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USA - Opera companies typically build grandiose sets befitting the stature of the pieces they produce. But for Florida Grand Opera's recent production of The Barber of Seville, the creative team did something different by using a huge rear projection screen with 20k projector fed by a Martin Maxedia Broadcast media server.

The backdrop graphics provided subtle enhancements to the production, a series of silhouettes and computer-generated animations that were stylish without distracting from the drama of this early 19th-century work.

"The graphics were beautiful and amazing," stated media server programmer Martin Potoczny of Visivo Visual Design who has worked with the Maxedia system for years.

"We used all custom created content by Lava Studio of Miami who provided a hard drive with all the content segments. I then put the show together with timing and

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UK - Adlib Lighting and Sound continue to service international comedy acts with the latest supply of full technical production for US ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. According to Pollstar, Durham was the top-grossing stand-up act in North America for the past two years as well as being the most successful touring comic in the world for 2009.

The sound design and spec was an open brief and Adlib's James Neale was asked to demonstrate his multiplexing abilities by designing and tech'ing the system as well as taking on FOH/monitor engineering duties.

Neale decided on a JBL VerTec PA, primarily because of its ease of use as a combined flown and ground stacked system. He knew that in the City Hall shows, he would have to split the arrays into these two positions to preserve the site lines and ensure that the seats around the sides of the stage had uninterrupted views - and this

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UK - SSE Audio Group will provide equipment and crew to many of the UK and Ireland's highest profile festivals this year. But this is the first year the company is going 'all digital' at festival monitor positions, a decision made possible by the acquisition of additional Yamaha PM5D-RH consoles.

The company has recently bought four more PM5D-RHs to add to its Yamaha rental stock, which now comprises ten PM5D-RH, two DSP5D, four M7CL-48, five LS9-32 and three LS9-16.

"Previously we've always had analogue consoles on festival monitors enabling us to cater for the wide variety of engineers who need to use them," says SSE's Alex Penn. "This will be the first year we've switched over to using only digital consoles, but it's a decision we haven't taken lightly, as all our setups need to be instantly accessible for any engineer to walk up to.

"The PM5D-RH is su

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South Korea - Opened in 2009, Chunma Art Centre at South Korea's Yeungnam University is a multi-cultural space which hosts a wide range of productions, ranging from the local to international. The installation of Alcons audio systems in its two main performance spaces has ensured that, whatever the event, all enjoy uniformly quality sound.

Located in the city of Gyeongsan, Yeungnam University is one of the largest South Korean universities outside of the capital, Seoul. The Chunma Art Centre has been built to an extremely high specification; It consists of seven stories above ground and two stories below ground, and it is one of the most technologically advanced arts centres.

For performances, the Art Centre comprises the Grand Hall with a seating capacity of 1,899 and a multi-purpose stage that can accommodate most types of performances, and the medium-sized Chamber Hall with

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Italy - A Dog On Tour Service, based in Cuneo, Italy, is a pro audio rental company that specialises in live rock, pop and jazz events. Owner Pier Francesco Leardi officially founded his company in 2007, but has been an HK Audio user since 1990.

Back then Leardi was working as a technician in a recording studio when he bought his first HK Audio sound reinforcement system - one that is still up and running today.

Knowing the reliability of his old system, Pier Francesco Leardi had no qualms about investing more heavily into additional active and passive HK Audio systems once his own company had finally been founded.

The HK ConTour Array system acquired by A Dog on Tour Service consists of four CTA 118 subwoofers and four CTA 208 mid/high units.

Leardi comments, "I have always been very satisfied with the quality of HK Audio products -especially with my good old 1990 sy

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UK - A special networking opportunity is offered by the combination of the Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference and the ABTT Theatre Show to be held in London from 13-17 June. This international conference focuses on the business of planning, building and equipping theatres and other venues for the performing arts and is held only every four years. Attracting specialists from all over the world it engenders communication between architectural, acoustic, engineering and technological disciplines and is extremely well supported by the manufacturers and suppliers to these industries. The three-day conference in the Central Hall Westminster is followed by two days of the ABTT Theatre Show exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Halls in nearby Victoria.

Led by Stage Technologies, many other important firms sponsor this event because it brings together such a wide range of p

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UK - Blackbox Recorder manufacturer JoeCo has announced the addition of four new companies to its international distributor network. Cairo-based Alpha Audio will distribute the products in Egypt, PT Kairos Multi Jaya in Jakarta will handle Indonesian sales, Sounddog Inc. in Seoul is the new South Korean distributor and Quanta Systems will represent JoeCo in Brazil. All have been appointed following successful meetings at this year's Frankfurt Musikmesse.

