New Zealand - Soundcraft mixing consoles have recently come up trumps across a range of applications for customers of Jands Electronics New Zealand (the Soundcraft distributors). In the past few months Soundcraft desks have found their way into houses of worship, concert touring, broadcast - and a prestigious opera house.

In the sound reinforcement sector, the contemporary City Impact Church in Auckland is now using a Soundcraft MH2 for its services, while PA Sound, a rental company which specialises in large church events, has added a GB8 to its inventory.

Meanwhile, another Auckland-based company, College Hill Productions, recently used a 32-channel GB8 on the Dave Dobbyn You Got Heart tour, in conjunction with their new JBL VRX line array speaker system. Chris Tate, sound engineer and director of College Hill Productions, toured with the desk and gave it the thumbs-u

With so many product lines represented, Italian distributor One 4 All was a hub of activity. Sales and marketing director Luisa Valenti reported having a "great show". One 4 All is the Italian distributor for Tryka, Xilver, Alpha One, Lycian, Le Maitre, Actor-Mate (lasers), and also produce their own architectural luminaires. Lycian had news of the new CE marked Midget II Quartz followspot. TMB - which distributes the Alpha One range in the UK and USA - was also on stand lending its support to the company, and showing off the ProTester DMX tool and other gadgets. Tryka had several new designs including the MR16 Module 6 and Module 36 and the new IDS-12 Intelligent Drive System. www.tmb.com www.tryka.co.uk

Worldwide - ETC (Electronic Theatre Controls Inc) has redesigned its company web site, which goes live today. With improved features and more information than ETC's former site, the new etcconnect.com will also be easier to navigate and will include regionalised access, say the company. Convenient categories for entertainment lighting, architectural lighting - or both - will make it a rich resource for experienced lighting professionals as well as beginners who will find more direct data on ETC products and a wealth of solutions for all levels of lighting projects.

Product pages will include user-friendly hot links to downloads, tutorials and other important documentation about ETC's acclaimed line of lighting equipment, including the award-winning Source Four family of luminaires; Sensor+ and Unison dimming systems; ETC and IES SineWave technology, compact Smart Solutions light

The Netherlands - There were exuberant celebrations when the victorious Ajax football team showed off the Gatorade Cup to 15,000 fans in Leidseplein in the centre of Amsterdam.

Following their 2:1 victory over PSV, the contingency plans for the victory celebration swung into action. Mojo Barriers worked with the City of Amsterdam and local police in advance to plan secure areas for the players and ensure the prestigious buildings around the square were protected.

Mojo's Jeroen Tap led a team that installed 110m of Mojo Aluminium Barrier to create a safe area for the team bus to drive into and the team to move onto the theatre steps to show off the cup.

The Mojo Barrier configuration allowed crowd management stewards and local police to successfully manage the good natured but exuberant fans, with a great atmosphere for all to enjoy the occasion and very few arrests.

(Chris

UK - Soundworks, based in Cardiff Bay, has become the first audio facility in the UK to install a Digidesign ICON console in a Dolby licensed film dubbing theatre. To ensure that the wiring for this major equipment upgrade went ahead without a hitch, Soundworks turned to cabling specialist VDC Trading to supply everything it needed.

"The best thing about VDC is the technical support you get to ensure the installation goes smoothly," says Soundworks' founder Simon Jones. "We spent about a week discussing exactly what we needed with VDC's technical staff so that when we actually received the cables, which were made up into runs at their premises in London, we were able to install them really quickly and easily with minimal fuss. It was all very straightforward and the service we received was excellent."

Soundworks, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this m

UK - Three innovative products, 11 stand-out projects and a UK lighting designer were the outstanding winners at the Lighting Design Awards at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London, on 30 March.

PLASA and the PLASA Show played a key role in the evening, sponsoring the new Entertainment Lighting Award, designed to give lighting designers recognition for their creative work. Following a rigorous judging process, the Award went to the Old Man of Storr in Trotternish on the Isle of Skye, which became the centrepiece for an extraordinary night-time event as an average of 200 people nightly took the midnight walk to the spectacular rock pinnacle. The Storr forest, cliffs and corrie provided the backdrop for a subtle and imaginative light and sound installation by Dave Bryant.

Peterborough Cathedral, which dates to 1118, won the Heritage Lighting Award for a scheme,

UK - Blitz Sound was commissioned by religious organisation, the Christ Embassy to provide audio and video equipment in support of a three day Easter rally at ExCel involving 5,000 people on site, plus a further seven million people world-wide via a live satellite feed.

