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USA - Bandit Lites is touring with Carlos Santana on his current Live Your Light world tour.

Featured equipment includes Vari*Lite 3500 Washes, 3000 Spots, Coemar Infinity Washes, Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes, MAC 600s, American DJ LED Pars, and Lycian M2 Spots. Lighting was controlled by two grandMAs.

The tour's lighting director, Lee Gipson programmed the US. leg of the tour at Bandit's Nashville facility with Bandit programmer, Trevor Ahlstrand. Additional Bandit crew includes crew chief, Chuck Hastings and lighting technicians, Paul Holst and David Hauss.

Santana is currently playing shows in Europe. He will continue touring throughout Canada and the western United States before closing out the world tour in mid-October.(Jim Evans)

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UK - Following the success of the Jester and Jester ML product ranges, Zero 88 has announced the launch of Phantom Jester, the latest addition to the Jester range.

Designed to aid with both pre-programming and training, Phantom Jester allows users to manipulate an emulated desk on their PC and view the monitor outputs without a real desk. Show files can then be interchanged with the desk using a standard USB memory stick, for true offline programming. Every software function of the desk is emulated including Online Help and a front panel mimic allows you to interact with the software in real time.

The launch of Phantom Jester coincides with the production release of version 2 software for the Jester ML range which includes additional pages of submasters, improved DMX In capabilities and improved monitor screens. A maintenance release for the Jester range (version 3.1) has also

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UK - LD Paddy Sollitt is using Robe moving lights for the UK section of the Pigeon Detectives world tour. The energetic Leeds indie rockers have just released their new album Emergency.

For this tour, Sollitt's design is based on multiple layers of lighting, the idea being that he has an infinite variety of beam patterns and effects at his fingertips to deal with the sharp, punky, flashy nature of much of the set. It's a heavily back-lit show, with a 'wall of death' upstage. This style of lighting is very much suited to the band's frenetic set which has no dull moments, with lead singer Matt Bowman engaging in some spectacular acrobatics particularly on top of the monitors.

This tour is also a big step up for Pigeon Detectives in terms of it being their first with a proper full production, kicking off in style with two gigs at Millennium Square in their hometown of Leed

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

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USA - Digidesign, has announced the appointment of Max Gutnik to the position of marketing manager, professional products. In his new position, Gutnik will lead the marketing team in developing and implementing marketing strategies for Digidesign's line of professional recording, post production and broadcast products including Pro Tools|HD and ICON integrated consoles.

Gutnik joins Digidesign from his position as director of sales and marketing at Apogee Electronics, where he was instrumental in developing several of the company's product lines. A successful musician, music instructor and recording artist, Gutnik has also held high-profile positions in retail with Sweetwater Sound and Guitar Center.

 

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USA - Chicago's Spybar re-opens this month following an extensive refurbishment. After bringing in new partners and recruiting a new management team, the group worked alongside design firm Simeone Deary to "conceive a fresh, sophisticated approach to cast Spybar as the premier nightlife destination in Chicago".

The 4,200 sq. ft. space features lush banquettes and can service up to 300 guests. Spybar will continue to usher in renowned DJ's. In collaboration with establishing the club as a premier nightlife experience in Chicago, Spybar has installed the Dynacord Alpha-Concept sound system. The system is one of only eight of its kind in the United States and the only model present in the Midwest.

(Jim Evans)

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Belgium - Barco has partnered with IBM Global Financing (IGF) to develop a new lease offering to help rental and staging companies more easily acquire Barco projector technology.

The new CLM Lease Offering, backed by IBM Global Financing, gives companies the opportunity to access Barco's CLM line of projectors, designed and built specifically for the demanding rental and staging market.

"For years, large concert promoters and event planners have relied on the Barco name to bring high-tech visualization and lighting technology to the stage," said Paul Foulkes, vice-president, vendor financing, IGF. "Thanks to the CLM leasing programme, smaller rental partners will also get the chance to acquire Barco's state-of-the-art CLM projection technology. We are delighted to incorporate a financing programme with Barco to support those companies grow their business."<

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Serbia - Eurovision lighting designer Per Sundin once again controlled the TV spectacular with a sophisticated grandMA system. Four grandMA full-size at the FOH were joined by an equal number of consoles as backup. 23 MA NSPs (Network Signal Processors) spread the commands to a massive lighting rig.

The show used, besides many others, 136 Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE, 24 BigLites, numerous Martin moving lights, approximately 120sq.m of Barco OLite 510, 24sq.m of Barco SLite 10 and a number of Martin LED screens. A giant stage construction was built on the arena floor which was 25m wide and 27m deep. 72 tons of light equipment were mounted to nearly 2,500m of truss.

Procon Event Engineering Germany, was the general technical supplier and provided lighting, sound, video, stage building, rigging and power. Production designer was Goran Joksimovic. Sven Stojanovic worked as art direct

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France - Large format projection specialists E/T/C Paris will supply video expertise to create 200m wide seamless video images on the 18th century Place de la Bourse as the highlight of the 10th Bordeaux Wine Festival.

