Business

Details

14 March 2016

As the economic development agency for Northern Ireland, Invest NI's role is to grow the economy by helping new and existing businesses to compete internationally and to attract new investment to Northern Ireland. Based in Bedford Street in the heart of Belfast, Invest NI's headquarters boasts striking architecture with its elegant curves and glass detail. Inside the building the strong design features continue, particularly in the main boardroom which forms part of the building's apex.

The installation took place in Invest NI's rounded main boardroom. Due to the shape and acoustics of the room, traditional gooseneck microphones were not suitable. Stephen Briggs, cont

Details

14 March 2016

SAE Liverpool manager Gavin Attard said, "SAE Liverpool has always focused on preparing our students for professional careers, but we also need to address the needs of those who need quick, hands-on and practical help to get up to speed with the greatest industry-standard tools that are set to shape the next generation of DJs and electronic music performers. And that's where our new Ableton Live Course comes in.

"In the space of four weeks we aim to revolutionise perceptions and expectations. Using the most powerful DJ software in the world and one of the most intuitive controllers yet released, we're certain our

Details

14 March 2016

As the event staging company for a number of Fortune 500 companies, meeting and event planners and producers across the United States, Showorks is responsible for some critical projects, and reliability, efficiency and crystal-clear sound are always essential elements. With that responsibility in mind, the company chose a Pro64 digital snake to connect the stage to front of house and for signal distribution to monitors and recording.

"Aviom's Pro64 system is the simplest way of splitting audio between multiple consoles while offering a low noise floor in a design that's lightweight," says Showorks project manager Mark Allen. "It's a lot easier to run Cat 5 or fibre than a piec

Details

14 March 2016

TDE selected VisualDMX software lighting control from Visual Productions to control the sauna's lighting as they required a system that could be programmed with numerous lighting effects yet provide a simple and safe means of customer control. They installed LED lighting within the venue including 2500 pieces of their LED strips from about 33cm each.

These, coupled with other mood lighting - including a fibre optic system for ceiling stars - were divided out acros

Details

14 March 2016

On August 8th in a field in Horam, East Sussex, Gary Moore will top the bill, supported by Mo Foster and local legend Ray Russell. There will also be a special guest appearance by Geno Washington of The Ram Jam Band fame and Chris Difford from Squeeze.

Vibes from the Vines '09 follows the first hugely successful festival in 2006, when organizers raised an impressive £32,000 for Cancer Research UK. This year, with a much bigger show and substantially improved production facilities organizers will be loo

Details

14 March 2016

Steven Cohen Productions, in conjunction with Epic Production Technologies and Syncrolite supplied a large lighting package that includes Martin MAC III Profiles, MAC 700 Profiles and MAC 2000 Washes with lighting control from a Martin Maxxyz and Maxxyz Modules. Video control for low resolution LED screens is from a Martin Maxedia Broadcast.

Production designer for the show is Steve Cohen. Lighting design is by Cohen and Mark Foffano. Foffano programmed for both artists and served as the ove

Details

14 March 2016

Supplied by La Cicala of Dragoni, near Caserta, the audio system was designed by one of Yamaha Musica Italia's consultants to overcome both the acoustic challenges of the venue and to provide an audio solution which delivered maximum versatility and an excellent price/quality ratio.

The heart of the system is a Yamaha DME24N digital mix engine, which takes feeds from four different audio sources, including background music from CD, the soundtrack of DVDs, karaoke vocals and audio file playback from a PC, via a Yamaha MW8CX eight channel USB audio interface and mixer.<

Details

14 March 2016

The Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants Conference, produced by Buckmark Productions for the fifth consecutive year, took place at the Ricoh Arena and this year brought together more Whitbread employees than ever before.

With 2,500 attendees from the restaurant and hotel divisions of Whitbread meeting for the annual conference, Buckmark Productions had to redesign the conference set, creating an 'in the round' seating system with a circular stage in the middle.

