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South Africa - Lighting designer Tim Dunn used nearly 300 Robe fixtures in his colourful and vibrant design for Miss World 2009, which was staged at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Johannesburg. It was the largest number of Robe fixtures to date that Dunn has used on a single event.

The show was recorded by SABC and broadcast live to 80 of the 112 participating countries, and for the first time - to the US, to India for both Hindi and English channels and to China via CCTV4, reaching an estimated viewing audience of between 1 and 2 billion. It also had to look great for the 3,500 live audience who packed into the venue to watch the show.

The creative challenges included making it look lively and visually interesting whilst covering the vast stage area and 45m wide spherical set designed by Dewet Meyer. Dunn also contended with the additional pressure of creating a dy

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USA - To improve service and support capabilities to customers and channel partners, Element Labs is partnering with two parts and repair firms to augment its service capabilities. These new partners are Lighting Hospital, located in Bristol, UK and LightParts, located in Austin, Texas. Customers in Europe, Mid-East and Africa (EMEA) will be supported by Lighting Hospital, while customers in the Americas and Asia will be serviced by LightParts.

Under these new agreements, Element Labs will continue to set a high standard for service and to provide warranty repairs, paid repairs, and technical support services to customers for all products. LightParts and Lighting Hospital will enable that standard by performing all warranty and paid service repairs on the Versa line of products - Stealth, Versa Tubes, Versa Tiles, and Versa Rays. They will also sell spare parts on these product

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Ireland - Void Acoustics reports that its distributor for Ireland, Decibel Audio, has achieved another installation coup, installing Void loudspeakers and amplifiers throughout Twisted Pepper, one of Dublin's premier night venues. After hearing the performance of the Void systems at Matter, Twisted Pepper contracted Decibel to re-equip the club's four spaces as part of a major upgrade programme. The final installation involves around 30 Void loudspeakers, including Air Motion and Airten systems, plus models from Voids Impulse, Stasys and Viper series, together with Infinite and V Amp power amplifiers.

Trevor O'Shea, head of Twisted Pepper's parent company Bodytonic Music, visited Matter in London's O2, where Void's loudspeakers are installed on the VIP level. He commented: "We visited Matter in London last year, and the Void speakers and spec really caught our attention how

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Italy - Set across 46,000sq.m of land in the west of Turin, Le Gru is the largest shopping mall in Italy. Immersed among its 180 shops is a massive and dedicated food court, occupying the Centre's Market Square.

Operating under the name Top Food, it has been set up by Gruppo Pasquettaz. Although there are seven restaurants, the food emporium consists of much more, including Butchery, Self Service and Delicatessen as well as Fish Restaurant, Pizza, Steak House, Self Service Fish & Seafood, Risotteria, Bar American and Sandwich Bar.

Director Roberto Pasquettaz wanted background music to be distributed evenly across the seven restaurant zones and satellite TV images to the plasma relay screens - but wanted local, easily-operable control.

QSC Audio was recommended to this new-build project at an early stage, and after participating in an evaluation, impressed Mr. Pasquett

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Finland - It makes little sense to keep an expensive luxury vessel like the MS Viking Cinderella tied up in port when her whole ability to make money pertains at sea. Viking Line are past masters at managing such efficiencies, conducting most routine servicing whilst on the move; it is however inevitable that some things can only be done at the harbour-side. "She was docked for three weeks earlier this year" informed Mr Jouni Sironen AV Coordinator for Viking Line, "so scheduling a refit of the discotheque and an upgrade in the nightclub had to be achieved alongside many other functions, all of them virtually simultaneously."

If that sounds simple and routine, consider this: "The safety standards on the Viking Line's ships are even stricter than the law requires." Sironen continued. "Cables have to be halogen free and secured in piping or cable

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Denmark - The UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) is taking place at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen 7-18 December. On the first day, press were informed that COP15 is the largest meeting ever held by the UN. It is estimated that 2,500 large and small meetings will be held during the conference.

COP15 will attract over 100 Heads of State and other VIPs, including. As befits such a major event, state-of-the-art conferencing equipment is absolutely essential, and Bosch Security Systems was selected as supplier.

