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UK - With seven major shows from the Bill Kenwright Ltd stable hitting the UK touring circuit in as many weeks, the early part of 2015 disappeared in a blur for sound designer Dan Samson. One of the shows involved the first tour in over a decade for Jesus Christ Superstar. Also on the schedule was a large scale new production of The Sound of Music - with both shows involving sound equipment supplied by Orbital Sound.

The preparation for both shows took place at Orbital Sound's Brixton facility, involving detailed system planning, build and testing prior to the tours going out on the road under the aegis of technical director Bill Addison. Dan's sound design for both shows centred around a d&b audiotechnik system, comprising principally Q-Series loudspeakers, complem

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UK - For the Tate Britain installation on May 1st at 6pm, AUDINT and Traction Sound will be presenting an infrasound / ultrasound / sound and video installation based on the 'Martial Hauntology' vinyl / book / print project released on AUDINT records in late 2014. A projection of the animated film produced for Side A of the vinyl - named 'Delusions of the Living Dead' will accompany an immersive wave formed installation that is designed to be felt as much as heard.

A screening of the film will also premiere in the Tate auditorium followed by a discussion at 7.30pm. Hire and install company Brighton Sound System will be overseeing the installation into the gallery and plan to fill it with a selection of Traction Sound bass speakers, including their BH218 'Zeus', BPS218 'Hades' InfraSub and BP18 'Atlas'.

Visitors will be free to explore the gallery and the sound waves, discoveri

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Canada / USA - Kling & Freitag Americas Inc, a new distribution company based in Montreal, Canada, is to take on exclusive distribution rights for premium German loudspeaker brand, Kling & Freitag, throughout Canada, the USA and Mexico with effect from 1 April, 2015.

The company was founded by Vaino Gennaro, formerly of Sennheiser Canada where he was in charge of Kling & Freitag distribution, and Susanne Seidel who has held top management roles within a number of technology-driven corporations, including Sennheiser and DPA. Gennaro will occupy the role of general manager with Seidel providing support in marketing and operations.

Together, Gennaro and Seidel represent many years of audio expertise and international business management in addition to Gennaro's specific and wide-ranging knowledge of the brand and the market. The new operation is designed to optimise market reach,

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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 - After a competitive tender process, The Broadsword Production Group has announced that it has been awarded a three-year contract to The Science Museum as a production supplier. With a diverse range of interactive galleries, located in the heart of South Kensington, the award-winning Science Museum offers a wow-factor backdrop for corporate events.

Matt Green, Broadsword's Sales Director, led the tender process and is excited about the opportunities at The Science Museum. He explains: "It is a bespoke venue, visually stunning, with a unique mix of the modern and traditional. Here at Broadsword, we offer the perfect mix of flexibility and innovation; the ability to design and adapt production solutions so that they work within unique environments. The Science Museum is definitely a space where we will be able to find new and interesting ways to stand out from the crowd.&

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Theatre Critic - Andrew Lloyd Webber has claimed a number of West End theatres are "not fit for today's purpose" and should be replaced. The theatre impresario said many venues have uncomfortable seats because people are now generally taller. He went on to criticise poor views in gallery seating, saying it was left over from "a class structure we don't have any more".

Speaking at the London Press Club Awards, where he was named Londoner of the year, Lloyd Webber said, "I believe that London would be a more vibrant place if we allow a more flexible use of theatres and recognise that some of the theatres may no longer really be exactly what we want in the 21st century. There are theatres from which frankly you can't see and that aren't fit for today's purpose."

Fame Academy - Ringo Starr has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame i

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USA - Georgia's Savannah Music Festival has selected Meyer Sound systems to reinforce all four of its principal venues for the first time, including the largest Trustees Theatre and Lucas Theatre. The exceptional audio clarity has prompted positive reviews amongst local press, including Connect Savannah.

