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UK - A team from Saville Audio Visual branches across the UK, supported by a host of AV manufactures has raised £10,000 for children's charity Rainbow House.

The team took part in the BUPA Great Manchester 10k Run to raise cash for The Legacy Rainbow House which specialises in providing services for children with brain injuries, disabilities and life limiting conditions such as cerebral palsy.

The Saville effort was coordinated by group installation manager Colin Etchells and supported by manufacturers and suppliers including Anders & Kern, AMX, Audio Visual Material, CIE, POLARaudio and Sennheiser, who all took part in the run.

The Rainbow House Charity is close to the hearts of all the Saville employees. Christian Spragg gave up his job at Saville AV to look after his daughter when he tragically lost his wife hours after daughter Illaria was born. Illaria was later d

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UAE - Dubai based Gulf Crewing Company (GCC) celebrates 18 months in business with a success story which has seen the company expand rapidly and the staff increase by 300 per cent.

Gulf Crewing Company was launched in November 2008 by Jo Marshall, Nigel Beaton and Shane Manning - all of whom have considerable experience working in various aspects of the live events industry.

The concept is to provide a European style crewing operation to supply skilled, qualified efficient crew and technicians for all types of events.

Beaton had been working in the Middle East as a freelancer and realised that there was a real need for a professionally run and organised crew service on these lines. He and Marshall - a show technical director/production manager and now heading Al Laith Events Services, formed GCC along with Manning, an experienced rigger, to fill that vacuum.

"The idea

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UK - Once again MilTec (UK) worked with South West Audio Group to supply equipment for the Glastonbury Festival.

A dozen of the MT Pro Acoustics MTA-TP12 speakers were bought by SWA Group for use as monitor wedges on the BBC Introducing Stage. They were chosen by SWA Group's MD Alister Pook after a demo at their HQ near Bristol.

The multi-purpose cabinets are intended to double as both PA speakers and stage wedges, with a 45 degree slope incorporated into the design. SWA Group needed a 60 degree slope for this particular application and worked with MilTec to develop an adaptor bracket to change the angle of projection. The bracket bolts on using two of the speaker's built-in flying points. This allows the speaker to be directed upwards at 60 degrees or horizontally as FOH fills or drum monitors.

Designed by MilTec's technical director, Graham Gosden, the birch ply cabinets a

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UK / South Africa - SES Entertainment Services in Datchet received an order from Gearhouse SA for a large order for power distro for the 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa.

Gearhouse SA ordered a total of 14 SES 19" 400A rack distros which were used during the rounds and also at the opening concert and the closing ceremony.

Andrew Sackstien from Gearhouse commented, " The racks we received from SES were exactly what we required and they had understood my requirements precisely. They arrived in good time and worked flat out for the duration of the WCF. They were built very well and I will certainly use SES in the future for my power requirements.

SES were "very pleased with the products and the comments, and as always, pleased to add another tick in the customer satisfaction box".

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Leeds-based Fibre Optic Systems has announced the availability of the range of LED luminaires from Canadian manufacturer, Lumenpulse. FOS has taken on the distribution for the UK and Ireland.

Brandon Siemion, Lumenpulse's executive vice-president for worldwide sales, comments, "Fibre Optic Systems is well-placed to distribute Lumenpulse as the company has experience in the LED field and knows the best use applications for Interior and exterior projects. The company works closely with many lighting designers, engineers and architects in the region.

"The timing for us to choose a partner in the UK is not only to develop new projects, but also support projects specified from North America. FOS has great experience supporting LED projects in the UK and other countries in Europe and the Middle East.""

Gordon Addison, FOS technical director, adds, "We

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USA - Video is breathing new life into the fortunes of a 30-year-old Washington State lighting/staging company. Earlier this year, lighting industry veteran Mark Steneide (Steneide Illumination) added the capability to install video walls at music concerts and shows, using EVLED 1024SMD panels from Elation Professional.

The demand for this service has proven so hot that Steneide has since spun it into a separate company, NW Video Wall, which was chosen to provide the video screen for the California leg of Bad Company frontman Paul Rodgers' solo tour.

It all began as a measure to cope with the economic downturn, said Steneide. "I was trying to figure out how to pump up business during this recession, and for a while now I'd been seeing how lighting and video are merging. You look at everything from TV awards shows to concert tours, and all you see are LED video walls. So I

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USA - Featuring the first customised radius corners in the NBA, and a standard-setting design by Anthony James Partners, Lighthouse and TS Sports continue to feature prominently in American sports.

