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Germany - Dynacord has unveiled the two latest members of its D-Lite family - the D12R and D12T weatherproof boxes. Both of these polypropylene cabinets are impervious to rough handing and inclement weather and the precise sound reproduction, lightness, and elegant, unobtrusive design of these newest D-LITE boxes make them suitable for a wide variety of sound reinforcement applications, says the company.

The D12R is a 12-inch, two-way, polypropylene cabinet for professional fixed installations (swimming pools, ice rinks, hotels, amusement parks, etc.) as well as small to medium-sized events. The box is equipped with an Electro-Voice DL12BFH 12" woofer (for the bass and midrange) and a Constant-Directivity HF horn [radiation pattern: 80° (horizontal) x 40° (vertical)]

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UK - Five 103" Plasmas were flown 10m in the air at Ricoh Arena, weighing in at an impressive 1,100kg, to relay the action for the annual Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants Conference.

The Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants Conference, produced by Buckmark Productions for the fifth consecutive year, took place at the Ricoh Arena and this year brought together more Whitbread employees than ever before.

With 2,500 attendees from the restaurant and hotel divisions of Whitbread meeting for the annual conference, Buckmark Productions had to redesign the conference set, creating an 'in the round' seating system with a circular stage in the middle.

Blue i Event Technology was commissioned to design and install the AV equipment required for the event and the new conference format posed new challenges. Ian Riley, project manager for Blue i explained, "Due to the sheer size of t

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Singapore - Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay has added to its stock of Robert Juliat zoom profile lanterns with the recent acquisition of 16 x RJ 711 SX2 2500W tungsten fixtures. The latest consignment was supplied to the Esplanade by Robert Juliat's distributor, Total Solution Marketing Pte Ltd.

"The popularity of the Esplanade Concert Hall and the broad diversity of events presented here, make providing the venue's performance lighting an exciting challenge," says Esplanade's head of lighting, Milton Arnold. "We find that the demands on our capabilities are ever-increasing, so we turned to lighting manufacturer Robert Juliat, and local supplier Total Solution, to provide the followspots and front of house profiles which would ensure our premier venue keeps pace."

He says the RJ 711SX2 zoom profiles were chosen for the Concert Hall's front-of-house lighting

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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UK - Production Resource Group UK (PRG) has announced that David March will take on the role of Director of PRG Distribution from 1 July. David has substantial experience in the entertainment lighting industry, starting with a 12 year period with Vari?Lite, up to 1999. He has also worked for High End Systems and most recently as managing director of digital and LED lighting sales company, Projected Image Digital.

Production Resource Group UK's CEO, Martin Locket, added: "David brings considerable skills and experience to lead the team at PRG Distribution. He will be developing and expanding the opportunities for the business as we build on the success of the brands we sell".

PRG Distribution is the European master distributor for Vari*Lite automated lighting fixtures, and also distributes products from Lycian, Pathway and Seachanger, amongst other brands.

March wil

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Belgium - Barco has revealed the world's first transformable LED screen for U2's latest world tour. With its 360° shape, the LED screen surrounds the band while performing and can change shape in all directions during the concert, For the third time this millennium, the Barco - U2 cooperation resulted in a revolutionary approach to video, this time totalling more than 500,000 pixels of video, making it the biggest LED screen ever used in concert touring. U2's worldwide tour kicked off 30 June in a sold out Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, Spain.

The stage and show were created by long-time U2 designers Willie Williams and Mark Fisher. With the help of Chuck Hoberman and Barco their vision of a 360° moving video screen was turned into reality. Barco provided more than half a million transformable LED pixels (FLX), which are integrated into a transformable structure designed

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UK - The latest Maximo Park tour was the first in the UK to feature one of MA Lighting's new grandMA2 consoles - a grandMA2 light - which was specified and programmed by Glen Johnson to run the lighting rig which was designed by the band's LD, Stevie Marr. The console ran the new grandMA2 software - the first touring show to do so.

Johnson operated the show for the first part of the tour while Marr completed his work commitments with Die Toten Hosen, after which he took over running the Maximo tour. All lighting equipment including the grandMA2 light was supplied by Blackburn-based Lite Alternative, having just invested in two of the new grandMA2 consoles.

Johnson says, "As soon as I touched the grandMA2 I liked the feel of it. It's neat and compact and the faders are just fantastic. They far surpass any previous motorised faders and in fact, you don't even notice that th

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UK - The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has revealed updated designs for the UK pavilion that will represent this country at Shanghai Expo 2010; its theme being Better City, Better Life. Developed by one of the UK's leading creative talents - Thomas Heatherwick - the UK pavilion will provide "a dramatic demonstration of creativity and innovation in the UK".

