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USA - Bandit Lites is currently working with Grammy award-winning alternative rock band, Deftones. The summer tour includes dates across the US, wrapping up in Canada. Deftones have already made their way through Mexico, South America, Japan, Australia and Europe this year, supporting their most recent album, Saturday Night Wrist.

Lighting designer Anthony 'Geddy' Korddjaka chose to use ACL's, PAR 64s, four Lite Moles, two Lite Inline Moles, Martin MAC 500s, AC Color Blocks, Coemar Par Lite LEDs, Pixeline 4' 1044s and Martin Atomic 3000 strobes and scrollers. Lighting was controlled by a Compulite Vector Red.

(Jim Evans)

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West Indies - In preparation for this year's Cricket World Cup, a number of the island nations embarked on significant redevelopment programmess, both to their stadia and the surrounding areas.

The 17,000-seat Queens Park Oval in Trinidad, the oldest Cricket stadium in the Caribbean, received an extensive makeover that covered both aesthetics and infrastructure. The venue, which has long been known as an acoustical challenge, was fitted with a new sound system comprising 109 Community R.5-HP loudspeakers, powered by Crown CTS2000 amplification.

Raj Patel of the global consulting group Arup's New York offices was brought in to see that uniform standards were met for intelligibility and acoustical consistency throughout the various stadia.

As Michael Pereira of Trinidad-based AMR Limited explains, the project presented several challenges, the most daunting of which was the tim

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UK - Rental Company Richard Martin Lighting has invested in 2K versions of the Moving High Ground, manufactured by Italian based company Novalight.

The 2K's are similar in design to the traditional Moving High Ground that was released only a few years ago. However, it has a black casing (as opposed to the original grey) and the increase from 1.2 Kilo Watts to 2 Kilo Watts is what makes this light different, says the company.

(Jim Evans)

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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 - A technological breakthrough on Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage this year was the implementation of a digital signal path from the Digidesign D-Show FOH desks right up to the Funktion One loudspeakers on the main stage - using an Optocore optical fibre solution.

The enhanced sound quality owed its success to the faith invested by Simon Honywill, sound designer for the control and monitor system suppliers RG Jones, and the support offered throughout by Marquee Audio's digital expert Andy Huffer.

It was Huffer who had proposed the digital solution to Honywill near the beginning of the year - suggesting three of Optocore's DD32E network devices to transmit a maximum amount of digital data at high speed.

Marquee are not only the official UK distributors of Optocore fibre networks but are also Digidesign resellers, and Andy Huffer was on hand at FOH to support the consulting eng

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USA - High End Systems has launched its newest automated luminaire, the Showgun. This, say HES, is a larger than normal automated light that can project images, change and mix dichroic colours, and switch from hard-edge to soft-edge, all within a compact system. Adding an extra bit of flash is the LED Tracking System, which forms a circle around the lens, says the company.

Showgun's's main output uses a 2000W short arc metal halide lamp, designed as a joint venture between Philips and High End Systems. The new MSR 2000SA Gold lamp uses a fast-fit socket design that allows for a more compact reflector combination. Combining the high-performance lamp, advanced reflector and revolutionary optical design, Showgun produces more than 100,000 lumens of output.

The LED Tracking System is a homogenously mixed RGB LED circular array, which allows the user to either match the colour of t

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USA - Studio 54 was the favourite nightspot of A-list jetsetters like Andy Warhol, Brooke Shields, Donald Trump and Mick Jagger back in the '70s. So when a mega-bash was held in tribute to the legendary New York disco recently, the party's organisers wanted the visual effects to be as mind-blowing and "trippy" as the decade of the club's heyday.

Jack Kelly of Eye Dialogue was approached by theatrical lighting designer Eric Wink to light up the event, which was called the Studio 50 Party and held in Charlotte, NC at the city's Grand Central venue. "Eric thought I would bring the psychedelic element to the design," said Kelly.

Kelly put together a package of lighting consisting mainly of American DJ and Elation Professional effects. He set the mood with two ADJ Fantasy 250s, a 250-watt discharge unit that creates 3D textured-glass-gobo patterns, projec

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Switzerland - The Montreux Jazz Festival presents its 41st edition near the shores of Switzerland's Lake Geneva from 6-21 July. Since 1986, Meyer Sound has been the Official Sound Provider for the festival, supplying sound systems for its many venues, including Auditorium Stravinski, Miles Davis Hall, Parc Vernex, Miles Davis Hall Club and more.

The festival's 16-day run will encompass the huge array of styles for which it has become famous, offering performances ranging from jazz giants like Chick Corea and Gary Burton to rock artists like Wilco, Jeff Beck, and Norah Jones to international favourites such as Youssou N'Dour and Cacau Brasil. The festival's venues are spread between three main buildings, outdoor performance areas, the Young Planet youth club, and "venues on the move": buses, boats, and trains hosting performances.

Meyer Sound's involvement with the fe

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UK - Following a successful public beta programme, Digidesign reports that its highly anticipated Structure professional sampler workstation is now shipping.