The Bradley Centre, home of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, will soon set the standard for LED center-hung integrated displays. Featuring over 1,000sq.ft of 6mm pitch LED video distributed across four main screens, over 91m of 10mm entertainment strips and scoring matrix, and a customised underside display, the Bradley Centre's centre-hung display will blaze with over 232sq.m and nearly 2m pixels of LED video.

"We are very excited about partnering with the Bradley Centre for their LED renovations," said Matt Ritter, TS Sports VP of sales. "The new centre hung will consist of customized radius corners making it one of the most dynamic LED systems in professional sports.&quo

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Germany - The first 'Business Brunch', arranged by Gerriets, took place in the Semperoper in Dresden, starting a new scheduled series of presentations about basics, projects and products from the Gerriets World. Further such events are scheduled to take place in regular intervals in different cities and with different topics.

The main presentation concerned the requirements for dance floors and their different fields of application. The lectures were closed by a 'journey' with Gerriets through 60 years of theatre history presenting the fascinating history of art curtains.

Gerriets reports the brunch was a great success and was met with an excellent response from the 120 participants.The programme concluded with a guided tour through the Semperoper.

"We would like to express our gratitude to the team of the Semperoper Dresden and especially to their technical director, M

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USA - Australian band Jet has hit the road in America to support the group's latest album, Shaka Rock. Manning the controls at front of house is veteran mixer Kyle Chirnside, with Will Burston on the monitor desk. The group is carrying its own front of house console, a Midas PRO6 live audio system supplied by Big Mo Pro in Parsippany, New Jersey.

"I've been using the PRO6 for two years now," says Chirnside. "In fact, we did the first few shows on this tour without it, and I can tell you, it makes a huge difference. With the digital snake system and on-board processing, the PRO6 really makes everything easier, and helps us get the most out the house rigs we encounter."

All shows on the tour are being recorded. For that task, Chirnside opted for the Klark Teknik DN9696 high resolution audio recorder. Designed to integrate seamlessly with Midas digital

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UK - With Friday Night With Jonathon Ross's tenure at the BBC drawing to a close, the microphones used by his resident band 4 Poofs & A Piano are being put up for auction in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.

Supplied by Terry Tew Sound & Light to the show's broadcast sound supervisor Andy Tapley, the four Shure SM63 mics in pink have been in use since 2001.

"Andy and I discussed what would be the best mic for the 4 Poofs," says Terry Tew, "and I advised him that the SM63s would be the right product to cope with their microphone technique. The fact that they've used the same ones for the last nine years is testament to the fact that we got it right."

Now the four mics are to find four new homes via four separate e-bay auctions, which will start at 9am on Wednesday 14 July following the recording of Ross's last show, which will air on F

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UK - Culminating in a an innovative awards event, the Restaurant & Bar Design Awards' winners, including the best designed restaurant and the best designed bar, were announced and presented with their awards at Victoria House, London on 22 June.

In a bid to increase networking at its awards event the Restaurant & Bar Design Awards commissioned Cinimod Studio to create an effective and visually stimulating solution. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology was used to identify key visitors on the two 'networking pods' during the evening's proceedings.

The tags embedded in shortlisted designers and sponsors' name badges used radio signals to send their identity to antenna receivers. Projections then highlighted guests' key professional characteristics (projects designed, sponsor brands) as they moved around the pods.

Audialsense co

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USA - Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 tour brings together the artist's urban edge, innovative video technology and live camera content creation that keeps screens director Drew Findley and video director Dirk Sanders on top of their game.

The city skyline video wall set, designed by UVA's Matt Clark, offers multiple video surfaces to create compelling imagery throughout the show but the real technical magic is in the complex video system. Sanders and Findley take full advantage of the capabilities afforded them by combining the Control Freak Encore DMX Bridge system with the PRG Mbox EXtreme v3 media server. Production Resource Group (PRG) provided a five-server system for the tour which has played arenas and stadiums around the around the world.

Sanders, who manages all the live camera feeds from backstage, explained the flow of the video system. "I am responsible for the ca

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UK - the Cubehenge installation at this year's Glastonbury festival proved popular, receiving rave reviews from web forums, blogs and even the Guardian newspaper. The full scale re-interpretation of Stonehenge, the famous stone circle, really came to life as the sun set and night closed in. Each cube was internally illuminated and individually controlled to provide a spectacular and rhythmic light show, complementing the acts performing in the Dance Village.

