European country.

"The company has been established for four years and our aim is to provide superb audio quality and the world's best support to our customers," says Imre . "And with brands like Meyer Sound, Audix, Furman and Avalon already in our inventory, we knew that we needed to be able to supply very high class digital mixing consoles.

"The truth is that it didn't take long to find the best choice," he continues. "We had so much good feedback about DiGiCo consoles from system techs and sound engineers from ri

UK - In celebration of the Betapack's 16th birthday Zero 88 are launching an updated version at ABTT this year.

All the best features of the Betapack have been retained so users can be assured that the Betapack 3 will offer the same reliability and durability as the current version. A number of new features have been added to improve the dimmers functionality. These have all been added with no extra cost, ensuring the Betapack 3 continues to offer fantastic value for money.

The new features include: MCB protection as standard; isolated DMX input; patchable per channel; preheat, topset and dimmer law selectable per channel; 12 programmable backup memories; three programmable 99-step sequences with adjustable times; auto DMX termination when loop-through plug is removed; temperature monitoring and progressive overheat shutdown.

The versatility of the Betapack means it can be i

France - Rycote is showcasing a new and exciting range of smooth windshields at AES (Audio Engineering Society) in Paris this month. As well as providing very effective wind noise reduction, these new Rycote Smoothies can be personalised with a printed colour logo of your choice.

The Smoothies comprise a two-part foam cavity constructed of an open cell acoustic foam base, covered by a thin foam outer skin, reducing wind noise up to 22dB. A large range of sizes is available to fit most popular shotgun and condenser microphones (from 19mm to 25 mm diameter), as well as a variety of on-board camera microphones. There are five new Smoothie flavours to choose from: blackberry, strawberry, lime, banana and blueberry.

For increased wind protection a removable fur cover (Smoothie Windjammer) is available as an optional extra in the standard Rycote grey fur.

Rycote's managing directo

USA - Just in case you couldn't be on the scene for NAB 2006, the videohounds at b-roll.net have got you covered. As one of the web's leading resources for TV news photographers, b-roll.net expert shooters made the leap this year from writing about NAB tocapturing the highlights on video. To make sure the sound was as crisp as the images and editing, they hit the Las Vegas Convention Centre equipped with Lectrosonics wireless microphones.

"NAB 2006 was the ultimate test for a wireless system," reports Kevin Johnson, founder of b-roll.net. "Even with so much RF running around the building, we never had a problem with losing the signal from our Lectrosonics mics. In all my experiences with Lectrosonics they've been a solid performer, and that held true in the challenging environment that ashow the size of NAB presents." The b-roll team set out with highly porta

France - First announced at AES New York in October, the new EnergyPro brand will be exhibiting for the first time at a European AES in Paris, together with their distributor Analogue Audio/Pro Audio Services.

EnergyPro is the newly created professional division of Audio Products International Corp, manufacturer of the brands Energy, Mirage and Athena Technologies. Based in Toronto, Canada, APIC is the third largest loudspeaker manufacturer in North America and one of the ten largest speaker manufacturers in the world.

The first products created under the new brand are a comprehensive line of studio monitors, focussed on the recording, post production, project studio and broadcast markets. Stereo, surround, passive, active, analogue and digitally controlled systems are all featured and API has used its R&D resources to design in digital compatibility and upgrade paths for this

USA - Zandar Technologies, a leading innovator in the design and development of high quality multi-source video display and management solutions, will be debuting their high-quality image processing products at InfoComm between 7 - 9 June, in Orlando, Florida, USA.

From the varied display requirements of audio visual, video conferencing and digital signage applications to the complex configurations required for high end command and control rooms, video surveillance and security monitoring centres, Zandar MultiViewers provide a specific multi-video display solution. The company shall be exhibiting its advanced range of MultiViewer solutions which provide one flexible, integrated interface for the display of multiple video and data sources at many demanding and diverse sites across the globe today.

Enhanced video display and monitoring will be showcased with the all new FusionPr

Aisia - Singapore-based distribution company Peak Fusion Audio Design has become the new exclusive distribution partner for HK Audio products in Singapore and Malaysia.

For several years, Peak Fusion has been active on the market as a distribution and installation company both in the professional audio and the AV segment and is also working exclusively with other German manufacturers as well.

Managing director Daniel Ng says: "With HK Audio, we have been able to add another premiere German manufacturer to the fold. Both the Portable Sound products with the active LUCAS systems and the high-end Cohedra and Cohedra Compact line array systems are the final touch in rounding out our product portfolio."

HK Audio international sales manager Christian Stumpp adds: "By working together with Peak Fusion, we are taking another major step in establishing our brand throug

UK - ADLIB Audio continues its excellent working relationship with the Charlatans, supplying a JBL VerTec line array system and full sound production and crew for their latest UK tour.

The band have just released their new Simpatico album, and with a loyal concert going fanbase, all the gigs have been packed with punters and enthusiasm.

The tour visits a variety of venues and is being mixed by FOH engineer Dian Barton. For the larger spaces, the standard configuration is 12 VerTec 4888 elements a side, together with six ADLIB 418 subs a side, explains ADLIB's systems engineer and FOH 'babysitter' Steve Pattison.

VerTec is an ideal system for a band like the Charlatans, who combine a serious rock 'n' roll attitude with power, driving guitars and intricate lyrics. They are not a band that requires rocket science to get a good sound, as they all play well and solidly, it

France - Graham Pattison has been Front Of House engineer for many bands and spent years with Kula Shaker and, more recently, Gomez. When it comes to recording, there's just one mic that Pattison takes into the studio, the SE Gemini.

