Details
Italy - The Protomoteca and Small Protomoteca are premises within the Capitol in Rome displaying priceless collections of antique sculptures. However, thanks to their prime location, they are not exclusively reserved for art exhibitions but as venues for prestige events. Thus, installing a quality sound system was a key priority when the two halls were recently renovated. The installation was entrusted to Rome-based specialists Video Company Multimedia, who worked closely with Cross-Point, the technology and design department of Texim.

The installation proved a complex task due to the tricky acoustics of both halls, which feature ancient stone walls and marble floors; the reverberation time in each was so extensive that it seemed any intelligibility would be impossible. With the h

Details
Estonia - Over 1000 Tannoy loudspeakers have recently been installed in Estonia's newest upmarket hotel development. A range of CVS in-ceiling speakers and Designer Install surface-mount speakers have been specified throughout the Meriton Conference and Spa Hotel in Tallinn as part of a comprehensive audio system that also includes Biamp amplification and DSP.

An elegant and modern addition to Tallinn's cityscape, the Meriton, which opened in May 2009, is located at the heart of the Estonian capital, close to the Old Town and the Parliament. The hotel has 301 guestrooms and the hotel's ace card is its combination of modern luxury in the shape of fine dining and health spa along with cutting edge business facilities.

A total of seven flexible conference rooms are furnished with the latest AV equipment including Sanyo 4500 ANSI XGA projectors, CommTec video matrices and Tannoy's

Details
Denmark - The effects of the global recession on one of the professional lighting industry's best-known manufacturers was clearly illustrated when Schouw & Co, the parent company of Martin Professional AS, made its half-year financial report yesterday.

The report describes a difficult first half of 2009, in which the group's consolidated revenue has fallen 13.1% from H1 2008, while the company's earnings before income tax (EBIT) fell by DKK 138 million to DKK 12 million, which the report says "is not considered to be satisfactory".

Furthermore, Schouw says that its earnings difficulties are "predominantly attributable to Martin".

"Revenue failed to meet expectations, and Martin continues to be hard hit by the knock-on effects of the global financial crisis. Geographically, the recession is broadly founded, and investments in large parts of the events

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 - All the team at PLASA and PLASA Media is saddened to hear of the death at the weekend of David Hopkins OBE, following a long fight against bowel cancer. He was 73. A well-known figure in the commercial audio marketplace, David was CEO of Stockport-based ADS Worldwide. He was also a long-standing member of the Institute for Sound & Communications Engineers (ISCE) and the longest-serving member of the Executive Committee of PLASA (the Professional Lighting and Sound Association).

David first joined the PLASA Executive Committee in January 1995 following the merger with the Sound & Communication Industries Federation (SCIF): he was then elected for a three-year term from January 1996 onwards, and re-elected at every occasion since, serving as chairman of the Association in 2003, as well as holding the posts of vice-chair (1996-97, 1999) and treasurer (1998-99, 2005-2009).

Ma

Details
Denmark - SoundMan-Server has recently been installed in The Worker's Museum, also called Arbejdermuseet, in Copenhagen to manage audio playback and distribution. This museum is dedicated to the history of the Danish worker movement starting from the mid-19th century.

SoundMan-Server and Medialon have been selected as the main sound and show control system for the Industry worker exhibition section of the museum. The exhibition was designed by Blekksprut AS who contracted Multitekst Ltd to integrate SoundMan-Server and Medialon.

The exhibition starts in an introductory room where a seven-minute long HD movie with historical facts is displayed on a 42" LCD monitor. A Danish and English version is available. The language option and movie play can be selected by the visitors themselves. After the introductory room, visitors go through several exhibition rooms. In a co

Details
UK - PLASA Connect, the new business contact initiative set to run at this year's PLASA Show (13-16 September, Earls Court, London), has gained the support and sponsorship of Supply2Gov. The only official government lower-value contract opportunity portal, Supply2Gov was created in June 2006, specifically to provide small businesses with information on public sector contract opportunities - typically below £100,000.