"With the help of Meyer Sound's new loudspeakers, [the Trustees Theatre is] the best sounding room in town. Enough kudos can't be given; when Taylor Goldsmith hit his first note, it was like the room collectively gasped in wonder at the mix," writes Anna Chandler of Connect Savannah after hearing the concert by Dawes.

The selection of Meyer Sound was driven by Chris Evans, the festival's chief audio engineer, who is responsible for system specification, tuning, and supervision of the audio crew. He also mixed Mavis Staples using a MIna line array loudsp

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UK - UK alt rock band Fightstar - critically acclaimed for their distinctive sound and experimental blending of numerous metal genres with orchestral and others - celebrated their 10th anniversary by playing five high profile shows dotted around the country, culminating in a gig at London's Brixton Academy, with a Robe moving light rig designed by Will Dart.

Ahead of the shows - spread out over three months and starting at the Forum in London - Will received a list of bullet points from the band about what they did and didn't want to see in the show.

Coincidentally, this happened to be almost identical to the ideas he was already formulating in his head for the design. The basic premise was to have a dramatic beamy style of lighting that was fundamentally dark and moody, yet punchy and hugely powerful at the same time.

The design featured four upstage 45 degree angled truss

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UK - Artists including Lady Antebellum, Florida Georgia Line, Lee Ann Womack and Lee Bryan took the stage at London's O2 for the 2015 Country to Country music festival (C2C) in March, making use of many channels of Shure wireless microphones and in-ear monitoring systems.

As its name suggests, C2C is an international multi-day festival of country music, the result of a collaboration between live music promoters SJM Concerts, entertainment group AEG Europe (developer and operator of London's O2) and the USA's Country Music Association (CMA). From its beginnings in 2012 as a two day-event at London's O2 only, C2C was held in London and Dublin in 2015, featuring appearances by eight artists over the weekend, with the performers swapping between the two venues on the different days. Extra dates were also played this year in Norway and Sweden.

Audio equipment supply and RF manageme

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UK - Scottish rock band Simple Minds - renowned for numerous memorable and anthemic hits, particularly during the 1980s and 90s often tinted with gritty political resonance together with a hyperactive 35 year touring career - are back on the road with the first new album in five years Big Music.

Simple Minds live have also been known for their spectacular and audacious lightshows, and this tour features another impressive creation by long term lighting designer Steve Pollard, whose working relationship with Simple Minds dates back to 1981. In fact, along with founder members Jim Kerr (vocals & song writing) and Charlie Burchill (guitars, keyboards and song writing), he's the only remaining member of the original team.

Blackburn based lighting and visual rental specialist HSL has been supplying lighting kit for all Simple Minds touring work for the last three years and a

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UK - Later with Jools Holland makes a welcome return to TV screens with live performances from musical legends and cutting edge new acts.

Ably lit by LD Chris Rigby, Aurora shipped a suitably rocking lighting package to the Maidstone Studios for this, the 46th series of the BBC flagship music show.

Show one alone featured a line up worthy of any festival date, including the newly reconvened Blur who were last on the show 15 years ago. Other acts featured on the bill include English singer-songwriter Laura Marling, London foursome the Vaccines and Mali punk blues outfit Songhoy Blues. Singer/songwriter Marc Almond also joined Jools for the customary chat at the piano.

All eight episodes promise an equally classically eclectic line up of leading purveyors of quality music from the past, the present and the future.

Recorded in front of a live audience, Later is

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UK - Enter Shikari, have just completed extensive tours across Europe and America to promote their latest studio album, carrying a GLD system to manage monitors.

Chosen by monitor engineer, AJ Sutherland, and supplied by Patchwork London for the European leg, the system comprised a Dante-enabled GLD-112 mixer with an AR2412 and two AR84 remote IO racks to manage five pairs of wedges and four stereo IEMs plus the engineer's listen wedge and cue mix.

Promoting Enter Shikari's fourth studio album, the tour included 25 dates across Europe, including two nights at London's Roundhouse on a sold out UK run, and 30 dates in 23 States in America, which included two festival appearances.

