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UK - Fed up with the usual freebies given away at trade shows? Then make sure you visit the ETC stand at PLASA 2004 for a chance to win one of its brand new, easy-to-use portable SmartFade consoles, worth £800! ETC is giving away a certificate good for one SmartFade 1248 each day - to have a chance of winning, all you have to do is visit ETC stands F39 or F40 to register your name in their Daily Draw.

While SmartFade is ideal for first time users, educational establishments and amateur groups, it nevertheless offers all the control performance required by lighting professionals. With three operating modes, SmartFade offers a simple Two Scene mode with 12 or 24 channels for novice users, or Normal mode, providing 48 or 96 channels with 288 or 576 memories and 48 sequences for more experienced users. DMX512 input facility also allows SmartFade to be used as a sophisticated backu

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UK - Massive Attack's summer festival tour was a high impact combination of electronics and visual expression, with James Thomas Pixelline fixtures and United Visual Artists' Dragonfly II software amalgamated into arguably the brightest show of the summer season. For those unable to prize their shades from their craniums after dark - this was the gig to be at!

The band wanted a visual departure from last year's LED wall, which featured low-resolution imagery. They favoured a less technical stage look, but also wanted to continue with digital technology: this provided the starting point for lighting designers Andy Hurst and Vince Foster and the UVA team, who came up with the concept of a super low-res horizontal wall of Pixelline - 151 pixels wide by 161 high - with gaps in between the units.

Highlighting the band in silhouette, the Pixelline wall served as a dynamic (and very bright)

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UK - PLASA 2004 heralds the first Prize Stage alongside the PLASA After Show Bar, set to run from 6-8pm on 12, 13 and 14 September. The Prize Stage is the brainchild of DiGiCo marketing director, David Webster, and is sponsored by nine of the entertainment industry's major players: Avolites, DiGiCo, Lab.Gruppen, Lighthouse, Meyer Sound, Mobil-Tech, Sennheiser, Stardraw and XTA Electronics.

Each evening, the sponsors will be giving away exciting prizes in a free draw for show attendees who have obtained an entry form from the companies involved and comply with the necessary criteria. There will also be the chance of winning a joint prize of £1000 for those who have visited each company and had their 'Prize Passport' (available from each of the sponsoring exhibitors) fully stamped.

"We're very excited to be able to put something like this together," says Webster. &q

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UK - Established in 1990, Sound Division has come a long way since its roots as a sales and service provider in the DJ technology field. Since the restructuring of the company in 2000, managing director David Graham has worked hard to develop other areas of the business with the result that now, some four years on, Sound Division is a much broader-based concern. Today, the company encompasses contracts and installations as a key area of its market, and a thriving entertainments and corporate events division run by Chris Baxter, which trades under the name of 'Sounds Good To Me' - as well as its traditional hire and sales operations.

While Sounds Good To Me is a side of the business that has always done well under Baxter's direction, and continues to do so, Graham is particularly pleased at the way in which business has taken off for the contracts division. Over the last two to three ye

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UK - Wakestock, which takes place in Abersoch, North Wales, is Europe's largest wakeboard music festival - a watersport/music combination which is proving highly popular. Sound, lighting and power for the event was provided by Cheshire-based VME.

The event was staged over three locations: Pwellheli inner marina and Abersoch main beach were used for the wakeboard competition, while Penrhos was the music site, where headline act Kosheen was supported by the Ordinary Boys, Snatch and others. It took two and a half days to set all power, lighting and sound equipment across the site.

PA for the main area was Kling & Freitag's Access system: four T9 and T5 cabintes, with 12 B5 and four B10s as subwoofers, powered by Lab Gruppen amplification. At front-of-house were a Yamaha PM4000 and an Allen & Heath ML5000. For each desk was an outboard rack carrying a Yamaha SPX 900 and SPX 2000, a dbx

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Greece - Le Maitre played a part in the Closing Ceremony of the 2004 Olympics, having been contracted to provide some of the special effects for the event by Jack Morton Public Events, producers of the ceremony. A team of six technicians were flown to Athens, along with 20 confetti blowers and over 500kg of confetti, glitter and streamers. The Le Maitre crew spent five days setting up the equipment in the Olympic Stadium between midnight and 6am, when the day's events had finished, trained 20 local technicians to help operate the cannons, and took part in two full rehearsals.