The conference equipment supplied by Bosch Security Systems includes 2,500 delegate microphones mainly of type DCN Next Generation, DCN Next Generation Simultaneous Interpretation equipment in two large plenary rooms and five other meeting rooms; Integrus receivers to enable delegates to listen to interpretations. Furthermore, the central Bosch equipment consists of 50 Ce

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Norway - US President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech marked a glittering début for Oslo City Council Hall's new but low-profile Renkus-Heinz Iconyx IC32 Digitally Steerable Array system. Although scarcely visible, the IC32s and matching subwoofers handled both the Nobel laureate's speech and world-class musical performances equally effortlessly.

Benum, Renkus-Heinz's Norwegian distributor, had been contracted by Oslo City Council to design a permanently installed system capable of delivering high intelligibility throughout the spacious marble-floored hall.

The main audio system comprises a pair of Renkus-Heinz IC32 digitally steerable arrays, supplemented by CF121M active monitors and PN212 active subwoofers. The Iconyx cabinets are custom colored to blend in with the surrounding architecture, mounted flush to the walls.

The IC32s had been installe

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Canada - While country rock band Blue Rodeo does have 11 studio albums to their name with over 3m copies sold, it is in the live environment where they truly seem at home. For their latest cross-Canada tour, lighting designer/director Brad Wagg is using a selection of Compulite Vectors to control a rig which accommodates venues big and small.

A Compulite user for many years, Wagg had production supplier Metalworks Productions bring in a Vector Red for the first leg of the tour before scaling down to a Vector PC system for the latter part of the tour, including many one-off festival gigs. For their annual hometown show at the Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto, the Vector Red returned to control an expanded rig which added a new video element.

Wagg specified the Vector Red with its triple touchscreens to give him added flexibility and speed of programming while he essentially buske

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Spain - Vieta and Seesound are moving house. The new premises are located central Barcelona, just 10 minutes from Placa Catalunya.

The new building houses a full demo room and training facility for Digidesign Venue, Adamson, Powersoft, Function One and all the other brands distributed by Seesound including Vieta Pro.

The address is: Vico, 30 - Local comercial 2, 08021 Barcelona, Spain. Tel: + 34 93 544 37; Web www.seesound.es

(Jim Evans)

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Qatar - Stage One were recently involved in creating a little Christmas spirit in the state of Qatar, when they were asked by marketing and events agency WRG to provide some super-sized Christmas decorations.

Destined for the newly developed area of Porto Arabia, the first phase of a dynamicupmarket shopping, dining and residential district of Doha, the developers of the area wereaiming to provide some festive cheer for Porto Arabia's international clientele.

Stage One were asked to construct: a giant 16m-diameter wreath, which weighed in at two tonnes and was attached to one of Porto Arabia's entrances; 30 scenically wrapped gift boxes, which were placed in various locations around the development and varied in size up to the largest at 4m x 4m; and two enormous scenic Christmas trees, one at 6m high, the other at 12m high.

"Sourcing then constructing the amount of ite

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UK - SSE Audio Group recently designed the biggest system ever installed into Sheffield Arena, enabling 12,000 people to witness BBC's 1Xtra Live spectacular. With two stages - one in the round and the other end-on - it was also the biggest stand-alone event in the history of the 1Xtra digital network, which specialises in black music.

Dizzee Rascal, Tinchy Stryder, JLS, Taio Cruz, The Sugababes and many more performed at the gig which was hosted by DJs Trevor Nelson and Mistajam - with Tim Westwood DJing for the night.

To optimise the sound coming from both the main live stage and the in-the-round second stage - used by presenters, DJs and playback artists - the company fielded two Soundcraft Vi6 digital consoles.

The live desk had 48 inputs - running active splits to the OB truck - while the show desk had 32 channels of presenter's mics, DJs and playback passing thr

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UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies presented a British Racing Drivers' Club award to 2009 Formula 1 World Champion, Jenson Button, at the BRDC Annual Awards luncheon. Over 400 people gathered at the InterContinental Hotel in Park Lane, London, for this year's event.

Hosted by Tiff Needell, the star-studded occasion featured many of motor racing's finest heroes from past and present to celebrate the success stories of the 2009 racing season. BRDC Club President Damon Hill was joined by fellow British F1 World Champion Sir Jackie Stewart and racing legend Sir Stirling Moss OBE. Other guests included Mark Webber, Christian Horner, Adrian Newey, Ross Brawn, Dario Franchitti and Jason Plato. In addition, The Club welcomed The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, as a distinguished guest.