Blue i Event Technology was commissioned to design and install the AV equipment required for the event and the new conference format posed new challenges. Ian Riley, project manager for Blue i explained, "Due to the sheer size of t

Details

14 March 2016

"The popularity of the Esplanade Concert Hall and the broad diversity of events presented here, make providing the venue's performance lighting an exciting challenge," says Esplanade's head of lighting, Milton Arnold. "We find that the demands on our capabilities are ever-increasing, so we turned to lighting manufacturer Robert Juliat, and local supplier Total Solution, to provide the followspots and front of house profiles which would ensure our premier venue keeps pace."

He says the RJ 711SX2 zoom profiles were chosen for the Concert Hall's front-of-house lighting

Details

14 March 2016

The stage and show were created by long-time U2 designers Willie Williams and Mark Fisher. With the help of Chuck Hoberman and Barco their vision of a 360° moving video screen was turned into reality. Barco provided more than half a million transformable LED pixels (FLX), which are integrated into a transformable structure designed

Details

14 March 2016

Johnson operated the show for the first part of the tour while Marr completed his work commitments with Die Toten Hosen, after which he took over running the Maximo tour. All lighting equipment including the grandMA2 light was supplied by Blackburn-based Lite Alternative, having just invested in two of the new grandMA2 consoles.

Johnson says, "As soon as I touched the grandMA2 I liked the feel of it. It's neat and compact and the faders are just fantastic. They far surpass any previous motorised faders and in fact, you don't even notice that th

Details

14 March 2016

The centrepiece of the UK's offering is the extraordinary pavilion building - a six storey high object formed from some 60,000 slender transparent rods, which will extend from the structure and quiver in the breeze. During the day, each of these 7.5m long rods will act like fibre optic filaments, drawing on daylight to illuminate the interior, thereby creating a contemplative awe-inspiring space. At night, light sources at the interior end of each rod will allow the whole structure to glow. The pavilion will

Details

14 March 2016

"The introduction of FPGA design and the benefits for the engineers are quite impressive. DiGiCo are frontrunners in this change in audio processing and it is a great result for the Festival that DiGiCo has chosen to become part of the sponsorship programme."

DiGiCo had already won half the battle with Patrick Vogelsang, head of audio for the Festival, before he'd even experienced its consoles firsthand. "It's refreshing to me that the company is so in tune with the industry and the engineers' needs," he says. "When

Details

14 March 2016

The cup lift for the England women's team was enhanced by further CO2 jets and large scale streamer effects using 14 streamer cannons, each holding 1 kilo of streamers.

For the cup lift for the winning Pakistani men's team MTFX also provided the CO2 jets and arena streamer effects, together with a display of pyrotechnics comprising comets, mines and jets and their new five-way Firedance system to provide a colourful choreographed finale.

(Jim Evans)

Details

14 March 2016

To achieve this, the church needed to undertake a major upgrade of its audio system, which has seen a pair of DiGiCo CSD5 consoles installed, one at front of house, the other in its integrated studio facilities.

"We had been using a 36 channel analogue console since 1992, but had issues with not having enough channels and were looking for a long-term solution, one which would be enoug

Details

14 March 2016

Leading the programme will be the 2009 Gottelier Masterclass presented by last year's Gottelier Award Winner, John Stadius of Soundtracs/DiGiCo. Stadius is a highly respected name in audio circles, and will describe his early days in the industry, the formative years of analogue console design, the move to digital, the influence of the SHARC processor and how the latest generation of chip technology has removed historical restrictions on console design leading to new possibilities for the future. This Masterclass will take place at the show on Monday 14 September at 3.00pm, just in advance of the PLASA Innovation Awards Ceremony that evening.

2009 will also see the return

Details

14 March 2016

"The Historic Church of St. Patrick was originally built in 1892 so that workers on the Erie Canal could attend Mass on Sundays," explains Don Beyer of Torrence Sound Equipment Company, the firm responsible for transforming the church's audio presentation.

