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USA - When Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn MI held its first race in October 1968, its 12,000-seat grandstand made it one of the top new racetracks in the US. For more than four decades, this two-mile oval has hosted countless historic races, its Victory Circle graced by such famous names as Richard Petty, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Parnelli Jones and Dale Earnhardt.

Today, MIS seats more than 119,500 and is still one of the nation's premier racing venues, thanks in no small part to an ongoing programme of improvements and upgrades over the years. Most recently, the track's original sound system was completely revamped, its 1960s-vintage horns replaced with more than 200 Community R-Series weather-resistant loudspeakers.

The project was overseen by consultant Jack McCallum of Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams (WJHW), with installation performed by Lansing-based

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Australia - For almost 150 years, the Queensland Museum has been telling the story of the sunshine state through its history of people, culture, animals, environment and geology. Whilst the museum houses many ancient artefacts and relics from the past, their new PA and paging system is most modern.

Various parts of the museum have been enhanced by the new multi-zone PA system including display areas, the external Museum cafe as well as the crowd-pulling Dinosaur Garden featuring life-size dinosaurs.

Consulting Engineer firm Norman Disney & Young, was responsible for the design of the new paging and PA system and prior to specification, they conducted an acoustic assessment to determine the measures required to reduce reverberation time and increase speech intelligibility within the museum public areas.

A three dimensional modelling approach using electro-acoustic simulation

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USA - Peavey Electronics is sponsoring the Project Independent 2010 US Tour, which launched last weekend in Atlanta. The nationwide showcasing programme provides independent metal bands with the opportunity to perform for music industry reps and ultimately win the headlining spot on the 2011 tour.

All bands appearing on the tour will perform with an all Peavey backline including: 6505+ Head, 6534 Head, Tour 700 Bass Head, and Peavey guitar and bass Cabinets. The artists will also have the chance to be profiled on Peavey.com.

Selected bands perform in exclusive artist showcases and receive a critique by a panel of industry experts including a promoter, a producer, and a touring musician. Groups who receive high marks advance to the finals where online voting will decide the 2011 Project Independent Featured Artist.

The winning band will receive over $10,000 in p

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UK - A strong upsurge in PLASA 2010 visitor registrations has taken the total soaring past last year's pre-registered figure, with over two weeks still to go before the show opens.

Over 2,000 chairmen, 800 lighting designers, 1,000 engineers, 900 technicians / programmers and 500 installers are among them - with concert & touring, live events and theatre the fastest growing sectors and impressive growth coming from the AV visitor figures too. Confirming that PLASA 2010 continues to be viewed as a truly international event, 30% of registrations are from non-UK visitors.

Interest has been high as organiser PLASA Events has announced a stream of over 60 new and returning exhibitors over the summer, joining the show's regular cast of hundreds of key international brands, between them preparing to launch an estimated 500 new audio, video, lighting and stage technology products.

A

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UK - CIE-Group's Team 00Heaven (Steve Collin, Chris Edwards, Martin Featherstone and Lauren Bamford) will this autumn be taking on the challenge of cycling 550 miles across Ireland in just three days.

Raising much needed funds for local children's charity Derby Kids' Camp, as well as Cancer Research and The British Heart Foundation, the team will be fully-funding the trip themselves, ensuring that every penny raised goes directly to the charities.

Says Chris Edwards, "By helping us to raise our target figure of £5000, not only will you be supporting these fantastic charities, but you could also be in with a chance of winning an amazing prize... in our Bond for a Weekend Prize Draw.

To sponsor the team online/make donations, check out www.cie-group.com and www.justgiving.com/00HEAVEN

(Jim Evans)

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Germany - The Sonnenrot Festival in Eching (near Munich) was held for just the second time this year, yet the event has already established an excellent reputation across Germany. Over 6,000 people attended on the Friday and 7,000 on the Saturday, drawn by a line-up that included acts like Jan Delay, Maximo Park, 2Raumwohnung, Donuts, and Danko Jones. Two stages were utilised.

This year, the entire lighting and sound production for the festival was the responsibility of Olching-based rental company Magic Event- & Medientechnik. Long before the first act took to the stage, a team of sound engineers led by company MD Markus Thomae had already made the decision to rely upon sound reinforcement systems from Electro-Voice.

"We've been relying on Electro-Voice for years now," says Thomae. "The equipment is reliable, its audio performance is exceptional, the tec

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UK - Experimental theatre group Punchdrunk joined forces with English National Opera to present a version of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, with a little help from Stage Electrics.

