UK - With the launch of its Instacube 4/Instasub 8, Studiomaster introduces a dedicated ultra-low profile, high performance, commercial audio loudspeaker system to its professional loudspeaker catalogue.
The miniature Instacube 4 aluminium enclosure, measures just 145 x 156 x 143 mm, complete with its removable mounting U-bracket. With a custom designed 4” neodymium, 2-way coaxial loudspeaker, comprising a 35 mm voice coil MF and 1.3” PEEK high-performance composite film diaphragm HF driver arrangement, the Instacube 4 boasts 100 W rms / 400 W peak power handling, up to 87dB continuous SPL output, and a 100 Hz – 20 kHz (-10 dB) frequency response.
The ultra-slim Instacube 8 bass reflex compact subwoofer is ceiling, wall or floor mountable, and can be positioned und

New Zealand - Aotearoa-based design studio Filament Eleven 11 combines the talents and imagination of lighting and visual artists Rachel Marlow and Brad Gledhill. Working across multiple genres – theatre, opera, dance, rock ‘n’ roll’ live events, installation, and light art – and embracing a mix of medias and light forms, the company is known for its innovative and fun approach to enhancing storytelling with this form of expression.
Filament Eleven 11 also owns some specialist lighting and control kit, and this year invested in Astera wireless LED products – AX3 LightDrops and NYX Bulbs – which have been busy on several projects.
Three AX3 LightDrop kits (24 in total) and 30 x NYX Bulbs were purchased from Astera’s New Zealand distributor, ULA Group, in the last year for use as “ultimately useful lighting tools” commented Rachel, and since then, s

Denmark - Creative Technology has worked alongside the Nordisk Film-owned VFX and post-production company Nordisk Film Shortcut to create the Shortcut LED Stage – a full 360° LED stage, 16m in diameter and six metres high, with walls and ceiling completely covered with LED panels.
The new stage allows film makers, production companies and other visual storytellers to shoot and tell stories in a flexible, creative, cost-effective and environmentally friendly way.
The project started last year, when Creative Technology was asked to build a 360-degree LED stage in Copenhagen for Nordisk Film, one of the oldest film studios in the world, and its post-production company Shortcut. After visiting the ARRI X CT stage in London, Nordisk Film Shortcut decided that they wanted to create a similar facility to enable film production in a virtual environment. In collaboration wi
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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

Spain - Naostage’s K System beaconless 3D tracking solution will make its debut before an international audience at Integrated Systems Europe 2023.
The K System makes it easy for fixed-install professionals to create immersive, interactive live experiences by seamlessly identifying and following visitors and performers wherever they are in a defined tracking area – allowing for the automation of an endless array of lighting, audio, video and media effects in real time, in sync with the installation or show. The official launch of K System will take place at 16.30 on Tuesday 31 January on the 196sqm Naostage booth (5D700), where hands-on demonstrations will give ISE visitors the opportunity to see the product up close for the first time.
In addition to concerts, tours and festivals, the technology could be used, for example, to automate tracking in a venue, museum o

Spain - Tascam has released its new Sonicview digital mixer line. Available as either Sonicview 16 or Sonicview 24, both products aim at a wide application range, including fixed installations, recording studios, broadcasting and touring.
Sonicview consoles incorporate the latest technology and a new multi-screen user interface called VIEW (Visual Interactive Ergonomic Workflow) which allows easy operation and control of all system parameters using fully customisable touchscreens, user-definable buttons, and intuitive control software.
Sonicview consoles include a 64-channel Dante interface, a 32-bit/96-kHz multi-channel USB audio interface, and a wealth of inputs and outputs. A 54-bit FPGA mixing engine offers floating-point processing with continuous high-definition sampling at 96 kHz, and 32-bit analogue-to-digital converters. The FPGA also ensures ultra-low latency