The centrepiece of the UK's offering is the extraordinary pavilion building - a six storey high object formed from some 60,000 slender transparent rods, which will extend from the structure and quiver in the breeze. During the day, each of these 7.5m long rods will act like fibre optic filaments, drawing on daylight to illuminate the interior, thereby creating a contemplative awe-inspiring space. At night, light sources at the interior end of each rod will allow the whole structure to glow. The pavilion will

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Switzerland DiGiCo has become a sponsor of the Montreux Jazz Festival. "We are up in the mountains, up with the cows and up in the sky," says festival founder Claude Nobs. "But for me it is so important that the Festival remains leading edge, that we adopt new technologies that bring improvements to the audience's experience.

"The introduction of FPGA design and the benefits for the engineers are quite impressive. DiGiCo are frontrunners in this change in audio processing and it is a great result for the Festival that DiGiCo has chosen to become part of the sponsorship programme."

DiGiCo had already won half the battle with Patrick Vogelsang, head of audio for the Festival, before he'd even experienced its consoles firsthand. "It's refreshing to me that the company is so in tune with the industry and the engineers' needs," he says. "When

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UK - MTFX provided the special effects for the Twenty20 men's and women's finals at the Lord's Cricket Ground. As each team ran on to the ground they were accompanied by a series of CO2 jets 5m high set in to a chase sequence using a specialist DMX controller.

The cup lift for the England women's team was enhanced by further CO2 jets and large scale streamer effects using 14 streamer cannons, each holding 1 kilo of streamers.

For the cup lift for the winning Pakistani men's team MTFX also provided the CO2 jets and arena streamer effects, together with a display of pyrotechnics comprising comets, mines and jets and their new five-way Firedance system to provide a colourful choreographed finale.

(Jim Evans)

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The Netherlands - Located close to the major conurbations of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag, Rotterdam and Leiden, the Levenstroom (Livingstream) church is a large format house of worship with a dedicated congregation. The church's recent move to a new building has seen it embrace the latest in audio visual technology to produce an all-inclusive experience for its worshippers and to spread its message via the internet, radio, television, DVDs and CDs - all of which are fully produced in house.

To achieve this, the church needed to undertake a major upgrade of its audio system, which has seen a pair of DiGiCo CSD5 consoles installed, one at front of house, the other in its integrated studio facilities.

"We had been using a 36 channel analogue console since 1992, but had issues with not having enough channels and were looking for a long-term solution, one which would be enoug

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UK - Hire and Sales company Point Source Productions Ltd has been using Doughty PAR can floorplates for many years to speed the preparation of lanterns in its warehouse. During this prepping procedure, technical director Ben Marshall realised that, whilst the floorplates negated the need to remove the hook clamp from a lantern, this time-consuming action still had to be done when mounting the lantern on a stand.

To address this, Ben devised a hook clamp spigot adaptor which would overcome this problem. Like the Doughty floor plate, this handy widget allows the hook clamp, complete with wing nut and washers, to be slotted into a secure fixing, which is mounted on a standard spigot fixing. This is then simply inserted into the lighting stand to present an immediate solution to stand-mounted lanterns without the fiddly process of removing the hook clamp.

"Preparation time is

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UK - Artistic Licence has introduced Art-Switch PoE4 - developed in response to customer feedback, it can be used to connect together up to four Art-Net nodes, such as Art-Lynx, providing both data and power for the unit and eliminating the need for external power supplies for each node, the company says.

As the number of Art-Net nodes being used in control systems increases, so too does the requirement to power each node. Art-Switch PoE4 uses a more efficient method than powering each node with an individual power supply, by feeding the voltage needed down the same cable as the data from the Ethernet Switch. This method is known as Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). Since Art-Net installations already require an Ethernet switch to carry data, why not include the power in the same unit?

Art-Switch PoE4 provides five 10/100BaseT Ethernet ports, four of which support Power-over-Ethernet

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UK - PLASA Events has confirmed some of the industry names that will headline its 2009 PLASA Education & Learning Programme, which runs throughout the PLASA Show from 13-16 September at Earls Court in London.

Leading the programme will be the 2009 Gottelier Masterclass presented by last year's Gottelier Award Winner, John Stadius of Soundtracs/DiGiCo. Stadius is a highly respected name in audio circles, and will describe his early days in the industry, the formative years of analogue console design, the move to digital, the influence of the SHARC processor and how the latest generation of chip technology has removed historical restrictions on console design leading to new possibilities for the future. This Masterclass will take place at the show on Monday 14 September at 3.00pm, just in advance of the PLASA Innovation Awards Ceremony that evening.

2009 will also see the return

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USA - Renkus-Heinz Iconyx Digitally Steerable Array technology has helped another famous house of worship satisfy the demands of modern-day audiences for clarity and intelligibility in an acoustically challenging space - in this case, the Historic Church of St Patrick in Toledo, Ohio.

"The Historic Church of St. Patrick was originally built in 1892 so that workers on the Erie Canal could attend Mass on Sundays," explains Don Beyer of Torrence Sound Equipment Company, the firm responsible for transforming the church's audio presentation.

