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The Netherlands - Now with two years of operational experience under their belts using IES sine wave dimmers, Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam can reflect on the technology's performance and economic benefits - benefits demonstrated in terms of silent operation and, thanks to no harmonic distortion, savings in electrical charges and lamp replacement costs too.

When Het Muziektheater commenced a major refurbishment programme in summer 2003, IES B.V. - pioneers of the advanced dimming offered by sine wave technology - designed and built special distributed dimming PowerBars for them, together with custom IES Matrix dimmer cabinets, all connected with an integrated state-of-the-art Ethernet communication system.Commenting on the choice of IES sine wave dimmers, Bert Pronk, theatre project leader and Hugo van Uum, head of lighting, said: "We were particularly impressed, not only

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USA - Lighthouse Technologies reported record sales during the InfoComm International Exposition 2005 (8-10 June, Las Vegas). The company attributes the success to its debut of LED video screens, which it says break new ground in digital signage, entertainment and special events. This includes PopVision, the industry's first portable and self-sustaining LED screen, and two new fanless 10 mm pixel pitch indoor LED screens.

"The unveiling of these advanced products coincides with an upswing in the LED video technology industry, providing us with tremendous market momentum," said Tony Turiello, vice-president sales, marketing and operations in the Americas for Lighthouse. "InfoComm has always been a profitable event, even so, this year we registered more sales in the opening hours than the overall total of any past show."

Taking centre stage at the InfoComm wa

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UK - Architectural and feature lighting specialist i-Vision has designed and installed a stylish lighting scheme at Bollicini in Chester - blazing a trail as the town's trendiest modern Italian restaurant. i-Vision's Dave Mackay was approached by Bollicini's owners Les Owens and Gianni Poletti to discuss the project. The new venue is located in a beautiful old listed Georgian building - previously a bar - which has been completely gutted and restyled into the ultra-contemporary Bollicini, a thoroughly 21st century take on Italian cuisine and ambience.

Bollicini means 'little bubbles' - and 'Fizziness and Fun' were exactly the atmospheric conditions the owners wanted to convey, explains Mackay. i-Vision created a lighting design and specification to match the owner's self-styled interior visions which feature tasteful blending of wood, metalwork, exposed brickwork and glass, plus

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UK - Cable specialist VDC Trading has supplied a large variety of reeled stock to Saville Audio Visual, which is handling the AV and power installation within the Ricoh Arena, the brand new home of Coventry City FC.

Over 600m of five-way Mini Red Video Coax cable is being installed, along with Cat 5 data cable and a range of specialist audio cables.

"We chose VDC cables for a variety of reasons, not least the reliability, quality and price point," says Jim Millar, presentation systems manager for Saville. "We have used the company's products in the past, particularly for larger projects. In this case VDC were also able to deliver cable in different reel sizes, which was an important consideration."

Saville is UK's largest specialist supplier of audio visual, video and presentation technology and the Official Audio Visual Partner for the £113 million stad

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UK - Projected Image Digital, digital media and control solutions specialists - has supplied, installed and commissioned a customized version of PixelMAD software to playback low resolution video imagery across a massive LED surface at the Wynn Resort development in Las Vegas.

The LED fixtures are embedded in a three acre artificial lake. The PixelMAD system is controlling 24 universes of DMX and 4012 Color Kinetics' C-Splash 2 LED fixtures spread across the base of the 'Lake of Dreams'. The system gives eight layers of digital media playback and 1:1 pixel mapping.

The PixelMAD is running on a 2.5 GHz dual processor Apple Mac and all system hardware and software is specified by PID. The software is triggered via a GrandMA console. The GrandMA also controls other fixtures in and around the Lake including over 100 Martin MAC 2Ks, EC2s, Syncrolite 7Ks, Atomic Strobes, over 3000 D

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UK - When Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the nation from the recent G8 summit, it was VDC microphone cable that ensured the world heard him speak.

Over 200 microphone cables were used during the G8 summit and UK-based cable specialists VDC Trading supplied them all.

VDC Cat 5 cable was also used to link the various buildings that comprised the Media Village, which was set up in the grounds of Gleneagles to house over 1,000 journalists who were covering the event for the international media.

Audio specialists Delta Sound Inc was given the task of linking all of the buildings so that when a call for a press conference was made, every journalist would hear the announcement regardless of where in the Village they were.

