USA - Scorpions recently released the19th studio album of their, over 50-year, band career. After several weeks at the Zappos Theatre at Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas, they started the Rock Believer world tour in early May beginning with a special concert at Madison Square Garden, New York.
Austrian Manfred Nikitser has been accompanying the internationally successful band as lighting designer since 2016. In addition to the lighting design, Manfred also created the complete show design (stage set and video) for both the Sin City Nights residency in Las Vegas and for the subsequent tour.
Manfred selected the remote follow-spot system from Dutch manufacturer Follow-Me: Follow-Me 3D SIX. The centre piece of this redesigned show is a pyramid-shaped drum riser in front of a se

UK - A complex, and reconfigurable Martin Audio Wavefront Precision design throughout the new Blackpool Conference and Exhibition Centre is the brainchild of system designer Samuel Williams of Derby-based Media Powerhouse.
The first major building development at the Winter Gardens complex since the construction of the Opera House in 1939, the venue, set on two levels, is one of the largest of its kind in the north of England. It features the necessary infrastructure for hosting modern conferences and exhibitions. Media Powerhouse’s integration includes cutting edge projection video and smart lighting technology as well as Martin Audio scalable line arrays in each of the eight rooms
The exhibition space is set on the first floor, with a large 2,000-capacity conference space on the second floor. It is conceived as four separate but reconfigurable venues on both floors.

Poland - The country’s largest drama theatre has reopened after lockdown, to reveal a major renovation to its various spaces, which took up much of 2021.
In order to preserve its impressive heritage, it was recognised that Jan Kochanowski Theatre in Opole (JK Opole Theatre) would need to undergo full modernisation, and a thorough overhaul of its technical infrastructure, fulfilling a dream it had nurtured for several years.
The cost of reconstruction was budgeted at PLN 25m ($6m US), with over half coming from EU funds.
The project, which took eight months to fulfil, included the renewal of the main building façade, the entrance and surroundings, the modernisation of stages and auditorium (including ventilation), as well as sound and lighting systems. This included a complete Optocore fibre network, based around the deployment of five AutoRouters.
The t
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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

UK - During last week’s PLASA Focus Leeds, Entec UVC SafeClean presented its research on creating COVID-free environments and busted some of the myths surrounding pathogen eradication.
Entec UVC SafeClean specialises in environmental germicidal disinfection, effective against COVID-19 variants as well as all other viruses. During the seminar at the Bury Theatre, Entec Group chairman Nick Pendleton presented scientific research on creating COVID-safe environments. He opened up by asking the audience several questions relating to their own personal COVID experience, and some 80% stated they expected COVID disruptions to continue, and almost as many said they had been involved in an event affected by COVID. “I was very surprised to receive such a strong view that the risk and problem had not gone away,” reflects Pendleton.
Aided by a portable Goldensea UVAIR 216 ul

UK - Le Mark’s head of export Karolina Wlodarczyk has been invited to be an ‘export champion’ for the UK’s Department of International Trade.
Karolina is a Polish citizen originally from the town of Raciborz, who studied (2004-2009) and graduated from Opole University with a master’s degree in English Language and Cultural Studies.
She is currently undertaking additional formal business training and education with an ambition to see a future graduation with ARU Peterborough.
Since joining Cambridgeshire based Le Mark Group, her career has grown from strength to strength. Karolina has built a reputation internationally, leading from the front at trade shows around the world. Since joining Le Mark she has represented the company at LDI Las Vegas, Prolight+Sound Frankfurt and Light + Audio Tec (formerly Prolight+Sound NAMM Russia). Karolina is now responsi

Spain - Kramer revealed a number of new products and technologies at ISE in Barcelona.
In the main zone of Kramer’s ISE booth, visitors experienced the company’s full eco-system of AVoIP solutions. This includes the new KDS-7 family of encoders and decoders, which provide low-latency, high-quality 4K60 4.2.0 video presentations and easy scalability to suit any size network AV installation. With fast deployment capabilities, a simple user experience, enterprise IT-grade security, and advanced, intuitive management, KDS-7 is designed for any enterprise, education, military, or government site.
Also on show was Kramer’s latest line of speakers. When paired with KDS-7, these advancements form Kramer’s AVoIP eco-system, enabling ‘instantaneous, secure engagement across organisations worldwide’.
In the booth’s secondary zone, visitors could explore the n

Germany - At this year’s Prolight+Sound, the MAILA modular line array system occupied the entire LD Systems booth.
MAILA is a scalable sound reinforcement system formed by four basic elements: the MAILA SAT satellite module, the MAILA COL column module, the MAILA SPA amplifier module, and the MAILA SUB subwoofer. With these elements, MAILA enables scalable, flexible system configurations for a wide range of sound reinforcement applications.
This extends from precise stereo speech reinforcement without subwoofers, to larger conferences and club gigs, to flown line array systems for professional live sound reinforcement at festivals with variable subwoofer arrangements on the ground.
In addition to the system flexibility, MAILA offers features and technologies that aim to simplify the life of every sound engineer. SmartLink+, for example, enables wireless connect

