Germany - On 15 July 2014, the football world champions landed at Berlin's Tegel airport. They were given a rapturous welcome by the waiting fans and journalists. World champion sound as the players left the plane and on the visitors' terrace was provided by eight LSP 500 PRO from Sennheiser.

At 10:08 precisely, the specially chartered Lufthansa Boeing 747 from Rio de Janeiro with the 23 German world champions on board touched down in Berlin. The triumphant national squad was given a rapturous reception by Tegel Airport staff, airline employees, journalists and hundreds of jubilant onlookers.

Eight Sennheiser LSP 500 PRO supplied by Bärlin Team operating on behalf of Berlin Airports ensured that the welcome addresses for the players could be clearly heard by all those present.

USA - Everyone knows that the focus of Nevada hotels is on gambling, right? That is, of course, unless that establishment is the new Whitney Peak Hotel in Reno. The absence of gaming may be unusual in a Nevada hotel, but then again, how many luxury boutique hotels feature the 164-foot-tall exterior climbing wall and interior climbing boulders found at Whitney Peak?

Occupying a building that once housed the iconic Fitzgerald's Hotel and Casino, a Reno landmark, Whitney Peak is the result of an extensive, carefully planned and well-executed renovation that relied heavily on lighting throughout the facility to create a transformative and memorable experience for guests.

The spacious first floor that been occupied by slot machines and table games when the site was Fitzgerald's, now houses Heritage, a farm-to-table restaurant that features locally sourced food and is inspired by Re

UK - UK Live is a new series of one-day festivals held during June at three locations around the country. Capital Sound was tasked with providing audio systems for both the NE Live and SW Live sites.

NE Live was held at Sunderland's Stadium of Light football ground with around 30,000 attending, whilst SW Live was held on the beach at Weston Super Mare for 15,000 with the crowds at both sites enjoying sets from headline act Jessie J, along with Jason Derulo, Rizzle Kicks, The Saturdays, The Vamps, Union J, Katy B, Rixton and Neon Jungle.

"We supplied large MLA systems at both venues," explains Paul Timmins, Capital's general manager. "At Sunderland we deployed a four-hang MLA rig and a twin-hang MLA rig at Weston-super-Mare with out-hangs of MLA Compact. Control was via twin avid Profile consoles at FOH and twin Yamaha PM5d consoles on monitors."

Capital a

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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

Mexico - Elation Professional's Mexican partner, ADIMSA, has supplied Elation LED lighting fixtures to Inbursa Aquarium (Acuario Inbursa) in Mexico City, fulfilling product specification, on-site supervision, and lighting fixture programming duties for the world-class aquarium in collaboration with lighting designer Cynthia Ortiz.

Owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, Inbursa features 230 species of sea life across 11,500sq.ft of space and is one of the largest aquariums in the world. Officially opened in June of this year, the building consists of four levels, all but one underground. The tour begins at the lowest floor, which represents the bottom of the sea with pirate ship and sharks, and ascends through coral reef and a manta ray pool to the Beach and Rainforest, culminating on the ground floor at one of the venue's main attractions, the Penguinarium.

Lighting designe

UK - tvONE is now shipping the new C2-2000 universal scaler series. The C2-2000 series encompasses the C2-2855 Universal Scaler, the C2-2755 Video Scaler and the C2-2655 Scan Converter. This new series provides the ultimate flexibility to the user, as the C2-2855 features the ability to up/down/cross convert, the C2-2755 to up/cross convert, and the C2-2655 to down convert.

When asked about tvONE's new tactile user interface and software designs, Andy Fliss, tvONE's director of marketing said, "Our R&D team flawlessly succeeded in delivering on our customers' needs. Our new C2-2000 product line diminishes installation time and shortens learning curves, and that's where integrators and rental and staging experts find success today."

The new product series features new, ergonomically designed control panels and highly intuitive configuration management tools making ins

UK - Yamaha has released software updates for its CL and QL series digital mixing consoles, as well as updated versions of its StageMix iPad app.

Available now as free downloads are V2.03 firmware and CL Editor for CL series consoles, V1.07 firmware and QL Editor V1.03 updates for QL series consoles and Version 4.5 StageMix iPad apps for QL, CL, M7CL and LS9 consoles.

The firmware updates and Editor software updates are available as free of charge downloads from www.yamahaproaudio.com. StageMix 4.5 can be downloaded free from the iTunes store or direct to an iPad via the IOS App Store app.

(Jim Evans)

UK - As a direct result of an increase in business and market share within its sub distribution network, Sennheiser UK has announced a significant change to its sub distribution model in the UK.

"The growth we are experiencing has been achieved across the whole Sennheiser portfolio, and will continue as Sennheiser and its partners introduce a raft of new product innovations later in the year," says channel sales manager Simon Druce. "We now have Sennheiser specialists within each of our distribution partners and they will receive on-going training from Sennheiser and our manufacturing partners."

The change has also dictated the need for dedicated internal sales person, with David Atkinson, who has over 15 years experience in the pro audio market and joins from his previous position at Avid, taking up the position of order management co-ordinator.

