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Worldwide - QSC's C-series ceiling speakers are playing an important role on the current Robbie Williams Close Encounters tour - as part of a unique electronic media concept, piloted for Blink TV.

The company responsible for the video wanted to develop a system whereby electronic merchandise would be advertised to the tour audience by way of many large screen displays around the outside of the event arenas.

The idea was that SMS messaging would be given to text certain words to obtain video or music downloads onto the user's mobile phones. The displays were required to be housed in weather-resistant casings, be easily maintainable and be able to provide a good quality, high level audio output.

To achieve the solution Blink TV approached Jon Swain's company SPC, who were asked to advise and project manage the entire manufacture and supply of the equipment together with

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UK - Norwich based Viking Stage Lighting has just purchased its 200th Robe fixture. The company, headed by Ian Leonard, passed the 200 mark with the acquisition of a batch of the all-new ColorWash 575AT Zoom s.

Viking specialises in theatrical sales and hire, and initially bought the ColorWash 575AT Zoom because of its "Superb zoom - which, along with light output and functionality, is better than any other product on the market at the moment".

Since having these fixtures in their own hire stock, Viking has demo'd them to many others and consequently sold several more CW 575AT Zooms to its clients.

Viking has steadily replaced their entire hire stock inventory with Robe moving lights over the last two years, now only leaving six non Robe units. In terms of fixtures, they have everything from the expediently sized Spot 150XT spot to the powerful workhorse ColorSpot

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USA - The Lollapalooza Festival in early August was an extraordinary event, offering 130 bands on eight stages over the course of three days in Chicago's lakeside Grant Park. Also living up to the dictionary definition of lollapalooza ("something outstanding of its kind"), according to Dolby, was the Dolby Lake Processor, four of which were deployed by production services company StagePro on the festival's Playstation and AMD stages.

"We love it - it sounds awesome," said Tim Smith, production manager for StagePro, of the Dolby Lake Processor. The company purchased the four units two months ago. "The ability to make changes from multiple locations around the venue, as well as the intuitive control software made tuning the rigs a joy. There were many compliments from both band engineers and patrons. For where we were at with our audio systems, which are b

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UK - Visitors to this year's PLASA Show (running from September 10-13 at Earls Court One, London) will be able to learn more about PLASA's work on the development of a new National Rigging Certificate - an initiative designed to give riggers working in all sectors a framework by which their expertise and knowledge can be measured.

Over the last year, PLASA has been working closely with the industry and a range of government bodies to develop a scheme that will not only serve the specific needs of the industry, but also achieve national recognition.

A Rigging Advisory Group, consisting of key figures from the rigging industry, has been established and has been working closely with PLASA on the development of the Certificate, most critically on the content of the qualification and on how the assessment process will be delivered. This consultation has allowed PLASA to develop an

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UK - Star Events Group Ltd supplied over 50 structures at both the Telford and Chelmsford sites of this year's V Festival.

Along with the 20m four bay Orbit stages, SEGL also supplied stages three and four, over 30 site towers at each venue, wheelchair user platforms, camera platforms, front of house structures, DJ Risers and the 'Tree House', a raised enclosed television interview room.

Mike Goodwin, manager of Star Orbit, says: "We were extremely happy to be given the opportunity to supply the majority of structures at this year's V sites. The weather was particularly challenging, with quite heavy on-off rain throughout, but everyone responded brilliantly and the event was a great success all round."

(Chris Henry)

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USA - Outline, manufacturer of pro audio, have announced its partnership with Morin Productions. Effective since July 15 2006, Morin Productions will act as the exclusive distributor for Outline products in the United States and Canada. The principals of Morin Productions, Tim Morin, Brandon Pritchard and Tom Nichols, each have over 15 years direct experience in the audiovisual and entertainment industry.

Morin Productions can be contacted on:
29 Front Street
Nashua, NH 03060
Tel: 603-880-3880
Fax: 603-880-3844

(Chris Henry)

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UK - LD Patrick Marks has found the Avolites Diamond 4 lighting console's Fixture Exchange facility a life saver during their extensive summer festival style tour. He's touring his own console everywhere and picking up a variety of local productions across the UK and Europe. The schedule has also encompassed a 3-week Swedish tour with lighting sound and trucking all supplied by Copenhagen-based Nordic.