The play was performed in a three-storey office and warehouse complex in the Royal Albert Basin, East London. Stage Electrics' London Bridge branch supplied large quantities of equipment which included cabling, distro, dimming, lanterns and haze machines for this extraordinary production.

"We knew from the start that this was going be a massive project. With a particularly short lead-time and a huge amount of space to cover, it was vital that we could depend on our suppliers. Stage were able to provide us with all the kit and more importantly the backup we needed throughout the project," commented Euan Maybank, technical director, Punchdrunk.

Business development manager Pau

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Columbia - For the 200th anniversary of independence, every city in Colombia featured concerts and events, with the largest public outdoor celebration taking place in the capital city of Bogota. On 20 July over 30,000 people rammed into Plaza de Bolivar for a 360 degree audio visual experience lit up by 390,000 lumen of projection mapping, and 100 Adamson line array enclosures hidden between and within buildings.

The Square has great historical meaning as it has been the stage for many violent struggles in Colombia's history, including where the first Call for Independence took place exactly 200 hundred years earlier.

The facades of all the surrounding buildings were incorporated to the show. Within the columned National Capitol and Justice Palace buildings musicians and dancers depicted a scene of the struggles and war between the natives and the Spanish conquistadores, with

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USA - At the production of the 16th X Games annual action sports competition in Los Angeles, which featured more than 200 of the world's best athletes competing in BMX Freestyle, Moto X, Rally Car and Skateboard, ESPN used a multi-node MediorNet installation from Riedel Communications onsite to distribute video signals between the different locations for the live event.MediorNet, a fibre-based signal transport solution with point-to-multipoint capabilities, provided a network allowing the routing of more than 30 video signals. Six MediorNet mainframes with 40 inputs and 48 outputs fed various video walls as well as commentary positions with information and program from the different event locations. The installation connected the Tech hub on Georgia St, the production suite on 11th St., the patch room, the Staples Center, the Nokia Theater, Nokia Plaza and the Park/Street venue lo

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Europe - Innovason reports an extremely busy and successful festival season worldwide for its Eclipse digital mixing console. Not surprisingly, it has been used on many of the biggest festivals on its home turf in France, such as Les Vieilles Charrues (where three Eclipses were deployed) and Jazz a Vienne (which also used three consoles), and elsewhere such as at Sweden's premier jazz festival, the Stockholm Jazz Festival, as well as further afield in China and Canada, numerous events in the UK and most recently a slew of major classical concerts in Germany. One of the most prestigious was the Thurn und Taxis Palace Festival in Regensburg that was held from 16 July - 1 August 2010.

Voted amongst the top ten best festivals in the world last year, the setting alone is something out of a fairy tale - the festival is in fact hosted by Gloria, Princess von

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Japan - Broadcaster MBS purchased the world's first Calrec Apollo desk for outside broadcast use in February 2010, and it has now provided six months of uninterrupted service in MBS's recently refurbished radio truck.

The 56-fader Apollo console, which replaced an older Studer desk, was ordered as part of a refit of MBS's audio OB vehicle, carried out by MBS with an eye on future-proofing the vehicle for surround sound transmission.

According to MBS, the company has used Calrec Alpha consoles in the past, but became seriously interested in the Apollo after it was launched last year, feeling that the newer desk's user-friendly touchscreen interface, easy-to-use surround features and down-mix functions, and future-proof, expandable I/O facilities were just what their rebuilt radio vehicle needed.

"Apollo offered the same high degree of reliability as the Alpha, but with t

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Fringe Records - The Edinburgh Fringe has broken last year's box office record by selling almost two million tickets. The three-week long arts festival sold 1,955,913 tickets, up more than 5% on last year. Festival organisers calculated that there were 40,254 performances of 2,453 shows in 259 venues across the city.

Fringe Society chief executive Kath Mainland said: "Edinburgh is without doubt the world's leading festival destination." In addition to official venues, the Fringe High Street Events team registered 662 acts from street performers to buskers and Fringe artists. An estimated 21,148 performers took to the stage during Fringe 2010 and 558 shows were absolutely free. Comedy made up 35% of the Fringe programme, followed closely by Theatre with 29%. Music 16%, Musicals & Opera 5%, Dance & Physical Theatre 4.5%, and Children's shows 4%, made up the rest o

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UK - Surrey-based QuiteLoud Pro Audio has completed a series of Fohhn PA system installations in UK churches. A range of the German manufacturer's loudspeakers, amplifiers and remote control hardware and software has been installed in Sunfields Methodist Church Blackheath, St James's Church Muswell Hill and Christ Church Tunbridge Wells.