France - Sony has joined forces with Plateau Virtuel (virtual production studio, subsidiary of the Novelty-Magnum-Dushow Group) and Studios de France (the leading set provider for broadcasting in France) to create the first virtual studio with a 90m² Sony Crystal LED B-series screen (18m wide x 5m high) in Seine Saint Denis, north of Paris, France.
This project will deliver ‘unrivalled image quality for producers and cinematographers alike, as Sony Crystal LED display technology is combined with the VENICE camera capture technology’.
"Our virtual production offering offers a unique image quality. We are delighted to open, with Plateau Virtuel and Studios de France, the first studio in Europe that will host creators and productions using Crystal LED technology on a wall of exceptional dimensions,” commented Fabien Pisano, sales director, media solutions, Sony E

UK - Sonny Fodera performed two sold-out shows at O2 Academy Brixton recently. Throughout both shows, the walls of the venue reverberated with fans responding to the highly emotive songs from his recently released fifth album Wide Awake and other recordings.
Helping to connect the music to the big crowd to at the South London venue was a bold Tom Cull lighting design that featured 89 Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied and installed by Bigabox Productions, which also furnished the video wall.
Seamlessly moving from intense aerial displays with aggressive crossing patterns, to moody atmospheric settings, to dark, shadowy haunting looks, Cull’s lightshow reflected the wide and nuanced emotional range of Fodera’s vocal-driven compositions.
The kit’s 10 Maverick MK1 Hybrid, 24 Rogue R3 Beam, and 16 Outcast 1 BeamWash fixtures, hung primarily on mid a

USA - The 2022 Latin Billboard Awards celebrated both the classic icons and modern-day hit-makers of Latinx music using versatile JBL Professional VTX Series speakers, supplied by Reflections Productions.
Held in the University of Miami Watsco Centre in Miami and broadcast live on Telemundo, 2022’s Latin Billboard Awards featured performances by an eclectic roster of artists; honorary achievement awards for Chayanne, José Feliciano and Christina Aguilera; and a tribute to legendary singer Raphael. With a record-breaking 23 nominations, Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny took home eight awards including Tour of the Year, which used Martin MAC Series fixtures.
Like all televised award shows filmed live with an audience, the Latin Billboards required an audio rig that provided full-scale live sound for the audience and accommodated both the performers and presenters with

Europe - Yamaha has announced that its VXC and VC series ceiling speakers are now compatible with the EASE Address software calculating tool, making the simulation of ceiling speaker placement and sound pressure levels quicker and more flexible for system designers.
VXC and VC series ceiling speakers are suitable for corporate, education and commercial spaces. Already supported by Yamaha’s Commercial Installation Solutions Speaker Calculator (CISSCA) and Nexo's NS-1 system configuration software, the new compatibility with AFMG Technologies’ EASE Address significantly expands the range of calculators available to engineers.
EASE Address is very simple to use. After drawing a top view of the facility, the user chooses the speaker models and the placement is automatically calculated, taking into account sound pressure levels. Manual operation of the software is also

Spain - ISE 2023 is shaping up to be a busy one for KV2 Audio with four new product debuts across three different product ranges. The first of those concerns the ESR Series which sees the addition of the ESR106 and its dedicated ESR2600D amplifier based on KV2 Audio proprietary SLA technology.
The ESR Series was developed for a particular niche in the market requiring an all-in-one box to provide clear, detailed reproduction over a wide area. Typical applications include theatres, houses of worship, cultural/performance centres and concert halls where they are likely to be used vertically. When mounted horizontally, ESR Series loudspeakers provide excellent coverage over a tiered seating area for stadium or grandstand type applications.
Like its siblings, ESR212, ESR215MkII and ESR215S, the new slimline ESR106 is an active-driven 3-way system. It deploys a column arra