"We installed a BSS Soundweb network system, which was linked to 140 small distribution speakers throughout the Media Village," says Delta Sound'

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Italy - Prism Sound's Italian distributor, Paolo Orizio, of Funky Junk Italy, has notched up significant sales success since he was appointed to handle the company's range of AD/DA converters earlier this year.

"Paolo has sold more Prism Sound ADA-8 converters in the last six months than we had previously sold in Italy in the last three years," says Jody Thorne, sales manager of the Cambridge-based company. "His contacts within the Italian pro audio industry are extremely valuable and we are delighted that he has put his faith and expertise into promoting our products to this important market."

Prism Sound's ADA-8 converter is widely regarded as an industry standard when it comes to analogue and digital processing and is already in use at many of the world's top recording facilities including Metropolis, Air and Abbey Road in London; Sterling Sound in New Y

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UK - Liverpool's third HUB Festival - a mix of art, music and extreme sports staged at the Pier Head - expanded and featured several new elements this year.

The event is the brainchild of the Council's Liverpool Culture Company and included music, skateboarding and BMX competitions, graffiti art exhibitions and music performed by many excellent local bands

Kirstie Blakeman, event manager, explained that they had created a new look main stage under the cover of a single king pole, purple membrane tent supplied by Wangos, which was chosen for its aesthetics. She added: "With the event being held at Liverpool's waterfront World Heritage Site we wanted something unique and different looking, something really special and dynamic for the music zone this year - not just another standard stage or marquee."

The same was true for the DJ tent, compared by Spykatcha - which sa

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Indonesia - Jakarta's new Sands International Executive Club is a luxurious multi-entertainment 'mega club' comprising a restaurant, live theatre, discotheque, wine bar, chill-out bar, and spa centre, all fitted with Allen and Heath mixing products. Encompassing three floors - with plans for expansion - Sands is classically designed with high ceilings, gilded walls, marble floors, plush carpeting, and crystal chandeliers. The owners appointed Singapore's Electro-Systems Industries to design and install the sound reinforcement systems, in partnership with project co-ordinator, Peter Loh Productions, catering for the complex AV requirements of the venue.

The Grand Ballroom and Dining Theatre make up the largest live performance area in the club, divided by a partition wall to enable the venue to host independent functions or combine and expand the rooms for bigger functions. The s

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USA - In June, Tomcat USA completed a custom project for the San Francisco Opera, designing and building a tetrahedral barrier for their production of La Forza del Destino, which is scheduled to run in November. The components of this special barrier are three 37ft legs of custom medium duty spigoted truss (each leg consisting of three sections of custom spigoted MD). These legs are connected with slew rings in the centre of each section, including spring-loaded pins that lock each section into place when they twist. The chords of the truss were constructed with box tube, making it easier to connect the cladding set pieces to be created in house at the Opera.

Custom stage sockets were another part of the project: these allow the barrier's legs to lock into the stage floor, after it is lowered from the grid. The design allows the legs to rotate as it is lowered, revealing

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Denmark - The Xhibition Bar is the new casino floor bar at the Harrah's Casino in Atlantic City.

Opened on President's Day weekend the 360 degree bar features the customary slot machines and table games, but it's a color coordinated lighting and video system that gives the bar its character.

Surrounding more than 300 towering bottles on the interior of the bar are sixteen 50" plasma screens that reveal sensual video content set to pulsating Top 40 metro music. Further in are two rows of Martin Alien 05 color changers - an outer row of 24 plus an inner row of 24 - illuminating liquor bottles on vertical liquor racks. Added to this are four circles of colour changing Color Kinetics LED fixtures surrounding the bar. In a touch that gives the bar its stylish feel, the LED and Aliens are colour coordinated with the video on the plasma screens.

The Alien 05 lighting was desig

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UK - Washington D.C.-based Presentation Services is an outside lighting vendor for the largest hotel in the city - the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, and the Zero 88 Fat Frog is their console of choice. Presentation Services won the contract for lighting events at the hotel in January 2004. In their first year competing against outside vendors, Presentation Services won almost $3 million in lighting and video equipment contracts alone. "We go after every group that comes into the hotel," says technical director and lead technician Aaron Kramer. "A lot of the groups that come in here, however, have national contracts, but we've still handled events for the Big Brother Big Sister program - where Laura Bush spoke in support, corporate Marriot events and others."

