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UAE - Nicolas Kyvernitis Electronics Enterprises (NMK), distributor of Neutrik in the Middle East region for the live sound market segment, is awaiting the first delivery of digital, wireless audio network Xirium.

multichannel wireless network designed to replace analogue audio cables in situations where it could be difficult to run a cable, but where a stable connection and audio quality are needed. The system combines digital transmission and receiving lines in one system and delivers the highest sound quality, reliability and ease of handling.

Xirium has been launched and presented during the ongoing NMK Roadshow which begun in November 2014 in Qatar and is heading to Kuwait on 12 January 2015.

"Demand for Xirium is extremely high. We have already sold three systems within two weeks after product launch in the Middle East region. The system can be used in various app

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Europe - Superstar producer/singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams made extensive use of Shure wireless microphone and in-ear monitoring systems on his first-ever headlining concert tour this Autumn. The six-week Dear G I R L tour ran from September to October and took in major venues in Western and Central Europe, including the UK's O2 Arena.

Shure's Axient wireless microphones and PSM1000 in-ear monitoring systems, as used on the European dates, were sold by Shure Distribution UK, and supplied by Wigwam Acoustics in Heywood, Greater Manchester.

Pharrell's regular monitor engineer Jeremy Peters informally approached US-based RF engineer and stage and microphone tech Matthew Bock, of Nashville audio technology vendor Sound Image, early in 2014 for advice about which wireless systems to use on the live dates that were then being planned in support of Pharrell's successful G I R

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Canada - Calgary's Epcor Centre is one of the most vibrant centres of the arts in western Canada, annually attracting over 600,000 people to around 960 events. This year the venue has invested in no less than six DiGiCo mixing consoles, the direct result of the positive experience with a single example installed in 2012.

Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts (then known as the Calgary Centre for Performing Arts) was officially opened in 1985 by Dr Martha Cohen, Sandra LeBlanc and Vera Swanson, three women who were instrumental in establishing and raising funds for the facility. It is housed within two historic buildings - the Burns Building, constructed in 1917, and the 1931-built Calgary Public Building.

Covering six floors and over 400,000ft2 (nearly 37,200m2), it is one of the three largest performing arts centres in Canada and features seven performance spaces, five of whic

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The Netherlands - Green Hippo will be holding a free conference during ISE in Amsterdam in February 2015.

With the recent launch of Hippotizer V4 media servers and AViary Video Tools, this is an opportunity to find out more, have live demonstrations and hands-on play with the latest Green Hippo technology.

To register you interest in attending the conference please sign up on either of the website links below:

Hippotizer: http://www.hippotizer.com/calendar/70/105-ISE-2015-Show-and-Green-Hippo-Conference

AViary Video Tools: http://www.aviary-videotools.com/ise-conference-2015

(Jim Evans)

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USA - In the city that gave us Times Square, New Year's Eve is just too big to be confined to one night. That is why RPM Presents created Big Week NYC, a week-long, heart-pounding EDM celebration, to ring in the New Year with sick beats by superstars like Martin Garrix and Kaskade and a scintillating lightshow created by Kevin Mignone and Mike Gionfriddo of KM Productions using a collection of fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

Held in Manhattan starting 27 December and going on through the wee hours of 1 January 1, the event drew visitors from around the world. Most of the performances took place at Pier 94, a 135,000sq.ft historic dock and warehouse that was converted into New York's hottest pop-up concert venue.

Artists like Carnage, Armin van Buuren and Disclosure rocked the famous Pier 94 stage. This all-star lineup preforming at a world-renowned venue required an intens

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USA - The GrooveBoston dance phenomenon made a recent high-impact appearance at the College Park Centre at the University of Texas Arlington (UTA). The spectacular lighting and production design was created by Nathan Almeida of East Coast Lighting & Production Services (ELCPS) and GrooveBoston production director Ed Slapik.

Almeida has been involved with lighting the legendary college-oriented EDM experience - renowned for high production values, awesome visual environments and some of the best dance sounds on the planet - for the past 10 years, and for this year's show, he once again utilized Robe Pointes, CycFX 8s and LEDBeam 100s.

Creating a new look for GrooveBoston was a priority, and the venue offered plenty of stage space and headroom. To ensure an efficient get-in and set-up in a tight timeframe, they decided on a trussing structure to make up the main set architecture

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UK - Rapper Professor Green hit the road in November and December to promote his latest album, Growing Up In Public, culminating in a sold-out show at the London Roundhouse. A Yamaha CL5 digital mixing system helped front of house engineer Neal Allen to make Waves with the mix.

