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South Africa - Production lighting for the 2012 Splashy Fen Music Festival - staged in the beautiful foothills of the southern Drakensberg mountains, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa - was designed by Llewellyn Pieters from Durban based event technical support company, Black Coffee.

The rig involved a selection of Robe moving lights including Robin 600 LEDWashes and ColorSpot 575 and 1200E ATs, chosen by Llewellyn who was LD/operator for the event for the second year running.

He needed to make the stage as versatile as possible as a performance space for the popular boutique festival, offering the wide variety of emerging and established artists playing throughout the event their own distinctive looks.

So the lighting concept needed to be as dynamic as possible for the budget.

Th

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UK - Pearce Hire has confirmed its return to the Showman's Show (Newbury Showground 17-18 October) this month. A regular supporter of the annual exhibition, the team from Pearce Hire will be ready to share the news of their busiest summer ever and talk about their expertise in providing solutions for the technical challenges of any outdoor, or indoor event.

Comments Shaun Pearce, MD of Pearce Hire, "The Showman's Show is ideally timed as it offers a platform for us to catch up with our customers at the end of the hectic summer season. The challenges and successes of the season are still fresh in everyone's minds and it allows an opportunity for us to sit down and plan for next year. We can review what has happened over the past few months and then act upon it and build on those experiences in order to produce even better events in 2013."

It has been a non-stop summer

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UK - As technology continually drives the improvement of entertainment systems, customer expectations rise exponentially. This is just as true at sea - in the cruise market - as it is on land, which is why the cruise liner Saga Sapphire has emerged from a recent refit with a comprehensive Sennheiser, DAS Audio, K-array and APart audio system on board.

Under previous owners the 30,000 ton vessel was named the Europa, SuperStar Europe, SuperStar Aries, Holiday Dream and Bleu de France. Given its third major refit at the end of 2011, the liner emerged as the Saga Sapphire with significantly upgraded facilities designed specifically for its owners' over-50s market. Major elements of the refit were brand new audio, lighting and A/V systems, specified and installed by Luton-based TEDAV.

"Our technical director Mark Morley had an extensive marine past and brought a lot of that w

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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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Italy - For almost 40 years, a historically ancient Italian town in the hills of central Italy transforms itself for ten days each July. Perugia welcomes tens of thousands of visitors for the annual Umbria Jazz Festival, which has gone onto become one of the largest music events not just in Italy, but in the world.

With it come the challenges of hosting multiple stages in a mediaeval and architecturally sensitive town, where getting the sound right for critical ears is as rewarding as it is challenging. Umbria Jazz's technical partner is Angelo Tordini, who is perhaps better known as the owner of the Ancona-based cable manufacturer, Reference Laboratory. As the chorus confirms, Mr Tordini and his handpicked dream team are prepared to work like dogs in order to get the sound right for the artists, the audiences and of course, themselves.

"I normally spend three weeks prepa

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UK - Training centre Backstage Academy reports a successful exhibit at its second annual PLASA Show, where it celebrated a year of growth with several initiatives.

The Academy took many enquiries for its Foundation Degree in Live Events Production, for which there are still places for this November. It also had a lot of interest from overseas companies wanting training delivered in their home country.

Said sales & business development manager Sara Gleadhall, "What was surprising this year was the number of enquiries we had from companies and professionals abroad who are desperate for us to take our training overseas.

"We are currently looking at developing packages of training in essential backstage skills and certificates to deliver in foreign countries."

The Academy launched a student competition to win a week's work experience on the set build of a major

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UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd's audio division has supplied one of Yamaha's CL5 digital mixing consoles - along with two Yamaha Rio I/O rackmount units - to Manchester based technical solutions company, Sterling Event Group (SEG).

As a single-source supplier for the corporate, commercial and private event markets, SEG specialise in providing creative, technical and production expertise and skills, coupled with all the latest available technologies.

SEG's project manager and head of sound, Ben Marshall explains that they already own several Yamaha digital consoles, which have been in constant use. When looking for a larger digital desk with more onboard features they were naturally attracted back to the Yamaha brand, explaining that they have found Yamaha consoles to be "extremely user friendly" and "reliable".

AC-ET was amongst the firs

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Australia - Twelve ETC Selador Desire D40 Lustr+ LED fixtures have found a welcoming home at the Adelaide Festival Centre, which was the first of Australia's performing arts centres and is still acknowledged by audiences and performers as the best of its kind in the nation.

"We wanted a fixture that was robust and really an industry standard," explained Phil Haddy, head lighting technician. "The ETC brand is well known and respected which is why we looked to them first. Plus the Selador Lustr has the seven colours and is more theatre-orientated without sacrificing the energy efficiency and long life you expect from LEDs."

According to Haddy, the Selador Desire D40 Lustr+ fixtures have been performing well and responding beautifully.

"I really like that they offer a lot more colours than other units do and their output is really good," Phil added

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UAE - A Solid State Logic AWS 948 Hybrid Console/Controller was chosen to upgrade the primary audio recording room, Studio 7, now named the SSL Studio, at the SAE Institute in Dubai.

