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Switzerland - A new website marks the official launch of the Schertler Group of companies, as its members formalise a corporate re-branding that has been in progress for several months. The group comprises Schertler SA, Swiss manufacturer of high quality contact microphones and compact acoustic and electric amplification systems, SR Technology, the Italian loudspeaker systems manufacturer (wholly owned by Schertler since 2012) and Velvet Strings SA (developed and owned by Schertler).

The group's new website offers pro audio customers, hi-fi enthusiasts and performing musicians an extensive range of products from amplifiers, preamps and contact microphones, through to compact active and passive loudspeaker systems for live performance, home listening and installation, as well as hi

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UK - Star Events rounded off a successful re-brand launch event at the Event Production Show by signing a service partner contract with sports specialist Footwise UK, under its Brazilian Minds in Fusion banner.

The deal provides Star Events with high-level representation and experience in Brazil and gives Minds in Fusion access to Star's lauded logistical and technical abiolities, and equipment, ahead of the Rio Olympics in 2016.Minds in Fusion produced the official Promotional Plan for the 2014 World Cup on behalf of the Brazilian Government. Football legend Cafu, Brazil's most capped player, is the company's global ambassador and Minds has worked with his foundation in Sao Paulo since 1999.

Roger Barrett, Star Events' special projects director, and Dominic Barrett-Evans, founding partner at Minds in Fusion, negotiated heads of terms on a UKTI trade mission to Rio at the end

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Poland - Located in the provincial capital city of Lublin in eastern Poland, Arena Lublin is a new 15,500 seat capacity football stadium. Built on the land of a former sugar factory, the stadium's surrounding area has been fully landscaped and is bordered by trees, with lawns to the adjacent river. Home ground to the football club Motor Lublin, the city is proud of its new landmark venue.

With unequalled experience in stadium audio in Poland, Tommex ?ebrowscy Sp. J. was commissioned to design and install the sound for the new venue. "We designed the system based on Dynacord electronics with Dante protocol networks and Community R Series loudspeakers," said Marcin Zimny, sales director of Tommex. "It's a combination that gives us outstanding audio quality and proven reliability."

The control centre of the sound system is sited in the commentary room with a D

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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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UK - When the annual TPi Awards switched from the Hammersmith Novotel to Battersea Evolution in 2015, turnkey event technology specialists VME were delighted.

Moving across the river to the large, wide open 5,500 sq.m Evolution temporary structure in Battersea Park was almost familiar territory, and the restricted sightlines and low balconies that had challenged them at the Novotel became a thing of the past. "We have worked in similar venues at Aintree and Tatton Park and are entirely comfortable in this marquee type of venue," he said. And of course he knew that the offsite sound restrictions imposed would pose no problem for MLA, with its advanced multi-cellular control software.

The Manchester-based company fielded its MLA Compact and MLA Mini systems to stunning effect - and leading the praise afterwards was the compere himself, stand up comedian Russell Kane.

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USA - Every year, the NFL Super Bowl attracts hundreds of millions of viewers; many are there for the football game. Others are there for the halftime. The core create team includes executive producer Ricky Kirshner of Touchdown Entertainment, production designer Bruce Rodgers of Tribe Design and special effects designer Mark Grega of Strictly FX. "The production is really a team effort. It's the third year that we've been working with Mark; his creativity and experience are a vital part of creating a memorable Super Bowl Halftime," states Rodgers.

For the Super Bowl XLIX Pepsi Halftime featuring Katy Perry, the special effects portion of the production was remarkably flexible. "We change the show up until the day of- in fact, we made changes on Super Bowl Sunday, because of the camera shots. We try to maximize the best shot that the director, Hamish Hamilton, is

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UK - Having already supplied new Soundcraft Vi3000 consoles for installation at Liverpool University and at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, UK rental company Adlib has now added two Vi3000 consoles, plus two Soundcraft Realtime Rack plug-in engines, to their own rental inventory.