USA - Butch Allen and André Petrus lit Nigerian superstar Burna Boy’s two-hour One Night In Space show at Madison Square Garden on 28 April.
The massive lighting design for the sold-out concert turned the venue into a giant lightbox that stirred the imagination with outer space images. Yet for all its multi-faceted flourishes, the design process followed a basic formula.
“Burna Boy’s music provided the road map, and we followed it,” said Allen, noting that the end result was a design based on “visual harmony” between the image, atmosphere and the artist’s performance.
Lighting the way on that road map and contributing to that atmosphere were Madison Square Garden’s house lights and an impressive rig provided by 4Wall Entertainment that featured 68 COLORado PXL Bar 16 fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
The motorised RGBW COLORado uni

USA - The Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences (CRAS), a leading institution for audio engineering education, has announced that RØDE US product specialist and CRAS graduate Ryan White recently participated in an event at the CRAS Gilbert, Ariz. campus. White worked alongside CRAS students during the day, demoing and introducing the students to a number of RØDE instrument microphones during instrument clinics. In the evening, White hosted an AES event for the CRAS student chapter.
“It’s always a pleasure to have Ryan join us at his alma mater to host such amazing events for our students,” said David Kohr, CRAS AES faculty advisor. “His events are always the perfect mix of fun and education. Over the years, Ryan has shown us that he has a way of bringing the students in and educating them in a fun and exciting way and this event was no different. We always

Germany - In 2018, Cameo celebrated its debut in the NicLen rental park with the Zenit Series. Since then, the dry hire provider has been adding Cameo products to its line-up year after year. Now, in addition to the Zenit W600 and W300 outdoor wash lights and the Opus Series moving heads, the dry hire range also includes the F Series Fresnel fixtures.
With investments in OTOS H5 beam spot wash moving heads, NicLen has also recently added Cameo’s new IP65 hybrid highlight to its inventory – the first supplier worldwide to do so. In addition to the OTOS H5, NicLen has completed its portfolio of Cameo F Series products with the F1 Fresnel spotlights and the F2 FC, and it also offers the new Zenit W600 SMD, an even brighter version of the successful Zenit outdoor wash lights.
With the OTOS H5, Cameo is directly addressing the needs of professional lighting designers a

Europe - Bose Professional has announced that hospitality operator Accor has selected Bose Professional as an official global supplier for integrated sound system solutions. All the group’s growing portfolio of properties will incorporate the Bose audio experience.
Bose Professional offers a wide range of solutions specifically designed to enable bespoke audio systems that installed in hotels around the world such as Sofitel Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Le Louis Versailles Château Hotel – MGallery in Versailles and Hôtel Novotel Megève Mont-Blanc in Megève.
“Bose Professional is a world-leading brand and most recognisable in the professional audio space,” stated Manuel Garrido, corporate category manager at Accor. “We are so delighted to offer our franchise partners access to such an impressive range of solutions, providing a variety of features to meet thei

USA - ADJ has announced the immediate availability of the new Jolt Panel FX and Jolt Bar FX. Both of these flexible fixtures combine intensely bright while strobe LEDs and zone-controlled vibrant colour mixing LEDs. Designed for concert productions, festival stages and rental houses, as well as for permanent installation in large nightclubs and performance venues, these fixtures can be used to generate a wide variety of effects.
The Jolt Bar FX is a professional linear LED lighting fixture featuring a central strip of 112 x 5-Watt cool white SMD LEDs, surrounded on both sides by a total of 672 x 0.3W RGB color mixing SMD LEDs. Both types of LED are grouped into independently controllable zones (16 white and 32 color), which means the unit can also be used to generate strobe chases and colored ‘eye candy’ animated pattern effects.
The Jolt Panel FX is a complementa

Europe - Sixty82 has launched Arena Frame, a new stage concept designed for venues which value the benefits of a quick and easy-to-build stage system.
The straightforward design allows big stages to be built ‘in the blink of an eye’ - a 200m2 stage, for example, can be built in just 90 minutes with a crew of four and a forklift.
The system has a very small storage footprint due to its foldable frames, while it also offers the ability to build the stage and rig at the same time, greatly reducing the time needed to build any stage set.
The Arena Frame system allows every second frame to be omitted, allowing the creation of corridors underneath the stage in both directions without any loss of its load bearing capacity. For standard decking 2x1m elements are used.
The system is equipped with robust swivel castors and an internal lever system which allows

Europe - Prolights has updated its Jet family with two wash moving lights, the Jet Wash 7 and the Jet Wash 19. These are compact and fast LED fixtures, with 20W Osram RGBW sources - the smaller fixture, the Wash7, has 7 emitters while the Wash19 has 19 LED emitters. Their wide zoom range goes from a narrow 4º beam to a wide to 56º wash.
The Jet Wash range has many similarities to the Astra family, with fewer features that make it more affordable whilst keeping reliability and performance to a maximum.
Their advanced colour mixing system has precise and advanced control with outstanding white temperatures and saturated tones. The white CCT pre-sets go from 2,800K - 10,000K, and the internal colour system provides +/- green correction, tungsten emulation and a virtual colour wheel with macros.
Just like the Astra range, there is also a linear crossfade channel

