USA / Spain - In response to the increasing demand for Constellation acoustic systems around the world, Meyer Sound has added Mac Johnson and Ana Lorente to the Constellation team. Johnson has been named Constellation project manager, transferring from his prior position as education programmes coordinator for the company. Ana Lorente, formerly with the projects department of Meyer Sound Spain, will now serve as Constellation project designer.

"Both Mac and Ana already have extensive experience with Constellation," states John McMahon, Meyer Sound's executive director, digital products. "The success of the projects they worked on is a major factor in their appointments to the team. We are extremely pleased to have them fully on board to support our Constellation wor

USA - Two New York City public schools have dramatically reduced the energy consumption of their stage lighting systems by more than 80% after replacing their existing conventional lighting rigs with LEDs from Elation Professional.

This plunge in energy usage occurred at Walton High School and PS 86X, an elementary school. The two schools installed the new lighting systems as part of an experiment conducted by the Division of School Facilities, Board of Education, City of New York to gauge the cost-saving potential of LEDs.

The experiment began about four years ago, said Michael A. Fink of Magical Designs (Brooklyn, NY), who works as a design consultant to Prince Electric, which is under contract with the Division of School Facilities. "At that time, one of the division's inspectors approached me and asked if we could put in an LED (stage lighting) system at one of the sc

UK - London- based drape, soft goods and dressing specialists Cover It Up finished one of their busiest years to date continuing to supply solutions to a diversity of projects including high profile sporting events like the AEGON Masters Tennis tournament at the Royal Albert Hall and the Red Bull F1 Racing End of Season Party at Silverstone's The Wing.

Cover It Up has supplied various draping elements to the annual AEGON Masters Tennis event for the last eight years, working for IMG Events.

The brief this year included helping to transform the RAH's famous 'Gods' upper circle gallery area into a series of functional spaces and VIP bays. For the VIP areas, the requirement was to create luxurious and comfortable spaces for the enjoyment of key guests accessing the hospitality facilities.

This was achieved this year by blacking out half of the gallery area and dividing the othe

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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

Olympic Countdown - The Olympics will cause "a bloodbath of a summer" for London theatres in 2012, Andrew Lloyd Webber has predicted. "Nobody's going to go to the theatre at all," the composer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, predicting that "most of the theatres in London will shut".

"It's going to be very tough," he said, revealing advance bookings were "about 10%" of their normal level. Three major musicals, he added, "are not going to play over the Olympics" - but he would not name them. Lord Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group owns seven London theatres which are currently hosting shows including War Horse, Matilda and The Wizard of Oz.

The impresario said "big, big, big hits" like his own The Phantom of the Opera would continue during The Olympics. But he said some of his

UK - Co-founded in 1863 by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and Lord Leighton, and with Rodin, Churchill and Whistler amongst its former patrons, the Arts Club in Mayfair's Dover Street boasts a glamorous heritage.

Completely refurbished under the new management of Restaurateurs Arjun and Jai Waney, and property entrepreneur Gary Landesberg, they have sought to retain the heritage and charm of this authentic landmark whilst introducing the club as the hub of contemporary cultural life in London.

Designed by David D'Almada of Sagrada, the space consists of a series of individually furnished rooms, including a sophisticated Member's Library, and the Brasserie and Oyster Bar. kitchens are under the stewardship of chef director Raphael Duntoye of La Petite Maison.

With Mark Ronson at the helm as director of music, members are kept in tune with "cutting edge and stimulatin

Belgium - Over 100 Robe Robin 600E Spot and LEDWash moving lights were used to illuminate the Blue Room, one of five arenas at the 2011 I Love Techno (ILT) event - one of the biggest and most successful rave experiences in Europe - staged at the Flanders Expo, Ghent, and attended by a sold out audience of 35,000 enthusiastic ravers.

The Robes were specified by the event's lighting video and production designer Thomas Boets of LD Productions, and supplied by rental company L&L Stage Services from Herentals, Belgium.

Boets designed visuals for all areas across the whole event - in which he has been involved for over seven years.

Seventy-six Robe Robin 600 Spots and 26 Robin 600 LEDWashes were used in the Blue Room, rigged onto to a series of trusses over the stage/DJ booth and on two box trusses - one inside the other - with curved edges that were flown above the audience. The

USA - American DJ's Mega 24PRO is a compact 16" RGB colour bar with 24 brilliant 1-watt LEDs (eight each red, green and blue) that can be adapted to different uses - from uplighting walls and ceilings, to overhead illumination.

Producing a 10° vertical x 40° beam angle that's suitable for wall washing, the Mega 24PRO features DMX or manual control, RGB colour mixing, 32 built-in colour macros, a colour strobe effect and 0-100% electronic dimming. Its multitude of features, along with six operational modes, give the Mega 24PRO the ability to create whatever ambience or colour effects are needed, says the company, making it "ideal for theatrical productions, nightclubs, special effects installations, party venues, DJs, mobile entertainers and more".