As a part of the worldwide network of over 56 SAE educational facilities, the Dubai campus offers a variety of degree and certificate programs in media production, including audio engineering, 3D animation, multimedia, game design, digital filmmaking and music production.

SAE Dubai's audio programme revolves around seven studios, each having a different level of sophistication and primary application. The SSL Studio connects to the SSL Live Room, a moderate-sized room that can comfortably house a quartet of musicians. The acoustics of the room are designed for picking up the dynamic response of instruments, especially drum kits and loud instruments. Having a console that can match the acoustic sig

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UK - This year's Reading Festival in the UK had some additional colour, courtesy of Colour Sound Experiment of London. Two weeks prior to the event the organizers decided to add lighting decoration to the general audience area. They called on Colour Sound whose design solution added 1500 metres and 1,500 lamps of TMB's IMS colour-changing festoon strings. The IMS (Intelligent Marquee Systems) rig was strung from an array of 6m high poles, suspended over the audience between the rear entrance and the main stage, arranged like spokes of a cartwheel. The individually DMX-controlled RGB IMS lamps were reminiscent of normal light bulbs hanging over the audience, but with each lamp acting as a low-resolution colour-changing 'pixel' for a dazzling display of video and graphics content. The system's 12 IMS Universe Drives were controlled with ArtNet using a Chamsys console.

"We cho

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UK - Avolites' popular Pearl Expert lighting control console had provided a powerful, easy to use solution for a one off, career-defining Frank Turner gig at London's Wembley Arena.

Lighting designer Shaun Moore adapted his smaller music hall inspired lighting design for the Wembley Arena show. However this one-off gig presented a number of challenges as Moore explains, "The show was a one off, so it was load in at 5am and doors at 6pm. Programming was done over two days at Terminal Studios via the Avolites console using WYSIWYG. We also had a couple hours tweaking over night in my hotel room! Obviously I could have done with a production day, especially as the show was filmed for DVD. On the day itself we had just a few hours tweaking positions and programming."

Frank Turner, the Winchester based, folk/punk singer and guitarist, has been touring almost consistently

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UK - The Cunard Building is one of the landmark buildings in Liverpool, being sited on the waterfront of the River Mersey right next to that classic symbol of Liverpool heritage, the Liver Building.

Originally the headquarters of the Cunard Steamship Company, the architecturally dramatic building was completed in 1917, and also served as the main passenger terminal for both Cunard and White Star Line liners.

Now the classic interior has been sympathetically enhanced and reconfigured to become one of the most upmarket office buildings in Liverpool.

LED lighting manufacturer Tryka LED of Royston, worked hand in hand with main contractor on the project, Jennor UK Ltd of St Helen's, to specify and supply its Flexistrip linear strip to illuminate all the public areas of the building. The six refurbished floors were installed with more than 1000m of Warm White Flexistrip 30 IP67 l

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UK - Allen & Heath will be releasing new firmware updates for the Xone:DB4 and Xone:DB2 digital FX mixers, and the Xone:K2 MIDI controller. Previewing at the BPM show, the new software provides enhanced FX sections and configuration for the DB4 and DB2 mixers, and greater integration between the DB4 and the K2 controller.

Xone:DB4 V2.0 firmware offers more creative flexibility with an advanced channel FX configuration, which allows the user to determine where the FX section, EQ section and FX ON switch are placed in the signal path - including much requested Post Fade FX. In addition, each FX section can be configured in Classic, Send or Hybrid Mode, to create a subtly different sound for each effect type. The new firmware also introduces a powerful new effect to the DB4's extensive FX library - Infrabass - a low frequency enhancer that generates infra bass energy from the sub-b

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Lebanon - Brothers Rami and Joe Keyrouz opened the Bar National in Beirut early 2012, yet within a few months were having to look at replacing their installed audio system. "This is a roof top bar with live DJ and music playback," said Youssef Aoun from sound specialists Seebeck Audio. "In the winter the bar keeps the glass walls to the balcony closed, but as soon as the warm weather arrived and they opened up the neighbours began complaining about the noise."

Music manager for Bar National, Gunther Sabbagh asked Aoun to take a cold hard look at the bar's physical orientation and surrounding neighbourhood. "He came up with a tricky but effective solution," said Sabbagh. "Beyond removing the existing system I could see two immediate problems," said Aoun. "The only way to contain low end at moderate levels to the surrounding buildings w

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South Africa - Randburg, Johannesburg- based technical solutions agency TechRig supplied technical production - including nearly 200 Robe lighting fixtures - to the 2012 annual DFC Conference & Gala Dinner for medical aid and insurance giants, Discovery.

The event was staged at Sandton Convention Centre (SCC) in Johannesburg over two days, and included two evenings of entertainment spectacular and Award presentations starring Lindiwe Bungane of Dream Girls, among other vocalists plus a full dance troupe.

Lighting was designed by TechRig's Robert Grobler, and the very stylish set created by Michael Gill. The two separate evening's programmes were enjoyed by over 1000 people.