The event was a charismatic renewal conference which started with all 5,000 devotees gathered in the main hall for a welcome and worship. A programme of interactive events including teaching and prayers then took place all day Friday and these were followed by an overnight vigil. A further two shows ran on Saturday and Sunday featuring charismatic leader, Pastor Chris preaching from Lagos. This sermon was transmitted via a hard satellite feed to Excel ensuring it could be watched in both London and South Africa. Blitz Sound recorded both audio and video throughout the four days, which were edited, remixed and sol

The Netherlands - With the delivery of a complete Alcons LR16 pro-ribbon line-array system, Amsterdam-based Focus Showequipment has chosen Alcons as main sound system brand for their rental inventory. The system consists of 18 pcs. LR16 ribbon line-array modules, 6 pcs. LR16B line-array bass complete with accompanying ALC4 2x 2kW controller-amplifiers and processing.

The choice for Alcons was made on basis of a number of comparison tests and on basis of their experience with a large number of brands from Focus' own rental inventory. Most important decision criteria were performance, logistics, but also a wide acceptance of the brand throughout the different application areas.

Paul Lassooij, co-owner, and responsible for the rental equipment, says: "Important for a large organisation as Focus, is to serve a largest possible range of applications with a smallest number of d

Greece - Christie partners AVC Productions recently provided complete technical support for a multi-venue Global Symposium on Vision Correction in Athens, on behalf of McMenemy Hill Live Communication, whose client is the eyecare specialists Bausch & Lomb.

Working with Bausch & Lomb's appointed communications agency McMenemy Hill, AVC supplied reinforcement for fifty presenters over the three days, using four of their newly purchased Christie (SXGA+) S+12Ks. These 12,000 ANSI Lumen, 3-chip DLP devices projected in 4:3 aspect ratio onto two butted displays, were soft-edge blended to create a widescreen canvas measuring 6m x 2.37m.

Fitted with 4.5-7.3:1 long-throw lenses, the S+12K's, ground-stacked at the back of the room on 10ft Dexion mounts, were able to provide the perfect solution, delivering razor sharp images over the 22m distance, and capturing the stunning detail of th

Belgium - Barco, a pioneer in creative LED technology, is delighted to announce the first permanent LED installation on a building façade. The Uniqa building in Vienna, Austria stands at an impressive 20 floors and has been fitted with 45,000 LED blocks covering a staggering 7000sqm. The LED blocks, attached to profiles in between the window panes, bring the building to life and make it one of the most striking towers in Vienna.

Designed by lighting designers Licht Kunst Licht, the installation is a fantastic example of how LED can be used creatively to transform buildings and identify them as distinctive landmarks. Licht Kunst Licht understand lighting design as an integral part of architecture by emphasizing its effect on spatial quality as opposed to stressing the formal lighting fixture design. At night the tailor made content for Uniqa brings the building to life and ensur

Europe - Hailed as one of the key pop lyricists of his generation, he made his name as the vocalist of the highly influential British rock group The Smiths. Morrissey's latest tour of Europe has been carrying full production provided by SSE Audio Group, featuring a Nexo Geo T system with Camco amplification.

The tour, which started in Sweden, has visited a diverse list of venues, from well-known arenas to town halls. Used in full at the largest shows, for example at London's Alexandra Palace, Morrissey's Nexo Geo T tangent-array sound reinforcement system comprised left and right arrays of 12x T4805s and three T2815s, with a centre cluster of two T4805s plus three T2815s. Sub bass was delivered by Nexo CD18s and the entire system was powered by Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers, with Vortex 4s to power the stage monitor system.

FOH engineer Dave 'Milky' Millward explained: "It's

Hungary - DiGiCo's ongoing worldwide sales expansion has recently enjoyed a significant boost with the appointment of Chromatica as the brand's distributor in Hungary.

Chromatica is a relatively young but fast-growing company, with founder Makkay Imre setting himself the challenge of bringing the very best audio brands to the eastern European country.

"The company has been established for four years and our aim is to provide superb audio quality and the world's best support to our customers," says Imre . "And with brands like Meyer Sound, Audix, Furman and Avalon already in our inventory, we knew that we needed to be able to supply very high class digital mixing consoles.

"The truth is that it didn't take long to find the best choice," he continues. "We had so much good feedback about DiGiCo consoles from system techs and sound engineers from ri

UK - In celebration of the Betapack's 16th birthday Zero 88 are launching an updated version at ABTT this year.