"The Mega 24PRO is a great fixture to use for uplighting, which of course is currently a big trend in e

USA - The Pig 'n' Whistle in midtown Manhattan is typical of many of the area's taverns. What the narrow storefront space lacks in width, it more than makes up for in depth and height, spanning two floors and extending far to the back of the building it occupies.

"It's only about 25ft wide, but it's more than 75ft deep, and there's an open veranda and dining area upstairs, with a high open ceiling," says Rich Trombitas of Cornwall-based Cardone Solomon & Associates Inc.

"It's a beautiful place," says Trombitas. "The architecture is just stunning, the finish and detail looks wonderful. But sonically it's very challenging. The stage is located on the second level, and particularly on Friday and Saturday nights when they have Irish bands and DJs in there, the noise level can be a real challenge."

The main floor is served by three wall-mounted TRX82

The Netherlands - Owned by Sander Krouwel, Road Productions is based in central Holland and operates in the corporate event, theatre, one-off events, and concert touring markets. The company is a loyal DiGiCo user, being the first rental company in Holland to purchase a dual D1 Live setup back in 2004. It is now adding to its console inventory with the purchase of a DiGiCo SD8 and SD11.

Road Productions is a key player in the Dutch rental market, working with singers such as Frans Bauer and his live band, and Trijntje.

As a satisfied DiGiCo user, Krouwel invested in a DiGiCo SD9 in 2010, but with the market expanding in the smaller and larger jobs, and seeing the range of consoles now available at TM Audio's seminars this year, he decided to make an additional investment in a DiGiCo SD8 and, for the smaller productions, an SD11.

"Our acts are very satisfied with this gu

Malaysia - The Vienna Boys Choir performed in the Plenary Hall of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in November, miked with DPA 2011C mics provided by Orange Events, a KL-based rental company.

Blurr Wong, owner of Orange Events, Blurr used two matched-pairs of DPA 2011C twin diaphragm compact cardioids from DPA's new Reference Standard series to mic the 30-piece choir. "These mics are special," says Blurr. "The twin diaphragm capsule design, combined with meticulous engineering, has resulted in the product being a good all-rounder mic. It sounds luscious."

Blurr also used a sensitivity-selected pair of DPA 4099P instrument clip mics for miking the grand piano, with one mic positioned at each end of the strings and the lid half open. "The 4099's small but packs lot of punches, allowing you to achieve studio-like quality in a live environment," con

Sweden - Reality TV talent competition Idol has aired on Sweden's TV4 since August 2004, and became one of the most popular shows on Swedish television. This year's edition was the final one and lighting designer Per Ax voted for a grandMA2 control system.

This comprised one grandMA2 full-size and one grandMA2 light console, four MA NPU (Network Processing Units) and three touchscreen computers, with grandMA2 on PC software running as backup. It all performed faultlessly while controlling 450 LED fixtures and moving lights from Philips Vari*Lite, Color Kinetics, Clay Paky and Martin Professional as well as a whole bunch of conventionals.

Lighting designer's assistant and head electrician Tobias Winerdal commented, "I have worked on Swedish Idol for seven years. We started out with another console and used it for a few years. We moved on to the grandMA full-s

Sweden - Lund's City Theatre recently invested in a wireless DMX/RDM distribution system comprising LumenRadio's CRMX Nova products.

Lund, located in the southern most part of Sweden, is home to Lund's University that was established in 1666 and is now one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research. Lund's City Theatre is the centre of the local performing arts life. Productions range from visiting avant-garde dramatic theatre to locally produced crowd-pleasers like the recently featured musical Sweeny Todd.

When it was time to redo the signal distribution system for their main venue, major considerations were ease and cost of installation, as well as the need to accommodate future expansions and new technologies such as Ethernet and RDM. The theatre is located downtown and co-existence with other neighbouring radio systems was an absolute requirem

Germany - High End Systems new Technospot automated luminaire and DL.3 Digital Light took centrestage on the recent sold-out tour of Germany with two artists, Nik P. and Andreas Gabalier. The show also featured other High End Systems lighting and control products supplied by Getec-Eventtechnik.

The tour required a lighting and set design rig flexible enough to fit a variety of venues, said Preworks' Andreas Reinbacher. Lighting operator Michael Mayler jumped in to help in the design - "to make the messages of the songs visible to the audience," Reinbacher said. Both artists are Austrian. Nik P. and his band perform what's known as Schlager, or easy listening pop music. Andreas Gabalier is a folksinger. Mayler used 10 Technospots, two DL.3 digital lights, two Showpix and two StudioPix LED graphic display fixtures and 10 Studio Beam automated luminaires. All were control

The Netherlands - projectiondesign will use Integrated Systems Europe to highlight how their innovations are integrated in today's visual solutions for collaborative working.

"Recognising the increased adoption of AV into IT systems, projectiondesign's stand this year focuses on demonstrating several live and real-world demonstrations of product compatibility with leading 3D visualization and collaborative working examples that are already widely in use all over the world. We understand that today's businesses see the value in faster, better, and more well informed decision making and these examples will allow visitors to see, feel and touch enhance their effectiveness" says Anders L°kke, marketing director at projectiondesign.