Cubehenge, the brainchild of Cubes Concept, was conceived last autumn with Glastonbury Festival in mind. Constructed using IBCs (1000 litre containers usually employed in the transportation of liquids), each cube was fitted with an LED colour changing unit supplied by UK distributor Batmink Ltd and was individually controlled via DMX using ChamSys MagicQ software and Mini Wing controller.

The 40m diameter installation cons

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UK - Hawthorn recently assisted a major national youth organisation celebrate its100th birthday. Hawthorn's brief was to turn an overflow car park into an arena concert venue for 5,000 young people.

Hawthorn provided all technical and site services for the event including power, lighting, sound, staging and site services. During the event and licensing stages of the project, the team worked closely with the Venue and the Licensing Authority on both health and safety and noise restrictions.

Hawthorn's project manager, Chris Knight, commented, "It's great to be involved in this important Centenary event and see so many people have such a great time."

A total of eight acts performed, combined with a birthday address from the head of the organisation. Between the acts members of the organisation performed on the front of the stage whilst the rear was set for the next a

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Australia - The 'Logies' are the Australian TV industry's annual awards and for many years have been broadcast live in Australia by GTV9, part of the Nine Network of Australia. Named after John Logie Baird, the inventor of television, the event was again held at the Palladium Ballroom, Crown Towers in Melbourne with the 'Who's Who' of Australia's TV personalities in attendance.

This year's lighting design included 33 video screens spread around the room, being controlled by a total of nine Media Servers from both Green Hippo and Pandoras Box. LSC Clarity lighting and multimedia control system was chosen to control this major element of the show.

Having seen Clarity's ability to control Media Servers so easily, LD Rohan Thornton specified a control system based around a VX20 wing, a VX10 wing and Clarity software outputting four universes for control of all Media Servers on the

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Sweden - Wireless Solution Sweden has announced the first batch of winners from their recent competition for fans of their Facebook group page.

"Although the contest was held last month, we've been focusing on our newest product line, so we postponed the drawing," says CEO Niclas Arvidsson, "We plan to hold regular competitions through the group site throughout the year, so people that join the group now still have future opportunities to win. It has turned out to be a fun and efficient way to communicate with our customers and users of W-DMX products so we want to encourage its growth and reward our members."

The winners are: Henrik Vaaben, Scott Peterson, Udo Thimm, Adam Moffat, Adis Spahic, Anne Sarmanne, Ashley Reeves, Audun Bull Hansen, Aziz Adilkhodjaev, Bo Thögersen, Broyden Mills, Charles A Versnel, Craig Beatson, Dalibor Golic, Erlwin de Gans, Gus

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UK - PLASA Events and The Theatres Trust have announced the first Ecovenue feature at this year's PLASA Show focusing on sustainable practices and technologies for theatres and performing arts venues.

PLASA 2010, which runs from the 12-15 September at Earls Court in London, is a major platform for the launch and promotion of innovative new ideas emerging across the event, entertainment and installation industries. The Theatres Trust's Ecovenue feature is a significant new addition to the event, designed to showcase the pioneering environmental efficiency practices being implemented across London venues.

The venues profiled in this uniquely designed 'theatrical' showcase are all participating in the Trust's European-funded Ecovenue project, designed to improve the environmental performance of 48 London theatres. Amongst those featured will be the Albany Theatre (Deptford), the

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The Netherlands - After more than 10 years' experience in their native Belgium, Plopsaland theme park operators Studio 100 have now successfully exported the concept, which includes Plopsa De Panne on the Belgian coast and Plopsa Indoors in Hasselt. Now the first Plopsaland indoor theme park has opened in Holland, with all audio equipment supplied by Ampco Belgium.

The latest construction in the city of Coevorden - situated in the north-east of Holland, and next to CenterParcs - took less than nine months to complete, a considerable achievement since the construction spans more than 10.000sq.m.

The attractions vary from roller coaster rides, turning frogs, carousel, boxcars to a disco featuring the popular girl band K3. Each day the park hosts a different live theatre show and each year they welcome some 400,000 visitors.