"We

Italy - The first Radio Italia Live concert was held in 2012 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Radio Italia. On that occasion, the well-known radio station organized the show in Piazza Duomo in Milan for the first time. An amazing 150,000 plus people turned out for the event, which was broadcast live on Radio Italia and Video Italia and repeated on Italia 1.

Since then, the organisation has decided to turn the Radio Italia Live concert into a regular event at the beginning of Milan's summer calendar, and today it is one of the few public showcases for Italian music with top-ranking performers. In 2014, Biagio Antonacci, Laura Pausini, Elisa, Negramaro, Edoardo Bennato, Emma, Claudio Baglioni and Alex Britti were on stage.

Giancarlo Toscani, who was in charge of the lighting design, graphic design and art direction, explained reports, "The first to the third years were

UK - Lighting and visuals rental specialist HSL supplied equipment for a bold, vibrant interactive lighting installation work, Control t'force, created by lighting designer James Bawn, that illuminated the 330m high Emley Moor Mast in west Yorkshire UK, which is the tallest freestanding structure in the UK, an iconic local landmark and the main UHF transmitter for most of the county.

Specially commissioned by TG Events on behalf of Kirklees Council as part of Hypervelocity, the five-day grand final of the 100-day 2014 Yorkshire Festival, the Control t'force project which ran over two evenings, also celebrated the start of the 2014 Tour de France cycle race in Yorkshire.

James has been involved in some previous architectural lighting projects for the council and when his ideas for lighting the Emley Moor broadcast transmitting station mast (currently owned

Brazil - When Spanish tenor and conductor Plácido Domingo took to the stage for the Concert in Rio, honouring the close of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, television audiences received a crystal clear sound thanks to DPA Microphones' d:dicate recording microphones. Performing at the HSBC Arena Stage in Rio de Janeiro on Friday, 11 July, Domingo was accompanied by Puerto Rican soprano Ana María Martínez, Chinese pianist Lang Lang and the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra.

With the entire world watching, Grammy Award-winner Jesse Lewis, audio producer for the live international broadcast of the concert, knew he needed reliable microphones for the broadcast of the performance, which was aired live from the massive arena. He turned to DPA Microphones for its range of d:dicate mics, including the 4006 Omnidirectional, 4011 Cardioid and 4041 Large Diaphragm solutions.

"For a venue of th

Switzerland - A Nexo Geo S system has been installed into the new BCV Concert Hall in Lausanne, a classy new addition to the Swiss music education scene.

BCV Concert Hall is part of the HEMU University of Music Lausanne, the 152-year-old music school, founded in the Romandy district of western Switzerland in 1861 as the Conservatoire de Lausanne, which is renowned for its highly qualified faculty members, challenging programme of studies and firm commitment to music on regional, national and international levels.

Designed by prominent Swiss architects Burckhardt and Partners, the hall is sponsored by the Banque Cantonale Vaudoise (BCV) Swiss bank and other local arts patrons, and is located in the Flon in central Lausanne, a district which underwent extensive rehabilitation in the late nineties and now throbs with life and culture.

The 300-capacity hall is to be shared betwe

Australia - The Academy nightclub in Canberra, Australia is benefiting from a new Robe moving light installation which was supplied by locally based Elite Sound & Light and is designed to ensure that their popular EDM club nights and visiting live artists can enjoy the very best lighting and visual experiences.

Elite's Darren Russell was asked to propose a design and his primary concern was to spec fixtures that would give the flexibility and variety of effects needed for long periods of operation, that would enable the club to have a completely different look and feel according to its programme that night.

The Academy is the largest club in Canberra and is right in the heart of the city. It has an 800 capacity main room and the 150 capacity Candy Bar upstairs, which features a glass wall along one entire side offering a commanding view of the main club dancefloor.

The Robe

UK - PRG Nocturne which provides LED video and projection support to the concert touring, festival, and corporate event markets, has expanded its operations in the UK.

"We are now heading into our fourth year with PRG," says Bob Brigham, president of PRG Nocturne. "One of the deciding factors in joining the PRG team was our dream to expand into the UK/European markets. The expansion of our UK operation allows us to fully support the rapidly growing demand with an experienced team of people and quality gear that our customers expect of PRG Nocturne US and UK."

In 2014, the UK operation has supported numerous tours and festival appearances including The Eagles, Katy Perry, Metallica, Skrillex, Franz Ferdinand, Bastille, Linkin Park, and The Rolling Stones. They have also worked with a roster of corporate clients which included 3D projection mapping for the la

UK - Penn Elcom, manufacturer of flight case hardware, speaker cabinet hardware and 19-inch racking solutions, alongside sibling brands, Pro Audio Stash and CLD Distribution, has signed a partnership with industry charity Entertainment Workshops (EW).

Entertainment Workshops is set to produce a catalogue of product functionality videos accessible to customers via QR codes and website links. This partnership not only supports the charity with a guaranteed financial income over at least the next two years but more importantly provides real-life, hands-on experience for students to work on projects being used in our industry today.

Entertainment Workshops provides an alternative education programme for young people who benefit from a kinaesthetic learning style. The charity provides the students with opportunities to gain Arts Awards and BTEC's in areas such as stage, sound and l

South Africa - The National Arts Festival (NAF) is Africa's biggest annual celebration of the arts. It's hosted in Grahamstown, a small university city in the Eastern Cape, and takes place over 11 days every winter.