Launched during 2009, the award-winning Blackbox Recorder is currently represented in over 30 countries. The rack-mounted recorder attaches to any live console and enables up to 24 channels of 24 Bit / 96 kHz audio to be recorded, in Broadcast WAV format, onto a regular FAT32 formatted USB2 hard drive, or USB flash drive, without the need to take a computer to the performance.

JoeCo's managing director Joe Bull commented, &quo

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UAE - The Dubai World Cup 2010 incorporated the opening of the iconic Meydan Grandstand and Racecourse - the new home of the Dubai World Cup. An extension of the programme has meant that the meeting now stages a total of eight races, making the meeting worth a phenomenal US$26.25m.

Creative Technology were asked by lead creative agency M-is, to supply a turnkey audio visual solution for this international event, providing over 17 tonnes of equipment from CT's London office and utilising a variety of equipment and resources from its Dubai operation.

Creative Technology provided the events with a wide array of equipment ranging from cameras, vision mixing and a high resolution replay system to LED screens and high powered projectors. One of the events leading up to the main Son et Lumière, was an evening with Sting, where CT supplied a four camera, vision mixing and engineering

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UK - Video control solutions specialist SNP Productions has moved to new, larger and improved premises in Milton Keynes.

The move follows a busy year in 2009 and positive signs that 2010 will be even busier, providing hire, sales, training and support for video control solutions. The new warehouse and office space is modern and very flexible. It provides a larger office area and more storage facilities.

SNP has set up a dedicated training, prep and programming area. This allows clients and freelancers working on SNP supplied shows and events to visit, work on their material and programme elements of their shows prior to arriving on-site. SNP's Simon Pugsley says, "Being able to set-up and configure a media server system saves valuable time during production rehearsals. This also ensures that the correct equipment is supplied and tested before it leaves the warehouse."

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Germany - The Klimahaus 8°Ost in Bremerhaven looks like a giant droplet that a Bremen-based architect has placed upon the port facilities. It is a glass palace with a certain similarity to the Allianz Arena in Munich. The building is 125m long and 82m wide, a 1.5 kilometre path leads through the exhibition space of 11,500sq.m, running from Bremen via Switzerland into the deserts of Africa, the Antarctic and back via Samoa, Alaska and the Hallig islands. The journey follows the eighth degree of longitude, which not only gave its name to the project and marks its location, but also indicates the thematic aspects of route, places and climate zones.

Amptown System Company (ASC), responsible for the technical implementation was honoured with the Sinus System Integration Award 2010 in the information category for its sophisticated installation of audio, light, video, media and con

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UK - The International Nursing Research Conference, organised by The Royal College of Nursing, will bring some 500 nurses and practitioners to the North East. Delegates from Europe, USA, Israel, Hong Kong and New Zealand will make the journey, descending on The Sage Gateshead, where they'll discuss the latest medical research and developments.

Event production partner, R&B Group, who have worked with the RCN for some 15 years, will be providing their expertise again this week when the three-day event comes to town. The team will be responsible for audio-visual and presentation support for over 240 speakers. As well as providing daily video programmes about the event.

Project Manager Gavin Frost comments: "Having worked with the RCN for over 15 years, it's a challenge to keep each event fresh and creative and indeed to top expectations from the previous year but it keeps m

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UAE - Robe UAE is a new operation launched by Czech Republic based lighting manufacturer Robe lighting to distribute and market their Robe and Anolis brands across all sectors in the United Arab Emirates.

The new office is in the Makateb Business Centre, Abu Dhabi. "We chose Abu Dhabi because business for events and shows here is very strong and expanding at the moment, and we want to be where the buzz is," says Elie Battah, Robe's Middle East regional sales manager, who will be the main initial point of contact there.

Robe already has a strong presence in the UAE, but with the increasingly complexity of some of its products - like the Digital series - it has become important to have direct manufacturer contact with the clients, and easy access to all the facilities needed to set up training seminars and full technical demonstrations, together with the full back up o

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USA - TT electronics OPTEK Technology's LED module strips and flexible LED light strips have been employed by Adirondack Studios in the design and fabrication of the Changing Earth exhibit at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA. The exhibit includes a Magma Crawl display - a crawl-through fiberglass tunnel that uses a sequence of programmed lights and heating elements to simulate the flow of lava through the earth.