The support of Supply2.gov.uk underlines PLASA09's role as a focus for business within the sector. Supply2Gov is the first major initiative to unite both buyers and suppliers in a single location, making it easier for business and government to work together. Suppliers can access UK-wide contracts for free via an online Contract Search, and can also sign up for a daily e-mail alert.Since its launch, the portal has provided small businesses throughout the UK wit

Details
USA - Beat three poker pros at their own game and walk away with $1 million. That's the premise behind Face the Ace, a new poker reality show airing this month on the NBC network.

Hosted by Steve Schirripa of Sopranos fame, contestants choose a professional poker player (the Ace) to match wits against from among four doors. Filmed at Cin City Studios in Las Vegas, Face the Ace uses a complement of Martin Professional lighting gear to dress the set in colour and beam effects, including the new MAC 301 Wash luminaire.

Innovative Show Design (ISD) of Lake Mary, Florida handled all scenic and lighting design, production and installation for client Poker Production. Lighting design is by ISD's lighting director/associate artistic director Justin Garrone.

The set design is based on a fashionable, contemporary hotel suite. "We were inspired by the look an

Details
UK - Manchester-based lighting company DBN Lighting supplied design services and equipment to illuminate the river facing façade of the Port of Liverpool building for LuminoCity, a 30-minute multimedia spectacular created and produced by Walk the Plank and featuring video projections, pyrotechnics, live performance, and a specially composed sound track.

The culmination of Liverpool's 2009 Art On The Waterfront event also produced by Walk The Plank for Liverpool City Council, LuminoCity was produced in conjunction with Tate Liverpool, which ran a week of colourful summer events for all ages inspired by their exhibition Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today.

Stephen Page of DBN designed the light show which illuminated the 50m tall building. Page used over 200 assorted LED fixtures, primarily Chroma-Q Colorblock mk2s, dotted all over the bu

Details
UK - grandMA consoles were in use at two key venues at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The Edinburgh International Conference Centre used a grandMA2 light console for their main Pentland auditorium, a 600 - 1200 capacity flexible space. This hosted two dance shows in rep and several comedy performances including Jimmy Carr and Jason Byrne, during the festival.

The console supply was instigated by freelance lighting designer Dave Elcome, who created the production design for most of the shows staged in the venue, and Kenneth Boak, the EICC's technical production manager.

Over in the Music Hall venue within the Assembly Rooms on George Street, another grandMA2 light was in action with a grandMA pico for the duration. The grandMA2 light was specified by Assembly Rooms' head of lighting Paul Lim, and operated primarily by Dave Evans and Steve Sanders, who ran it in 'series 1

Details
Japan - In the mahogany earthiness and mirrored elegance of its decor, the Cotton Club of Tokyo echoes its New York namesake, the celebrated Harlem venue revered in memory as the premier showcase of America's jazz age. A fusion of a restaurant, nightclub, and live performance venue, Japan's Cotton Club reaches beyond jazz to embrace essentially all Western popular music styles, which are reinforced through a self-powered Meyer Sound Mica line array loudspeaker system.

According to the Cotton Club's sound engineer, Taro Moriyama, selection of the Meyer Sound system was based in large part by the venue's eclectic musical fare. "Our stage hosts an incredibly wide variety of music, and we've found that Meyer Sound loudspeakers work well with any musical style because they don't colour the sound."

A quick sampling of acts that have graced the Cotton Club stage includes ja

Details
USA - The build team for popular US television show Mythbusters- Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara - visited Meyer Sound's Berkeley headquarters as part of their quest to verify the claim that a Russian-made SKS rifle could be set off by the vibration of a high-powered subwoofer.

Mythbustersoften calls on Meyer Sound when it comes to investigating audio-related myths. The show, which features a team of five special effects and science experts who put some of the most outrageous urban legends to the test, has turned to Meyer Sound to prove or debunk such popular claims as a duck's quack not echoing, the human voice breaking glass, or the existence of the dreaded 'Brown Note'.