This year, from 3 to 13 July, 225 000 people attended some 2800 performances in 50 venues scattered across Grahamstown and its surrounds. Once again Electrosonic SA was a sponsor of this world class arts festival. This year, to celebrate the festival's 40th birthday, it was decided to do something special. Recently Electrosonic SA became the sole distributors of Green Hippo's Media Servers, and the festival presented the ideal opportunity to show what these servers can do.

The plan to use the Hippo to project images onto a large area was the brainchild of NAF Technical Director Nicci Spalding and Robbi Nassi (Electrosonic SA's project manager and programmer. Report

UK - The World Snooker Awards '14 took place recently at The Lancaster Hotel, London and saw the great and good of Snooker assembled to honour the outstanding performances of the 2013/14 season.

Hosted by TalkSport's Andy Goldstein, the event featured awards for nine separate categories and was dominated by Ronnie O'Sullivan and Mark Selby with Dennis Taylor and Cliff Thorburn inducted in to the Hall of Fame.

For the third year in a row MRL Productions supplied full production including lighting, staging, AV and camera feeds to screen. MRL also provided sound which meant that, also for the third year running, KV2 Audio loudspeakers were relied upon exclusively to transfer the presentation and performances to the audience.

The event had two stages - a live band stage and main awards stage.

For the band stage a KV2 Audio ES system was used whilst the main awards stage featur

USA - Completed in 1837, St. John the Evangelist is a historic Catholic church in Frederick, Maryland, with a Grecian ionic design and a cruciform floor plan. The church has carpeted floors but its spacious marble and plaster interior and hardwood pews create major challenges for voice intelligibility.

St. John's existing sound system had poor intelligibility and coverage and a recurring feedback issue., Eric Johnson of Audio Video Group offered St. John's a new system using Community's Entasys column line-source loudspeaker system. Johnson performed a live demonstration that showed his design could provide intelligible sound with even coverage while minimizing audio feedback.

St. John's new system has an Entasys ENT-FR full-range column and an ENT-LF low-frequency column on each side of the chancel tilted slightly downwards to avoid rear-wall echoes.

The left and right tran

Mexico - SAE in Mexico recently opened a new live audio engineering degree course, installing Allen & Heath's new Qu-24 compact digital mixer as the teaching console.

Supplied by Allen & Heath's Mexican distributor, Audyson, students will learn to mix using Allen & Heath digital mixers, starting with the Qu-24 and progressing onto larger consoles, such as the GLD-80. The course will also include practical sessions, placing students in real situations with live bands, where they will also mix using A&H consoles. One such session has already taken place with a Qu-24 at FOH, with additional IO provided by an AR2412 audio rack, and a ME personal monitoring system for the musicians.

"We are using the Qu-24 and GLD-80 with SAE students because we want the new generation of sound engineers to know about the excellent sound quality and ease of use, and way to mix of the Allen & H

UK - After winning a competitive tender to provide a technical infrastructure at the London School of Economics' new Saw Swee Hock Student Centre in central London, LSI Projects turned to the Harman Professional catalogue.

Responding to a specification drawn up by consultants, Arup - to supply and fit sound and communication, lighting and staging systems in the 850-capacity nightclub/live venue - they constructed their digital routing network around BSS Audio Soundweb London components, before turning to sister company Soundcraft's digital VI platform for the main FOH and monitor mixing consoles.

Named after an alumnus who made a sizeable donation towards the £24m development cost, the building itself was designed by Irish architects Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey (O'Donnell + Tuomey).

Set on seven storeys above ground and two high storeys below, it contains a nightc

UK - Smashing their initial target by over 1000% and then beating their increased target by over 20%, the girls at Le Mark did an amazing job at Race For Life on Sunday 20 July in Cambridge. The first of the girls came across the line in an impressive 28 minutes!

With over 6,000 women taking part, the event drew huge crowds of support and is expected overall to raise hundreds of thousands, if not more for Cancer Research.

Le Mark's Sam Cooke commented, "It was inspirational to run. We were an amazing team, both during the run and working together to raise as much as we could. Crossing the line was so emotional, with so many of the runners having their own personal story. We're all definitely going for it again next year, and we'll be bring even more people with us".

Donations may be made at www.justgiving.com/peasinapod1

(Jim Evans)

India - The foundation Universal Brotherhood has chosen SGM's G-Spot LED moving head for its Sant Nirankari Mission Fountain of Worship in India.

Lawrence Ryan of Eagle Eye Studios was tasked with designing and programming a show control interface for the beautiful fountain in Delhi known as the Fountain of Oneness.

The idea behind this unique architectural structure originates from the Guru himself as a symbol of people from different religions, cultures and languages coming together in one place. The structure is made up of adults and children holding hands in a circular formation, so large that the audience can walk around or through the fountain.

As a centrepiece, a huge sphere represents the world, denoting worldwide unity. Great care has gone into making it structurally sound, with the key focus being the huge weight of the structure and strong winds in the area

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