All the best features of the Betapack have been retained so users can be assured that the Betapack 3 will offer the same reliability and durability as the current version. A number of new features have been added to improve the dimmers functionality. These have all been added with no extra cost, ensuring the Betapack 3 continues to offer fantastic value for money.

The new features include: MCB protection as standard; isolated DMX input; patchable per channel; preheat, topset and dimmer law selectable per channel; 12 programmable backup memories; three programmable 99-step sequences with adjustable times; auto DMX termination when loop-through plug is removed; temperature monitoring and progressive overheat shutdown.

The versatility of the Betapack means it can be i

USA - Just in case you couldn't be on the scene for NAB 2006, the videohounds at b-roll.net have got you covered. As one of the web's leading resources for TV news photographers, b-roll.net expert shooters made the leap this year from writing about NAB tocapturing the highlights on video. To make sure the sound was as crisp as the images and editing, they hit the Las Vegas Convention Centre equipped with Lectrosonics wireless microphones.

"NAB 2006 was the ultimate test for a wireless system," reports Kevin Johnson, founder of b-roll.net. "Even with so much RF running around the building, we never had a problem with losing the signal from our Lectrosonics mics. In all my experiences with Lectrosonics they've been a solid performer, and that held true in the challenging environment that ashow the size of NAB presents." The b-roll team set out with highly porta

Aisia - Singapore-based distribution company Peak Fusion Audio Design has become the new exclusive distribution partner for HK Audio products in Singapore and Malaysia.

For several years, Peak Fusion has been active on the market as a distribution and installation company both in the professional audio and the AV segment and is also working exclusively with other German manufacturers as well.

Managing director Daniel Ng says: "With HK Audio, we have been able to add another premiere German manufacturer to the fold. Both the Portable Sound products with the active LUCAS systems and the high-end Cohedra and Cohedra Compact line array systems are the final touch in rounding out our product portfolio."

HK Audio international sales manager Christian Stumpp adds: "By working together with Peak Fusion, we are taking another major step in establishing our brand throug

UK - ADLIB Audio continues its excellent working relationship with the Charlatans, supplying a JBL VerTec line array system and full sound production and crew for their latest UK tour.

The band have just released their new Simpatico album, and with a loyal concert going fanbase, all the gigs have been packed with punters and enthusiasm.

The tour visits a variety of venues and is being mixed by FOH engineer Dian Barton. For the larger spaces, the standard configuration is 12 VerTec 4888 elements a side, together with six ADLIB 418 subs a side, explains ADLIB's systems engineer and FOH 'babysitter' Steve Pattison.

VerTec is an ideal system for a band like the Charlatans, who combine a serious rock 'n' roll attitude with power, driving guitars and intricate lyrics. They are not a band that requires rocket science to get a good sound, as they all play well and solidly, it

France - Graham Pattison has been Front Of House engineer for many bands and spent years with Kula Shaker and, more recently, Gomez. When it comes to recording, there's just one mic that Pattison takes into the studio, the SE Gemini.

Pattison is a freelance sound engineer based in Paris who has worked with a host of big bands and artists. For years he worked as Kula Shaker's FOH engineer and when the band reformed recently they asked him to work with them at their reunion gigs.

"The gigs were really good," he says. "I didn't know whether to get involved again to be honest. It was kind of like going out with an old girlfriend! I turned up and mixed the first show and it went great."

Pattison has a long list of other bands on his CV too. "I've worked with Spiritualized and, over the last couple of years, I worked with Gomez who are now very big in Amer

Thailand - Visualization specialist Barco is delighted that its products were selected for the MTV Asia Awards in Thailand on 6 May 2006. The Siam Paragon in Bangkok was illuminated not only with international and Asian stars celebrating the fifth spectacular MTV Asia Awards 2006, but also a host of Barco's leading creativity products were on set to provide the visual displays.

The highly creative set design was built around two OLite 510 LED displays totaling 30sq.m of modular LED blocks. Set back from the OLite were a total of 8,000 MiPIX blocks which gave the set depth. Two SLM R12+ projectors provided the 4,600 capacity crowd with a front seat view of what was happening on stage, as well the MTV short animation film that played at intervals throughout the show.