UK - Spectators who saw this year’s Allam British Open in Hull witnessed some of the world’s greatest squash players compete for the $165,000 (US) prize.
With squash enthusiasts all around the globe also able to tune in to the event live via SquashTV, as well as via the official Facebook page of the PSA World Tour, organizers were keen to create a riveting production. Toward this end, Firefly AV was brought on board to award the tournament with a sporty visual flair. Helping them in this endeavour were Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Spot and MK2 Wash fixtures, along with Rogue R1 Washes and R2X Beams.
The squash facilities at the University of Hull’s Sports Complex provided an appropriate setting for the event in which World No.1 Mohamed ElShorbagy would defend the title he won in 2019. (COVID forced the cancelation of the 2020 competition, which is close to m

APAC - Pixotope has announced partnerships with several key broadcast companies in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan, The Philippines, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Singapore. Following key staff appointments, the deals follow a number of successful virtual production collaborations using Pixotope in the region.
Together with Pixotope, new distributors TechTwist Corporation, Elevate Broadcast, DB Productions, Great Wheel, Starlight, Bright Media, DongHwa, Mitomo, Kadinche, Jadason, Getop and StageFor will facilitate the adoption of Pixotope’s virtual technology in new regions and broadcast sectors.
Dennis Breckenridge, CEO of Elevate Broadcast, notes, “Pixotope has not only technical superiority but a business model enabling the adoption of virtual technologies into many new markets. We feel that the ease of use, open standard support for plugin

UK - Robe UK has joined the albert initiative, a BAFTA-owned and industry run organisation dedicated to raising awareness and empowering professionals and companies working in film, television, commercial and other screen-based media productions to operate as sustainably as possible.
One of their aims is to build an accredited network of equipment suppliers, and as a lighting supplier to many rental companies active in these sectors, Robe UK appreciates the value of the albert Initiative’s work as a broader part of the entertainment technology industry.
BAFTA highlights two key responsibilities in helping to reverse climate change, firstly making changes to its own working practices and Awards ceremonies – it hosts the high-profile annual BAFTA Awards celebrating the best British and international contributions to film – and to support and inspire all screen in

Europe - Manufacturer of innovative 3D audio technology Holoplot has announced its partnership with Creative Technology, adding Holoplot products to Creative Technology’s audio portfolio. This partnership marks the arrival of Holoplot’s audio performance capabilities in the UK.
Consisting of Modul 96 and Modul 80-S, Holoplot’s X1 product line is a new category of sound system, granting users a previously impossible level of control over sound. Holoplot technology provides a broad range of practical and creative capabilities - whether solving challenging acoustics in complex environments or adding authenticity and depth to immersive spaces.
The synergy between Holoplot and Creative Technology was underlined at Creative Technology’s conneCT Open Day in December 2021 - where the company invited a diverse group of designers, creatives, and users from various indust

Italy - Outline has extended its organisation with appointment of Daniele Tebaldi as CTO (chief technology officer). Daniele will liaise with the company's R&D team, sales and tech support crew and board of directors.
After embarking in the mid-80's on a successful career in Italy and Germany as a concert sound engineer with a keen ear for jazz, classical and contemporary music, 10 years later Daniele conceived and directed Live Sound Education, one of the earliest and longest-running audio courses in Italy, hosted by the City of Modena – while continuing to work as a freelance copywriter, publicist and translator for the pro audio industry. This landed him a key role in the incorporation of a (now well-known) German professional loudspeaker manufacturer's Italian subsidiary, which he subsequently directed for 25 years.
"In 1997 I attended Daniele's education pro

UK - Avolites has announced new appointments to strengthen its operations in North and South America.
Returning to Avolites, Francisco Yañez Valdivia has been appointed as territory manager for LATAM. Based in Santiago de Chile, Francisco’s role will focus on driving a new phase for Avolites in the region, following the recent launch of the Diamond 9, along with the company’s continuous development of its software platforms Ai, Titan and Synergy.
Francisco has over 10 years’ experience using Avolites products across different positions, including lighting technician and operator, product manager and sales engineer. Avolites’ presence in South America is already very notable, with a substantial userbase of Avolites products.
Stephen Baird-Smith will assume the role of special projects and territory manager for North America. Having worked at Avolites for

Spain - APG is showcasing a new series of loudspeakers, subwoofers and amplifiers at ISE this week. The manufacturer is also presenting its new visual signature. Inspired by the blue border dear to the brand since its creation in 1978, the new logo will now act as an integrated visual element on all products.
The SPOT2.6 is a passive full-range compact loudspeaker equipped with 2x 6.5'' speakers and a compression driver loaded by a 70° x 50° constant directivity horn. SPOT 2.6 offers perfect directivity control over a wide frequency range (70° x 50°) thanks to the two low-mid d'Appolito mounting transducers coupled with a rotating horn for high frequencies. SPOT2.6 comes with a wide range of optional accessories.
APG is also introducing the DA amplifier series. Developed in partnership with Powersoft, the DA8 and DA12 are four-channel amplifiers with signal proces

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