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USA - When the Theatre Arts department at American River College began making plans for its new performance space, an up-to-date rigging system was one of the department's top priorities.

"The old theatre had no fly loft," said Kathy Burleson, department chair and technical director at American River, a two-year community college with 30,000 students. "We're a teaching institution, and for most of our students, this is their first experience with lighting or rigging. We wanted a system that would enable our training process so the students could learn lighting, and experience both manual and automated rigging in a very safe manner."

The new 360-seat proscenium theatre has a 20 x 40ft proscenium and a rigging system with 42 line sets, Burleson said. "We

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USA - City Theatrical announced its first eight SHoW DMX technology partners at the Lighting Dimensions International (LDI) show in Las Vegas.

CTI's OEM partners have committed to using SHoW DMX technology inside their products and many examples of their work were seen around the show floor at LDI, including wireless dimmers, wireless distributed dimming, wireless DMX transmitters and receivers, wireless lighting controllers, and wireless remote circuit breaker panels.

The newly announced partners include: Applied Technology (USA), Easily LED (UK) , Electronics Diversified Inc. (EDI) (USA), Johnson Systems (Canada), Lex Products (USA) , LynTec (USA), LSC (Australia) and Zero 88 (UK).

(Jim Evans)

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Australia - EAW recently provided Melbourne-based Crossway Baptist Church with EAW's flagship UMX.96 digital console for use as the church's Front-of-House mixing console. With regular cumulative Sunday attendance of upwards of 4,000 people and up to 1,100 at each service, Crossway is one of Australia's largest churches.

Crossway required a particularly powerful and versatile FOH mixing console, which is what the UMX.96 delivered. Graeme Stevenson and the rest of the team at Production Audio Services (Mitcham, Victoria) handled the sale and worked very closely with Crossway personnel in the choice and design of the system.

"The UMX.96 is very intuitive and easy to operate, which is important for us, as most of our operators are volunteers," stated Peter MacLean, Crossway Baptist Church media pastor. "Adding to that, it has comprehensive features and lots of outp

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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Russia - During this year's Music Moscow the Dean Day took place at forum hall on the 10th of October. Rock musicians Michael Angelo Batio with his band Hands Without Shadows, Sergey Mavrin and the band Black Obelisk were the main acts of this event.

The Russian K.M.E. sales partner MixArt Distribution organised the exclusive festival and used as main PA the K.M.E. line array system PANO consisting of eight line array subs QLB 118, plus four line source units QL 906 and two QL 1215 as down-fill per side. The monitoring was made by CLP 320. The CA 7 served as side-fill.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - After a 13-year run in the West End, the show Buddy continues to play to full houses throughout its current UK tour. This musical is a biography of Buddy Holly, from his struggling teenage days in Texas, his climb to national success, and to his tragic death in a plane crash. Over 20 of Buddy Holly's signature songs feature throughout the show.

And ensuring Peggy Sue gets married every night without a hitch are 16 channels of Trantec S5.5 wireless. The system was recently purchased by one of London theatre hire company, Thames Audio, who have had over 17 years experience of providing a custom sound system for this show.

Sound designer and director of Thames Audio, Peter Cox says: "I am very happy Buddy has had another thriving year on tour. The combination of a good crew and first class equipment has proven itself, we get very positive comments about th

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USA - NSCA members who have shown exceptional achievements can share their expertise with peers and customers through NSCA's Excellence in Business Awards. The awards will be presented at the 2009 NSCA Business and Leadership Conference, sponsored by InfoComm International, 26-28 February in Phoenix, AZ.

Systems integrators are encouraged to nominate themselves or their industry peers who have demonstrated outstanding success in the past year in various categories.

Submissions are due 31 December 2008. The NSCA Business and Leadership Conference Committee will announce the winners on 15 January 2009.

"Creativity, vision, flexibility, economic security - these are key to the success of today's integrators," said Chuck Wilson, NSCA executive director. "NSCA is pleased to promote and recognise integrators who excel in their day-to-day activities."

Four com

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USA - Element Labs has appointed Marc Van Eekeren as vice-president of worldwide sales. The appointment forms part of Element Labs' continued growth and consolidation strategy.

Van Eekeren brings to Element Labs over 25 years international experience in key commercial roles in both Europe and North America. Prior to joining Element Labs, Van Eekeren spent a substantial part of his career at Barco's Media & Entertainment division, which he joined in 2001, in effect witnessing the emergence of LED technology as a commercially viable large-screen display solution.

Barbara Nelson, CEO for Element Labs, welcomed the addition of Van Eekeren stating: "Element Labs is currently dramatically expanding its reach and scale, building on its longstanding reputation in the entertainment industry to pursue the international fixed installation market. We're targetting this market very ag

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UK - Bandit Lites is currently supplying full lighting production for the Queen & Paul Rodgers tour, which features a lighting design by Baz Halpin.