"I bought a GLD-80 when it first came out and have used it on various projects over the past three years. I think it nails the midscale console market. The IO, functionality and audio quality are

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UK - Pearce Hire has confirmed their participation at the upcoming PLASA Focus trade show, taking place at the Royal Armouries in Leeds on Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 May 2015. Pearce Hire has become a regular exhibitor at the show and will once more be promoting their production services and rental business.

"We recognise the significance of this regional event and it has now become an important date in the diary for us to network with industry colleagues and clients," observes Shaun Pearce, MD Pearce Hire. It will be the third year running that the Cambridgeshire based company has taken a stand at the sell-out show.

Pearce Hire operates nationally and internationally and their expertise covers all aspects of production management, production solutions and bespoke installations, in addition to an extensive inventory of rental equipment for dry-hire.

"This is

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Germany - At Prolight+Sound 2015 in Frankfurt, d&b audiotechnik introduced the newest four channel, two rack unit (2RU) amplifier: the D20. The new amplifier features proven, intuitive user interfaces and offers fast, responsive remote control and monitoring via Ethernet through the Open Control Architecture (OCA) protocol

The D20 amplifier has four independent 1600 Watt channels, each with two 16-band equalizers which feature parametric, notch, shelving and asymmetric filters and up to 10 seconds of delay. The digital signal processing (DSP) power of the D20 means that external system processors are not required, reducing the equipment in the signal chain.

The amplifier's intuitive user interface has a colour touchscreen along with a rotary encoder. It is enabled with an integrated web interface for use with a browser and can be controlled using the d&b R1 Remote control soft

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Germany - DiGiCo's new compact 2U Orange Box is a simple-to-use audio format converter with multiple options, allowing you to use DiGiCo Multichannel Interface (DMI) cards to create audio paths over a variety of interfaces.

With two PSUs for redundancy and two slots to accommodate any of the ten current interfaces available (DANTE, HYDRA2, BNC, CAT5, Optocore, Aviom, ADC, AES, DAC and SoundGrid), the 'anything in, anything out' Orange Box allows conversion of almost any audio format to another.

"The Orange Box is our first technology release borne of the pro audio group we have formed with Calrec and Allen&Heath," says DiGiCo managing director, James Gordon. "But we have opened it up to other selected third party manufacturers as well, making it an incredibly useful device."

If, for example, you wish to connect a product with MADI to one with a Hydra2 con

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UK - Working with their client, Reality Ltd, XL Video supplied LED screens, a multi-channel camera system and relay screens for the NME Awards 2015 with Austin, Texas.

The ceremony was held at London's O2 Brixton Academy, and featured live performances by The Vaccines, Run the Jewels, award-winners Royal Blood and Charli XCX, and the recipients of the 'Godlike Genius' award, Suede.

XL Video project manager Paul Wood worked with Reality's Paul Corrick and vision director Matt Askem to specify the multi-camera, multi screen set-up. This is the eighth consecutive year XL Video has supplied the awards.

Upstage centre, a 35sq.m 16:9 screen formed from XL's ROE MC-7T LED Screen was flown, and 25m2 of XL's ROE MC-18 Hybrid LED Screen was used for an additional square LED surface flown to the left of the stage and 6 portrait banner screens arranged around the main screen.

The LED

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Germany - HK Audio has announced a series of Key Rack package solutions for rental, touring and professional musicians, as well as IPD passive speaker system solutions for audio installers.

Developed by HK Audio's application specialists, the Key Rack packages feature the latest generation of advanced controller amps made by market leaders Lab.gruppen - the IPD 2400 and IPD 1200. The amp racks can be easily configured to drive a variety of HK Audio speaker setups simply by selecting the appropriate filter set.