South Africa - DWR Distribution has been appointed the official South African distributor for zactrack automated ‘following system’ designed for open-air events, theatre stages and studios. The system was put through its paces by lighting designer Denis Hutchinson on Sinbad the Sailor, a festive pantomime held at the Teatro, Montecasino.
The system allows any number of performers to be tracked and registered in a 3D computer model using Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radio tracking to locate the position of actors and objects on stage.
Stephan Saremba, managing director at zactrack, comments, "We welcome DWR Distribution to the family of worldwide zactrack distributors. Their professional sales, support and training team, matched with an extensive product portfolio make them an ideal partner to bring the magic of automated tracking to customers in South Africa. We l

UK - Production Futures is an initiative created to provide opportunities for young people to learn, train, network, and develop real careers in production across every area of the live event, music, touring, theatre, TV, broadcast and film industries
As part of its continuing programme of On Tour live events, Production Futures will visit Nottingham’s Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies on 23 January, in company with industry experts and brand partners including manufacturers Sennheiser, Avolites, ChamSys, Chauvet Professional, Shure, Nexo, disguise, Brompton Technology, TAIT, Roe Visual, Riedel Communications, and Vectorworks, as well as a number of leading supply and production companies.
Part of Nottingham Trent University (NTU), Confetti has two campuses, one in Nottingham and a new one in East London, scheduled to open this September. Production Futures

USA - A lot of lighting designers looked for ways to stay busy and productive during the pandemic lockdown. Daniel Thibault of Life is Art Studio in Raleigh, NC, found a number of means to do this; one was by lighting in-your-car-concerts at drive-in movie theatres, the other was by helping the Lincoln Theatre develop a “covid safe” seating plan that could be implemented when restrictions on live shows were finally eased.
“The theatre wanted to figure out how to reopen responsibly for live music shows when the time came,” said Thibault. “So during the pandemic, I spent time making an exact 3D model to scale of the stage and the building , so we could help figure out a safe seating chart.’
In the process, Thibault also figured out something else: how to get “the most lights possible” on the popular venue’s relatively small 24ft wide by 20ft deep stage,

Italy - Staged for the first time at the Cagliari Lyric Theatre in Sardinia, Arthur Laurents’ two-act stage musical West Side Story, with music by Leonard Bernstein and loosely based on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, was a guaranteed success.
The staging offered by the Cagliari Lyric Theatre was derived from three major U.S. musical institutions: the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Houston Grand Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival in New York State. The performance, which blends the language of traditional opera with that of the musical, took place from 15-23 December, bringing to a close the 2022 opera season with 10 highly anticipated English-language performances.
Lighting designer A.J. Guban, nominated for eight Helen Hayes awards, opted for 12 Ayrton Bora TC and 25 Ayrton NandoBeam S6 fixtures for the lighting design taken from Mark McCulloug

USA - Wilderado is a three-piece indie folk band from Oklahoma with a loyal and ever-expanding fan-base. The beginning of the year saw them complete of a sold-out US headline tour and announce their first UK tour as special guests on alt-J’s The Dream Tour, ending this autumn with their own headline leg.
Despite their solid success, not everything was perfect in the Wilderado-camp. Struggling with monitor wedges and inconsistent set ups on stage, they knew something needed to change. When audio engineer, Davis McCoy, joined them at the beginning of the year, he recommended KLANG immersive in-ear monitors. They have not looked back since.
“As we started building longer sets and were doing more and more dates, I found I just couldn’t sing through the show,” says lead singer and guitarist, Max Rainer. “It was too taxing trying to project and to hear myself in th

Australia - Crowded House returned to touring again in 2022 after re-forming in late 2019.
A recent show at Stage 88 in the lush green environs of Commonwealth Park, Canberra was one of a week of rescheduled Australian shows, postponed from April when the tour was interrupted by the Covid lockdowns. Here, locally based technical production company, Elite Event Technology (EET), supplied an all Robe moving light rig.
The band’s lighting designer Dan Black used this mix of Robe BMFL Blades and WashBeams, MegaPointes, LEDWash 300+s and 600s to great effect, crafting an elegant lightshow that matched the mood and style of a crisp springtime evening outdoors.
Crowded House had played a splattering of concerts throughout 2020 and 2021 in Australia and New Zealand as and when pandemic restrictions allowed, with lighting and video designed by Ben Dalgleish from Human

