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Lighting designer for Beyonce's I am... tour is Justin Collie, partner of Artfag LLC, while Pat Brannon is on tour as lighting director.

Collie decided to use the MAC III Profile on the tour because, he said, they were new, brighter and better.

"Due to the huge video screen, we needed to move the lighting elements into useful positions when required so we have most of the MAC IIIs on 'pods' that can track, raise/lower and rotate within the three-dimensional area over the stage," says Collie. "The MAC IIIs are nice and bright, the zoom range is good and the rotating effect wheel is a nice gag."

Pat Brannon adds: "I love the optics of the MAC III. It has the same features of the MAC 2000 with much improved optics and brightness - in fact, I love their br

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Germany - The Allianz Arena in Munich witnessed a much anticipated encounter of four world champion soccer teams competing for the Audi Cup 2009 - AC. Milan from Italy, Club Atlético Boca Juniors from Argentina, Manchester United from the UK and the winning home team, FC Bayern München. A celebration for the German auto manufacturer's 100th anniversary, the Audi Cup festivities included an appearance by singer Ronan Keating, and were delivered to 1,500 VIP guests in the arena's lounge with crystalline sound reinforcement from a self-powered Meyer Sound system.

Nürtingen-based Creative Technology (CT) Germany supplied and operated all audio, video, and lighting equipment for the two-story VIP area. The system included eight Meyer Sound M'elodie line array loudspeakers, two 600-HP subwoofers, and an assortment of UltraSeries loudspeakers, including 10 UPA-1P and 38 UPM-1P

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UAE - After several years of growth in the region, Sennheiser has embarked on an ambitious expansion of its operations in the Middle East by establishing a new branch office in Dubai Airport Free Zone, headed up by Mig Cardamone, business area manager for the Middle East.

Sennheiser Middle East is a branch office of Sennheiser UK, long responsible for the distribution of all Sennheiser Group brands in the Middle East, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of parent company, Sennheiser Electronic GmbH & Co.

With a diverse portfolio of products, this step has been taken to facilitate better support of its existing dealer network, as well as expanding its distribution channels.

Responsibility also encompasses the distribution of all Sennheiser Group brands, including Neumann and Klein+Hummel, as well as distributed brands such as K-Array, NetCIRA and Rycote.

"This is a logi

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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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The Netherlands - DPA Microphones presented its Distributor of the Year Award to German distributor Mega Audio at its annual distributor meeting, held during the recent IBC show in Amsterdam. In addition, the Danish manufacturer also presented Martin Goosen, from Dutch distributor Amptec, with a special Lifetime Achievement Award.

DPA has worked with Mega Audio for more than a decade, appointing them as exclusive distributor for Germany in 2004, a move which has seen turnover double in the region.

"Mega Audio have managed to increase their sales figures even during these financially difficult times," says DPA director of sales and marketing, Morten Stove. "We have a great working relationship with Mega and it grows stronger every day. We have high expectations and they are able to meet them. They have dedicated staff, and invest resources in marketing. Their de

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USA - The third season of AMC's hit drama Mad Men premiered in New York's Times Square with sound reinforcement from Zeo Brothers (Hatboro, Penn.) and Electro-Voice.

Joe Moser and the Zeo Brothers team deployed a high-performance, compact EV system for the outdoor event, comprising eight XLD281 line array elements (FOH), four QRx218S subwoofers, six Sx250 (delays/mix monitors) and three Dx38 system processors.

"We set the EV system up to provide perfect coverage for the upper island (aka Duffy Island) in Times Square," says Moser, "and we only needed to use arrays of four XLD boxes per side, with a little support from the Sx250 delays. The system was the ideal supplement to the 10' x 18' video wall showing the premiere video. The concert-quality audio helped leave the audience captivated, and evoked thrilled and thankful responses from our client - it eve

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UK - Northern Stage Services staff members Paul Hay, Matthew Cassidy, Chris Sharp, Shaun Todd, David Culshaw, David Simpson and Neil Lees along with support team members James Allen and Andy Anstess decided upon the challenge to raise money for Cancer Research UK. They planned to climb Ben Nevis (1344m), Scafell Pike (964m) and Mount Snowdon (1085m) all in under 24 hours, including travelling between peaks.

The team of seven walkers and two drivers signed up for the challenge in April and put themselves through an Olympian like training regime in an attempt to improve their fitness levels, they even cut back on the 'chip shop' lunches.

The walkers set off from the nStage office in Shaw and took the long drive up to Fort William to commence the mammoth challenge at 5pm on 18 September. They suffered injuries, sickness and even got lost but with help from the support team and so

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Portugal - Top Portuguese artist Mariza has embarked on the worldwide Terra tour, named after her recent album. Returning to Portugal for a number of concerts, the singer made her entrance in Cascais on a sailing boat. This show marked the first time that Mariza's sound engineer, João Cebolas, worked with a Midas PRO6 live audio system. It was provided by local rental company Audiomatrix for all the Portuguese dates, having been recommended by the company's owner Jorge Pina.