A large trussing system was installed over the 30m wide stage, based on three concentric circles with a series of trussing spines coming off the largest circle on the outside of the two smaller one

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Italy - K-array announced during their Global Distributors Meeting that Michel Brouard will join the company as corporate vice-president of sales. Brouard will personally manage the handling of the Asian Market. He is joining K-array from L-Acoustics, where he covered multiple roles.

"I am delighted to be joining the K-array team," Brouard said. "This is an exciting time with our strong lineup of upcoming product releases and line diversifications. What attracted me to K-array was its dynamic team motivation. The vision of growth and 'keep it in the family' spirit is the primary motivation behind the company's success - that and their open-minded approach to the market."

(Jim Evans)

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Colombia - A DiGiCo SD8 is the latest mixing console purchased by Colombian company Grupo Hangar, which provides technical production services to events in and around the city of Medellín. Already used successfully on the city's highest profile festival, the SD8 has made many friends.

Grupo Hangar provides its services for live music, cultural festivals, sport, exhibitions, trade and fashion shows. The company needed a mixing console that could handle all of them and satisfy their policy of providing a bespoke solution for each one.

"We purchased the SD8 for a number of reasons," says Grupo Hangar producer Santiago Vélez. "First of all it has a wonderful sound - not only in terms of the features to shape the sound, but just by bringing the faders up it sounds amazing. It's also a very versatile desk; each session can be configured to each event's needs,

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UK / Sweden - LumenRadio has appointed Peter Kirkup as VP of Entertainment; he will be joining the LumenRadio team on their stand at the LDI show in Las Vegas.

Kirkup, working until recently for Zero 88 and Cooper Controls, brings with him extensive experience and has been a particularly strong supporter of the PLASA RDM technologies and initiatives. He is the designer and administrator of the recently revamped rdmprotocol.org website; the leading industry resource and forum for RDM related matters.

"Having worked with LumenRadio as a customer for several years, I can attest to their professionalism, capability to deliver on time, and to provide comprehensive support and backup when required", says Peter Kirkup, "Our work together on several complex projects exemplified just that - last minute purchase orders, technical challenges due to the constraints on site,

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Norway - The Hålogaland Theatre in Troms°, Norway, is putting its new DPA d:fine Headset Microphones through their paces on a production of Les Misérables, which opened on 6 September 2012.

The theatre has replaced its old stock of DPA 4060 omnidirectional miniature microphones with 40 directional d:fine Headset Microphones and 40 d:fine omni microphone booms, which are being used with a new 32 channel Shure Axient wireless system. The microphones were supplied by sound company Lydproduksjon Troms° AS, in conjunction with DPA's Norwegian distributor Lydsystemer.

Jim Oddvar Hansen, head of sound at the theatre, says, "The new d:fine Headset Microphones replace a selection of DPA 4060 miniature microphones that we had had for some time. As our previous experience with DPA technology had always been good, it made sense to upgrade using the same manufac

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South Africa - Johannesburg rental company, Blackmotion, is rebranding itself to become a full lighting service and audio visual company focusing on stage, concerts, architectural and system integration.

Over the last few months they have purchased 16 Robin 600 fixtures comprising of four Robin 600 Washes, four Robin 600 Spots, four Robin 600 LEDs and four Robin 600 Beams.

"The purchasing of new sound equipment has been put on hold while we focus all our energy and resources on lighting and audio visual," commented Kagiso 'Daystar' Moima, owner of Blackmotion. "Over the years we split our resources way to thin and growth was limited. Now we will head towards modular screens and mapping integrated with lighting."

Blackmotion provides all the necessary services from visual rendering to lighting design. While the company has sound in their warehouse, their l

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USA - Avolites Media is heading Stateside this month to show off its award-winning Sapphire Media Infinity System.

The media server technology, developed by the R&D team at Avolites Media, will be exhibited for the first time in the USA at the annual LDI show Las Vegas, 19-21 October 2012 at Las Vegas Convention Center.

Avolites Media will be at Creative Stage Lighting's stand, the company's US distributor, on Booth, # 1129.

Since its groundbreaking use on major events in the UK and beyond the Sapphire Media Infinity System has been the talk of the entertainment technology industry and, at the PLASA show, it won the much-coveted PLASA Award for Innovation with PLASA judges commenting: "It's the first integrated video control surface dedicated to video. It's well thought out and well designed."

Steve Warren, managing director for Avolites Media comments, "The

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UK - With widespread success across the UK market in TV studio installations, Northern Light has put in place plans to apply this success within the international arena.

Andy Booth, senior contracts manager with Northern Light, said, "Whilst Northern Light has extensive experience of delivering the design and installation of technical systems in theatres and concert halls worldwide, we feel the time is now right to promote our expertise in the design and project management of TV studio systems to an international audience."

Working as a specialist sub-contractor to the construction industry, Northern Light has been responsible for the design and installation of technical systems for TV studios within a multitude of venues right across the UK. Recent projects that the company has been involved in include the Theatre, Film and Television building at the University of Y

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