A.C. Entertainment Technologies sales director, Phill Capstick, along with the BRDC club president a

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Italy - The We Will Rock You musical opened to audiences at the Allianz Theatre in Milan on 4 December, running to 6 January 2010. Once again the displayLED team is involved in the action on stage and has supplied four digiLED screens to the latest production.

The team's history with the WWRY production team goes back a long time as Guy Horrigan supplied the LED screens for WWRY's original show in London's Dominion Theatre, tours in Australia, Japan, and the Cologne, Zurich and the US residencies, the later being at Las Vegas' Paris Casino.

Bob Kronman was head of LED with the show at the Dominion Theatre and later installed the LED screens in Melbourne, Australia for the tour's first residency and in Zurich for its successful run there.

In this latest production, four digiLED Tile screens create a dramatic backdrop of video, animation and spectacular lighting effects

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UK - Exploring the impact that humans have on the global environment is a key theme of the Eden Project, 'global garden' located in a former china clay pit in Cornwall. Fittingly, that theme was also the centrepiece of Beth Derbyshire's multimedia presentation Anthem, performed at Eden this autumn, with BrightSign HD1010 media players, supplied by UK distributor Pixels UK, driving the visual element.

Presented as a joint venture between Eden Project, Derbyshire and Cape Farewell - an organisation devoted to highlighting climate change through culture - Anthem combined a trilogy of films shot by Derbyshire in the Arctic, Newfoundland and the UK, with a live choral performance of music composed by Ulrike Haage.

Dunstable-based Pixels supplied a complete media playback system for the project, comprising three HD1010 compact media players, which were synchronised to

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Europe - Florence and the Machine carried a combined iLive FOH and monitor system on their European tour in September, which included dates in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Holland and Austria. iLive was subsequently specified on dates in the USA and Canada, and hired in from SRD Systems in Kent by management production company, Brit Row, for a special performance as part of the Electric Proms at Camden's Roundhouse.

Dave McDonald, FOH engineer, discovered iLive on the discussion forum of audio professionals' website, www.crewspace.com. It led him to pursue the idea of using iLive on the Florence tour. He said: "With iLive, I can turn up to any type of venue and just plug it in. It's so simple and it's got expensive-sounding FX, good gates and good compressors. The pre-amps are really great and the headroom's amazing. I don't use outboard gear at all

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UK - The organisers of EvenTech Scotland exhibition, which was due to take place on 10-11 February 2010 in Glasgow, have announced that the event has been postponed.

A statement issued by Scattered Media blamed the "current economic climate and the strain this is having on many companies' budgets at present" and said that they were "in the process of looking at the calender to find suitable dates later in the year".

(Lee Baldock)

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Czech Republic / Slovakia - The first joint Czech and Slovak version of Pop Idol was recently broadcast in the Czech Republic (TV Nova) and Slovakia (Markíza) and was a resounding success with 50% viewing shares and a TV audience of nearly three million.

Czecho-Slovak SuperStar first aired in September during the Czecho-Slovak cultural exchange month and runs for 10 weeks.

Martin Professional LC Series LED panels and MAC moving heads make up the majority of a large dynamic lighting package with supply/sale through Martin's Slovak partner Adam A Syn.

The show stage is filled with approximately 300sq.m of LED panels with panels in the stage floor and various other LED spread around the set. But the most crucial visual aspect is projected on backdrop Martin LC Series LED panels via a Martin P3-100 System Controller.

The SuperStar setup includes seven in

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Europe - GE Lighting today confirmed that two projects it filed under a European Commission initiative for cities (The Covenant of Mayors) are among the first to be awarded the Benchmark of Excellence. A Benchmark of Excellence is awarded to a city initiative that represents a world-class successful implementation of sustainable energy technologies. The successful cities that GE partnered with for the 'Benchmark of Excellence, are Motril (Spain) and Budapest (Hungary).

The Covenant of Mayors is a European Commission initiative under which more than 1000 cities have committed to reducing their CO2 emissions by more than 20% by 2020 exceeding the existing EU targets. As part of this initiative, the Commission developed the concept of Benchmarks of Excellence for energy efficient solutions in an urban setting with the aim of creating a best practice forum for c

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UK - Ian Bond of IPB Audio, owner of one of the first Midas PRO6 live audio systems to roll off the production line, has been using it on a 10-week European tour with five-piece progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Bond has a long association with the band, having been their front of house engineer for 10 years.