Structure ships with a 128-level multitimbral universal sound engine, an integrated multi-effects processing engine including convolution reverb, and support for an unlimited number of nestable patches and up to 8-channel interleaved samples.

Structure features 20 GB worth of comprehensive, premium factory sound libraries from EastWest and A.I.R., including Quantum Leap Orchestral Elements. Also included is a 30-day trial of Goliath Structure Edition, EastWest's 40 GB professional sound library. Structure also allows users to work with their existing sound libraries by providing support for importing SampleCell, EXS24, and Kontakt 1 and 2 sample libraries.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Switzerland's Merging Technologies, makers of the Pyramix digital audio workstation and VCube video player, has opened a dedicated sales and support office in the UK to meet the demand of its rapidly growing operation. UK company Total Audio Solutions, which has been the exclusive distributor for Merging in the UK until now, will continue as a principal dealer for Merging's product line. Some of the Pyramix and VCube support personnel from Total Audio Solutions have moved across to Merging UK to ensure continuity of support for Merging's customers, and sales will be headed as before by Paul Mortimer.

Merging's head of sales and marketing, Ken Barnsley, explains the company's decision to open a dedicated British office. "The UK market for Merging has grown incredibly fast over the last four years, to a level where we felt it important to be able to support our customers

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Germany - Meyer Sound has announced the appointment of Michael Bahr to the position of marketing coordinator at Meyer Sound Germany. Working closely with Meyer Sound headquarters in California, Bahr will be responsible for maintaining a consistent marketing presence in Germany and Scandinavia, and ensuring that the needs of those markets are met, says the company.

"Meyer Sound and its customers will both benefit greatly from Michael joining the company," says Meyer Sound director of marketing Rachel Archibald. "His extensive marketing experience, combined with his excellent language skills, make him the ideal person to communicate the values and philosophies of the company to the local markets in the region."

Bahr brings with him nearly 12 years of marketing experience within the musical instrument and automotive audio industries. He spent close to 10 year

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UK - BBC Radio One's Big Weekend (Moor Park, Preston) featured some of the best known names in the business. Not just on stage, but behind the lighting desks.

Lighting designer Paul Normandale and Lite Alternative took the helm this year, controlling an impressive ship. Scissor Sisters, Groove Armada and Razorlight were just a few of the acts to take to the stage. And hanging above them were some of Martin's latest models, including the MAC TW1 and two new LED fixtures - Stagebar 54 and the light curtain, LC 2140.

Normandale was the lighting designer for the entire event and put together a striking design for the three stages. His major challenge was to create a design that would look good live, but would also be clean enough for broadcast, as the whole weekend was televised in HD quality.

Another challenge was ensuring the stage design was flexible enough for the many guest

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UK - Adlib Audio sent 20 crew and engineers headed by Hassane Es Siahi down to Glastonbury 2007 to run the Circus and Theatre Fields. Continuing its association with the Festival, Adlib supplied sound systems for the Theatre (La Belle Epoque), Circus Big Top and Cabaret tents, and the Outdoor Circus and Outdoor Theatre (now the Dance Saddlespan) stage.

Additionally, they also had two mobile systems, one transit-van based, that were on call for various outdoor areas as needed.

While the band and music stages are relatively predictable in what's upcoming, there's no such consistency of performance in any of the above areas explains Es Siahi, making the 'other' performance stages the most challenging on site for providing audio. The acts can range from a 20-piece Samba band to fire eaters, a juggler or acrobats. "We really have to be prepared for - and not phased by - anythi

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UK - The Soundcraft Studer Group has made some key senior sales management appointments. Whilst previously, Soundcraft sales and Studer sales were separated into two distinct management teams, in this move sales for both brands will be headed up by Bruno Hochstrasser who also continues as president of Studer in Regensdorf, Switzerland.

Andy Trott, president of The Soundcraft Studer Group says, "Bruno's experience spans over 35 years in the professional audio industry and he has been very successful in growing Studer's digital business. Now that we have completed the integration of our production, marketing and product development functions, it's time to complete our programme and unite these great marques under one sales team.

"We have incredibly exciting strategies for both brands to expand in the live, broadcast and recording sectors with working projects for a bra

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UK - Wakefield based rehearsal arena Litestructures Studios has provided tour support services for two acts celebrating milestones in their careers.

George Michael has celebrated 25 years as a performer by taking his 25 Live Tour to stadia across Europe this summer. In June he christened the new Wembley Stadium with a performance in front of 140,000 people. Production Manager, Mark Spring, and crew spent four weeks this spring at Litestructures Studios preparing for the tour.

Meanwhile the Arctic Monkeys have celebrated an important milestone in their young careers by debuting at the Glastonbury Festival with a headline slot at the Pyramid stage. It was just one of a string of summer performances for which the band travelled the short distance from their native Sheffield to rehearse at Litestructures Studios.