Pattison is a freelance sound engineer based in Paris who has worked with a host of big bands and artists. For years he worked as Kula Shaker's FOH engineer and when the band reformed recently they asked him to work with them at their reunion gigs.

"The gigs were really good," he says. "I didn't know whether to get involved again to be honest. It was kind of like going out with an old girlfriend! I turned up and mixed the first show and it went great."

Pattison has a long list of other bands on his CV too. "I've worked with Spiritualized and, over the last couple of years, I worked with Gomez who are now very big in Amer

Thailand - Visualization specialist Barco is delighted that its products were selected for the MTV Asia Awards in Thailand on 6 May 2006. The Siam Paragon in Bangkok was illuminated not only with international and Asian stars celebrating the fifth spectacular MTV Asia Awards 2006, but also a host of Barco's leading creativity products were on set to provide the visual displays.

The highly creative set design was built around two OLite 510 LED displays totaling 30sq.m of modular LED blocks. Set back from the OLite were a total of 8,000 MiPIX blocks which gave the set depth. Two SLM R12+ projectors provided the 4,600 capacity crowd with a front seat view of what was happening on stage, as well the MTV short animation film that played at intervals throughout the show.

All Barco products were supplied and installed by Tedtronic Pte Ltd of Singapore, one of Barco's la

Spain - Time goes by with giant steps, so Work is introducing the new SION professional mixer series, aiming to satisfy the needs of the most demanding DJ's.

SION is a new and useful mixer series with two, three and four channels, bringing some new features and including new technical characteristics of the latest generation.

Input type selectors and three band equalizer on each channel, level adjustment and master/monitoring selector at the headphones output, front and back microphone inputs with talkover function, high intensity Led vumeters, recording outputs, an easy crossfader and line faders replacement system, and an excellent signal/noise ratio makes of the new SION series a must in the future DJ booths.

(Chris Henry)

USA - Meyer Sound has announced that Alejandro Orozco has been appointed to the newly created position of marketing manager for Latin America. Based at Meyer Sound's office in Mexico City, Orozco is charged with strengthening Meyer Sound's brand throughout Latin America by working closely with customers and Spanish language press to disseminate news about applications of Meyer Sound equipment in Latin America, and through Meyer Sound's presence at trade shows.

Orozco comes to Meyer Sound after occupying several marketing positions in Mexico's financial and entertainment industries and acting as marketing consultant to companies such as Glaxo-Smithkline, ING Financial Group, Novedades Editores, and Texas-based SoilLock Inc. Orozco also has contributed to magazines in Mexico and other parts of Latin America.

"Meyer Sound has a strong reputation and consistently inspires en

Belgium - Barco, pioneer in creative LED technology, is again centre stage at this year's 2006 Eurovision Song contest. With an impressive and varied combination of the latest LED technology and projectors, the show is set to be the biggest ever and is a tribute to Barco's leadership in international events.

As the eyes of an estimated 400 million viewers across the world tune-in to watch the semi-final and final in Athens, Greece on 18 and 20 May, they will see one of the most spectacular stage designs ever, featuring more than 1,100 of the industry's standard Barco ILite 6 XP LED tiles, 4,800 OLite 510 modules and 8 high brightness SLM-R12+ projectors all being controlled by the Encore show control system. Barco rental partner Procon (Germany) - ETF (Belgium) delivered all visualization equipment used on the show.

Integrated into the gigantic 13-metre-wide stage floor

USA - Danley Sound Labs is introducing the SH-100B at InfoComm 2006. This new addition to the popular SH Series gives the user the additional power of a tapped-horn subwoofer wrapped around the popular two-way Danley SH-100 loudspeaker.

With a maximum SPL in the upper 120dB range, a beamwidth of 110 x 110, and frequency response to below 40Hz, the SH-100B is destined to become a favourite loudspeaker solution for audio designers, contractors, and staging/rental companies, says the company. Its compact size, 29.5" x 20.5" x 19", make the SH-100B extremely mobile.

Applications for the SH-100B include houses or worship, commercial theatres, live music venues, performing arts centres, and discos.

"Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, the SH-100B is one of the most powerful loudspeakers out there," says Mike Hedden, president of Danley Sound Labs. "Us

Denmark - The Mania SCX series is Martin's response to the market demand for more powerful, compact and feature packed scanners. The latest in the series is the Mania SCX700, a far-reaching and blinding moving mirror effect driven by 150 watts of discharge power. The SCX700 also features crisp rotating gobos, a broad selection of colors and a fast strobe effect making it ideal for the all-night club dance floor.

This extraordinary discharge scanner effect houses the highest quality optical system for maximum light output and true high-definition image quality. It combines with a long life 150W discharge lamp (6000 hours, included) to kick out an impressively powerful array of graphics and color. And for easy serviceability, the lamp in the SCX700 is a breeze to replace.

The SCX700 features separate colour and gobo wheels for a multitude of brilliant effects. Included are seven

UK - The M1 Tubetracker is ideal for the home or project studio - especially when space is limited. The M1 follows on from the success of the hugely popular M4 tube console launched last year, which already has a large array of high profile users from Athlete to Lamb.

The M1 enables you to capture that acclaimed warm, smooth and clean TL Audio sound at the lowest price point ever achieved on one of their desks says the company, without compromising quality. The M1 offers you quality valve mic preamps on each channel, three band musical EQ with sweepable mid on each channel, two auxiliary sends per channel as well as effects returns and alternate two track returns and monitoring options.

It has been designed to maximize today's recording techniques, with the addition of an optional ADAT output for easy digital connection to your recording device and software. It makes the perfe

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