In 2004, Presentation Services invested $176,000 in new lighting equipment and purchased a Zero 88 Fat

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Ireland - Bandit Lites supplied Production North with full lighting production for the first Cork Festival of Music, titled Live at the Marquee, and staged by Aiken Promotions in a near-5,000 capacity big top at the Monster Showground, Cork. The event, part of the City's year as European Capital of Culture, has been so successful that moves are afoot for it to become a regular fixture on Cork's annual entertainment calendar. The two weeks of live music featured a diverse line up of national and international artists, ranging from Christie Moore to the Gypsy Kings, Ronan Keating to Nick Cave.

Production North came onboard to supply the entire technical infrastructure, with the unflappable Steve Levitt at the helm, production and site managing. With some fast back-to-back changes needed, he wanted to ensure that all bands received their own required standards of lighting, a

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China - China's National Broadcaster CCTV has selected HK Audio's Cohedra Coherent Dynamic Response Array system for its Studio 1, from where the prestigious CCTV New Year Gala TV show is broadcast to over one billion Chinese people at home and abroad. Studio 1 was constructed on the site of a circular garden alongside the main CCTV building in 1997. The 1600 square metre building, which can seat 800, was purpose-built for the New Year Gala show and other large-scale live broadcast programs. As the studio was constrained by the shape of the garden, it is also circular in shape, meaning that improving the sound quality has become a constant challenge to the CCTV audio department, and this is why CCTV chose to install the Cohedra system. Sixteen CDR 208 T/S mid-high cabinets have been installed into the room where they have already been used for shows such as Joyride in China - Seve

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UK - When Faceparty, organizer of London's Big Gay Out festival in north London, wanted lighting for its dance tent, it gave the brief as "to create an 80s-style rave environment." With the help of PRG Europe - who also supplied lighting for the main stage and the alternative music tent - they did just that.

The event, held on Saturday 23 July, is the successor to London's Pride festival, and hosted 20,000 people at the Big Mutha main stage and 11 other stages and tents in Finsbury Park.

"For the main stage, we created a big automated lighting rig, to cater for all requirements, and offer greater flexibility live," said lighting designer Mike Sobotnicki, contracted by PRG Europe from Imagination. "Until we saw the rehearsals, we had no idea what would be needed. We had three overhead lighting positions, to create symmetrical patterns of beams through h

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UK - For the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II the Ministry of Defence engaged Unusual Services to provide production services for a weeklong programme of events.

The main focus of the week was on Sunday 10 July with an event staged on Horse Guards Parade for 11,000 veterans. Edwin Shirley Staging built a 40m x 25m stage with sound supplied by Wigwam, lighting provided by PRG Europe and a 160m scenic wall from Centrestage. Other key suppliers included Search, Power Logistics, Arena Seating, Unusual Rigging, Screenco, Show & Event, Dobson Sound, Delta Sound, Thorns and National Radio Bank.

During the week leading up to the celebrations, images of previously unseen World War II photographs were projected onto the façade of Buckingham Palace. In addition an 85m x 30m tented Veterans Centre was installed in St. James's Park along with a Living Museum, Press Centre, a BB

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USA - Greg Norgeot, Paul Sharwell and Angus Sinex of the lighting design partnership Unlimited Visibility Lighting Design recently lit the Oprah Winfrey Live Your Best Life workshop tour in multiple locations across the US.

Hosted by O, The Oprah Magazine, the Live Your Best Life tour was billed as "A day with friends, an afternoon with Oprah." The all-day workshop consisted of a morning of motivational entertainment and esteem-building exercises, followed by a presentation featuring Oprah Winfrey herself in the afternoon. UVLD's Greg Norgeot designed the lighting for the event; Paul Sharwell, assisted by Angus Sinex, was charged with recreating the design on each stop of the tour.

"This was quite different from most of the shows that we light," remarked Norgeot of the Live Your best Life tour. "Whereas most events we design

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UK - XL Video supplied Oasis with a seven-camera DPU including one of its new GV Zodiac vision mixing desks, three 'Magic' DVE's, a matrix switcher and Dataton control for its UK stadium tour. XL also supplied a Catalyst digital media server used by the show's artistic director and lighting designer Andi Watson.

The band's overall video production was coordinated by video director Dick Carruthers' company, Cheese Film & Video Productions, with touring video production manager Dave Wright overseeing the 35 video crew.

The show is a dynamic, pacey mix of live camera and specially created playback sources onto six LED screens - four onstage which moved up and down on a Kinesys vari-speed automation system, and stage left and right side screens.

Carruthers and programmer Richard Turner maximized XL's pre-programming facilities for prepping the show at its Hertfordshire HQ, worki

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UK - Leading UK audio rental house Britannia Row has purchased 32 crown Xs amplifiers from Harman Pro UK.