Ampco Belgium were again invited to mastermind the so

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USA - NASCAR races have evolved to include events beyond what happens on the track. Racing venues now offer a wide range of entertainment, including top national acts performing before the drivers start their engines.

At the legendary Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Alabama, a new audio system, featuring 101 Community R.5HPT loudspeakers and 50 R.5-SUB subwoofers, has raised the bar.

Chris Ogles of Oxford, AL-based Sound Solutions reports that a demo of the new system in September 2009 left quite an impression. "It made such an impact that the president of the speedway came to us right there on the spot during the demo and asked if they could have the system installed by the next race in November," he says.

Ogles, who has served on Talladega's track AV crew for five years, explains that the bandwidth of yesterday's horn loudspeakers limits their usefulness in

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Europe - Following the successful American, Australian & European legs of Muse's The Resistance tour, a further nine large-scale stadium dates have been added. Brilliant Stages created a completely new stage set for the stadium venues, based on the design concepts of Oli Metcalfe and Es Devin, with technical realisation by Malcolm Birkett, and produced by Chris Vaughan of The Production Office.

The stadium set consists of a 62m long video header, a suspended ceiling grid, a diamond shaped stage flanked by projection screens, drum riser fascias and on- and off-stage rear fascias, a tracking B stage with inset revolving scissor lift and tech bunkers and screamers.

The dominant feature is the video header which appears as a forced perspective ranging from 13.25m high downstage to 4.5m high upstage. Brilliant Stages' CAD team, managed by Kevin Edwards, devised the logistics

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Tour News - Ticket sales for major concert tours across North America have fallen to their lowest point since 2005, a US trade publication has said. During the first half of the year, the top 100 tours made a total of $965.5m (£636.2m), the lowest since 2005 when gross revenue was $730.9m (£481.6m). It marks a 17% decrease from the same period last year.

Pollstar magazine said an average of 6,951 tickets per show were sold, down 9% from the same period in 2009. The information comes just after it was announced that two weeks have been cut from the American Idol tour. Promoters Live Nation said eight shows by the Idol finalists, including winner Lee DeWyze and runner-up Crystal Bowersox, have been dropped. The Jonas Brothers, The Eagles, Christina Aguilera, Rihanna, John Mayer and Limp Bizkit have all pulled summer dates in the US.

Influential Music

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USA - ETC Eos lighting control systems continue to be installed in theatres and venues across the USA.

The San Diego Opera upgraded to an ETC Eos system because the lighting team was looking for a system that could handle the number of scrollers they had acquired over time and could easily control moving lights when a show called for them.

Their control system consists of two Eos desks - one for the tech table and another on the network backstage - as well as an RVI (Remote Video Interface) and an RFR (Radio Focus Remote), allowing different members of their lighting staff to work throughout the theatre to programme shows. Chris Rynne, former resident lighting associate and lighting designer for the San Diego Opera, says, "I love the board. It's cleaner and more intuitive. It's easy to use for people who have theatre and integrated work. Eos makes it quick and easy to pai

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UK - Several of the UK's leading sound rental companies have been quick to add Soundcraft's new Vi1 digital console - the latest, and smallest addition to its Vi family - to their own touring inventories.

Soundcraft has taken the platform to another, more affordable level with the release of the Vi1, which inherits many of the key features of its larger siblings, including Soundcraft FaderGlow, four stereo Lexicon effects engines, BSS Audio graphic EQs on all output busses, and integral dynamics on all channels. The desk is also compatible with Vi2, Vi4 and Vi6 show files.

The Vi1 is Soundcraft's response to market demand for a lower-priced desk with these facilities, but still built around the Vistonics interface.

"It's a small-format desk with big format functionality," summarises Eddie Thomas of ETASound, currently in the midst of a major inventory overhaul. &qu

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UK - Stage Technologies has been recognised in two top business league tables published by the Sunday Times.

In September 2009, London-based Stage Technologies was listed number 52 in the ninth annual Sunday Times Tech Track 100, sponsored by Microsoft. Tech Track 100 ranks Britain's 100 fastest-growing private technology companies.

In a corroborating follow-up this month, the company has been picked out at number 48 in a new listing published on 11 July, International Track 100, which ranks Britain's private companies with the fastest-growing international sales, highlighting important contributions being made overseas.

Stage Technologies has strong regional presences in Las Vegas, where the company has been providing equipment for opera houses and educational performance venues as well as for high-technology, Vegas spectacular shows; Macau, where the c

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