USA - To ensure clear, impactful live sound with wide, even coverage for the Long Beach Jazz Festival, AV integrator Flag Systems deployed a dynamic selection of JBL Professional solutions.
Featuring headliners Robert Glasper, Ledisi and Sergio Mendes, 2022’s Long Beach Jazz Festival took place at Rainbow Lagoon Park for waterside views as fans enjoyed a mix of jazz, soul and R&B. While the location was a pristine setting for a weekend of laid-back jazz, the stage needed an audio rig with enough coverage to reach audiences on both sides of the lagoon, while also considering the stage’s limited height and space. To meet these requirements, Flag Systems designed a sound reinforcement system exclusively featuring JBL VTX and VRX Series solutions.
“If you’ve ever seen the site, you know one of the main challenges is that there’s a lake right behind the front-

USA - Illuminate Production Services (IPS) has recently opened an East Coast facility in Ft. Pierce, Florida, to better serve clients nationwide. The family-owned company, which first opened its doors in Sacramento in 2006, is one of the live event industry’s premiere full-service production companies. The new facility, which is stocked with production quality audio, video, lighting, and staging equipment, includes many of Elation Professional's most sought-after products.
General manager for IPS East is Michael Betancourt, a Florida native who is proud to lead the new 8100 sq. ft. facility. “By choosing Fort Pierce, it allows us to be central and support the many production companies throughout the state and east coast. I am excited about the opportunity and have a lot of ideas to further the successful growth of IPS.”
Betancourt brings over 30 years of audio, v

Spain - EM Acoustics returns to ISE for the first time since 2020 after a strong year that has seen significant growth. Celebrating 20 years in business, the full management team will be present as the company looks to actively forge new links across Europe and worldwide as well as continue to build on current relationships.
Visitors to the stand will be able to see a representative selection of EM’s ubiquitous EMS Series that offers a wide range of products for a variety of applications, both fixed and mobile, plus the full range of award-winning Reference Series point source loudspeakers.
This widely successful product family - currently comprising the compact R8, the mid-sized R10 and the large format R12 - has found favour in theatres and performance venues thanks to its quality sound reinforcement in a versatile, low profile package. This includes the most recen

Spain - ISE 2023 sees the K-array group present their new roadmap dedicated to the AV market sector. Today, the K-array group comprises three brands – K-array, KGEAR and KSCAPE. Together, these brands offer solutions for AV spaces or applications – large or small, complex or not.
According to K-array president Alessandro Tatini, the time has come to consolidate the company’s offering for the AV market to make it easy for integrators, consultants and architects to specify the products they need for their projects. K-array group products offer solutions for applications including corporate, education, hospitality, retail, public spaces, visitor attractions, marine and venues.
“We are passionate about sound and have been pioneering unique audio solutions for live events for over 30 years,” explains Tatini. “We wanted to bring that experience to the installed A

Spain - Allen & Heath will be showing their full range of audio install solutions, including audio matrix processors, touchscreen controllers, Dante I/O, and the newly released Custom Control V1.3 software, at the upcoming ISE show in Barcelona.
The complete AHM series will be on display including the Inavation Awards finalist AHM-32, plus the AHM-64 and AHM-16. Designed to excel in corporate, retail, hospitality and education environments, AHM is a family of powerful Audio Matrix Processors which allow integrators to quickly create systems that build from a single boardroom to a complete campus with emphasis on simplicity of programming and control.
Allen & Heath’s range of install-focused hardware controllers will be present at the booth including the CC-7 and CC-10 touch panels in addition to the IP1, IP6 and IP8 controllers.
A comprehensive selec

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