E/T/C will utilise its multimedia production and display control platform, OnlyView, with four Christie Roadie 25K and three Christie Roadster S+20 projectors to achieve spectacular results.

Covering an area of approximately 4000sq.m, the high definition video will be in excess of 12 million pixels, a resolution six times greater than that of professional HD digital video.

The show, entitled Hommages, is a collaboration between E/T/C, video designers and producers Cosmo AV and audio experts Les Ateliers Lumière. The imagery for Hommages will be produced by Jacques Nougaret, Pierre-Yves Toulot and José Christiani from Cosmo AV.

(Jim Evan

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UK - Being a major venue for many different events, the London O2 Arena was legally obliged to provide audio assistance for visitors that are hard of hearing. For that the owners of the O2 turned to Vivid Acoustics, who in turn recommended Sennheiser products for the job in hand.

Traditionally, these needs would have been met by an Audio Frequency Induction Loop or an Infra Red Transmission system. However, due to the huge size of the O2 Arena and certain other factors, a special radio-based solution was implemented. The O2 Arena took delivery of 200 customised EK 1038 body pack receivers, 200 EZT 1011 neck induction loops, 50 GP 03 earphones, 100 L 2015 chargers with one SR 300 IEM G2 rack-mountable transmitter, one A 5000CP antenna and one custom built linear UHF amplifier, built by Sennheiser's chief engineer Andy Lillywhite to increase the power of the transmitter to cover t

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UK - The radical remodelling of a Council-owned Hertfordshire swimming pool between 1989-1991 resulted in a new type of building geometry, topped off with a giant hyperbolic roof which at that time was the largest of its type in the world.

During the first quarter of 2006, The Finesse Leisure Partnership, who manage the Hatfield Swim Centre for Welwyn Hatfield Council, completed a £750,000 council-funded refurbishment of the technical infrastructure for the local authority.

At that time the facility's system integrators Clarity in Sound, Light and Vision introduced Finesse to the idea of LED lighting to enhance the discharge lighting in the high-humidity environment.18 months ago the integrators specified and fitted 12 of Pulsar's ChromaFlood 200 fixtures (each containing a combination of 66 Red, Green and Blue LEDs).

Finesse's health & fitness manager, Amanda Morris,

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UK - Servicing a client located on the other side of the Atlantic can be a challenge for an event services company, but London-based PSL has forged a successful working partnership with American production company A Caspian Production.

Under the direction of A Caspian, PSL delivered the full staging solution for this year's 2008 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, an annual forum and Awards ceremony to mark the distribution of more than $30 million of grants by the Skoll Foundation, the largest foundation for social entrepreneurship in the world.

For a two-night programme culminating in the Awards, A Caspian Production booked one of Oxford's architectural gems, the famous Sheldonian Theatre. More than 700 people attended the ceremony, which boasted former US President Jimmy Carter as one of its speakers, as well as Jeff Skoll, first president of Ebay and founder of t

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UK - Current Thinking, based in Sunderland, has supplied the massive network of integrated fire telephones and disabled refuge points installed throughout the Wimbledon Lawn tennis complex during the multi-million redevelopment of the world's most famous tennis centre.

The system, called VoCALL is a fully distributed Emergency Voice Communication System (EVCS), complying fully with BS5839-Part9:2003 and combines both fire telephones and disabled refuge points. It covers all buildings including offices, media centre, main court complexes and museum across the South London site.

Chris White of installation company Comlite said: "I hadn't worked with Current Thinking or the VoCALL system before this project, and though the learning curve was steep I have found the company easy to work with and was and was impressed by the attentiveness of its staff, technical support, system

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Germany - Sommer Cable's SC-RG Classic Broadcast Series offers S/P-DIF suitable video and SAT-cables and fulfills all of the requirements placed on high quality HD-SDI/HDTV-cables today. The low damping values for this cable series are based on a solid wire made of oxygen-free copper (OFC), gas-foamed insulation as well as double shielding made of tin-plated copper braiding and an AL/PT-foil.

These video and SAT-cables are available in four different versions, depending on application and transmission length and with different diameters and insulation strengths (0.6/2.8; 0.8/3.7; 1.0/4.8; 1.6/7.0).

Each cable version in the SC-RG Classic Broadcast Series is available in either a PVC- or a flame retardant FRNC-version. The flexible PVC-version is especially suitable for mobile applications, while the FRNC-jacket (in compliance with top quality norm IEC 332-3) makes the cable pe

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UK - On 1 June, during excavation work in preparation for the 2012 Olympics, an unexploded WW II bomb was found in a river less than 50 yards away from the Three Mills Studios in Bromley by Bow. The 1,000kg bomb was the largest discovered in the past three decades. Bomb disposal experts from Royal Engineers went to work on making the device safe, and on Friday 6 June at around 6.00p.m. a controlled (yet bigger than planned) explosion was finally carried out.

