Details
USA - Danley Sound Labs has introduced the TH-215 subwoofer, the latest addition to its TH line of compact subwoofers. The TH-215 uses Danley's patent-pending tapped horn technologyto deliver honest sub-30Hz performance with audiophile fidelity in a lightweight, tour-friendly cabinet. It will find ideal applications in houses of worship, performing arts centres, and music venues ranging incapacity from clubs to arenas, says the company.

The 22" x 30" x 42" TH-215 is designed to cover the 29-125Hz range (+/-3dB) with a sensitivity of 99dB SPL at 39Hz (measured as 20V input 1/2 space at10M distance). The TH-215 takes up to 1,400 continuous watts and 2,800 programme watts and will produce a generous 133dB SPL at 36Hzand 138dB SPL in the range of 102-113Hz. The TH-215 w

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UK - Entec Sound is supplying a d&b J-Series line array system for the current Tool UK and European arena tour, which FOH sound engineer Ian Hopkinson says is "the best system I've ever used".

Entec's systems engineer Stef Serpagli confirms that the system has been pushed to astonishing limits with the exceptionally high SPL levels demanded by the Tool sonic experience, "It's basically on 11 all the time, and it's holding up really well!"

The most common configuration for the arrays is 12 J-8 tops and four J-12s a side for the main hangs, plus six C4 tops, flown two wide, and four C4 subs per side as the side hangs to give 180 degree coverage. For Wembley, the main hangs were increased by four J-8s per side - adding up to the most J-Series that Entec has hung to date. Sub bass is provided by 14 J-Subs and 12 B2s, run in cardioid mode, arranged in a delayed

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UK - The first Robe DigitalSpot 5000 DT's in the UK have been delivered to Leeds-based Zig Zag Lighting, with one immediately dispatched on tour in Europe with Pink Floyd tribute band, Off The Wall. The DS 5000 DT is rigged at the centre of the front truss, and is used to project all the band's visuals onto a 5-metre diameter circular screen positioned centre-stage.

A carefully selected assortment of video clips, graphics and animations are critical to the show. Off the Wall's video designer and manager Paul Barker has produced a full show's worth of material.

The DS 5000 DT is being looked after by LD Paddy Sollitt and his crew, and Zig Zag is also supplying all of the lighting equipment and lasers. In addition to projecting the video (stored on a separate video machine with VGA signal sent to the DS5000), the DigitalSpot 5000's onboard digital media server is also being util

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

Details
UK - Stage Technologies make the 'hills come alive' in the new production of The Sound of Music at the London Palladium, literally moving mountains. In this case it is a 12 tonne automated mountain (26 tonnes including mechanics), one of the focal pieces of scenery in this highly acclaimed production in London's West End.

Stage Technologies worked with set building company Scena to create this scenic piece which is raised and lowered from the grid and also rotates along horizontal axis, all of which is controlled by an Acrobat control console.

As well as beautiful mountain backdrops, the story of the problematic Maria unfolds amidst the stone walls of an abbey and the beautiful Von Trapp family mansion house. Large automated trucks bring the house on stage in four sections. The synchronisation and millimetre positioning of these trucks is vital to bring each piece toget

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USA - Color Kinetics Incorporated and Super Vision International, Inc. have announced a joint settlement agreement ending all pending litigation between the two companies. Through the agreement, Super Vision will pay Color Kinetics a set fee as settlement for all past claims Color Kinetics has against Super Vision, including the amount awarded to Color Kinetics by the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Super Vision will drop its pending claim of infringement against Color Kinetics with respect to US patent #4,962,687, known as the '687 patent, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Color Kinetics will drop its declaratory judgement claim of non-infringement of the '687 patent filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Color Kinetics will grant Super Vision a royalty bearing license to its worldwide patent portfolio,

Details
Germany - The PUR tour Es ist wie es ist (It is like it is) marked the return of the German band after a break. Two concerts, including the official dress rehearsal, in the Gerry Weber Stadion, Halle/Westfallen, marked the start of the tour. Other dates included Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund and Basel in Switzerland.

During the pre-programming phase, lighting designer Günther Jäckle and his team used grandMA 3D. For the actual shows, 3 x grandMA full-size, 1 x grandMA ultra-light, 2 x grandMA mediaPC with grandMA video and 7 x NSPs were employed. Connected via fibre optic cable they controlled the complex network. In total 24 x VL3500 and VL3000, 24 x VL2416, 8 x Robert Juliat Aramis, 15 x 8-Light Blinder with Rainbow Colour Changers, 6 x Publitec beaMover and a wide range of high-class LEDs were used.

The set consisted of two centre-stages connected b

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UK - 5 Star cases has supplied Professional & Broadcast Digital Systems (PBDS) with a selection of flightcases to complete the building of a flyaway television studio for a client in Russia. The order comprised three 17u and three 10u Tour Grade specification racks.

Rack 1 is used for video, Rack 2 for the VTRs and Rack3 for audio - the 10u racks provide all the monitoring. Each of the 17u racks has a sliding tray which provides a control surface for the three operators - camera control vision mixer / director and sound engineer. The system provides four broadcast cameras, audio and video for two VTRs together with full communications and monitoring.