"As this was primarily an Academy tour, which all have in-house consoles. I wanted a desk with footprint that would cause the least problems, whilst maintaining the sound and functions I was after," says Neal. "I had used a CL5 with Professor Green on the Music Cube shows we recently did at London's Westfield shopping centres and really liked the sound, especially when using the Premium Rack compressors.

"I needed to purchase a console which would drop into the Dante network for the stage and in-ear monitors package that we'll be using on the summer festivals we are playing in

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USA - The words "costume exhibition" don't promise a lot of drama. Perhaps we have seen too many costumes imprisoned in glass cabinets under bland eco-friendly display lighting. Perhaps we got bored reading the vital statistics of each item of clothing as we strolled through hushed museum halls.

But a visit to the recently opened Hollywood Costume exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), lit with ETC Source Four Mini fixtures and powered by ThruPower power control, will make you forget all you ever knew about museum visits - and may change forever the way you view exhibitions. Here, the costumes receive as much direction and attention as the actors who once wore them. The creators of these remarkable displays realised that without great lighting, sound and video, costumes are just old clothing once inhabited by a famous person, allowing them inherit

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UK - Colour Sound Experiment ended a very busy 2014 supplying lighting and LED screens for several music tours including for ultimate UK synthpop aficionados, The Human League. The west London based rental company worked closely with lighting designer Rob Sinclair and the band's manager, Simon Watson, both of whom were involved in creating the eye-catching set and look for the stage.

The band tour the UK and Europe every two years in the lead up to Christmas to the delight of their enthusiastic and loyal fanbase. Each tour presents a different stylish look for the stage and Rob, who has now been lighting The Human League for 10 years, reckons that the biggest challenge is to top what they have done previously.

On recent tours, video has been central to the show and this was again the case, complete with their white carpeted stage and set, which has become a Human League tradem

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USA - The John C. Maxwell Leadership Centre at 12Stone Church in Atlanta honours the life and impact of John's global and generational leadership as an internationally recognized leadership speaker, author and pastor. In celebration of his continuing legacy, visitors today enjoy interactive audio-visual presentations of John's life and achievements across an immersive video wall controllable from several user stations. The engaging video and graphical content is driven exclusively by Renewed Vision's ProVideoPlayer 2 (PVP2) software, bringing exceptional reliability and quality to a cost-efficient playback infrastructure.

Velocity Productions, an Atlanta-based production and systems integration company, was tasked with building out the video wall on a curved wall, using a custom mounting system to cleanly integrate multiple 46-inch Barco monitors in a four-wide, three-tall confi

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UK - Entec Sound & Light helped the smiles flow by supplying full production - lighting, sound and video - to the high profile Roar With Laughter event staged by ZSL (the Zoological Society of London) at the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo.

It's the third year in a row that Entec has supplied equipment and crew to the fundraiser, which featured another impressive line-up of top comedy talent in Seann Walsh, David O'Doherty, Sean Lock, Ed Byrne, Stewart Lee, Lucy Porter, Phil Nichol and Greg Burns.

Entec's ability to supply all the technical elements from one source made co-ordination easy for the client as well as enabling a high quality yet cost-effective technical production solution which looked and sounded great.

Entec invited Simon Tutchener to join in the hilarity and create a lighting scheme for the evening. "It was a great show for a worthwhile cause and I tho

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UK - Fifteen years after providing the complete audio-visual system for the Our Dynamic Earth attraction, Electrosonic returned to help the science centre bring Scotland's Time Lords to life. Electrosonic was charged with the design and systems integration of the AV elements, under subcontract to Studio MB, engineering the new exhibition with reliable components within a simple system architecture.

Scotland's Time Lords introduces visitors to the Scottish scientists who laid the foundation for the modern paradigm of plate tectonics. Three new interlinked galleries take visitors from an 18thcentury themed classroom with magic blackboards and talking portraits back through Deep Time to the Big Bang and beyond. Visitors learn the impact of James Hutton and Arthur Holmes on the evolution of earth science, and celebrate the fact that scientific discovery is at the heart of Scottish c

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UK - Greg Walsh, sound design and front of house mixing engineer, chose a selection of DPA microphones to capture the sound of Kate Bush's successful Before the Dawn series of concerts at London's Hammersmith Apollo.