The rig features over 100 moving lights from Coemar, Martin, Clay Paky, Syncrolite and Vari*Lite, a 49-way Kinesys automation system and some specially fabricated custom trussing commissioned by Bandit. Baz Halpin and lighting director, Trent O'Connor used Bandit's MSD pre-programming suite for one week prior to rehearsals. There were two weeks of production rehearsals at Elstree Studios prior to the first show.

Seven variable length raked 'finger' trusses run upstage/downstage forming an architectural 'roof' over the main performance area. All of the truss moves on Kinesys motors and the centre three have hinge-down sections at the front. Bandit purchased the Lo Pro trussing & custom hinges from Total Solutions with some modifica

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USA Elation Professional has introduced the ELED Fresnel, a modern-day version of the white Fresnel stage light that's powered by LEDs.

Instead of the traditional halogen lamp, the ELED Fresnel utilises a 50W, 6,000k white LED module as its light source. This module, comprised of a cluster of white LEDs, emits a high output that's equivalent to a 500W halogen lamp. Yet because of the amazing energy efficiency of LEDs, the ELED Fresnel draws a total of only 75W of power, allowing theatres and productions to save on their energy bills.

"An LED-powered Fresnel is an idea whose time has definitely come, and it's something our customers have been asking for," said Eric Loader, director of sales for Elation Professional. "There will always be a huge demand in the theatrical market for a basic Fresnel to use as a white light or to put your own custom colour filter on.

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UK - Stage Electrics has announced the addition of Safex-Flamejett to its portfolio of hire and sales products.

This device produces large flame effects without on stage propane bottles. It produces safe, effective and impressive bright tongues of flame and fireballs up to 4m and is practically smokeless, says the company. Unlike the majority of fire-effect devices the Safex-Flamejett works with an aerosol containing the propellant / fuel mixture.

The 380g aerosol contains enough propellant to produce large numbers of flames and fireballs, ensuring that only a small amount of flammable substance is on stage. For professional use the device is equipped with DMX 512 connections. To operate, three channels are necessary: an arming channel, a firing channel and a flame duration channel. It is equipped with pre-selectable effect programmes and can produce rhythmic tongues of flames

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USA - American DJ's new Tri Phase LED moonflower earned the Crystal Disc Award from DJzone at the recent LDI Show in Las Vegas. The product was chosen over all other lighting products at the show that were designed for mobile entertainers.

Part of American DJ's new Tri-LED line of effects, the Tri Phase features three-in-one Tri-Color LED Technology that combines three different colored LEDs (red, green, and blue) into a single 10W LED source, to produce a spectrum of colour possibilities. This creates more vibrant and even toned mixed colours in spotlights, while allowing moonflower effects to produce beams in more colours than just red, blue and green, says the company.

"Our team devoted a great deal of energy and ideas to this project to create a product that opened new creative opportunities for entertainers," said Scott Davies, general manager of the American D

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UK - The Mighty Boosh are currently on the first leg of their four-month tour of the UK. And a vital part of British comedy's brightest stars' armoury, in addition to a multitude of costume changes, on-stage effects and ridiculous jokes, are the Sennheiser in-ear monitors that allow the musical sections of the show to flow seamlessly.

For the two-hour show's many musical numbers all five members of the comedy team - Julian Barratt (Howard Moon), Noel Fielding (Vince Noir), Michael Fielding (Naboo The Enigma), Dave Brown (Bollo) and Rich Fulcher (Bob Fossil) - are fitted with Sennheiser ew 300 IEM G2 monitors, as are the two-man backing band.

"There are two full-time musicians in the band on drums and bass," explains FOH engineer Ashley Jones, part of the team from sound and lighting specialists Sonalyst. "And at the climax of the show Noel sings, Julian plays gu

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UK - Pro Audio Stash from Hastings, East Sussex has launched an ecommerce system that will see them selling professional audio equipment in four countries. Earlier this month Pro Audio Stash launched stage 1 of their four part launch with www.proaudiostash.co.uk.

When the ecommerce system is fully operational at the end of October Pro Audio Stash will be selling professional audio equipment in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia.

Pro Audio Stash provides a selling platform for larger manufacturers to increase their market share through web sales or enter new market places at a cheaper rate. They operate in a unique way by providing micro sites for each country which are all controlled centrally in the UK. This gives customers the confidence in those countries that Pro Audio Stash understands their market, while allowing Pro Audio Stash to organise centrally.

Robert Platt, mana

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Italy - Aethra has announced that it has signed a new agreement with CVS Hightech for the distribution of its video communications product range throughout Central America.

Based in Guatemala and serving the Central American region, CVS Hightech, develops video and audio projects using state-of-the-art technology to create new opportunities in underserved markets.

CVS Hightech has significant experience in the Central American market and covers the surrounding states of El Salvador, Panama, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, as well as Guatemala itself.

Juan Ramón Echeverría, of CVS Hightech comments: "The Aethra products were selected over other brands for distribution in Central America because of the built-in-streaming capabilities that allow remote areas to participate in distance learning projects, broad compatibility with any other endpoints devices and th

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UK - OHM has introduced the DSP-A3 amplifier, which the company says offers an output of 1800W per channel at 4 ohms, and combines the reliability of a class H output with the lightness of a switchmode power supply and a fully featured DSPEthernet controller.