Packaged with the Realtime Rack and utilising the Vi3000's on-board Dante interface, the compact rental system provides 64-channel recording, virtual soundcheck, and integrated UA plug-in capability alongside the Vi3000's acclaimed sound quality and ease of use.

Dave Jones, Adlib director commented, "We have packaged the Vi3000s with a touchscreen interface to the Realtime Rack via a mac mini which can be used for virtual soundcheck and audio playback using the console's on board Dante interface. This combination makes a very compact 64 channel recording package with integrated plugins."

(Jim

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Puerto Rico - LumenRadio once again worked with the extraordinary lighting magician Tupac Martir on Palomino, a desert Island off the coast of Puerto Rico and home to the legendary Bacardi Triangle party.

Three jumbo jets from three cities across the world, flew the world's hottest artists and 1862 invited guests to a private island in the Caribbean Sea to party in one of the most mysterious places on earth. Headlined by Calvin Harris, Kendrick Lamar and Ellie Goulding, the three-night music festival brought some of the world's leading artists together for a gig of epic proportions.

For three nights, Bacardi took over the 5-star resort, El Conquistador and transformed it into one of the most spectacular venues on earth. A total of 14 universes of LumenRadio's CRMX Nova TX2 RDM units were used to transfer reliable wireless DMX/RDM data to four large areas across the resort. 22

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Australia - For the past three years, Entertainment Installations has been supporting the long-standing Twilight at Taronga summer concerts in Sydney with production services.

Based an hour north of the city, the installation and production specialists can hardly have taken on a more challenging task, since the concerts take place in the middle of the busy Taronga Park Zoo, with restricted site access. Despite its picturesque setting, with around 1600 people nightly picnicking as the sun sets behind the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, in the past off-site noise has been a real issue.

"Being a Sydney Harbourside location there is a lot of 'old money'," observes Entertainment Installations' MD, Neale Mace. "These are well-to-do residents who you don't want complaining about noise. There is also the issue of the animals themselves, the elephants in particular are s

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UK - TNA (Total Non-stop Action) Wrestling stormed British shores this month for a series of adrenaline-fuelled shows with lighting operator Andre Huff running the show on an Avolites Sapphire Touch console, and ART2000 dimmers providing the power behind the scenes.

The dynamic tour, featuring some of the biggest names in world wrestling, had a vibrant light show designed by Emmy award-winning LD Jeff Bornstein and used production gear and crew provided by Ian Livie.

"Jeff instructed me he wanted big two-tone looks for each wrestler's entrance, rather than a lot of flash and trash with the lights," says Huff, an Emmy-nominated LD and operator of 24 years, with significant combat sports experience.

"We chose to do big panning movements with two colours and sometimes a gobo. No real crazy flashing looks with a lot of colour changes."

Knoxville-based Limel

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Russia - Leading Russian consumer electronics retailer M.Video has had its "best New Year's Eve event in history", thanks to technical producers MAX'N'MAX and lighting designer Roman Stolyarov choosing the super powerful Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20, Sharpy Wash 330 and Alpha Spot HPE 1500 for the event's live stage shows.

Stolyarov's design saw a central chandelier truss above the stage in the Moscow Expocentre rigged with 32 x B-EYEs, which were supplied by rental company Arlecchino Group. Throughout the evening there were varying performances by M.Video's staff, directed by George Dolmazyan.

"As the chandelier was the focal point, Roman used the B-EYEs' graphic light effects and vibrant colours to create the varying looks for each performance," says MAX'N'MAX's production director Maxim Korotkov. "It was our first time working with the B-EYE and its i

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USA - The potential for output variations that seem to be inherent in LEDs can be problematic for entertainment lighting manufacturers who are in greater need of consistent colour and brightness.