After 35 years away from the live stage, these much anticipated concerts received high praise from reviewers and fans who frequently commented on the exceptional audio quality and the clarity of Kate's vocals.

The decision to use DPA microphones was made following extensive testing by Greg Walsh and the production team, which included renowned audio engineer Stephen Taylor who was responsible for Kate's vocal processing and monitor engineer Ian Newton, who sadly passed away earlier this month.

"I knew about DPA, having originally discovered Bruel and Kjaer [DPA's predecessor] in the mid-1980s," Walsh says. "The larger capsule microphones su

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South Africa - Lighting designer Willie Bothma once again lit the Kings of Chaos on their latest tour to Sun City and at GrandWest's Grand Arena in Cape Town with a grandMA2. The full technical was supplied by Gearhouse Group's Cape Town branch and supported by Gavin Taylor, Sean Caie and the team at the Grand Arena.

Kings of Chaos featured special guest Steven Tyler alongside Billy Gibbons, Matt Sorum, Gilby Clarke, Duff McKagan, Robin Zander and Nuno Bettencourt and was brought to South Africa by Andrew Mac of AMP Events.

"It was a great show to do," said Bothma from Gearhouse who also lit the performance in 2013. "The only request was that the band should be seen all times and this was done. At the end of the day it's about the band and that is why people come to the show."

The rig and design were the same at both venues. The main challenge was setting

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UK - The divisions between architecture and art have become ever more blurred in recent years, so no one should be surprised to find room-spanning mirrored structures suspended in the Raphael Gallery at London's Victoria and Albert Museum as part of the London Design Festival. Designers Edward Barber OBE and Jay Osgerby OBE, in collaboration with BMW, devised 'Double Space for BMW', a kinetic installation that altered the viewers perception of space and movement in relation to themselves and the Raphael Cartoons on display. Total Solutions Group (TSG) were tasked with suspending the structures in the revered halls of the V&A.

"Manufactured by Millimetre and engineered by Arup, the two structures are in fact shallow ellipses 15m long and 10m deep made from polished Alucore panels mounted to a lattice framework, much like the construction of an aircraft wing," explained

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China - Created by DreamWorks Animation, the How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular was produced by the storytellers at DreamWorks Animation and Global Creatures, the masterminds behind the international phenomenon Walking with Dinosaurs, the #1 grossing world tour of 2010. Following its launch in Australia and New Zealand, as well as a successful run in North America, How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular landed in China. Over 145,000 spectators turned out to enjoy the premiere at a newly built theatre on the grounds of the Beijing National Stadium - the famous Bird's Nest, built for the 2008 Summer Olympics

Featuring more than a dozen impressive dragons with 40-foot wingspans, the audio challenge for Rightway Audio Consultants and sound supplier Dadong Huahan was to make the dragons sound as impressive as they looked, while also superbly representing spoken voice and so

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Spain - Effective 1 December 2014, NEEC Audio Barcelona acquired the Ecler pro audio brand and business including the personnel and management team under the leadership of Enric Casimiro who will continue to manage the business.

The Ecler business is known for its focus on technology. The brand is also well known by its creative design of Audeo speaker cabinets, in collaboration with the Italian company Italdesign Giugiaro.

NEEC intends to invest in innovation in the pro audio field and to ensure that the Ecler brand is associated with both advanced technology and excellent design.

Over the last decade Ecler has focused its efforts in commercial audio solutions, always striving to improve sound quality, innovation and sustainability. Its main markets include retail shop fitting, education, corporate, hospitality and sports & fitness. ECLER product solutions can be found in w

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Italy - Audiosales has taken over as the exclusive Powersoft distributor for the Italian market, adding the audio manufacturer to its portfolio of leading brands.

Audiosales will be managing the nationwide distribution and sales of Powersoft rack amplifiers, for both the touring and fixed installation markets.

"We are very pleased to begin this collaboration with Powersoft," says Stefano Rocchi, owner of Audiosales, "The products and technology embraced by Powersoft perfectly match the requirements of the market in both the touring and installation sectors. With the addition of Powersoft to our brand portfolio, we can now provide our clients with solutions at the very cutting edge of innovation. Our goal is to make Powersoft amplifiers the standard on the Italian market."

"With Audiosales, I believe that we have found the right partner to continue to

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Norway - The Nobel Peace Prize is probably the highest profile and best known honour in the world, bestowed since 1901 on those who have made an outstanding contribution to peace between people and nations. The 2014 award ceremony took place on 10 December in Oslo City Hall, Norway, with Yamaha CL5 and QL1 digital mixers entrusted to mix the prestigious event, broadcast live to an audience estimated at one billion.