The effects created provided a spectacular accompaniment to the three-hour ceremony. The Chinese performance of the Beijing handover ceremony was given a dramatic finish using 15 of Le Maitre's Electric Air Cannons to fire yellow streamers from inside a giant lantern. The ceremony featured performances fro

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UK - Lighting designer Dave Byars used two Avolites Diamond 4 consoles for a recent show at The Eden Project with French band, Air. One was his touring console (he's been on the road with the band since the beginning of the year) while the second was supplied by Avolites to control illuminations specially installed to light the Eden Project's famous Biomes, which backed onto the stage.

For Air's performance, the Biomes were lit with a combination of James Thomas PixelPAR 90(A) architectural fixtures and Pixelline 1044 battens. The Biome D4 was operated by Fraser Elisha.

For the tour - a combination of own shows and festival slots, with lighting and sound production supplied by Entec - Byars needed a lightweight desk with compact dimensions that was easy to hoist up FOH festival towers. He also needed it to offer plenty of creative power, and found the D4 ideal from all perspectives.<

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UK - The organizers of the Reproduced Sound conference have issued a provisional programme for this year's event, which takes place at the Oxford Hotel in Wolvercote, Oxford, from 8-10 October 2004. Previously known as 'The Windermere Conference' after the location in which it spent its first 14 years, the conference was successfully held at its new location in November 2003, and will return there this year for its 20th event.

The theme for the conference this year is 'Improving the listening experience', and the organizers are encouraging creative interpretations of theme in papers submitted for the programme. The event will also include an area for demonstrating and exhibiting products and catalogues, and practical demonstration sessions will take place on each of the two evenings.

The event is expected to attract more than 100 delegates, from all parts of the audio profession. Fu

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USA - CITC, the innovative US manufacturer of special effects products, has supplied equipment to two recent film productions. Disney's forthcoming film, based on the first book from C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series, is currently being filmed in New Zealand. To achieve the winter-wonderland described in C.S. Lewis's land of Narnia, CITC supplied SnoBiz snow machines to Jason Drury of Film Effects in New Zealand.

Meanwhile, The Chronicles of Riddick, starring Vin Diesel and Ja Rule, has made use of CITC's Stratosphere Haze machine. The film's special effect technician, Bill Orr, had three large stages in which to maintain a balanced haze. He commented: "It doesn't have to stay on very long to make six hours of haze that's even."

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UK - The entrepreneurial aspirations of two well-known entertainment industry figures are being unveiled this month, with the launch of a new company, Global Design Solutions (GDS).

GDS is the creation of Matt Lloyd and Richard Cuthbert (both previously of Stage Electrics). The company boasts many strings to its bow, in both technical and commercial arenas, not least of which is the development of new global products specifically related to the technical entertainment presentation industries - R&D for two of which is already well underway.

"We're bringing new, innovative ideas to the marketplace and creating solutions," says Lloyd. "We've identified gaps in the market and are using our expertise and imagination to create forward-thinking design ideas which we'll license to manufacturers and end-users."

Alongside product development, the main direction of GDS wi

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Ireland - AVC, the Dublin-based audio-visual equipment hire company, has become the latest European rental operator to invest in the Nexo GEO S Series tangent array system.

John Magann and his team at AVC opted for the GEO S "because of the technology and the compactness of the system." Already a Nexo PS Series user, AVC has now made the strategic decision to concentrate its hire stock entirely around the Nexo designs. "It's a perfect fit," says Magann. "The GEO S elements are ideal for the concert and cabaret work that we do, as well as being perfectly suited to our corporate clients and the events market. The Nexo PS Series can be used as a monitor system with GEO S, or in its own right for the smaller jobs."

AVC made its decision after discussion with local dealer Rea Sound, and a visit to the Millennium Forum in Derry, where a Nexo GEO S sound system

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UK - The entertainment technology industry seems to have reached an age where the time is right to take stock of its roots. Initiatives include the sociological - recall our report on Paul Dexter's RoadCases project (L&SI May 2004) which aims to record the experiences of rock and roll roadies for posterity - and the technological, with the NEET project . . .

NEET - the National Exhibition of Entertainment Technology - first materialized in 1999, founded by Jason Williams. After serving as the secretary for the Projected Picture Trust, which deals with protecting the heritage of the cinema industry, Williams realized that there was very little effort being made to protect the heritage of other entertainment technologies. Hence NEET, created with a simple set of objectives: to locate, preserve, and exhibit early examples of entertainment technology, providing a valuable educational and h

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UK - Souncraft's Going Live course in live sound engineering has to be one of the most useful and enlightening industry short courses I have ever had the pleasure of attending. Run in association with Adlib Audio and Liverpool Community College, it was well-structured and expertly delivered by respected industry professionals who were clearly passionate about their work.