While the Brown Note episode called for modifying electronics to accept frequencies well below the normal operating range, this time the test involved four of Meyer Sound's 600-HP co

Details
UK - For the past five years, FOH Kyle Chirnside has been manning the controls for Fall Out Boy, and the Midas PRO6 is Chirnside's console of choice for the band's current world tour.

"I've always been a Midas guy," states Chirnside. "Whenever I had a choice, I would have my XL4. But then I had the chance to test drive the XL8." That opportunity came with an invitation to visit Metallica FOH engineer Big Mick Hughes during preparations for Fall Out Boy's autumn 2008 tour of the UK and Europe. "We were at his house, sitting around mixing Metallica tunes on the XL8, which was huge for me. I fell in love with the console. So when I heard Midas was developing a smaller, more affordable digital desk, I was totally into it."

Clair Global supplied a PRO6 for Fall Out Boy's spring US tour, which featured four support acts. "Even with five bands, we o

Details
UK - The church of St. Mary Bredin in Canterbury has had an eventful existence. Over the centuries the congregation has seen many physical changes to their place of worship, but the latest building project has seen some of the biggest improvements yet, including the installation of an Alcons audio system.

Originally founded in Saxon times, by the late 1800s the church of St Mary Bredin was an imposing and ornate Victorian building. In 1942 it was destroyed by a Luftwaffe air raid which devastated much of Canterbury and it wasn't until 1957 that a replacement church was constructed on a new site around half a mile away.

Happily the 1957 building is still standing firm and, unlike many churches, its congregation has seen steady growth in recent years. In 2008/09 the church undertook its latest building project, which involved making major changes to the main body of the building

Details
UK - Truss manufacturer Milos will have an eye-catching feature on their stand at PLASA09, which will be constructed from their MT2 Towers and QuickTruss products. The stand will feature a whole range of Milos trussing, roofing and staging ranges.

New products include Milos' C3 crowd barrier system, a lightweight, modular crowd control system available in a wide range of sizes and angles. The robust construction has a completely foldable design for rapid and easy set-up and breakdown, and can be built into numerous configurations using a selection of the standard module sections.

Also new is the latest S8 Xstage modular staging system, which builds on Milos' existing products in the range. S8 features a new profile available for compatibility with plug-in legs and scaffolding.

Milos S4 Xstage will also be prominent, and has proved an ideal option for all types of events - la

Details
UK - A number of prominent British acts are using the new Sennheiser ew 500 G3 wireless receiver, paired with new SKM 935 and SKM 945 microphones, says the company.

"When we heard that a new product was on the way we were eagerly waiting for it," says Jon Burton, front of house engineer for The Prodigy, one of the first professionals to receive an ew 500 G3 and the new SKM 935 mics. "And once G3 arrived it exceeded our expectations.

"Our ease of setting up each day has been greatly improved. Even if we have to reassign all the frequencies at the drop of a hat we can do so in minutes using the infrared sync system. Using it has proved to be very intuitive. Very handy as monitor engineer Joe Campbell and I both have a casual disregard for manuals.

Dave Mcdonald, front of house engineer for Florence and the Machine has been impressed by the audio quality of

Details
UK - Now approaching its 30th year, Nottingham-based Rock City - originally set up by director George Akins, and today among the UK's longest-surviving independent venues - has commissioned a new sound and lighting infrastructure.

To keep pace with modern tour riders, and the growing move by the medium-sized venue market to offer bands the opportunity to leave their production in the truck, visiting sound engineers can now mix their acts through Soundcraft 64-channel Vi6 at front-of-house and 48-channel Vi4 at the monitor position.

The desks were chosen by the venue's technical manager Dave McVea, and installed by the SSE Audio Group installation project team, led by Alex Penn and Steve Dando.