Over the years, the Nobel Peace Prize has been presented to many of the world's most foremost statesmen and women, but it also recognises less well-known figures. This year the award was to children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel laureate.

The event's mix engineer Bernt Austad has used Yamaha digital consoles since 1995. "I choose them because of their stability, they never crash or need re

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South Africa - The first Barco Auro 3D 11.1 cinemas in Africa have been completed and audiences were recently treated to the first screening in Nu Metro cinemas at The Glen in Johannesburg and Menlyn in Pretoria.

The installation of Auro perfectly fits Nu Metro's list of firsts in Africa, as Nu Metro was the first cinema chain with an all-digital Cineplex and now again leads the way with the Auro immersive sound system.

Being a first in Africa required collaborating with leaders in the professional audio industry and so Nu Metro called upon JBL importers and distributors Wild & Marr. They assisted with the system design, calibration and setup of the Auro 3D system to integrate it with JBL Screen Array loudspeakers. Wild & Marr's technical team met up with the international team from Barco and went through training to become certified Auro 3D engineers.

Wild & Marr worked in

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UK - Panto is one of the most fun and also one of the most demanding genres of performance to light, requiring busy cueing, lots of bold and fast moving multiple scene and location changes and several touches of visual magic to help the action flow, all with simultaneous split-second timing - a challenge that lighting designer Andy Webb fully embraced for the Qdos production of Dick Whittington at the Swan Theatre in High Wycombe, where he chose Robe for all the moving and LED elements of his design.

Actor, comedian and singer Shane Richie - best known for his role as Alfie Moon in the long running BBC 1 soap EastEnders - was back in the lead role at The Swan due to popular demand after his success as Buttons in last year's Cinderella.

Andy, a freelance LD based in Cirencester, has worked with Robe products over the last 10 years and was impressed - in par

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USA / Germany - Christie, the specialist in visual displays and audio technologies, has announced that it has acquired Cologne, Germany-based coolux GmbH, the developer and supplier of 3D compositing and rendering systems, best known for its Pandoras Box product family. coolux will be integrated into Christie's Global Market Solutions team, maintaining its office in Cologne, Germany.

Jennifer Smith, Christie's executive vice-president, Global Market Solutions, said: "Christie is committed to deepen its marketplace lead in supplying a total solution for advanced applications such as projection mapping, broadcast delivery and all manner of large-scale digital canvas creation, so the fit between our products and services and those of coolux is a natural one."

Continuing, Smith said: "Pre-visualization capability when creating stunning, experiential events - includi

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UK - The city of Bristol marked the start of its year as European Green Capital, by lighting up the 150 year old Clifton Suspension Bridge green on New Year's Eve 2014 into New Year's Day 2015

The innovative architectural lighting system was creatively designed by Utopium's MD Colin Bodenham, who also masterminded the complex logistics for the installation in just one day, by 12 local based technicians. The bridge lit up the city's skyline, going through a series of colour changes culminating in it being green at midnight. The image promoted the city's Green capital status and the bridge's 150th anniversary through local and national media on New Year's Day.

Colin said, "We were proud to be asked to work with the event's organisers Richmond Event Management (REM) and The Bristol Green Capital Partnership on this prestigious launch event.

"The Green Capital initiati

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USA - Founded in the late 1960s, Avcom is a multi-line AV manufacturers' representative company covering the states of Ohio and West Virginia as well as Western Pennsylvania and Northern Kentucky.

Avcom prides itself on providing quality products and building long-lasting and profitable relationships with the AV integrators, engineers, acoustical consultants and end users in their territory.

President Jim Umstead emphasized the importance of a constant presence in the field including regular business meetings with integrators and consultants and frequent product demonstrations. He commented, "We are proud to represent Community in our four-state territory. Community's reputation for high-quality products, expert application assistance and great customer service fits well with our desire to provide each of our business partners with the best possible solutions to their par

  1. Renegade raises the bar for Kasabian tour
  2. Chauvet lighting drives Concours d'Elegance
  3. Chaos Visual Productions acquired by PRG
  4. DPA Microphones reveal Secrets of the Tomb
  5. TV2 upgrades SNG truck with Broaman MUX22
  6. Meyer reinforces Norway's Fosnavag Cultural Centre
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