At the recently re-built Blackheath church, QuiteLoud worked alongside architects during the construction process to ensure that the PA requirements were successfully accommodated.

"Fohhn loudspeakers were specifically chosen for their interior design compatibility and size, as well as coverage," commented QuiteLoud's Steve Bradshaw. "We fitted Linea LX-100 line array column speakers in the main worship area, with Arc Series AT-22 and AT-05 speakers used in other parts of the church. The system is driven by a Fohhn D-4.750 4-cha

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UK - Extreme water sports came to the gentle seaside town of Harwich in the form of the UK's National Powerboat Championships, using Electro-Voice sound reinforcement systems for a beachfront concert stage as well as a kilometre-long 100V line of ZX1 full-range speakers, one of the longest set-ups of its kind.

Offshore powerboat racing in the UK is both challenging and highly competitive. The sport is administered by the Royal Yachting Association, which this year encouraged the incorporation of a music festival into the annual national championship event. The day's racing was rounded off by two evening concerts for 10,000 people, headlined by Tinchy Stryder, DJ Ironik, and X-Factor stars Olly Murs, Jamie Archer and Danyl Johnson.

Eclipse Sound & Light provided PA for the main concert stage, situated just 10m from the water's edge. Watching the forecast closely, the Ecl

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Portugal - Jands Vista I3 lighting consoles have provided show lighting control for the latest tours of high-profile Portuguese artists Blasted Mechanism and João Pedro Pais.

Portuguese lighting design company, Lamp On! Creative Solutions has three Vista I3 lighting consoles in its rental stock for use by its team of lighting designers - Vitor Azevedo, brother Pedro Azevedo and Rui Rodrigues. The company chose the mid-range Vista I3 model due to its combination of affordability and built-in Linux operating system.

LD Vitor Azevedo used one of the Vista consoles on the recent João Pedro Pais Portuguese tour to launch their latest album, A Palma E A Mão. The wide variety of venue sizes, ranging from small clubs to large outdoor arenas, necessitated using different local suppliers and rigs on a daily basis. As with his previous tours using the Vista, Azevedo found that the con

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USA - Longtime grandMA user Chris Kuroda, who's marking his 22nd year as the lighting designer for the rock band Phish, has taken a pair of grandMA2 full-size consoles along on the musicians' cross-country summer tour. Lighting programmer Andrew Giffin suggested using the grandMA2 for lighting control, and Kuroda reports that the two desks have been "a 100 percent complete and utter success. They've been incredibly wonderful - I'm very happy with them".

"Phish is a jam band. There's no set list and you never know what song is coming next, so you have to pay attention," Kuroda explains. "We need to programme the lighting so we can grab anything very quickly. So I have the grandMA2 broken up into two worlds: one is a punter mode than runs on the fly and follows the music as it goes, and the other is a cue stack. Sometimes we're changing cue times by hundre

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Sweden - LumenRadio has in cooperation with the Swedish Department of Energy, the University of Lund, Sweden's largest property manager Riksbyggen, and leading European fixture manufacturer Fagerhult completed two large scale exterior lighting installations with a scientific twist.

These systems pioneer the application of mixed protocol wireless lighting controls and fixture feedback, as well as motion and environmental sensor inputs, in large outdoor public areas. All outdoor fixtures in the targeted residential areas were replaced with modern energy efficient LED fixtures and a unified infrastructure for wireless controls and sensors was installed. Fagerhult supplied the lighting fixtures, Riksbyggen managed the practical and legal matters, and LumenRadio provided custom CRMX wireless lighting control and monitoring systems.

The effort was part of a larger scientific project

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UK - Wimbledon-based White Light is one of six companies shortlisted in the Best Green Business category of the Merton Business Awards 2010.

Organised by Merton Council, the local council covering White Light's south Wimbledon base, along with South London Business and the Merton Chamber of Commerce, the awards are designed to reward and celebrate the many dynamic and innovative businesses in the borough.

White Light's nomination is in the Best Green Business category, intended to "reward companies with an environmental conscience". The nomination reflects White Light's work over the last few years both to reduce White Light's own environmental impact and to promote improved techniques, practices and equipment for reducing the environmental impact of the shows and events it supplies.

This has seen White Light involved in a wide range of activities, from investing h

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UK - PLASA Events has confirmed that the first ever PLASA International Rigging Conference is close to a sell out. With over 160 delegates already registered from all over the world, there are now only 25 delegate places remaining.