These went straight into rehearsals with some of the best known rock 'n' roll stars on the planet - including Pink Floyd, The Who, Madonna, Elton John and Robbie Williams in the run up to Live 8. "So as you can deduce from that, we were pretty confident we had a superlative product" states Brit Row's Roly Oliver. The company provided discreet monitor systems for all these maverick performers in the run up to their appearances at Live 8 London.

The amplifiers were then used to power the monitor system for the historic Live 8 gig in Hyde Park. It's the first time Britannia Row has ever bought Crown explains Oliver, "We did a listening test against several other amplifiers and nothing even came near the Xs in terms of build quality and value for money." He

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USA - 'A sensory overload' is what Toshiba wanted for its corporate meeting 15-20 May in Miami. Plus the design had to enhance Terry Bradshaw and The Beach Boys, who would also take the stage.

"Our design objective was to create an immersive environment resulting in a sensory overload that would work in tandem with automated lighting," says veteran LD Bill Strother of Carrollton, TX, who was called in to set the scene.

To carry out his design, Strother selected six High End Systems DL1 digital light fixtures and a Catalyst Pro Media Server, supplied by Zenith Lighting of Orlando.

"The set - provided by the client - was a vast array of different Spandex shapes," Strother explains. "With that many differing surfaces for projection, we had to be able to hit as many as we could with only six projectors - knowing that it would be very difficult to gauge t

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UK - Building on the success of the previous two years, the third ABTT Summer School takes place during the first week August at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry from Monday, 1 August - Friday, 5 August inclusive.

The courses are for members of the ABTT wishing to develop their career in the industry by learning new skills or refreshing their knowledge of individual subjects. This year sees three firsts; the launch of the Silver Award courses, alongside the established Bronze Award, full accreditation of all courses by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama and ABTT's active involvement in Skillscene, the organization developing industry standards for the live arts.

Open to members of the ABTT only, a few places remain for the Sound Technicians course for this year.

Also during the same week, the ABTT Road Show will be held on Wednesday 3 August 2005, at the same venue at

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UK/Europe - Avril Lavigne's show at London's Carling Hammersmith Apollo had the packed audience screaming for more as crunchy guitars filled the air and the kick drum vibrated throughout the audience. FOH engineer John Kerns looked pleased as he watched the crowd response. "This is probably the first time I have taken a real rock show out with a Meyer loudspeaker system," Kerns admits. Having taken over FOH duties from Jim Yakabuski partway through Lavigne's extensive European and American tour, Kerns found himself in the capable hands of Audio Analysts system technician Brett Dicus. "Jim came up with a setup that he really liked," explains Dicus, "which was Meyer mains and a centre sub-hang. That is our priority whenever possible. The Meyer high-end energy from about 5kHz on up can't be beaten. We find we do not have to do the usual boosts for intelligibi

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USA - Hilary Duff has seemingly done it all at the ripe old age of nearly 18. Stage actress, film and television star (she was Lizzie McGuire on the TV show of the same name), she even has her own clothing line. And oh yes, she also finds time to sing.

Hilary Duff kicked off her Still Most Wanted tour in LA in July and will be touring the US through September. Teaming up on the tour are the Martin Maxxyz lighting console and Maxedia media server along with MAC 2000 Wash, MAC 300 wash lights, VL3000s and conventionals, all in the hands of lighting designer Seth Jackson. Tour lighting supplier is Bandit Lites.

"The plot was changing up until a day before the truck loaded," Jackson commented. "If it weren't for the flexibility of the crew (Sam Harden, BK Waggoner and Billy Willingham) and the endless amounts of drawings and input from Dizzy Gosnell, I doubt

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UK - Star Events Group was recently involved with the series of spectacular shows that took place at the Tower of London during July this year. The client, Planit Events approached Star Orbit requiring a 20m five bay flat back Orbit stage structure to be positioned in the moat surrounding the Tower for five nights of grand opera and six nights of jazz.

One of the main stipulations from the client was the need to effectively seat and protect from the elements a 60-piece orchestra without obscuring the onstage artists and disrupting audience sightlines. Mike Goodwin (Star Orbit) and the Star Design team collaborated with Planit to devise an under-stage Orchestra pit that provided the shelter the orchestra members required whilst maintaining the sound quality. This was achieved by extending the front of the stage floor out and over the heads of the musicians. Onstage the stunning c

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