PBDS, part of the Wescom group of companies, provides custom system engineering solutions from outside broadcast vehicles to major studio systems. This is the second order PBDS has placed with 5 Star - following a series of cases

Details
USA - JR Clancy's PowerAssist counterweight automation system was awarded both the 2006 Live Design International Product of the Year in the Rigging and Staging category and the ESTA Dealers' Choice Product Award at LDI in Las Vegas.

"This year at LDI we were honoured to receive both awards on top of the extraordinary feedback from attendees on the show floor. We were very happy with the response at the show before Saturday night's awards, but we were really happy on Sunday morning," says Tom Young, vice president of marketing for JR Clancy. "We're particularly pleased by these awards because the LDI award is from judges who are end users and specifiers of the product and the ESTA award is from dealers, who we consider our partners."

The PowerAssist allows the user to automate existing counterweight rigging sets, as well as add motorised rigging to new proj

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UK - Utopian Leisure has just completed its third new venue launch - in the spectacular Odyssey complex situated on the riverfront of Belfast City opposite the famous H & W (Titanic) Shipyards. The Box is a two tier nightclub and bar venue offering a diverse selection of style, imagery and music. Following on from their successful openings of Sam Jacks and Bar 55 in Newcastle and Love Shack in Durham, MD Bob Senior and operations director Carl Hornsby called in Andy Austin-Brown of KV2 Audio to specify a new sound system to match the standards that had been installed in the previous venues.

The Box represented another challenge, that of being able to contain and control sound without creating external noise pollution. In this case the Odyssey complex is surrounded by a multi screen cinema complex, an IMAX cinema directly above and several well know chain restaurants in the surro

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UK - Already with a reputation as one of the most luxurious cinemas outside the West End, the renowned Everyman Cinema Club in Hampstead, London, has nevertheless been getting a makeover, commissioning CGA Integration to enhance the technical facilities in its bar and private screening lounge.

Hot-foot from its recent project at the Dorchester Hotel, CGA has altered the identity of the Cinema's ground-floor, transforming the lobby into a cool bar seating area with the installation of an Electro-Voice sound system, using four wall-mounted EV S-40 ultracompact compact monitors together with a 50" plasma screen.

The space has been re-designed to include a cyc-type wall, new lighting, and shocking pink and orange furnishings. Says Chris Gunton of CGA, "even given the hot colours, it's a square design so I chose Electro-Voice's square S-40 cabinet, which sounded much warm

Details
UK - Lamp sales operation Just Lamps has been recognised by the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 listing, which placed the company seventh in the prestigious list. With sales at £387k in 2003 and at £9,926k in 2006, the projector lamp distributor achieved an outstanding 195% annual sales growth in this period, making them the fastest-growing company in the audio-visual sector. Published on Sunday 3 December, Fast Track 100 run in conjunction with the Sunday Times and Virgin Atlantic, ranks Britain's hundred fastest-growing unquoted companies by 2003-2006 sales growth. Established in 2002, Just Lamps identified a niche in the market, to meet the fast-growing and ever-urgent demand for replacement projector lamps. The company has fully exploited this niche, offering a high level of service via its award winning website. Over the last four years, the company has built a rep

Details
USA - To celebrate the season, High End Systems Inc is hosting a Holiday Open House on 13-14 December, from 2-8 pm at its Austin, Texas headquarters. All are invited to join the company for festive drinks, hors d'oeuvres and, of course, entertainment lighting technology featuring demos of its latest products. Anyone interested in attending is asked to RSVP indicating which day they would like to attend by emailing the address supplied below.

High End Systems is located at 2105 Gracy Farms Lane, Austin, TX 78758. Call 512 836 2242 for directions.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
Australia - Australian-based pro audio manufacturer ARX has added the new Iso Optimizer to its AudiBox series of audio problem solvers. The company says its Iso Optimizer is a unique transformer isolated precision Level optimizer, which allows the user to attenuate the level from one piece of equipment to the next in order to provide the exact level required and reduce the risk of overloading sensitive inputs. Transformer Ground isolation provides low-noise operation suitable for any application, say ARX.

Applications include pro audio/consumer interfacing, and level and impedance matching for digitising audio. Specifications include, Input and Outputs have a 10K Impedance Ohms and Balanced jack and Unbalanced RCA connectors. Input Attenuation is user variable from 0db to infinity (off) and Frequency Response is 20Hz - 20kHz ± 0.5dB.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
UK - The tiny Mediterranean island of Malta has always taken its dance music seriously - with more highly-specified nightclubs per capita for its 400,000 population than just about anywhere else. Stefan Farrugia of sound system distributor Futuretech, has set out to convert the island's top venues and DJs to Denon DJ playback devices and mixers - and now believes his coverage has extended to 70% of the island's fixed installs and rental houses.

"The breakthrough was caused by the arrival of the DN-S3500 CD/MP3 player," he says, and to date high profile venues such as Silk, Styx, Plush, Sin City and Places have given main booth space to the tabletop players - as has George Said's legendary La Grotta on the neighbouring island of Gozo.