Running alongside PLASA 2010, the PLASA International Rigging Conference is taking place on 13-14 September in the Earls Court Conference Centre. This 'world-first' unique event has attracted delegates from Europe, USA, Canada, Asia and Australia - making it an invaluable international industry forum for the international live entertainment and event rigging community.

Industry icons speaking at the conference include Unusual Rigging's Alan Jacobi, Star Events Group's Roger Barrett, Prolyte's Marc Hendriks, CM ET's Cristiano Giavedoni and Sapsis Rigging's Bill Sapsis.

Unusual Rigging's Alan Jacobi, LVO, states, "Unusual are delighted to be su

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USA - Located in Charlotte's Music Factory entertainment district, Butter NC is an 8,300sq.ft space that has taken the Charlotte club scene to a new level, with lush design concepts, superior service, and a sound system that envelopes up to 400 guests with an upbeat mix of electronica, hip-hop and top 40 music.

Local design and install firm Eye Dialogue chose Turbosound TCS speakers to pump up the volume and provide distinctly different vibes on Butter's two levels, each with its own DJ.

"It's a total visual experience; they pulled out all the stops in designing this space," says entertainment technology designer Jack Kelly of Eye Dialogue Lighting & Sound in Charlotte, who designed and installed the club's audio systems. "But the big thing for the owners was the sound.They wanted it to feel like the sound was all around you instead of originating from one end o

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UK - Global Infusion Group (GIG) scored a 'triple-double' with Red Bull at X-Fighters 2010. For the second year running GIG were on-site with three of their companies..

Contracted by live event production company Innovision, e2B Logistics were on-site for two weeks installing Red Bull's experiential marketing, advertising and merchandising equipment. The Red Bull kit, including large star shades, inflatable arches, branded fridges, signage, DJ decks, vehicles, parasols and much more is stored and maintained in GIG's new warehousing facilities. It is then packed and transported to site before being installed in the grounds of Battersea Power Station.

During the site build, sister company Eat To The Beat were on hand to provide production catering On competition night Upbeat Event Catering and Design provided catering for the judges and riders.

John Ford, Red Bull's operations

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USA - Tomcat USA has announced an expanded partnership with 4Wall Entertainment as an official Tomcat Master Stocking Distributor. 4Wall Entertainment is a full-service lighting company with locations nationwide that specializes in providing entertainment lighting systems.

"4Wall has been a key client for many years. Similar to Tomcat, 4Wall is a company that values integrity, quality and performance," commented Don Dimitroff, sales and marketing director for Tomcat USA. "And through the Master Stocking Distributor programme, together we will be able to better serve our customers on the East and West Coasts and throughout North America."

In its role as a Master Stocking Distributor, 4Wall will carry a full stock of Tomcat truss at their Las Vegas, Nevada and Moonachie, New Jersey locations.

(Jim Evans)

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USA - Justin Bieber is in the midst of a whirlwind tour, playing cities across the continental US.

Back in February when tour preparations were in negotiations, monitor engineer Tony Luna staked his claim on a DiGiCo SD8-24. "The budget dictated that we had to use a smaller console than on previous tours and the SD8 had all the features and power that I was used to in the SD7. It was pretty much a no-brainer that that's what we were going to need on this tour. I had first mixed on one at the NAB convention this April and had a cool experience on it. Plus, the audio quality was excellent."

For Bieber's seven-piece band, Luna is utilising 53 channels overall. During the several weeks worth of rehearsals pre-tour he was able to pre-programme the basics of the show. Once the group commenced rehearsals, it made building his mixes that much easier. "Everything was alr

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Qatar - Doha International Tennis Court in Qatar recently hosted the acclaimed Indian Bollywood pop singer, Sonu Niigam.

Maestro Sound & Lighting Company located in Bahrain, was the provider of sound, lighting and video backdrops for the major force of the Indian music industry, with the help of tour manager Vincent Rodrigues and event manager Shafiq of Regency group, who helped coordinate the event.

Maestro achieved "excellent sound quality" at the Doha International Tennis Court, which holds approximately 10,000 people. The venue was not originally designed for outdoor music events, and suffers from unflattering architecture, reverberation and bad acoustics, for such an application. Employing Maestro's recently acquired Adamson speaker system, Promod, Sonu's front house engineer, had a fulfilling first experience using Y-Axis series consisting of 16 Y18, 16 Y10, 10

  1. Intelix partners with Sommer Cable
  2. Tonight's the Night returns with RML
  3. Midas seeks to double R&D team
  4. Milan's ChiMiama installs Proel Audio system
  5. ENTTEC opens North American office and factory
  6. Arhus church refurbished with d&b sound system
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