All Barco products were supplied and installed by Tedtronic Pte Ltd of Singapore, one of Barco's la

Belgium - Barco, pioneer in creative LED technology, is again centre stage at this year's 2006 Eurovision Song contest. With an impressive and varied combination of the latest LED technology and projectors, the show is set to be the biggest ever and is a tribute to Barco's leadership in international events.

As the eyes of an estimated 400 million viewers across the world tune-in to watch the semi-final and final in Athens, Greece on 18 and 20 May, they will see one of the most spectacular stage designs ever, featuring more than 1,100 of the industry's standard Barco ILite 6 XP LED tiles, 4,800 OLite 510 modules and 8 high brightness SLM-R12+ projectors all being controlled by the Encore show control system. Barco rental partner Procon (Germany) - ETF (Belgium) delivered all visualization equipment used on the show.

Integrated into the gigantic 13-metre-wide stage floor

Australia - Norwest Productions, one of Australasia's largest sound rental companies, have recently added an additional 66 fP Series amplifiers to their already impressive inventory giving them well over 1million watts of Lab Gruppen power.

The main amplifier model in Norwest's inventory is the Lab.gruppen fP 6400, which delivers 2300W per channel into 4 ohms in a 2 rack space, 10 kg package. Norwest employ their Lab Gruppen amplifiers to power a variety of speaker systems as well as for a wide range of applications including corporate shows, tours, dance parties and large scale events. Some recent Norwest shows and events powered by Lab.gruppen include: Black Eyed Peas tour, REM tour, Michael Crawford, Tamworth Country Music Awards, Billy Connolly tour, Carols in the Domain, The Wiggles tour, East Coast Blues and Roots Festival, 2006 Commonwealth Games ceremonies and of

The Netherlands - Midas Consoles Holland is pleased to announce the sale of a Midas XL8 Live Performance System to rental company Hof Audio - Licht - Beeld, a long-established rental company whose top-end inventory includes several Midas analogue consoles.

"Since Midas announced it was to produce a digital console which would retain, and indeed improve upon, the sound characteristics of XL4, we had huge confidence in the new product," says company owner Bart Hof. "We also know that, this being Midas, we can be assured of excellent quality, service and support. There's a niche for XL8 in the Dutch market, and as we are an established and trusted company we are well placed to introduce it."

Both Hof and his chief engineer Auke Meijer are exited about the possibilities XL8 offers, both in technical and commercial terms. "Aside from the sound quality and r

UK - XL Video supplied a 20 by 4.8 metre landscape curved SoftLED backdrop and Catalyst digital media server control system for Irish comedian Dara O'Briain's DVD shoot at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London for Open Mike Productions.

Series producer Alex Hardcastle specifically wanted a simple 'screen effect' with no text or recognizable images, just abstract effect and colours. He wanted about eight or 10 different colour states that could slowly morph throughout the show, matching his cues for the two acts and encore.

SoftLED was suggested as the ideal solution, and the deal was set up by XL's Al Green who says: "Open Mike specifically wanted controllable, changing colour states with different intensities across the screen, as opposed to solid colours."

XL achieved the basic brief that the audience should be concentrating on O'Briain's dialogue and banter, rat

USA - Aviom, Inc., manufacturer of the Pro16 Monitor Mixing System, recently announced the appointment of two new international distributors in the Middle East and one in Sweden. The new agreements are expected to significantly expand distribution of Aviom's products to all market sectors including, but not limited to: live-sound reinforcement, houses of worship, clubs, conference centres, stadiums, schools, professional musicians, and broadcast and recording studios.

"We are very pleased to add these three distributors to our expanding worldwide team," says Joel Brazy, director of international sales. "International markets represent a huge growth opportunity for Aviom, and our strategy is to partner with leaders in their markets. These new distributors represent only high quality products and we expect them to help Aviom achieve rapid growth throughout each regi

UK - Lighting designer Dave Bryant (DB) won a 2006 Lighting Design Award for his stunning site specific work, The Storr - Unfolding Landscape. The coveted Awards are sponsored by architectural publication Lighting magazine, and The Storr was the first winner of their new Entertainment category.

The project - for Scottish environmental arts organization nva Arts - involved the design of an eco-friendly lighting installation for eight weeks of live promenade performance highlighting the breathtaking darkness of The Storr Footpath on the beautiful Isle of Skye (link to full story on Avo website).

DB says: "I was surprised to be nominated let alone to win the Award! It's fantastic that such an unusual project should receive such an accolade."

The project led to Avolites developing a new rechargeable battery powered dimmer which then went into production a

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