Having the D4 and using Fixture Exchange has not only meant: "No more re-programming shows on sunny afternoons with no time!" says Marks, it's also saved him from worrying about whether the fixtures for the day are Martin, Robe, Vari*Lite. Whatever they are, his show remains the same.

Marks 'converted' to the D4 at the beginning of the summer after many years of running Status Quo's show on a Diamond 3. Now he's using the D4 and the very latest software versions which

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UK - Pearl Jam, Muse, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, The Arctic Monkeys and Primal Scream were among the highlights of a great weekend of music enjoyed by over 150,000 fans at the Carling Leeds and Reading Festivals.

Mojo Barriers supplied over 1000m of barrier across the two sites. Aluminium Mojo Barrier, incorporating the Barrier Load Monitor System (BLMS), formed the main front of stage systems with the new secondary barrier system employed at both festival sites constructed from steel barrier, in the new configuration, located between the front of house mixer and stage.

Headliners Pearl Jam's last festival tour in Europe was shattered by the tragic deaths of nine people during their Rosklide show. So their return to festival stages this year was accompanied by particularly close attention to health and safety issues.

This is an area Mean Fiddler's festival director Melv

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UK - HSL is supplying a full floor lighting system for Snow Patrol's current UK and European outdoor festival tour, which includes an impressive LED back wall consisting of 57 ColorKinetics iColor Tiles and 57 Chroma-Q DB4 LED fixtures, plus 16 Robe moving lights.

The band's stunning stage look is being created by the slick teamwork of lighting designer Dave Sherwin and visuals operator Robin Haddow. The tour is being project managed for HSL by Mike Oates.

In addition to the LED and moving lights, HSL is also supplying six vertical trussing towers, two pairs each at 10ft in the centre, 8ft and 6ft on the outside; six two cell Moles and six Atomic strobes - each of which sits on each tower, along with six of the Robe ColorSpot 1200ATs on top. The rest of the moving lights are scattered around the floor, along with an additional 20 DB4s.

HSL designed and supplied the custom sc

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UK - With the industry's leading companies rolling out major new products and services, PLASA06 is going to play a central role in delivering solutions to many of the high profile projects, events and tours of the coming 12 months.

The specialists exhibiting at PLASA06 have the expertise to make anything possible with technologies developed by this industry transforming the quality of experience within the entertainment, events, live arts and leisure markets to a level scarcely imaginable 10 years ago.

And in the building and architectural sectors, the development of audio, video and IT technologies has also transformed the way buildings are designed and used - aesthetically, practically and architecturally - with information and safety-related systems now essential ingredients in the development of public spaces and buildings.

All these developments - together with the next

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USA - Founded in 1867, Howard University is better known for academics than athletics, sports are still a prominent aspect of student life.The university's homecoming football game and accompanying celebration is considered one of the capital's more notable annual events, with thousands of local residents joining the 11,000-plus student body to partake in the week-long gala, which features a cornucopia of musical entertainment and special celebrity guests.

With another year fast approaching, Athletic Department facility manager Isaac Darden knew it was time to upgrade Greene Memorial Stadium's aging sound system, and sought the advice of Beltsville, MD-based RCI Sound Systems, the firm behind other local high-profile jobs including Kennedy Center Concert Hall and the Washington Redskins' FedEx Field.

"We knew the stadium needed an audio system that could withstand the Was

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UK - At the PLASA Show this year, a trio of the UK's best-known TV lighting directors will gather together for what promises to be an entertaining session on the ups and downs of the business of lighting for television.

John Watt, Mike Le Fevre and Ian Dow are all TV lighting directors who by default have specialised in different genres of television - as well as just lighting whatever comes next! They hope to be inspired by questions from the floor to explain how they attempt to keep the quality of lighting in television, whilst battling budgets and the idiosyncrasies of producers. They may well illustrate their remarks with stories of the triumphs and disasters of their careers!

Chaired by PLASA's executive director and former L&SI editor Ruth Rossington, the session will take place from 3.30-5.00pm on Tuesday 12 September, in the seminar theatre on Level Two of Earls Court.

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UK - PLASA - the Professional Lighting and Sound Association - has announced a new events strategy to drive the development of its market-leading PLASA Show and to advance its range of business and networking events. Central to this major initiative will be the roll-out of a number of satellite events, including the launch of a regional networking event in the north of England, details of which will be announced shortly.