Rock City is owned by DHP (Daybrook House Promotions) who went through a long process of consideration before it made its final choice of an audio supplier. Managing director David Dav

Details
UAE - Approximately 30 pro sound specialists from across the Middle East assembled at the Dubai World Trade Centre on 12 and 13 July for a workshop conducted by Anthony Sawyer, technical support manager for Electro-Voice and Dynacord. The workshop primarily dealt with Electro-Voice's compact XLC line-array system. The participants were all Electro-Voice customers and already familiar with other EV line arrays, but the object of the workshop was to study XLC in detail to ensure that everyone was making the most efficient use of EV technology.

"Our watchword is 'The demo makes the sale','" says Oliver Sahm, director of technical support ProAudio EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa). "And this workshop demonstrated the truth of that idea for the umpteenth time. By the time the event was over, many of the participants had decided to either expand their existing XLC invent

Details
UK - Guardian cult columnist, writer of BBC4 series Screenwipe and writer of Charlie Brooker is heading up the new TV show, You Have Been Watching.

This Channel 4 eight part-series sees Brooker dissecting the week's TV shows along with three guests.

Production designer Cath Pater-Lancucki is the creator of the towering set of back-lit stacked TV sets crowned with satellite dishes. Lighting Designer, Will Charles wanted it to feel like an 'over the top' version of Telly Addicts.

Charles enlisted the services of Richard Martin Lighting to provide the lighting fixtures for the show which consists of 20 GLP Chrome Impressions as a ceiling of light above the set , seven VL3500 and four VL3000 Spots for searchlight beams behind the set , two Mac 500's as backlights and eight VL1000TS as tungsten key lights.

Charles has been working alongside moving li

Details
USA - The Sacred Heart Church, in Springfield, Massachusetts has replaced its old distributed audio system with a single pair of Renkus-Heinz ICONYX Digitally Steerable Array loudspeakers as part of a complete audio refit.

The visually stunning, beautifully renovated, interior is highly acoustically reverberant, and the basic problem that parishioners in the 1,200-seat space found eulogies and sermons hard to follow was compounded by the occasional intrusion of a local radio station through the church's sound system.

Ten loudspeakers, two flown over the congregation, eight more arranged along the walls, served the seating area that stretches back in a T shape to 102ft from the altar, varying in width from 92ft to 108ft across and measuring 80ft high, with intervening stone columns - driven from a rack full of equipment that produced, said Richard G. O'Connell, principal of int

Details
USA - Mackie has launched the TH-15A two-way powered loudspeaker, which delivers 400 Watts of system power in a rugged design weighing in at just 36lbs. Designed by the same team that created the Mackie SRMv2 Series, the TH-15A offers the power, portability and performance required of a compact PA solution, says the company.

"We are very excited to deliver proven Mackie Active technology derived from our popular SRM Series at the most accessible price point in Mackie's history," said Greg Young, Mackie brand product manager. "The TH-15A is a perfect compact PA solution for a tremendous variety of portable applications."

The TH-15A features Mackie Active technology, which incorporates an active crossover and driver time and phase alignment for optimised system performance. The 15" high-precision woofer and 1" compression driver produce "great

Details
USA - LEDtronics has announced the latest additions to its series of energy-efficient replacements for PAR38 light bulbs. The high-power PAR38-12X2WF series of warm-white and pure-white frosted soft-flood bulbs offer "long-lasting durability, low power consumption and money savings". They run a wide range of voltages from 85 to 265VAC requiring no special adapters, while consuming less than 18 watts. The bulbs directly replace halogens and metal halides up to 90 watts, providing 77%-85% energy savings, says the company.

In addition, the series PAR38-12X2WF boasts a wide-focused beam of around 90 degrees, powerful 661 (XIW) and 808 (XPW) lumens of brightness, easy drop-in installation in existing 26mm Edison/E27 European base sockets, and sturdy construction with UV-stabilized plastic lens and magnesium alloy housing.

The maintenance-free LEDtronics PAR38 series comes

Page 2378 of 3465

Latest Issue. . .