He adds, "During the 1970s and 80s, like many other Midwest cities, Toledo lost a lot of manufacturing jobs, and the neighbourhood suffered. But the building is a historic landmark, and the diocese decided to revitalise the church with an extensive outreach programme to the Catholic community in greater Toledo. We were called in

Details

14 March 2016

Martin Professional was chosen to share in a special Three Cups celebration for FC Barcelona at Nou Camp Stadium in Barcelona before nearly 100,000 spectators.

Supplier Serveis de l'Espectacle Focus, S.A. provided a Martin package that included MAC 2000 series moving heads, Stagebar 54 LED battens, Jem ZR33 Hi-Mass fog machines and AF-1 fans, together with a large number of followspots, lasers and other special effects for the event. All Martin lighting gear was supplied through Martin's Spanish distributor Ecler. Lighting designer for the event was by Xavier Costas.

(Jim Evans)

Details

14 March 2016

This provides them with a trio of West End venues - all of which have had their technology and mood lighting implanted by Sound Division. First came Whisky Mist in 2006, a reconfiguration at the former Zeta Bar in the Mayfair Hilton - and both this, and its successor, Mahiki in Dover Street continue to thrive.

Tini Bar (a derivation of 'Martini') is the latest. As the name and concept imply, this is open early evening for cocktails before ratcheting up the tempo later on, when the background music of earlier makes way for louder house music and cool new age jazz.

With his long experience of working with the operators, Sound Division MD David Graham knew the best approach to take wit

Details

14 March 2016

The company was employed on 18 events across multiple sites, including three of the UK's highest profile music events, Glastonbury Festival, Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park and Take That concerts in Manchester.

On one of the busiest live music weekends of the year, Eat to the Beat were found at the hub of the Glastonbury Festival, providing backstage catering to the Pyramid Stage and The Other Stage. There they served 6,600 meals to the crew, and many artists specifically requested additional after-show catering in backstage and dressing room areas.

In London, Eat to the Beat teams at Hard Rock Calling served 7,000 meals to the production team alongside Upbeat Event Design who were responsible for artists

Details

14 March 2016

SWG have been involved in the evolution of the Park Stage since its launch three years ago and as a result of their co-operation with MilTec (UK) have been able to keep up to date with the developing catalogue of products from the Chinese lighting manufacturers.

Said SWG operations manager, Mark Bott, "Last year the PR Lighting moving heads were really bright and functional, but the true test for a hire company is how those lights bear up in a live situation. These endured a raft of conditions and we didn't have a single fault, so we were more than happy with them and were pleased to be using them again."

This year the presentation was beefed up for acts which headlined Animal Collect

Details

14 March 2016

Lighting, set and production design was created by Dave Lee, working to an initial brief from Lemar's management who requested a dark and moody ambience for the performance.

Lee also wanted to ensure continuity in that it fitted in to all the venues on the itinerary, so he based the rig on three straight trusses and a serious amount of floor kit, which is "always good for more subtle visual effects like silhouetting and back lighting".

Details

14 March 2016

Rafael Gonzalez is a professional with specific experience in the lighting industry and has been appointed sales manager for Spain.

Thanks to this new set-up, the SGM sales organization will be able to strengthen its relationships with current clients, increase the presence of its products in the region and dynamically develop new corporate strategies, says the company.

(Jim Evans)

Details

14 March 2016

The first thing Ricketts mentions about the 4099 is its sound - a logical observation given that the microphone design is based partially on acoustic test measurements of his sax playing, conducted by DPA design engineer Ole Moesmann.

"The sound is so natural," he says. "I've played about 25 concerts in the past few months across the Scandinavia, the US, Japan and East Africa, and the sound techs always comment on how the sound from my horn through the 4099 requires little or no EQ, and signal output is never an issue for them.

"The same is true onstage - I get a sound from the stage m