The move will be underpinned by the launch of PLASA Events Ltd, which will implement the new strategy, and also allow PLASA to build on the success of its established PLASA Show, paving the way for a major relaunch of the event in 2007. The new division will be headed by two faces familiar to the industry: Nicola Rowland joins the PLASA team as director of events and Sophie Matthews joins as operations manager. Formerly with Clarion Events, both have wide experi

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Hawaii - The Maui Arts & Cultural Center's (MACC) was founded in 1994and hosts over 1,700 events a year in nine facilities.

Two of the MACC's premier venues, the 1,200-seat Harold K.L. Castle Theater and the 250-seat McCoy Studio Theater, have just been given major audio upgrades with the installation of new self-powered Meyer Sound systems. The Castle Theater's new MICA compact high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers, 700-HP ultrahigh-power subwoofers, UPJ-1P compact VariO, UPA-2P compact narrow coverage, M1D ultra-compact curvilinear array, and CQ-1 wide coverage main loudspeakers, are put to use with the aid of Meyer Sound's RMS remote monitoring system and a SIM 3 audio analyzer.

The system was installed by Docktrdave Audio, specialists in theatre sound system retrofits. Company president Dave Lawler and his partners, Craig Doubet and Eric Laliberte, saw the opportunity

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UK - UK cable specialist VDC Trading supplied a large amount of cabling to A.C. Lighting's Special Projects division, which recently installed a background audio system for the newly refurbished Wembley Arena. A.C. Lighting was contracted by Wembley London Limited through Stace Project Management to provide the background audio system for the Arena's five separate sound zones, including specification and supply of all equipment, custom-built AV racks, electrical power and data cabling, trunking, routing and programming.

The installation of the system was scheduled to take place during the final stages of the building works, so A.C. was under both budget and deadline pressure to complete all work in time for the re-opening. A.C. chose VDC because the characteristics of its cables were ideal for their requirements, plus the company was able to respond quickly to their brief, which

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UK - Top DJ, Paul van Dyk, has adopted Allen & Heath's new Xone:3D mixer-controller as the core control element in his live performance set-up. PvD has purchased two Xone:3D's, one for touring, and one installed in his studio.

"The 3D is perfect for my live set up as it's not just a mixer, it's also a controller, which means I can programme in real time using the unit's MIDI sends and returns," explains van Dyk. "As soon as I got the 3D I configured it with all my software and it worked straight away. Iuse two computers - one loaded with Scratch Live using time-coded CDs, and the other with Ableton Live and all of my sequences and elements. I also have an E-MU keyboard, which records and plays back sequences. And at heart is the 3D, controlling and syncing it all. It's liberating - I'm constructing and creating tracks on the spot, and every performanceis unique.&q

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UK - For companies involved in the sale, hire or use of radio microphones, in-ear monitoring systems, talkback systems or wireless links, then next week's PLASA '06 will be the place to be.

On the Tuesday of the Show (which runs from Sunday 10 through to Wednesday 13 at Earls Court One), BEIRG - the British Entertainment Industry Radio Group - will be hosting a Forum to inform attendees of the current situation with regards to the impending sell-off of the RF spectrum.

At present, it appears that if the industry doesn't act, the entire RF Spectrum from 470-862MHz will be auctioned to the highest bidder. The Forum is a chance for anyone affected to have their say and contribute to the debate about how the industry can preserve enough spectrum for it to continue to do what it does, in the way that it does it.

The forum moderators will be Duncan Bell of Autograph Sound recordin

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UK - The Birmingham Conservatoire, a faculty within The University of Central England, selected the summer break to undertake a major refurbishment of The Adrian Boult Hall - a refurbishment which included the first UK installation of the RCF TTL33A line array.

The hall, built in the 1970s was designed and equipped for recording orchestral concert works having a technical control room, but as an acoustic concert platform had only very limited public address equipment. The largest element of work involved sound system infrastructure and equipment. The shortcomings with the public address have now been resolved with the help of the new RCF TTL33A line array loudspeakers. Two arrays with five TTL33A segments in each and two TTS 18A sub-bass units were floor mounted rather than flown with the arrays.