The industry is concerned with a more complete testing of the performance of light engines. Composed of the combination of one or more LED modules, together with an LED driver (also known as electronic control gear, or ECG), the variations in light engine output account for most of the variations in LED colour temperature, brightness and other output characteristics.

To alleviate this problem, many LED light engine manufacturers provide 100 percent "functional testing" of lamps along with first article and periodic inspections of a production run. However, functional testing merely validates that the lamps will illuminate, and usually don't analyze the CCT (correlated colour

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UK - Flashlight Ltd has announced the appointment of industry veteran Gordon Smith, who joins the company's UK sales department as a Film and TV sales executive. Gordon will provide field based sales and support for the company's expanding range of leading lighting brands.

A well-known face in the industry, Gordon brings over 40 years' specialist knowledge and commercial experience to the new role, having previously worked in a variety of TV, film, theatre and entertainment lighting hire and sales roles. Gordon says: "I'm looking forward to the exciting challenges ahead within an established, vibrant company. I can't wait to get started!"

Flashlight directors Andy Dodd and Rob Williamson commented: "We're delighted to welcome Gordon to the company. His extensive experience and knowledge of the Film/ TV lighting market further strengthens our high level of produc

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UK - When working as a lighting gaffer, David Oldroyd always struggled with the movement of kit in and out of location trucks especially on TV dramas with a small crew. The problem still bothered him when he took up his position as a rental agent with leading motion picture rental company Cinelease, so he began looking at ways of making the moving of kit easier.

David knew that with the varied kit used on each job, any solution would have to be adaptable and so sat down with Doughty's Dan Phillips to come up with a modular trolley system that could be easily adapted.

David explained, "I have always known Doughty to be an effective engineering grip company, so contacted Dan to see if it would be possible to figure something out between us. We drew up a few sketches which he then developed into technical drawings. It became apparent straight away that Doughty had more knowl

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USA - Founded in 2005, the Rocky Mountain Classical Academy is a successful K-8 charter school in Colorado's second-largest city, Colorado Springs. However, RMCA was split between two locations until the recent completion of a $17m, 100,000sq.ft building to house all of its 1,000 students, with additional room to grow school enrolment by 33%.

The building is community-oriented, featuring lots of open areas and gathering spaces with an abundance of natural light. Among them are an adjacent gymnasium and auditorium. With a clever arrangement of movable partitions, the two facilities share a stage that can be used for a wide range of events. When unforeseen budgetary issues threatening the audio/video systems in both rooms, the school district hired local A/V integration firm Sight & Sound Technologies to engineer a fix that would preserve the hoped-for functionality and reliabilit

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UK - SGM were again one of the major sponsors at the third e-Luminate Cambridge Festival - occupying two iconic sites, St John's College Tower and King's College Chapel, and bringing them to life with their powerful IP65-rated LED fixtures.

While Jack Beccegato from Zero Kb designed the set piece for King's College Chapel, Daniel Kirby from SGM UK created the concept for the St John's College Tower lighting. Six G-Spots were used by Beccegato to illuminate the front of the Chapel, while the St. John's Tower was animated with the stunning used or 11 P-5 RGBW wash lights.

Also playing a central role in the Festival was SGM customer, Hawthorn, under the coordination of the company's Cambridge based head of sales and marketing, Rachel Waterfield. Hawthorn also supplied all the power and rigging for the SGM lights.

The festival, co-founded by Alessandra Caggiano and Hugh Parnell

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UK - In support of their forthcoming second album, This Is All Yours, alt-J recently played a headline show at London's 20,000-capacity O2 Arena. For this show - the band's largest to date - XL Video supplied a bespoke LED screen and camera IMAG package.

Working with production manager, Bennie Brongers; lighting, video & rigging co-ordinator, Mike Oates; show designer, Jeremy Lechterman, and Jackson Gallagher from Fragment Nine, XL were tasked with supplying an LED screen solution for Jeremy's creative design.