Cebolas was only able to try the PRO6 for the first time the day before the show. "It's an intuitive system, with a magnificent work surface where all the pots, buttons and colours are revealed very distinctly, and everything is just a touch away," says Cebolas. "The LCD monitors are relatively large, with strong, vivid colours and high contrast, even when exposed to bright daylight. T

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UK/World - FairTunes is a new charitable organisation dedicated to enhancing the lives of struggling communities in developing nations, through the power of music. The organisation's vision is "to mobilise local talent and empower musicians, artists by providing a platform to develop their creative potential".

FairTunes is a team of industry and technical experts with a simple idea - to target local communities in developing nations and build music studios and radio facilities in their neighbourhoods. They then train the community to use the facilities and continue to support them, until they are able to run the facilities themselves.

The charity also aims to apply the principles of fair trade to establish an online promotion and distribution facility for the music produced in the studios. This will "create a self sustaining cycle where artists will get paid for

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Malta - A pair of E/T/C London's Christie Roadster HD18Ks delivered high power video projection throughout a special two-hour Rockestra concert in Malta recently. The show was the result of E/T/C London's Ross Ashton being asked by the President of Malta, George Abela, to create a high profile fundraising event for the Malta Community Chest charity.

President Abela is the patron of the charity, the largest on the island - and with an enthusiastic audience of 12,000 packing into the Malta Conference and Convention Centre (MFCC), this was one of the largest ever indoor events to date on the island.

The concert, under the music direction of Sigmund Mifsud included specially orchestrated versions of rock classics by Queen, the Beach Boys, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple plus instrumental pieces performed by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. Also appearing onstage w

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USA - For an unprecedented 15 years, Crystal Cruises has been voted 'World's Best by Condé Nast Traveller magazine, and operates two top-rated luxury cruise liners - the 922-guest Crystal Symphony and the 1,070-guest Crystal Serenity. As part of a recent technical upgrade, Crystal Cruises has standardised on Innovason's Sy48 digital mixing consoles to be installed into the featured venue aboard both ships, the multi-purpose Galaxy Lounge.

Kyle Toth, entertainment technical director at Crystal Cruises explains, "We have the most extensive entertainment and educational programmes in the ultra-luxury cruise market and the Sy48 has become the backbone of our audio support for those programmes. We offer multimedia lectures, classical concerts, headline vocalists and instrumentalists, comedians and several full scale production shows. The most exciting application f

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UK - White Light, a regular visitor to all of London's theatres, set something of a record in early September, supplying three different productions at the same theatre over the course of a long weekend.

The theatre was the Arts Theatre, located in the heart of London's West End; the three productions indicated the many different capacities in which White Light can help light a show as well as its ability to work to suit a production's schedule, however demanding.

The first of the three shows, an event in the theatre, saw White Light deliver lighting equipment on Friday for a Saturday show, then return late on Saturday evening to collect the gear from the theatre after the event.

The second saw White Light's Production team working with PositiveTV on an event in the theatre; the Production team provide a complete lighting service, including design, supply, crewing and more,

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UK The Battle Proms are staged in the grounds of a number of stately homes throughout England over the summer and combine a classical concert and fireworks with military displays, including Napoleonic cavalry and infantry, a Second World War Spitfire and the ear-splitting accompaniment of around 200 cannons.

The 2009 season saw Battle Proms take in six concerts in July and August, with Yamaha Commercial Audio's digital systems manager Nick 'Biggles' Pemberton mixing the shows on an LS9-16 console with an SB168-ES digital stage box.

Audio supplier for the shows was Luton-based Concert Sound Clair, who supplied an EAW/Clair Bros/Showco front of house system, together with Schoeps microphones to get the best of the orchestral sound.

"It's actually a very simple setup," says Pembereton. "All audio processing is done within the LS9 and I have a laptop

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UK - Schneider Electric has introduced Ulti Epic, a multimedia interface that combines multiple outlets into a one-panel solution, allowing modern technology to interface with television, projectors and audio systems.

The Ulti Epic is a compact unit suitable for high-end design residential installations, in addition to commercial applications such as hotels and boardrooms. The streamline solution groups together outlets that naturally complement each other so that equipment such as camcorders, DVD players, laptops and games consoles, including content from memory cards and memory sticks, can be run through a television. The outlets are installed on a media plate providing a neat alternative to individual sockets, while preventing damage to expensive equipment.

The Ulti Epic is a flexible product as it allows customers to configure the outlets on the panel to suit their individ

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Italy - Proel and Trabes have just signed an important commercial partnership agreement concerning Trussing products. It will allow Proel to offer its customers "a more flexible support policy and optimize its "problem solving" efficiency; at the same time, it will bring about increased strategic monitoring in these product lines".

To achieve a more distinct identity in trussing, the pre-existing partnership with Litec has been terminated.

"Proel and Trabes are two companies which, to some extent, share the same idea of business," explains Maurizio Amadori, founder and Chairman of Trabes. "Since it was established in 1985, Trabes has always worked in the market trying to meet the concrete needs of its customers and demonstrating its commitment to product reliability with accurate choice of materials and attention to detail, as well as with st

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France - L-Acoustics has fully redesigned its website to offer improved navigation and more content information with a freshened-up visual appearance. This move coincides with the recent publication of the new L-Acoustics full line brochure. Behind the scenes, the website features a powerful and state-of the art database content management offering its visitors information in real-time.