He adds, "During the 1970s and 80s, like many other Midwest cities, Toledo lost a lot of manufacturing jobs, and the neighbourhood suffered. But the building is a historic landmark, and the diocese decided to revitalise the church with an extensive outreach programme to the Catholic community in greater Toledo. We were called in

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Spain - FC Barcelona is the first football club in Spain to attain the coveted treble: National League Cup, Kings Cup and UEFA Champions League Cup.

Martin Professional was chosen to share in a special Three Cups celebration for FC Barcelona at Nou Camp Stadium in Barcelona before nearly 100,000 spectators.

Supplier Serveis de l'Espectacle Focus, S.A. provided a Martin package that included MAC 2000 series moving heads, Stagebar 54 LED battens, Jem ZR33 Hi-Mass fog machines and AF-1 fans, together with a large number of followspots, lasers and other special effects for the event. All Martin lighting gear was supplied through Martin's Spanish distributor Ecler. Lighting designer for the event was by Xavier Costas.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Sound Division Group has extended its long relationship with London operators Piers Adam, Guy Pelly and Nick House with the opening of Tini Bar, a classic Italian 'aperitivo' bar in Chelsea.

This provides them with a trio of West End venues - all of which have had their technology and mood lighting implanted by Sound Division. First came Whisky Mist in 2006, a reconfiguration at the former Zeta Bar in the Mayfair Hilton - and both this, and its successor, Mahiki in Dover Street continue to thrive.

Tini Bar (a derivation of 'Martini') is the latest. As the name and concept imply, this is open early evening for cocktails before ratcheting up the tempo later on, when the background music of earlier makes way for louder house music and cool new age jazz.

With his long experience of working with the operators, Sound Division MD David Graham knew the best approach to take wit

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UK - Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, The Killers and Take That were among the diners enjoying some of the 39,000 meals served by the Global Infusion Group (GIG) last weekend.

The company was employed on 18 events across multiple sites, including three of the UK's highest profile music events, Glastonbury Festival, Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park and Take That concerts in Manchester.

On one of the busiest live music weekends of the year, Eat to the Beat were found at the hub of the Glastonbury Festival, providing backstage catering to the Pyramid Stage and The Other Stage. There they served 6,600 meals to the crew, and many artists specifically requested additional after-show catering in backstage and dressing room areas.

In London, Eat to the Beat teams at Hard Rock Calling served 7,000 meals to the production team alongside Upbeat Event Design who were responsible for artists

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UK - MilTec (UK) again joined forces with the South West Group to supply PR Lighting automated fixtures and LED effects for this year's Park and BBC Introducing stages at Glastonbury.

SWG have been involved in the evolution of the Park Stage since its launch three years ago and as a result of their co-operation with MilTec (UK) have been able to keep up to date with the developing catalogue of products from the Chinese lighting manufacturers.

Said SWG operations manager, Mark Bott, "Last year the PR Lighting moving heads were really bright and functional, but the true test for a hire company is how those lights bear up in a live situation. These endured a raft of conditions and we didn't have a single fault, so we were more than happy with them and were pleased to be using them again."

This year the presentation was beefed up for acts which headlined Animal Collect

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UK - Blackburn- based HSL supplied lighting equipment and crew to the recent Lemar UK theatre tour. It was HSL's first tour with producers Production North, on which project manager Mike Oates comments: "It was great pleasure to work with Steve Levitt, Iain Whitehead and their team and on the road with production manager Sarah Hollis. Production values on all their tours, whatever size, are always at the top of the agenda."

Lighting, set and production design was created by Dave Lee, working to an initial brief from Lemar's management who requested a dark and moody ambience for the performance.

Lee also wanted to ensure continuity in that it fitted in to all the venues on the itinerary, so he based the rig on three straight trusses and a serious amount of floor kit, which is "always good for more subtle visual effects like silhouetting and back lighting".

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Spain - SGM has announced the opening of a new sales office in Spain and the appointment of Rafael Gonzalez to the SGM team.

Rafael Gonzalez is a professional with specific experience in the lighting industry and has been appointed sales manager for Spain.

Thanks to this new set-up, the SGM sales organization will be able to strengthen its relationships with current clients, increase the presence of its products in the region and dynamically develop new corporate strategies, says the company.

(Jim Evans)

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Denmark - American saxophonist and music director Bobby Ricketts has adopted Copenhagen as his hometown like many expatriate musicians before him. And he has selected the DPA 4099 Saxophone mic to accompany him and his instruments on a packed international touring schedule.

The first thing Ricketts mentions about the 4099 is its sound - a logical observation given that the microphone design is based partially on acoustic test measurements of his sax playing, conducted by DPA design engineer Ole Moesmann.

"The sound is so natural," he says. "I've played about 25 concerts in the past few months across the Scandinavia, the US, Japan and East Africa, and the sound techs always comment on how the sound from my horn through the 4099 requires little or no EQ, and signal output is never an issue for them.

"The same is true onstage - I get a sound from the stage m

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