Bond waited a long time before investing in a digital console for his rental company. "You can have all the recall, built in effects and features you like, but if it doesn't sound good it's pointless," he says. "I was waiting for someone to build a console that sounded like a real console. Midas has done this with the PRO6."

For the Porcupine Tree tour, where the musicians largely create the sound they want at source, Bond is using the console mainly to mix on the fly. However he is making good use of the PRO6's POPulation Group and VCA (variable c

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Italy - Last September, Proel organised a number of important strategic events. The Benelux Meeting was held in early September at Proel's headquarters in Sant'Omero. Organised together with the distributor Heuff Sound & Vision, this event concerned strategy sharing with dealers from the Netherlands.

After a visit to the production and logistics centres in Sant'Omero, they got to participate in demonstrations, seminars and presentations of the entire Proel product range, as well as a tasting of Italian specialties.

Soon after, Proel organised the Moto GP Show in Italy, travelling between Sant'Omero, Cattolica and Misano Adriatico.

In collaboration with Italiacorre, Proel held the first Moto GP Event, on the occasion of the San Marino Motorcycle Grand Prix, in Misano Adriatico (RN). In addition to guided visits to the Proel Headquarters and to the R&D centre in Cattoli

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Greece - DNA Systems, XTA's newly appointed distributor for Greece, recently hosted a training seminar for XTA users in Athens. Thirty pro audio professionals from all over the country gathered together in DNA's showroom to participate in the seminar given by design engineer Waring Hayes assisted by sales director Bill Woods.

"When we met the DNA guys at PLASA, we agreed that we would participate in a training seminar. Takis Tsonopoulos - DNA's managing director - contacted us with a date and an agenda. They told us that they expected 30 people to attend and that is exactly how many did come."

Hayes added: "The audience were largely very familiar with the workings of the DP226 and Audiocore so we concentrated on the DP4 Series, the newer features of Audiocore and the wireless interface. Then Bill gave an overview of some new products such as the DC1048 and the N

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USA - With millions of viewers tuning in to see her perform live on David Letterman's Late Show, Missy Elliot used AKG's wireless microphone to debut her chart topping hit Get Involved. Using her crystal stone AKG D 5 microphone, Elliot was able to showcase her Grammy nominated lyrics to a viewing audience of more than three million people without interruption.

The performance was the first time that Missy Elliot appeared on the Late Show, adding to Letterman's star-studded list of past performers that includes Paul McCartney, Janet Jackson, and Bon Jovi.

With her D 5 hand-held mics, Elliot was able to stand out from past performers thanks to the patented AKG laminated varimotion diaphragm that was able to pick up her most sensitive vocal tones. Also, the supercardiod polar pattern that comes standard on all D 5 mics ensured maximum gain before feedback, a

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France - Rental company Ace Event Group, suppliers of a range of audio-visual services from video and data-processing to LED video screens, has recently purchased 128 modules of digiLED T8S.

Based out of Biarritz, Ace Event Group will be using digiLED's latest product from the Tile series, the T8S for events such as sport, lifestyle company promotions, festival and concerts throughout the South of France. With the new company structure being launched, Ace Event Group was keen to update and increase its LED screen inventory and approached DisplayLED's managing director, Michiel Hettinga, to discuss selling its existing Lighthouse screens and upgrading to new digiLED screens.

Key to Ace choosing the digiLED T8S was the fact that they could be involved in the production process, discussing with the displayLED team its special needs to customise the product to suit its requirement

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USA - The Baby Grand is the smaller of two venues at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware. The historic Grand first opened in 1871 and the Baby Grand debuted next to the Grand in September 2000. The Downtown Wilmington location where it now stands had once been occupied by the Aldine Theatre.

The 300-seat Baby Grand is an intimate venue, which hosts a variety of different performances and features many small independent musical acts. Its stage stretches 56ft, and has a proscenium arch opening that measures approximately 36ft wide by 17ft high. The Baby Grand and The Grand combine to draw approximately 100,000 people to their shows each year.

The Baby Grand's configuration made the installation team's job challenging. Howard Fulton, audio engineer for the Grand Opera House, explained that horizontal coverage was difficult because the Baby Grand's seating area is wider

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