"Our projection display products meet the ever increasing and challenging needs of a highly detailed and clear image. The wide range

UK - Clockaudio has introduced the CW-200 dual channel wireless conferencing system.

The CW-200 provides an affordable, easy to deploy and operate solution for elementary, occasional or portable conferencing applications, says the company. The system comprises two boundary microphone transmitter units and a dual channel UHF receiver.

Receiver and transmitter are operable over 32 selectable frequencies for each channel, and feature auto scan and lock to provide transmission on an available interference-free frequency. Adjustable 'Noise-Lock' squelch and RFI shielding technology negate environmental RF noise and signal interference.

Commenting on the addition of the CW-200 to the Clockaudio range, sales and marketing manager Rod Geary stated, "The CW-200 offers a highly cost effective and versatile solution for a part of the market we have not previously addressed, where

Italy - Designed as a speaker solution for indoor installations where the critical acoustic environment is an issue and where moderate visual impact is required, the RCF VSA is now available in three models - VSA 2050, VSA 1250 & VSA 850.

VSA aims to address the audio signal exactly to the listening area, avoiding sending the acoustic energy to ceilings and empty floors, thus not introducing bad reflections that would affect speech intelligibility, mainly in critical environments with high reverberation time, says the company.

"The target we aimed at when designing the VSA was to offer voice directivity and control over all the voice range, to give high intelligibility performance with wide frequency response and high dynamics and coherence at distance," says a spokesman. "We've been able to reach this goal thanks to the length of the column, the number and size

UK - Black Light has used its rigging and working at heights expertise to help a high-profile leisure centre refurbishment meet its completion deadline. The company used innovative thinking and a bespoke access system to reach a malfunctioning high-level LED lighting feature at the Carnegie Leisure Centre in Dunfermline. This tricky repair challenge was jeopardising the scheduled hand-over of the newly renovated centre.

"The client and main contractors on this job were Fife Council, Balfour Beatty and Barr Construction," said Phil Haldane, Black Light's head of company development. "They were very impressed with the system we devised and our professional approach to the work. Most importantly, they were delighted with the result and the hassle-free outcome to what would otherwise have been a significant sticking point for their project."

The main challenge

Denmark - To mark Martin Professional's quarter of a century in the entertainment lighting industry, Martin will be celebrating with a variety of special activities in 2012, including anniversary events at trade shows throughout the year.

Incorporated in 1987 as a producer of disco lights and fog machines, the Danish-based company has grown over the past 25 years into one of the leading manufacturers of dynamic lighting and video displays. Martin's MAC line of moving heads alone has sold over 350,000 units and the company's growing line of LED products is among the fastest selling on the market.

The anniversary is also being marked on the Martin website, as well as Martin Professional's Facebook page, where industry professionals will find special opportunities to interact and share in Martin's look back at 25 years in the lighting industry.

"2012 marks our 25th anniver

USA - Renkus-Heinz has announced its EASE Level 1 Training Class schedule for 2012. The classes, conducted by Renkus-Heinz application engineers Jonas Domkus and Jim Mobley, cover the basics of using EASE 4.3 and EASE JR 4.3, with specific focus on room modelling techniques and basic electro-acoustic analysis.

Each three-day session is held at the EASE Learning Lab, located at the Renkus-Heinz headquarters in Foothill Ranch, California, with classes offered quarterly throughout the year.

All classes are based on EASE 4.3 for Windows. Ownership of and basic familiarity with EASE 4.3 is a prerequisite, and students are encouraged to bring their own laptops. Classes are scheduled on 20-22 February, 14-16 May, 20-22 August 20-22 and 12-14 November 2012.

(Jim Evans)

UK - The first batch of Source Four Fresnels to be shipped to the UK have been delivered. The largest sales have been to Villa Marina on the Isle of Man, which took 60 units, Clwyd Theatr Cymru (40 units) and Stockton Arts Centre (18), all of which were supplied by Stage Electrics.

Davie Bell, divisional sales manager at Stage Electrics, says: "We have been extremely pleased with the reception to the new Source Four Fresnel from ETC. Customers like the light output and with a wide choice of 375W, 575W or 750W lamps source it is showing itself to be a very versatile unit for a variety of performance spaces. We are out showing as many customers as we can our demo units and they are invariably impressed and placing orders. It is a strong addition to the ETC fixture range."

Other venues to which Stage Electrics supplied the new Source Four Fresnel include Bridgend Colleg

USA - The restoration of Omaha's Greater Beth-El Temple is complete after a June 2008 arson attack that nearly destroyed the Apostolic Christian church, popular among Omaha's African-American community. The congregation was forced to relocate while the temple underwent a complete renovation. Left virtually an empty shell after the fire, the building required new floors, a ceiling, a stage, seating, and numerous other necessities including a sound system.

Greater Beth-El services include a full musical ensemble playing contemporary Christian and gospel music. Theatrical performances and concerts are also regular events at the temple. According to John Manhart of Direct Pro Audio LLC, the contractor who designed and installed Greater Beth-El's new audio system, low profile looks combined with large sound capability were paramount in selecting the new system.

"Greater Beth-E

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