The site boasts an enhanced layout both aesthetically and practically. The simplified navigation and quick access to information can be done with a minimum number of clicks. Drop-down menus with content preview and multi-tabbed product information and downloads "make the visit a breeze".

"Information on modern websites remains sometimes difficult to access despite the existence of many 'bells and whistles', animations and the like," says L-Acoustics marketing director St&eac

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UK - Scottish Ballet has recently moved in to new purpose-built headquarter premises on the south side of Glasgow where the studios have been fully equipped throughout with Harlequin sprung dance floors.

The completion in May 2009 of the new building containing three studios follows an earlier project phase in 2008, which saw the conversion of two former stables at Glasgow's co-located Tramway venue. Here at the end of last year, British Harlequin installed Harlequin WoodSpring into the converted stables at Tramway; one being covered with Harlequin Cascade and the other with Harlequin Studio vinyl dance floors. All three new studios are also furnished with Harlequin WoodSpring basketweave floors and completed with a dance surface of grey Harlequin Cascade vinyl.

At 382sq.m, one studio is thought to be the largest in Europe. In addition to the new dance studios Scottish Ballet

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USA - While MTV's Video Music Awards (VMAs) lit up the TV screens of millions of households on 13 September, lighting designer Tom Kenny utilised an extensive package of Coemar Infinity Wash XLs, Infinity ACLs and ParLite LEDs provided by Scharff Weisberg Lighting for the live show at New York City's Radio City Music Hall.

"An awards show of that size and pressure is like going into battle in the trenches," says Kenny. "In New York, everybody thinks they know how to be the mayor, the president of the United States and the lighting designer of the VMAs. You just have to hold your ground and do your show."

Working under such mission-critical conditions Kenny sought reliability and dependability as well as great creative scope from his lighting instruments. "I used Coemar Infinitys as the firepower on the show," he says. "All the lights pointing

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UK - The new Soundcraft Studer factory in Potters Bar, near London is virtually complete. Based on a $7 million investment the company made four years ago, the new factory extends the manufacturing floor space by more than 100 percent plus additional storage space. "It will be a fantastic facility for our sales teams and distributors to bring their customers to impress them with our technology and quality, said Andy Trott, president, Soundcraft Studer.

In addition to the OnAir 500, OnAir 2500 and Vista 5 SR, all of which have previously been manufactured in Potters Bar, the new factory will now produce all Studer Vista, Router and OnAir products. The company has already appointed 15 new production staff to cope with the additional production workload, with more to join before year end.

Additionally, a new customer centre will feature two large dedicated acceptance test ro

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UAE - After several years of growth in the region, Sennheiser has embarked on an ambitious expansion of its operations in the Middle East by establishing a new branch office in Dubai Airport Free Zone, headed up by Mig Cardamone, business area manager for the Middle East.

Sennheiser Middle East is a branch office of Sennheiser UK Ltd, long responsible for the distribution of all Sennheiser Group brands in the Middle East, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of parent company, Sennheiser Electronic GmbH & Co.KG.

With a diverse portfolio of products, this step has been taken to facilitate better support of its existing dealer network, as well as expanding its distribution channels, say Sennheiser.

Key areas such as consumer headphones and multimedia headsets - an area in which Sennheiser has achieved significant success in Europe and the US in recent years - as well as cockpit

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USA - An extensive Electro-Voice XLD line array loudspeaker installation has raised the bar for the James T. Jeremiah chapel sound at Cedarville University in Cedarville, near Columbus, Ohio. Designed by Todd Gathany and Jeff Sanderson of consultants Onpoint Designs and integrated by AGI Professional (Kelly Baum & Kyle Anderson), the system features 36 XLD281 line array elements (two 10-box main arrays & two eight-box side arrays), 12 XCS312 cardioid subwoofers and two NetMax N8000 processors.

Cedarville University's chapel auditorium was built in 1996 and originally featured main arrays and a delay ring from another manufacturer. Preaching and worship are a priority at the school, and the whole student body comes together each day in the chapel - audio is an essential element of the worship experience at Cedarville.

"The old system was installed back when the contemporar

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USA - Six new Tascam products were launched at the AES in New York last week, including the company's first portable multitrack location recorder.

The Tascam HS-P82 is an eight-track location sound recorder, employing Compact Flash (CF) card digital media, for secure and robust recording with no moving parts. The HS-P8 features an internal stereo mix down capability, in addition to the eight discrete tracks. Audio quality is up to 96kHz/24bit (8-track recording) or 192khz/24bit (4-track recording) quality, with time-code and support for industry standard Broadcast WAV (BWF) file format and iXML.

Also shown for the first time, the US-2000 is a 16-channel USB2.0 rackmount audio interface for multi-channel computer audio applications. The US-2000 provides competitively priced, high end features and specifications for the universally supported USB2.0 connection. Features include s

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