The TTL33A is a compact active box with 1250W of amplification (2 x 500W + 1 x 25

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Worldwide - Like floating cities, Carnival Cruise Lines offer their passengers a lot of variety. Now grandMA's play a key role in the line's entertainment show control. "The grandMA system is an important component for technical operations in the main showroom on our ships," says Preston Bircher, entertainment technical projects manager for Carnival. "Most ships have between two and seven production shows and although they're completely different, they utilise the same basic rig and light plot. The difference is in the programming with all the moving lights and colour changers. The flexibility of the grandMA system is fantastic," he continues.

Demfis Fyssicopulos of dfdesign served as grandMA lighting programmer for Carnival's 2,052-passenger Sensation, with the next installation scheduled for the line's 2,052-passenger Fascination. "These vessels are si

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UK - When the Rose Bowl was constructed at the start of the millennium, offering a new headquarters for Hampshire County Cricket Club, it offered all the facilities expected of a modern stadium. Shaped like a circular amphitheatre, its flexible capacity of 9,000-plus rose to over 19,000 for the 2006 Twenty20 International between England and Sri Lanka. In addition to offering cricket at the highest level, the stadium also hosts rock concerts and numerous functions and conferences.

But five years after Hampshire played their first county match at the Rose Bowl, there were signs that the public address system was leaving a lot to be desired - particularly in terms of speech intelligibility and even distribution. This is vital, not only for voice evacuation purposes, but for spectators to keep up with the commentaries from the scorer's boxes.

Rose Bowl plc, the owner of Hampshire

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UK - The Rizla Unleashed Music Festival delivered a weekend of music from a breath-taking cliff-top location overlooking Watergate Bay in Newquay, UK in early August. The sold-out event, Cornwall's largest music festival, attracted 14,500 people for the weekend. Friday's headliner Feeder were joined by The Automatic, Mystery Jets, Captain and others, while Starsailor and Graham Coxon headlined the Saturday show.

Concert Sound UK was in charge of sound production and provided their new Adamson enclosures to use. Concert Sound's new T-21 Subs garnered excitement from System Tech, Andy Walker, who commented: "They deliver all that was promised and more. What a stunning sounding, innovative product!"

The sound system design was perfected by Didier Del Fitto of DV2 - Adamson Europe, who chose 24 Adamson Y10s and six Adamson Spektrix as downfills for the main arrays. A tot

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UK - Denon DJ have signed a sponsorship deal with MOBO Award-winning DJ Shortee Blitz. Nominated again for a MOBO in this year's Best DJ category Shortee remains one of the UK's most influential hip hop exponents, with two weekly radio shows on KISS FM. The DJ will be using a pair of Denon's flagship DN-S3500 CD/MP3 players on future dates around the world, and to premix his radio show.

An avowed devotee of vinyl, Shortee's signature skills of cutting and mixing have been honed over a long career. But in the new millennium he has had to face the reality of the market. "The fact is that less and less music is being pressed on vinyl these days and I needed something that would make the transition (to CD) easily. I have tried various vinyl emulation devices but they just don't have that feel."

He was urged to try Denon's flagship CD/MP3 player, the DN-S3500 by Simon Fra

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USA - Eat to the Beat flew 6 top catering crew from the UK over to Chicago to work alongside the 18 strong predominantly Chicago based team for Lollapalooza 2006. The event was produced by Capital Sports & Entertainment and Charles Attal Presents, with catering provided over 11 days on site.

For three days Grant Park was transformed into a celebration of music with fans gathering from around the world to enjoy one of the summer's most powerful line-ups including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West, The Raconteurs, The Flaming Lips and more than 120 other bands.

On show days, the Eat to the Beat team were catering for 850 people, three meals a day. Menus were planned in advance to take into consideration the hot weather and the many dietary requirements. Key favourites during the festival included the full Anglo-American breakfast to cater for varying tastes of the international

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Worldwide - Marquee Audio have helped solve a logistical problem for Britannia Row Productions at the mixing desk on the current Robbie Williams Close Encounters European tour.

Faced with a large returns system, Brit Row had been amalgamating all sources at front-of-house and then running the signals via a digital matrix to create the various sends to the speaker system.

"The loudspeaker controllers were also digital input - which meant that a large number of digital channels were travelling from FOH to stage left and right," notes Marquee's digital manager, Andy Huffer. Seeking a more efficient solution, Britannia Row settled on an Optocore system, due to its simplicity and reliability.

Roly Oliver, the production company's equipment manager, says: "Optocore was always top of our list in terms of audio quality, history and configurability - and the fact that

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