Two HK Audio Key Rack packages are currently available: the compact 2-RU Key Rack 1.12, which features an IPD 1200 (2 x 600W @ 4 ?) and can drive systems such as Premium PR:O, and the larger 3-RU Key Rack 2.24, which consists of two IPD 2400s (2 x 1200W @ 4 ?) and can drive Linear 5, ConTour, ConTour Array and other systems.

The Key Racks provide a unified amp rack for

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USA - The 50th annual Academy of Country Music Awards were held 19 April at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX. Among the many superstar performances, possibly the biggest of the night was Garth Brooks with his tribute to the men and women of the US armed forces.

Placing an exclamation point on the salute was the lighting design of Bob Dickinson, Jon Kusner and the rest of the Full Flood team, which utilized Syncrolite SXL 7K fixtures on stage and upstage to backlight Brooks and his band during this especially emotional moment of the broadcast. This year's ACM Awards set a world record for the most attended award show.

Syncrolite fixtures were also used throughout the stadium adding excitement and drama to the entire evening. Twenty-four SXL fixtures provided big beams of light making dramatic backgrounds throughout the show. Programming the dynamic stage system was Andy O'Reilly a

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China - Clear-Com has appointed Ann Williams as its new director of sales Asia Pacific, effective immediately. Williams will use her considerable sales and leadership experience to build on the current success in the region and drive new business. In addition to the Southeast Asia region, Williams will have supervisory responsibility for the China and India markets as well as Japan, Korean, Australia, and New Zealand.

"Asia-Pacific remains a strategically important region with considerable growth opportunities for Clear-Com. Thanks to the support and dedication of our in-region team and our distribution networks, Clear-Com continues to be the leader in intercom solutions," said Bob Boster, president of Clear-Com. "The breadth of Ann's experience and her extensive knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region will be invaluable in deepening our market penetration and growin

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UK - Chairman John H. Skewes and managing director Dennis J. Drumm welcomed Prime Minister David Cameron's General Election 'Battle Bus' to the Garforth, Yorkshire premises of John Hornby Skewes & Co. Ltd - as the company celebrates its Golden Anniversary year.

Introduced by local constituency MP Alec Shelbrooke, the Prime Minister spoke on the topics of the day to local supporters, guests and JHS staff, then toured the JHS facility, showing great interest in the company's story, which was started in 1965, from humble beginnings in the home of the eponymous John Hornby Skewes and his wife Madge.

The company now offers a portfolio of over 4500 products, which are sold to over 2000 customers throughout the UK and Eire, contributes to the local economy with employment, and to the wider UK economy with its exports to over 85 overseas markets including the USA, Canada, Australasia,

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UK - East Anglia-based CEG Hire & Productions has added the Robe Robin BMFL Spot to its growing hire inventory.

CEG's director Ben Bowles says: "In 2014 we took the decision to make a significant investment in the Robe Robin range, and we felt that in 2015 it was time to take this to the next level with the BMFL Spot. In line with our current growth plan, the BMFL allows us to be involved with new exciting projects, as well as supply to a growing sub-rental market within the UK and Europe.

"The BMFL is not only a complete workhorse of a fixture, but it also provides unique features not available in any competing product available on the market today. It has enabled us to provide a versatile range of fixtures that any of our LD clients and production customers would have a hard time resisting the temptation not to specify them on their next project."

The invest

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USA - XS, the award-winning club at Encore at Wynn Las Vegas, has led Nightclub & Bar's Top 100 list for an unprecedented six years. Renowned nightclub lighting designer Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting, the creative force behind many leading nightclub lighting designs, was engaged to work his magic on XS and give the club a new, more technology driven look. He met this challenge with a bold futuristic design that drew on the pixel mapping power of the Nexus Aw 7x7 warm white LED panels and ÉPIX Strip 2.0 LED strips from Chauvet Professional.

"I've enjoyed a good relationship with the team at XS," said Lieberman. "When XS managing partner Jesse Waits announced that they were ready to take the next step at the club in terms of lighting, we put our heads together to come up with a state-of-the-art concept. They wanted to incorporate newer technology into

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