"With the design of not only the lava display on the inside of the tunnel but the eruption meter on the outside of the lava tunnel as well, it was imperative that we utilized high bright LEDs with a significant degree of controllability," said Jerry Panza, electrics foreman for Adirondack Studios. "OPTEK's LEDs are not only extremely reliable - we ran them for two and a half months non-stop (50K+ hours) and not a single LED dimmed or faile

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Uruguay - On 18 March Guns N' Roses brought their Chinese Democracy tour to the Centenario Stadium in Montevideo. Performing to an enthusiastic crowd estimated at more than 30,000 people, the outdoor concert employed a sophisticated sound reinforcement setup consisting of a large quantity of Aero Series 2 and Aero loudspeaker models from the catalog of D.A.S. Audio.

Three sound service companies united for this undertaking: Leggio Sonido (directed by Jorge Leggio), Ariel Marti's Marti Audio, and Victor Lampariello's Compañía Uruguaya de Sonido. Together, these three firms pooled a massive amount of equipment together and pulled off one of the most memorable hard rock concerts to hit Montevideo in some time.

Jorge Leggio, director of Leggio Sonido, reportsd, "This was an outdoor concert where the crowd was situated on the soccer field, in an area about 100m wide b

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France - An installation at the National Engineering School (ENISE) in Saint-Etienne is enabling students to gain a new take on visualisation techniques, thanks to a 3D solution from Norway's projectiondesign.

Conceived, designed and installed by systems integrator Immersion, the system uses projectiondesign F12 1080 DLP projectors and INFITEC stereo 3D hardware. Each projector is built into a custom-made rear-projection housing so that they are physically 'locked' into position. The projectors fire directly onto a vertically mounted, 2m wide Stewart rigid rear-pro screen, and onto a custom-built mirror and horizontal Stewart 'table' screen setup.

The result is a seamless 'L-shaped' projection surface that gives viewers a greatly enhanced three-dimensional impression of whatever image is being displayed. This in itself is a notable achievement, but the project is unusual in ot

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Belgium - Icelandic volcanoes notwithstanding, Innovason's Belgian distributor Amptec celebrated 20 years in business with a major 'open house' event which counted over 600 visitors over three days from 21 April. Visitors were treated to a factory tour and the opportunity to hear bands playing on stage, and then the opportunity to attend several different workshops during the day.

During the evening, guests were rewarded with a party and a concert. At the heart of all these proceedings was an Innovason Eclipse digital console which mixed the bands, recorded them, and then sent out the recordings over an EtherSound network directly to each workshop where participants could make comparative microphone listening tests, or try their own hands at mixing.

Innovason's Matthieu Le Failler managed the network and 'babysat' the various freelance engineers who were mixing the bands. He e

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UK - DB Systems has been nominated for two awards at next month's AEO Excellence Awards 2010.

DB is in the running for the Equipment Supplier of the Year and Service Supplier of the Year categories. DB won the Service Supplier of the Year award at last year's event.

David Bulley, DB's managing director said: "These nominations reflect the work ethic and high standards so synonymous with DB Systems. We always display innovation, creativity and professionalism at major global shows, such as Mobile World Congress and DSEi.

"In the past 12 months we've invested close to £500,000 in new equipment and technologies, introduced Microsoft Surface to the UK market, and developed ecoXpress, which provides exhibitors with an environmentally friendly and cost-effective method to communicate with clients. We've also created two specialist divisions, DBpixelhouse, which pro

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Canada - After a thorough investigation of the layout and worship services at Community Pentecostal Church in Ottawa, Ontario, A/V design company Audio Plus Sound Solutions upgraded the church's audio system with JBL loudspeakers. Electing to install three clusters of PD series loudspeakers, Audio Plus was able to cover an additional 20 percent of the seating area for the 1,000-person congregation, providing the church with a sound system that was both versatile and powerful.

Before the Community Pentecostal Church hired Audio Plus for the upgrade, its system was falling apart, according to system engineer Brian Davis. The original component JBL loudspeaker system was still operating but it didn't cover the entire audience or offer reasonable intelligibility because of design oversights, and the concrete at the centre of the room made implementing new communication technology ve

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UK - Denon DJ Europe has announced that it is a musical sponsor of the second edition of HowTheLightGetsIn: The Philosophy and Music Festival at Hay.

Returning with a "bigger and better" programme of philosophy sessions, performances and parties, after its acclaimed debut last year, HowTheLightGetsInruns from 28 May to 6 June in the literary festival town of Hay-on-Wye. It is billed as "bringing together thinkers, performers, artists and musicians to cast light on our lives, to give us insight into what is going on and where we might be heading; and above all to excite the imagination and renew the spirit".