For two-and-a-half days I counted 'one, two' into microphones (the emphasis on the 'T') - and, along the way, developed a working knowledge of live sound mixing and production. Beginning with a half-day induction course for the absolute beginner hosted by Adlib's Andy Dockerty, covering the basics of speakers, cable running, coiling and mic stand set-up. We then progressed onto a tour around a mixing desk, phantom power and a demonstration of active and passive crossover. By the end of the afternoon I had learned more

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UK - The 2004 PLASA show will see the worldwide launch of the new InMotion 3D/CyberHoist motion control system by Holland's XLNT Advanced Technologies. The complete system offers a stunning combination of precision movement and user-friendly 3D object-oriented programming and is the most advanced motion control system available for the entertainment industry, say the company.

The system was first seen at the EBU Eurovision Song Contest 2004 and is now on its début world tour with Phil Collins (currently in the USA) through PRG Lighting. Full live demonstrations of the system will be running throughout the show in the Warwick Hall at Earls Court 1, in association with Vertigo Rigging. The system has its worldwide Press Premiere on Sunday September 12 at 2pm in the Warwick Room (access via the lift at the back of the Warwick Road entrance foyer).

XLNT Advanced Technologies, bas

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UK - One of the more unusual aspects of this year's PLASA Show (12-15 September, Earls Court, London) will be a photographic exhibition celebrating the creative and practical talents of Irish band U2 and their production team. The photographs for the exhibition have been taken from U2 Show - a new, authorized book by Diana Scrimgeour - which covers the entire touring history of the band. The exhibition is part of the PLASA Production Village, located on the Top Deck.

To coincide with the launch of the book, there'll also be an exclusive seminar featuring two of the band's longest-serving touring personnel. Hosted by TPI editor Mark Cunningham, the seminar - Designing for U2 - will feature Willie Williams and Joe O'Herlihy in conversation about their creative and technical involvement with U2, and how advances in technology have been successfully (and ingeniously) applied to del

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USA - Crown International, the US manufacturer of amplifiers, microphones and systems control products for professional audio markets, was recently named first runner-up for the US Senate Productivity Award for 2003. The award, which is given annually and sponsored by US Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Manufacturers Association (IMA), and the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), recognizes outstanding productivity gains or methods, which may be utilized by other Indiana companies to improve Indiana's overall productivity. Larry Coburn, senior vice-president of Manufacturing for Crown commented: "We are very proud to have received this award. This recognition by our peers in the Manufacturing community is extra special because they understand the hard work we have done to improve our processes and products."

As a result of their efforts toward producti

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UK - Following an investment of £1.3m, Gloucestershire entrepreneur Terry Cole has given Stroud residents a highly-specified new nightclub on the site of the former Gaumont Cinema. The three-storey venue Warehouse adopts the same name as Mr. Cole's other venture, the Warehouse Wine Bar in Dursley, and is an industrial conversion of the Gaumont Cinema which opened in 1935, using varnished sleepers, brickwork and stone effect flooring. Above the large balcony bar on the first floor is an opulently-detailed VIP room, while the dancefloor itself incorporates a water feature.

Cole enlisted local company, Hans Beier's CAV - which he had worked with before on the Dursley venue - to design and install a sound and lighting infrastructure in the 850-capacity venue.

As the centrepiece, Beier chose the Martin Audio W8LM Mini Line Array system - after Martin Audio's Simon Bull successfull

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UK - Pioneer has revealed its plans for a stunning DJ line-up on the opening Sunday of PLASA 2004. DJs appearing and playing on the Pioneer stand on that day include VJ Kriel (Charles Kriel), James Zabiela, Hexstatic, Addictive TV, Dan Tait, OakeDoak Crew, Red Dog & Mungo, Marco & Maui and DJ Yoda.

In addition to these, the following names will be playing on the Pioneer stand throughout the rest of the PLASA show: Monday 13 September, Seb Fontaine: Tuesday 14 September, Nic Fancuilli and Eddie Halliwell: Wednesday 15 September, Judge Jules.