XL Video utilised 270 tiles of their popular Pixled F-12 LED, along with 154 of XL's own custom touring frames to create horizontal strips of LED across the width of the O2 stage. The empty frame rows revealed lights including Showtec Sunstrips and other lights were attached to the spacers between the LED.

XL's Project Managers, Phil Mercer and Jay Mobbs-Beal, w

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USA - EDM may appear like a lot of random flashing, but puts a lighting console through a stress test quite unlike any other. Without the luxury of a script or a set list, the EMD lighting designer has to create an infinite series of dramatic looks that match the feel of the music and support the strong video images that are another hallmark of the genre.

Tom Schneider, an ETC tech and console trainer in the company's Hollywood office, has designed and operated EDM shows since he was old enough to sneak out of the house to light raves in warehouses. He believes that Eos is the perfect tool for the job - "What really sets this console apart from other high end consoles is the effects engine. It's pretty cool. The effects engine is programmable to anything I could possibly want."

While big US events like Electronic Daisy Carnival, Electric Zoo and the Ultra Music Festi

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USA - Some may say bigger is better when it comes to speakers, but in this case Avalon Hollywood's owner and audio expert John Lyons says, "It's a matter of being louder, cleaner and clearer."

The new system, which was unveiled during Grammy weekend at Hollywood's historic venue Avalon two weeks ago, features Powersoft's new M-Force technology - and is claimed to be the world's largest subwoofer club installation ever.

While other venues may opt for sound systems featuring a du jour brand, Avalon has its own namesake speaker series. No stranger to conceptualizing game changing speakers, owner John Lyons is an audio expert responsible for installing sound systems at some of the world's leading nightclubs.

Making this new speaker a realisation is a feat that Lyons and premier audio engineers at EAW and Powersoft have worked rigorously for two years to perfect. "

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UAE - A new company, Broadcast Wireless Systems, has been established to offer expertise, agility and objective advice on specialist broadcast RF requirements and will make its debut at CABSAT 2015 in Dubai in March.

Formed by wireless experts Stuart Brown and Max Zaja, with more than 60 years' experience between them with the likes of Cobham, Link Research, Tandberg/Ericsson, Vislink and the BBC, Broadcast Wireless Systems now provides high-level sales, service and support of best-in-class wireless systems from a variety of manufacturers.

Broadcast Wireless Systems commercial director Stuart Brown said, "Our depth of experience means that we can design and implement bespoke wireless products and systems that precisely meet client needs for specific applications.

"New technologies now enable production teams to reliably reach places on land, sea or sky, limited onl

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USA - Entertainment lighting manufacturer High End Systems has announced that industry sales veteran Sean Hoey has returned to the Austin-based company as Eastern US sales manager. After working at High End Systems throughout the 1990s-2000s, Hoey enjoyed a successful tenure as a territory sales manager at Christie Digital Systems.

Hoey comments, "I am excited to be back at the company that was so instrumental in my career development in this industry. High End Systems is now in its third decade of creating cutting-edge products for lighting professionals, and I look forward to working with our client base - a mix of old friends and new faces - and introducing them to our latest technological innovations."

In other HES news, the company announced they have restructured their US sales team and efforts. Adam Camp will continue as Western US sales manager, while Hoey wi

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South Africa - Wild & Marr, the South African distributor for Harman Professional, will be hosting two exciting Harman BSS Audio workshops in Johannesburg during March 2015. The workshops will be presented by Justin Hankey, Application Engineer for Networking and Installed Sound at Harman.

The target audience for the classes would primarily be AV Programmers and Systems Integrators as well as audio designers and anyone else in the professional audio industry that require a better understanding of Audio Architect, networked audio signal processors and digital audio networking protocols and systems.

The first workshop is an Introductory Course to HiQnet Audio Architect, which is the software platform that is used to configure, control and monitor BSS Audio Soundweb London and the Crown DriveCore Install Network Series.

Soundweb London is an award-winning product line of digita

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