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Australia - Wildfire, one of the leading waterfront restaurants in Sydney, has gained an enviable reputation over the years for fine dining, fine wine, all with a stunning view. Recently, owner Ton?i Farac decided it was time to give their fine establishment an audio makeover calling in the experts at Compact Monitor Systems.

"The client also wanted to expand the audio to several zones and include areas that haven't previously been covered whilst redoing those that had with a more complete sound system," explained Bill Richardson, managing director of Compact Monitor Systems.

Compact Monitor Systems completely dismantled the existing audio system and replaced all of the processing with BSS BLU, all amplifiers to Crown Audio and added a wide range of JBL speakers. The v

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UK - On 15 June, the ladies of Delta Sound and Sound By Design pulled on their hiking boots and windbreakers to make the 245 mile trip to climb the highest peak in England and Wales, Mount Snowdon. Leaving behind the warmth and safety of their office in Surrey were Emma, Emily, Ruth and Sarah who braved fierce winds, lashing rain and freezing temperatures as they trekked to the 3,560ft summit to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

The idea for the expedition began back in January when Sarah chirped up with an idea of mountainous proportions. "I want to climb a mountain, who's with me?" she said. Just half an hour later the team was assembled, a plan formed and the all-important team name chosen. The MountainEARS, were going to climb Snowdon in the middle of June in the beautiful Summer sunshine. It was foolproof....

Fast forward to 4am on 15 June as the pierci

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UK - The University of Southampton Students' Union building, more familiarly known as SUSU, is a busy place offering a broad and varied range of facilities to the students. The Bridge venue offers a relaxed bistro dining experience during the day and in the evenings is host to a varied line up of events and performances. Consequently when Ed Blackwell, assistant technical co-ordinator at SUSU, needed to install a new loudspeaker system into The Bridge venue, his shopping list needed to tick a lot of boxes simultaneously.

The choice of a d&b audiotechnik loudspeaker system from the xS-Series was made after extensive research despite SUSU already being a d&b customer through Entec Sound and Light, as Blackwell explains, "When The Bridge was refurbished, the aim of the project was to create a space that appealed to a wider demographic of students, provide a small gig space for

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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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Maldives - When the exclusive World Travel Awards - Indian Ocean Gala Ceremony took place recently at the luxurious Paradise Island Resort & Spa in the Maldives, local event company, Azidon Pvt Ltd used the occasion to introduce its new lighting inventory from the Chinese lighting manufacturer PR Lighting.

Azidon Pvt Ltd sponsored the production for the World Travel Awards - Indian Ocean Gala Ceremony as an event partner. "Our intricate local knowledge of the seas, islands and beaches gives us an edge when it comes to delivery," says Azidon's managing director, M. Fayid Farouk.

In addition, Azidon also offers private and exclusive VVIP event packages in partnership with its sister company, Lets Go Maldives Pvt Ltd.

As an event partner, the company knew that the set needed to be dressed to perfection and it turned to its recently acquired PR Lighting inventory, whic

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USA - Enhancing the overall shopping mall experience for visitors - by creating a unique atmosphere with low maintenance colour-changing fixtures, which can be activated for selective events - is a challenge facing all management companies.

And when Gene Tasche, operations manager of Pine Street Group LLC, the company responsible for the Pacific Place shopping centre in Seattle, contacted GLP authorised dealer PNTA, it was precisely with that in mind.

With the Christmas season approaching, and the annual Snow Show looming, he needed something innovative to grab the attention of passers-by, and give the 15-year-old retail centre a fresh approach. Having worked on other projects at the site previously, the lighting specialists recommended seven of GLP's LED fixture, the impression Spot One, to be installed in each of the mall's seven columns.

Sheldon Warshaw, PNTA's Cus

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Sweden - Ulfsunda Slott, situated near Stockholm's city centre in Sweden, is a castle with much history and numerous anecdotes. Built during the Thirty Years' War, and having been used by royalty, the history of this castle is indeed a rich one.

The building has been in the possession of private families, a prime minister, the county council and has now returned to private ownership - furniture designer from Svensk Inredning (Swedish Interior) Torbjörn Blomqvist, who initiated a major renovation upon the acquisition in 1999. Now the 1600's have met the 2000s in an amazing contrast, and the castle is now ranked as Sweden's number one luxury hotel, featuring facilities for art showrooms, conferences and restaurants.

In this special environment, every detail is of high importance. The illumination of the castle by night has been a challenging task for Blomqvist, and for the owne

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UK - Vernon Kay is back to present a new series of the ITV show Family Fortunes . Dave Davey designs the lighting rig which is provided by Richard Martin Lighting (RML).

Each show, two teams of five family members (led by a celebrity captain) go head to head trying to guess the top answers in a series of open ended survey questions given to 100 members of the general public. At the end of this, the teams play Big Money. All prize money raised goes to the teams chosen charities.