(Lee Baldock)

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Japan - "Acoustically it's perfect," said Ralf Zuleeg, an applications support specialist from d&b audiotechnik, "a typical modern, horseshoe-shaped concert hall; slightly dry for a small ensemble, but ideal for a full orchestra." Matsumoto City Hall in Japan was originally opened 40 years ago; the current refurbishment project began in 1999, completing in the spring of 2004. Its grand opening will comprise multiple events covering the full gamut of musical performance, with the debut concert having been staged on 29 August 2004.

Yamaha Sound Technologies Inc. was selected to be responsible for the sound installation, with Nagata Acoustics Inc. providing the acoustic sound design, Makoto Ino their senior consultant elected to specify d&b systems. "We have experience of this company's equipment through our partnership with the Otaritec Corporation, who

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UK - PLASA 2004 has now opened and promises to be another successful event: even this morning the stands were buzzing, with a vast range of the latest pro lighting and audio, video and digital media, rigging and staging products on show. The Innovation Gallery, where this year's nominations for the PLASA Awards for Innovation are displayed - 67 products in total - provides a popular draw for visitors at the front of the hall.

Seminars kick off today with a fascinating discussion on DJ/VJ technology and how club land is being transformed by user-friendly media servers and DJ-friendly CD decks. This will all happen in the seminar theatre on the top deck from 2 - 3pm, and will be closely followed at 3.30pm by a presentation on digital media servers, offering a comparison of the features of some of the systems available today and a demonstration of two of the current systems from H

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UK - Pro audio distribution specialists, Fuzion plc will announce the formation of a new lighting division at this year's PLASA Show in London (September 12-15). Difuzion will be headed by the experienced Graham Barron, who has spent the last four years at Martin Professional, having dedicated much of his professional career to lighting design, support, consultancy and sales. Difuzion will open its account by confirming an exclusive UK distribution deal with German-based Futurelight, headed by Bernd Steinigke.

Said Graham Barron, "I was ready for a new challenge and was impressed by the set-up at Fuzion. As for Futurelight, they produce a comprehensive, attractively-priced range of well-made products - and yet historically the brand has been under-exposed in the UK." He emphasized that this was just the start. "We are ready to take on other non-conflicting lighti

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Germany - Barco has signed a cooperation agreement with T-Systems International GmbH at the IBC show in Amsterdam, under which Media&Broadcast, the T-Systems' media arm will market, sell and support Barco's full line of large screen display solutions in the sports, corporate branding and broadcast markets in Germany. The first joint project to stem out of this cooperation is the installation of a visualization solution at the 1. FC Kaiserslautern Stadium, one of the stadiums to host the soccer world championships in 2006.

T-Systems operates analog and digital transmitters for radio and television, and a digital distribution network that links transmitter sites and studios throughout Germany. The company is currently building an international transport network for broadcast and media customers that will provide broadband connections between large cities.

As a first joint proj

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UK - The DMC/Technics World DJ Championships, held at the Carling Hammersmith Apollo (4-5 September 2004, London), represented one of the first UK projects to feature the new Aspect series of high-efficiency loudspeakers. Broadcast by the BBC's 1Xtra radio channel, the DMC/Technics World DJ Championships is the culmination of international heats that have taken place thought this year, across Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe.

Turbosound provided sound reinforcement in association with UK rental company Britannia Row Productions, deploying 19 Aspect loudspeakers, with nine in a central cluster, and five per side in the main front-of-house system, complemented by an additional twelve TSW-721 low-frequency enclosures per side. The entire system was powered by just three amplifier racks - each able to drive six mid-highs and twelve Aspect subs. Turbosound's wedge monito

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UK - Pure Distribution, a division of Stirling Audio, has been successful introducing Audix microphones to new artists around the UK, since taking on the distribution earlier this year. The Finn Brothers are the latest fans, using a selection of the products on their current tour. New Zealand born Neil and Tim Finn spent nearly a decade as one half of Crowded House, and made it big in Britain and the US in the early 90s with the multi-illion selling album Woodface.

Audix has supplied a selection of microphones for use on their worldwide tour, for which the duo play a range of musical instruments, from keyboards to ukuleles. Both brothers use OM-6 dynamic vocal microphones, the CX-111 studio condenser mic is put to good use on their guitars, while a variety of Audix drum and percussion mics can be found across the stage. Their current tour has taken them around the US and

  1. Confidence returns at PLASA Show
  2. Full Sail ahead for DiGiCo
  3. HES - new product and partnership
  4. SSE at V and Carling Festivals
  5. PRG at Republican National Convention
  6. James Thomas's LED Workshop
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