The amplifier features a 48-bit 96kHz AD/DA converter and a DSP that features system filtering, up to 2 seconds of delay, EQ and limiting functions. Configuring, monitoring and controlling can be done locally or by use of the full Ethernet communications capability. The performance can be monitored and settings changed via a Windows-based computer over a local area network or from the internet, enabling installed amplifiers to be monitored from remote location. The user interface shows the DSP functionality just like an analogue unit with one-to-one portraits of every control.

To complement the DSP amplifier a 2U high 19&

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UK - UK Skills Secretary John Denham announced that small businesses will be the focus of £350 million worth of Government funds to help them train their staff. The Government's approach will be reshaped and money will be available to deliver a new package of support to help small businesses get through the tougher economic climate by building the skills and expertise of their workers.

It will deliver funding for training, with the minimum level of bureaucracy or delay. This will be for subjects such as business improvement techniques or leadership and management, which are proven to provide skills to increase the productivity of individuals and firms. John Denham said:"Small businesses are an important engine of our economy and we must make sure that we support them during tough economic times.

"We are overhauling the training system to make sure that they can

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Switzerland - With the SUV Q5 the German car manufacturer Audi has launched its second model in the "Q" range. To give this new car suitable impact, high-profile shows were staged, including one that was recently held in Zurich. Lighting designer Christian Crego and Dirk Stirnimann, responsible for lighting, video, design and realisation, used a grandMA system for the AMAG Q5 Preview Event.

"I've been familiar with MA products for a long time and have always relied on them for any show. The reliability and operation are second to none. You simply have to love your 'Granny'," says Stirnimann. For this reason he built up a system consisting of a grandMA full-size, a laptop with the grandMA onPC software as backup and two MA 2Port Nodes for local DMX-distribution.

"It was my intention to have an open stage. Therefore I chose triangular trusses which were

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UK - Stagecraft Ltd, the Salisbury-based lighting, sound and AV hire and sales company, went into liquidation on 17 October 2008, LSI Online has learned. Lisa Tapper, the former accounts manager of Stagecraft Ltd, reports that she and other key staff members have bought the assets of the company and are reforming as Stagecraft Technical Services Ltd as of today, 30 October 2008.

The new company directors are Lisa Tapper, Mike Naish (formerly Stagecraft Ltd production manager), Kevin Hughes (former projects manager) and Simon Sketchley, who has joined the company from AJS Theatre Lighting and Stage Supplies, where he was general manager.

Tapper reports that eight key members of staff have been retained as part of the new operation, while a further eight have lost their jobs.

Tapper was also confirmed that all forward orders on Stagecraft Ltd's books will be honoured by the ne

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UAE - In Dubai, Protec has just increased its inventory of Camco amplifiers for use with JBL Vertec and Nexo Geo line array systems. Already the biggest user of Camco Vortex in the Middle East, Protec has ordered another 24 Vortex 6 units for use on Kylie Minogue's massive outdoor show in November.

Protec is the largest supplier of sound, lighting, audio-visual, hydraulic and motor control equipment in the region, with an investment of over 50 Million Dirhams in the latest equipment. The company has used Camco for many years now, and Edward Ross, Protec's head of audio, continues to be a fan. "These are fantastic amps, very smooth and the quality of the audio is second to none. The Vortex 6 is really reliable, handling the challenging conditions of the UAE climate, which has extreme temperatures and high humidity."

The new Vortex 6 amplifiers were acquired from loca

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China - The sixth edition of Prolight+Sound Shanghai drew a record crowd of visitors from 82 countries and regions when held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, 9-12 October 2008.

Visitors to the show found a variety of sound, entertainment and lighting technology spread over two halls as well as exclusive live concerts hosted by Sennheiser microphones and Pioneer.

Prolight+Sound Shanghai attracted 14,152 visitors, an increase of nearly 4% compared to last year. Of these 13,008 were domestic visitors, a rise of 6% and 1,144 were international visitors. The exhibition saw 308 exhibitors from 10 countries and regions showcasing their products in 23,000sq.m, the organisers say.

(Jim Evans)

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Australia - ARX Systems has announced the appointment of EAS (Excellent Audio Support) as its new distributor for Germany.

ARX Managing Director Colin Park commented: "EAS's Hubert Overesch and I have been discussing the possibilities of working together in Germany for some time, the EAS sales team felt our range of signal processing products was a very complementary fit with the other lines they currently represent, especially our newer USB and analogue interface and dynamics products.

"Germany has always been important for ARX, along with the UK, it's one of Europe's trend setting markets. We're looking forward to working with Hubert Overesch and his energetic team at EAS to consolidate ARX's position in the German market and to reinforce to their customers the state of the art performance that ARX products can offer them."

Along side ARX, EAS also represent

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