Lighting-wise, this has seen some significant changes, the main one being the use of LED. Davey uses Robe Robin 600 LEDWash and Robe Robin 100 LEDBeams amongst other units including MAC 500s.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - The weather in London wasn't exceptionally sunny for the ABTT 2013 Theatre Show, but the atmosphere inside The Old Truman Brewery on 12 and 13 June was enough to put a smile on everyone's face, say the organisers.

The exhibition space, which was reorganised for 2013 with the addition of an extra hall, two seminar rooms and an imposing registration hall off Brick Lane in London's East End, provided visitors with an adventurous route around the exhibits and meeting areas. Two new initiatives - the Market Place and Village Green - were widely applauded. In the Market Place section of the Blue Hall, a collection of small booths enabled a wide range of theatrical suppliers and associations to present their services at an affordable cost.

The 'Village Green' as it became known during the event, became a central area for visitors to meet, have somewhere to sit and enjoy a coffee

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UK - London-based lighting specialists, White Light, have become the first UK company to invest in SGM's new IP65-rated P-5 LED wash light to boost its hire fleet.

The agreement to supply 24 of the high power, low profile rectangular fixtures, was confirmed at this month's ABTT Show in London.

Incorporating 44 x RGBW 10W LEDs, the fixture offers CTC and White Balance control, with just 450W power consumption and LED source life expectancy of 50,000 hours. Stretching the output-to-consumption envelope by providing an overall efficacy factor of 52 lumens per watt (channelled through the 15°, 21° and 43° lens options) the green credentials of the P-5 raise the benchmark considerably.

Said SGM UK's Ian Kirby, "This is a highly significant sale for us as it is the first substantial P-5 rental sale - and to one of the industry leaders. Given that White Light also

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Germany - ETC's stand at Showtech in Berlin was busy throughout the three days of the show, with visitors often spilling into the aisles. And regular presentations at the Layers of Light Theatre in both German and English drew large crowds who found out more about how LED fixtures work and how they can work as part of a mixed traditional and LED rig.

Given the 34º heat outside, ETC was keen to proving how cool the LED fixtures run - a plastic gobo would melt in front of a tungsten lamp, but they work perfectly with Source Four LED fixtures.

Visitors to the ETC stand were invited to draw a gobo on a square of plastic, with ETC's Facebook friends deciding which were good enough to win a Source Four Mini. Hundreds took part in the public vote, with Linus Zahn, Lilith Gardell and Elana Siberski the clear winners.

European Promotion & Advertising Manager for ETC GmbH Rosi Marx s

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Lithuania - The new Kaunas Žalgiris Arena in Lithuania, originally opened in August 2011 to host the European Basketball Championships, today enjoys a multipurpose role and has the ability to accommodate up to 17,500 people when used in concert mode.

Owned by the Kaunas City government, the €50m Žalgiris Arena spans 39,684sq.m and is the largest in the Baltic states. This required a top quality PA that would deliver excellent sound coverage to every seat in the house. Management company Kauras Arena found this with a Martin Audio H3+ horn-loaded solution, proposed by Martin Audio's Lithuanian distributors, Audiotonas, which not only met the overall specification but introduced other advantages, when used for basketball or ice hockey matches.

Audiotonas co-owner, Algirdas Sidiskis, explains. "During basketball play, in particular, we typically have audience noise crossi

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Belgium - Visualisation specialist Barco has signed a deal with FVC for the distribution of ClickShare. FVC will be distributing Barco's wireless presentation and collaboration system across the Middle East, North Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

FVC has offices in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Kenya, Nigeria and a growing network of channel partners in 45 countries. This broad geographical reach and market leadership have played a major role in Barco's decision to join forces with FVC.

Another important factor in Barco's choice for FVC is the fact that ClickShare fits in with the latter's existing offering. With the addition of Barco's presentation solution, FVC can now present its clients with an all-in-one package for a state-of-the-art meeting room, including video conferencing, networking, information security and, now, wireless and smooth running presentation equ

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Sweden - The world's biggest song contests - Eurovision and Melodifestivalen (Melody Festival), the annual music competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio, both rely on CAST Software's pre-visualisation suite wysiwyg for their production designs.

As chief LD on both productions this year, distinguished lighting designer Fredrik Jönsson of Eyebrow Designs, employed wysiwyg in order to deliver stunning visuals for the likes of Robin Stjernberg and Emmelie de Forest, winners of Melodifestivalen and Eurovision, respectively.

Regarding WYG's involvement in the production design for Melodifestivalen, Jönsson remarked, "Well, it's all we use! wysiwyg is the backbone of the lighting production, we use it for all aspects: CAD, lighting design, pre-production, technical specs and drawings. I use it as a tool for the presentation o

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UK - West London based lighting and visuals rental company Colour Sound Experiment has invested £350,000 in the latest Robe moving lights - to up its stock and service its busy on-going work schedule.

Forty LEDWash 600s, 40 x LEDWash 300s and 35 x MMX Spots, all from Robe's Robin range, have joined Colour Sound's rental inventory which now features over 250 Robe moving heads - as well as a few hundred more from other brands.

Colour Sound's Haydn Cruikshank remarked, "These particular Robe fixtures are appearing with increasing frequency on band and LD specs, so we need to have them on board", adding that they are "light, bright and excellent value".