Other Denon tabletop devices, including the award-winning DN-S5000, can be found in venues like Clique, Sugar Shake, 121 (the former Mo

Details
Italy - Guido Noselli, the founder and chairman of Italian pro audio manufacturer Outline, passed away on Friday 1 December 2006, following the diagnosis of an incurable illness just one year ago. Noselli was considered one of the world's leading experts in his field, and his patents and unconventional ideas received recognition in the form of various industry awards.

A statement issued by Outline reads: "Guido happily shared his experience and knowledge, and whoever listened to or read what he had to say (from youngsters to seasoned pros) was immediately struck by the passion with which he talked or wrote from the heart."

The company has asked friends and colleagues of Guido who would like to leave a message in his memory to do so by e-mailing Outline at the address provided below.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
USA - ANSI E1.17 - 2006, Entertainment Technology - Architecture for Control Networks, better known as ACN, is now available for sale on The ESTA Foundation website. ACN is a suite of documents that specifies an architecture, including protocols and language, which may be configured and combined with other standard protocols to form flexible, networked audio, lighting, or other control systems. It can be implemented on networks that support UDP, IP, and related protocols. It is not bound to Ethernet as a transport medium, but Ethernet is an obvious choice.

ACN is being distributed via download as a five megabyte ZIPped archive of 17 PDF and two DDL files. The "hardcopy" is a CDROM; there is no paper version offered. The ReadMe file lists the 18 other files that make up the suite and provides links to the human-readable PDFs, as well as giving acknowledgements and stat

Details
UK / Croatia - MC2 has announced the appointment Bo-Mah as its Croatian distributor. BO-MAH is a Zagreb-based company specialising in practical solutions offering complete customer satisfaction through direct sales, hire and installation.

MC2 report that the team at BO-MAH has a wealth of experience gained from their collective experience across the audio industry as company directors Marijo Suica and Boris Mahovli? explain: "This experience has taught us to understand what our customers needs are and to use only the best quality equipment. This in turn provides potential buyers with personalised customer service to obtain the best result and value for money."

BO-MAH is a licensed distributor for some of the top staging and pro-audio brands, including Sennheiser microphones, headphones and wireless systems; Coda loudspeakers; Europodium staging, mobile stages and alu

Details
USA - Once reserved only for the largest of musicals, automated lighting can now be found in theatrical productions of all scales - as demonstrated by the acclaimed new play Frost/Nixon, which recently made use of the FocusTrack lighting tracking software to facilitate its move from the Donmar Warehouse to London's West End.

Directed by Michael Grandage and designed by Christopher Oram with lighting by Neil Austin, Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon re-creates and dramatises the legendary interview between David Frost and Richard Nixon, following the President's resignation after the Watergate scandal. The show opened at London's Donmar Warehouse in mid-August; such was the critical acclaim, it was announced almost immediately that it would transfer to the Gielgud Theatre in the West End.

This presented a problem for lighting designer Neil Austin, whose commitments to ot

Details
UK - Special effects manufacturer Le Maitre has announced the introduction of a number of new effects products.

First, Terrafog is a patented design, brought about by a desire from the nightclub market to have a high-powered smoke effect to simulate the large liquid nitrogen fog cannons seen in some of the superclubs of Ibiza and Florida. The company says that, whilst the effect of Terrafog is not as big as the liquid nitrogen cannons, or as cold, it is very close - given the price.

Terrafog uses one or two Le Maitre G300 smoke machines to give a visual effect, plus carbon dioxide for the cooling effect, compressed air or nitrogen for the pneumatics and special fog fluid to ensure the effect disappears quickly. The combination of these elements gives a large blast of cold fog that can be blasted upwards, down on to the audience or across a stage, say the company, adding that T

Details
UK - A new service called OnePlanet - sustainable event solutions, launched by Paragon Live Event Agency on 1 November, is offering who are paying more and more attention to the CSR (or 'Corporate Social Responsibility') credentials of the services they buy, with the choices and framework to stage more environmentally responsible events.

Through OnePlanet, Paragon offers options including sourcing venues and suppliers with proven eco-credentials, ideas for alternative methods of travel and CO2 offsetting, increasing energy efficiency and waste reduction (around 20% of waste produced in the UK is packaging, that's 4.5 million tonnes a year), use of reusable and recyclable materials in stage/set design, build and theming.

There are also opportunities to provide interesting local and global projects actively integrating into an event, say the company - for example, creating a tea

Details
UK - When the Barbican Concert Hall decided to integrate its four different sound system controllers with an AMX integrated sound control system, they were referred by AMX to Hawthorns to carry out the installation.

"This wasn't a straightforward AMX installation, as the Barbican use the system in a unique way and we enjoyed the technical challenge," said Simon Ling, installation manager for Hawthorn.

Hawthorns have done over 12 AMX installations, for a variety of clients in the UK, over the past 12 months: "When we were asked to recommend a potential installation company by the Concert Hall, we had no hesitation in recommended Hawthorns who have done superb installations for us in the past and our customer feedback on their performance has been glowing," said Sarah Chiappi of AMX.

Ingo Reinhardt, deputy technical manager at the Barbican said: "We ar

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