Working under instructions from the Army, Police officers evacuated the area, whilst a 200m cordon was put in place, forming an exclusion zone around the bomb. This effectively resulted in the immediate closure of the entire Film Studios, affecting all current productions in 15 stages totalling 114,000sq.ft and resident on-site businesses plus 200 production offices.

One of the oldest tenants in 3 Mills Studios, Rigging Se

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USA - Rational Acoustics LLC has announced its official debut into the professional audio industry. The company, based in Putnam, Connecticut, has been founded by industry veterans Jamie Anderson, Karen Anderson, Calvert Dayton, and Adam Black, and will focus on providing a range of training classes and product sales within the specialized field of acoustic test and measurement and system alignment. The company is also developing a variety of new system alignment software and hardware products.

"The art and practice of system alignment is as varied and expanding as the people, equipment and applications that encompass the field," says Jamie Anderson, company CEO and resident Educator Guy. "Anyone that understands their tools can create new and effective ways to use them, and our goal is to help that process along for the benefit of the measurement community as a w

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UK - A.C. Lighting's stand at the ABTT show will highlight a selection of the many products and services available from the supplier's dedicated Lighting, Rigging, Audio and Video sales divisions, and sister Special Projects company.

As the exclusive UK distributor for the Chroma-Q, Jands and Spotlight brands, A.C.'s lighting area will feature recent additions to each range. The Chroma-Q LED range includes the new Color Punch compact IP65 fixture, and Color Split fixture with dual side by side RGBA LED cells for twice the lighting possibilities.

The Jands range includes the Vista lighting console with graphic based user interface and the FPX/WMX portable/wall mounted, professional touring quality 12x2.4kW channel dimmers. The Spotlight range includes the Cyclorama Domino RGBA LED floodlight with optical system for uniform light distribution, Vedette 12HCC LV followspot with lo

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UK - Allen & Heath has chosen the forthcoming Sound Recording Technology (SRT) show - part of the London International Music Show (LIMS) - to launch its first dedicated recording mixer for over 10 years.

The Allen & Heath ZED-R16 combines an analogue recording mixer with a FireWire soundcard, MIDI controls and 'home-studio' routing so you can build tracks in the studio, record live gigs, mix-down and remix.

"Allen & Heath used to be well known for its recording mixers and the last one we designed was the GS3000 - a traditional analogue mixer - nearly ten years ago," says designer, Mike Griffin. "The way the recording musician works now is quite different, so with the ZED-R16 I was looking to offer a product which addressed the world of digital recording. ZED-R16 offers an interface to that world but also offers great analogue functionality - where you can mix in

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On the eve of what is predicted to be a buoyant and well-attended ABTT Show in London, we have to report that console manufacturer Cadac Electronics has gone into administration. Managing director Bob Thomas said: "It is heartbreaking to see this great company go under at this stage. Although additional bank finance had been put in place to complete the S-Digital development and to get its production under way, the sudden slump in forecast analogue sales over the next few months meant that Cadac would be unable to maintain the underlying cashflow necessary for its survival." Sad news indeed.

The announcement that L-Acoustics has signed an Icelandic distributor, Nyherji, is further evidence that this North Atlantic outpost has established itself as a leading player on the international live sound circuit. Many international tours now include Reykjavik in their itineraries, whi

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UK - After 40 years of operation, the directors of Cadac Electronics plc have announced that the company is to be placed into administration following a sudden and unexpected fall-off in anticipated sales of the company's analogue products in the coming months. Anthony Kent of Maidment Judd, Harpenden, has been appointed as administrator.

Having recovered from its financial difficulties of the last three years, Cadac was close to putting its new digital console into production to fulfil an anticipated order book of approximately £2m. The directors are hopeful that buyers can be found for Cadac, as not only is the S-Digital console approaching production, but also the sales, service, refurbishment and new production of Cadac's analogue desks (F-type, J-type, R-type and S-type) is an ongoing business.

Managing director Bob Thomas said: "It is heartbreaking to see this

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UK / Belgium - UK-based media server specialists Green Hippo have teamed up with Barco to offer an integrated media server for the recently released Barco DML 1200 digital moving light. The DML 1200 is a very bright digital moving light, with a wide zoom-range and integrated CMY colour-changer that also has powerful projector capabilities. Barco says the new unit "tears down boundaries between projection and lighting."

This amalgamation of video and lighting capabilities combines Barco's projection technology with Green Hippo's widely recognised and user friendly Hippotizer V3 software technology.

According to Barco: "With its brightness, unlimited image selection and instant switching between light beam and video projection, cue by cue, the DML-1200 provides lighting designers with pure creativity at their fingertips. With its on-board media player, lighting de

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France - L-Acoustics has confirmed the appointment of Nyherji as its new distributor for Iceland. Nyherji is a leading IT corporation that provides a full set of audio video and system integration and related services in Iceland.

On the fixed installation side, Hrannar B Kristjanssson will focus on installing L-Acoustics systems to venues, club and sports halls.

On the rental side, Gunnar Moller, Nyherji rental manager is very enthusiastic about the dynamism of the rental market and foresees the future as "very promising".

(Jim Evans)

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