(Jim Evans)

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UK - A technical theatre course offered by The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) has received national accreditation, as the sector continues to thrive despite the economic climate.

A team of theatre production experts from industry training body Drama UK said LIPA's BA (Hons) in Theatre and Performance Technology prepared students well for life after graduation.

Joe Stathers-Tracey, head of the programme at LIPA, enthused, "It's a great benchmark that takes into account not only the quality of our training and facilities but also the fact that our graduates are proving very employable.

"We had to meet a lot of criteria and the people putting us under the spotlight know this industry inside out. I'm proud of the programme and, especially, the students, some of whom were interviewed by the panel as part of the accreditation process."

Drama UK exp

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Qatar - To take account of growing interest in the sport, a new stadium, the Qatar Cricket Stadium, was built recently in the municipality of Al Rayyan in Doha. The stadium is part of an entertainment complex that includes restaurants and a cinema. With a capacity of 13,000 spectators, the Qatar Cricket Stadium satisfies the highest international standards.

That is true not only of the sporting facilities but also of the stadium's sound system. For the installation, the stadium operators commissioned the Doha-based specialist Helmet Trading and Contracting. After conducting a variety of tests and head-to-head comparisons, the company opted - with the full agreement of the stadium management - for a sound reinforcement solution from Electro-Voice.

There were several reasons for this decision, as Mahmoud Fahmawi, Helmet's project manager, explained, "First of all, the quali

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Japan - Adding to its already substantial rental inventory, Japan's Hibino Corporation has recently purchased a number of DiGiCo digital mixing consoles, which include four of the UK manufacturer's flagship SD7 consoles and two SD10s.

These additions bring Hibino's total to six SD7s, four SD10s and ten SD8s, allowing the company to continue to support the Japanese touring markets increasing requirement for top quality audio equipment.

"Of course the most important reason for investing in DiGiCo consoles is because of their high quality and usability," says Hibino's managing director, Mr Ryoichi Hashimoto. "A significant amount of DiGiCo consoles are being used all over the world and have achieved the trust of many engineers. Their high reliability is another big reason why we keep choosing DiGiCo consoles, along with the fact that we have trust in DiGiCo and hav

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UK - Ambersphere Solutions have announced the dates and venues of their upcoming open days.

The Ambersphere Open Days offer customers a localised opportunity to meet the team behind Clay Paky, MA Lighting and Robert Juliat products in the UK, and spend some time familiarising themselves with the latest products available from each of these highly respected brands.

The Midlands Open Day will be held on Tuesday 9 July at the Swan Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, followed swiftly by the South-West Open Day later that week at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School on Thursday 11 July.

And hot on the heels of the announcement that Ambersphere Solutions has become the exclusive distributor of Robert Juliat in the UK there will be plenty to see and talk about with the team.

"There really is no surer way of understanding the quality of any piece of equipme

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UK - When searching for the right spot luminaire system to enhance Vive Forever the West End musical based on the songs of the Spice Girls, lighting designer Howard Harrison held a light shootout. The Martin award-winning MAC Viper Profile was chosen to light the stage.

"The Viper is a very good unit, very bright. It's as simple as that," Harrison says. "We use Vipers in every scene - they are the workhorses of our lighting rig for 'Viva Forever.' Throughout the show's running they've been reliable and have maintained their brightness very well."

Harrison's rig places the Viper Profiles on the stage's overhead truss with additional units at the FOH position. White Light, the London-based lighting contractor, supplied the Viper Profiles. The company debuted MAC Viper in the West End in late 2012 on another Harrison-designed musical, Loserville.

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The Netherlands - When De Levende Steen (The Living Stone) Pentecostal ministry outgrew its existing building in the Dutch town of Hoogvliet, the church built a brand new facility in nearby Spijkenisse. Opened in the spring, the €10m state-of-the-art house of worship features Yamaha a digital audio system.

The new building covers an area of 12,000m². Its main space - dubbed The Dome - seats 2000, with a second room holding 450. Central to the design is a high quality audio network - needed to provide sound reinforcement for services and other events, as well as to allow De Levende Steen to broadcast its Saturday morning service on Dutch national television channel SBS6 and to record services for future use.

"People come from all over the Netherlands and from Belgium," says the church's technical manager Rens van Reenen. "The old building was too small to accom

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UK - Rycote, the UK-based manufacturer of advanced microphone windshields and suspension systems, has announced the departure of Stefano Pucello, the company's sales & marketing director.

Pucello, who joined Rycote in January 2010, is leaving at the end of June. During his time at Rycote, first as sales & marketing manager and then as S&M Director since 2011, the company has diversified successfully from its original broadcast supply base into the pro audio and DSLR accessories markets, which has involved a great deal of travel to set up and service new sales outlets internationally. Pucello initially plans a well-earned rest before deciding on his next career move.

"It's always important to leave a company on a high note, having achieved what you came on board to accomplish, and Rycote has expanded enormously into new markets during the time I've been here," he comm

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