Denon DJ is kitting out the booth for all three 'Live and Night Sessions' parties at the famous Globe at Hay with its latest DN-S3700 digital turntables and DN-X1600 mixer.

The Friday opening party features a night of music and eclectic b

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South Africa - Sisters in Song which ran at The Lyric Theatre, Gold Reef City Casino, had the audience on their feet and dancing in the aisles. This was a powerful performance held from 14 April to 9 May 2010, lit by some 56 Robe fixtures controlled by a grandMA full size.

The lighting design was by JR Roughly from Vedatec who says, "Most people who know me will say, JR did this job," he said. "What I'm doing is not new, it's just that the technology is far superior now and the creative ideas have become easier to execute."

Eight Clay Paky HPE 1200w fixtures were placed on the stage floor which had two stairways on either side and a centre reveal. Robe 700 series Wash and Spot were hung from trussing over the stage as well as from the wings. JR interprets music with colour and uses his console as a palette to paint the stage. He utilises a 15,000 Lm

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Switzerland - From 26 to 28 March, lighting designer Stefan Gfeller illuminated the Kulturm tower of Solothurn, an important Swiss historical symbol, with a lighting installation featuring Coemar LED products.

Built in 1538 as a defence tower, Kulturm has been used over the centuries as a granary, prison and bunker; today it has become a multi-purpose cultural centre able to host theatre events and art exhibitions, and its facilities include a modern club lounge.

The tower, characterised by irregular stonework with all sorts of nooks and crannies, became the focal point for a rather special light show. The light designer installed nine StageLite LEDs at the base of the tower and six StripLite LEDs in the loopholes: with their chromatic effects and the possibility of varying the projection angles, the Coemar products highlighted every curve of the building.

In particular, the

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UK - Renkus-Heinz will demonstrate IC Live, the "world's first digitally steerable loudspeaker" designed specifically for high power rental applications, during the PLASA / L&SI loudspeaker demonstration at The Centaur in Cheltenham from 12:00-13:00 on May 20th. The company's senior vice-president and head of design Ralph Heinz will join a team from UK distributors Polar Audio at the event.

The three-day shoot-out on Tuesday 18th, Wednesday 19th and Thursday 20th May, will allow visitors to hear and compare a range of the world's leading professional PA systems designed for shows and events with up to 5000 audience capacity.

Renkus-Heinz, which introduced the world's first music-and-speech digitally steerable array, Iconyx, five years ago, has designed IC Live as the first digitally steerable array loudspeaker for mobile rental applications, with a comprehensive hardware sy

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World - Sound Driver, a five-piece Indie-Rock band, are midway through an unusual world tour. Throughout 2009 and into 2010 they are taking in some of the world's most iconic venues as a way of raising awareness for charity The Smile Train. So far on their travels they've played Sydney Harbour Bridge and broken World Records on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Future dates include The Great Wall Of China, Niagara Falls and Dubai's Burj al Arab hotel, on an ever-growing list of dates on this extravaganza.

To successfully negotiate such a demanding schedule requires gear that's compact and lightweight for easy portability, but also solid and reliable enough to deliver quality sound in adverse conditions.

So when it came to wireless in-ear monitoring, wireless microphones and all of the tour's PA needs, David Spillane, the Chasing Rainbows tour manager, knew that he needed to g

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USA/Germany - The JoeCo BlackBox Recorder recently made a successful 48-track US debut at the annual MerleFest Americana Music Festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, with an audience of over 70,000 in attendance. A 48-track feed from the Midas Heritage front-of-house console (supplied by event sound provider SE Systems) was taken directly into two balanced JoeCo BlackBox Recorder units linked together with sample accuracy, to record main stage events over the four-day festival.

FOH engineer Frank Martin commented on working with the BBR. "It just worked day in and day out, through dust and heat for four straight days and nights! An amazing product that took up very little space in my rack too," he said.

A BlackBox Recorder also featured at front of house during Stoppok plus Worthy's recent Grundblues tour in Germany. FOH engineer Sven Geiger used the B

  1. Adamson & Theatrixx in Canadian partnership
  2. Teamwork & Turbosound in Taiwan Temple
  3. Diversity dance to the Yamaha tune
  4. Huntingdon Council goes wireless with beyerdynamic
  5. Chris Young tours with iLive
  6. Stage One makes magic for Butlins
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