"It has been a real honour for Litestructures Studios

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UK - XL Video UK supplied screens, one of their new High Definition PPUs and an IMAG system for the the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium. The event was co-ordinated for XL by screen producer Chris Saunders. Flanking both sides of the stage were two screens made up from 9 x 7 modules of Lighthouse R16 LED, flown in the conventional side-stage positions.

Unusually, two additional screens were configured and flown above the side stage monitor positions at right angles pointing away from the front of stage and directly at the restricted view seats around the back - to ensure that everyone in the stadium got an equally good view of the action. These were also made up from Lighthouse R16 in a 5 x 4 panel format.

Onstage, XL supplied six 10m high by 4m wide Barco MiTrix columns on a tracking system, that formed three pairs of 'doors' for stage entrances and exits and also tracked

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UK - Following a busy two years of installation projects and with an ever expanding hire department, Essex Sound & Light (ESL), a committed KV2 Audio user, is upgrading its audio equipment hire stock with an initial delivery of the new design KV2 Audio ES system.

Mike Glover, ESL managing director, comments: "Three years ago we invested in a large KV2 Audio ES system, of the original design, which was used extensively on a wide range of commissions from live music festivals, gigs and presentations to the Labour Party conferences in Brighton. The original systems were designed as 'plug & play' systems and they were fantastic, providing huge output from a small footprint.

"It was the very method and way in which this system performed that made this decision to re-invest that much easier. After having attended a few live, on-site demonstrations with Andy Austin-Brown of

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Czech republic - Robe moving lights were in action in the main Scenofest Hall of the Prague Quadrennial 2007 - the International Competitive Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture.

This is organised by OISTAT - the International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians - and is the world's largest scenographic exhibition. The event took over three halls of the Prague Industrial Palace at the Exhibition Grounds to the north of the city.

Scenofest featured two main performance spaces. The first was the 18m high Tower of Babel, built from scaffolding and steel and conceived by Sean Crowley, head of design at the UK's Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Technical design of the Tower was by PQ's technical director Ian Evans, head of technical studies at the RWCMD.

Crowley, Evans and Jean Guy Le Cat also designed the other main performance sp

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UK - Stage Electrics supplied and installed set, lighting and generator power for the Nokia Rock Up & Play structure at the 2007 Donington Park Download Festival, formerly known as Monsters of Rock, working for The Dobson White Partnership.

The Nokia Rock Up & Play set-up features a stage which is open to everyone who wishes to perform. Anyone can turn up as individuals or bands and play on their own or with the house band - with predictably mixed results. The stage also attracts the more 'non musical types' who enter the air guitar competition with a signed 'air guitar' as first prize, there is also a DJ for late night moshing.

Scenic elements supplied by Stage Electrics included the main bar, DJ bar, performance stage, Q & A stage and graphics walling. The company also provided download units and phone display pods.

This year, the teams worked to demanding ti

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UK - Birmingham-based manufacturer and designer Deco Leisure has launched Plasmariser, a portable mechanical Plasma or LCD screen lifting system. The product allows a flat screen display to be wheeled around a venue easily and safely while being fully protected. Once the Plasmariser is in position you simply press a button and the screen rises from the case for viewing, says the company. Once that viewing is complete the screen can be lowered back into the case and Plasmariser removed from the area.

The Plasmariser can accommodate screens up to 60"; it has a wide variety of applications from hotel conferencing to educational facilities to companies and government bodies. Plasmariser is available in a fixed installation format.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - DMi - D&M Installation - has launched the latest in the Escient FireBall SEi range of HDD digital music servers onto the European CI market. The new FireBall SE500 boasts a 500GB internal hard drive, enabling the acquisition, storage, replay and management of thousands of hours of encoded music.

The latest FireBall SEi digital audio servers are packed with features that make acquiring, encoding, storing, searching and playing music files as easy as watching TV, says the company. Multi-functionality includes CD playback, ripping and CD-R recording, analogue recording, internet radio streaming, PC/ Mac file sharing, and HD storage for thousands of albums worth of music.

The on-screen user interface for browsing, managing and selecting music, IP streaming, system configuration and setup functions, is supplemented by the included FireBall-PC application for control and stream

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UK - Martin Chambers, founding member and drummer for the Pretenders, recently took delivery of a Lab.gruppen C 10:4X amplifier to power his slightly unusual monitoring setup on the band's current tour supporting Rod Stewart.

Chambers' monitoring is more physical than most. Tim Briscusse, Tour Manager for the Pretenders explains, " For his on stage monitoring, Martin expands on the usual wedges and drum-fill and uses specially designed 'thumper' speakers. These are bolted directly to his seat! This way he literally gets a kick out of his playing and finds that this unique setup really helps him keep the beat."

The two rack space, 8.5 kg C 10:4X produces 250 watts per channel into 4, 8 or 16 ohms and has a universal power supply. The C 10:4X, normally used for permanent installations, is perfectly happy in a touring situation being built to the same standards as Lab.g

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