Germany - Meyer Sound will make its first-ever appearance at Showtech in Berlin (19-21 June), the international trade show for stage and convention technologies professionals. Through demonstrations and displays, attendees will have the opportunity to experience a full complement of products, including the new UPJunior ultracompact VariO loudspeaker, LCS Series Matrix3 audio show control system, and the M'elodie ultracompact high-power curvilinear array loudspeaker.

Meyer will host demonstrations of Matrix3 with SpaceMap multichannel panning, Wild Tracks hard disk playback, and the CueMixer compact control surface. Matrix3 is used in a broad variety of productions and attractions, including numerous Cirque du Soleil shows. UPJunior and the M1D-Sub ultracompact subwoofer will also be in use in the demo room.

"We see Showtech as being an important international event

UK - This week at ABTT, Selecon debuts several new luminaires including the long throw Toru 4º-8º followspot, the third and final model from the Performer Series range of followspots. Previously seen in pre-production mode and now in full production, the Toru 4º-8º Followspot features a comprehensive control suite with CTO filter, 24-leaf iris, cutters, dowser and diffusion frost; built-in universal 100V-250V electronic power supply and integrated 6-colour changer.

Sporting a fresh new look, the updated Acclaim Fresnel and PC introduce heat management to 500W / 650W luminaires - a feature which ensures operators can focus these stage lighting workhorses without the need for gloves. The new Acclaim luminaires also include the integrated safety bond design feature alongside Selecon's well known mains power isolation solution ensuring full compliance with European Standards for

UK - The winners of this year's Annual Awards and the Technician of the Year, were presented with their Hook Clamp trophies - jointly sponsored by Andolite & Triple E - at the Annual Awards Dinner, sponsored by PRG Europe and held at London's Commonwealth Club.

Chairman of the judges, Robin Townley, ABTT Hon. Secretary, remarked that there were again more nominations this year than ever before and that nominations continued to arrive from the ABTT Theatre Show floor, well into the morning.

Judging took place throughout the day, with the final decision made shortly before the start of the Awards Dinner in the evening.

The ABTT Sound Product of the Year 2007 went to Orbital Sound for the Zaxcom digital radio mic system which the judges described as "very impressive, forward thinking application of digital technology".

Other awards included: Lighting Product of the

UK - PLASA has relaunched its prestigious Awards for Innovation, which will be joined for the first time this year by the new Gottelier Award, named in memory of Tony Gottelier - the leading designer, innovator and industry commentator who died in 2006.

Designed to reflect excellence in new products in lighting, sound, engineering, AV and staging - the PLASA Awards for Innovation were first established in 1992 and have since been presented annually during the PLASA Show, which this year runs from 9-12 September at Earls Court in London. The Awards have a justly deserved reputation for identifying high quality, innovative new products early in their life and many previous winners are now firmly established in their fields.

Judged by a panel of respected industry professionals, products nominated for the Awards compete for one of eight Innovation Awards, plus an additional troph

UK - The Willow Foundation is a charity that works with seriously ill young adults, offering them a range of 'Special days' which aim to provide a chance to escape the pressures of their daily routine and share quality time with family and/or friends. The charity was founded by ex-Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson and his wife Megs, in memory of their daughter, Anna, who died of cancer aged 31.

Every special day is of the young person's choosing - it could involve fulfilling a lifelong dream or it could simply offer an opportunity to bring some much-needed normality back into their lives. The Foundation will endeavour to fulfil the special day request however imaginative and, if possible, exceed expectations.

To date the charity has organised and funded special days for young adults living with a wide range of serious conditions including amongst others; cancer, motor neurone dise

Sweden - Three leading Swedish companies in the media technology industry - Prisma Outside Broadcast, Massteknik and Primetec - are to join forces under one name, MediaTec Group.

The merger creates one of Europe's larger media corporations with a combined turnover of 80 euros and a specialist workforce of 230 employees. A management statement declares, "With operations in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the UK, the MediaTec Group will have an immediate pan-European presence, supplying equipment and personnel to customers and events worldwide. The new company has a clearly defined strategy that puts the focus on growth, both organic and through strategic acquisition.

"The media technology industry is undergoing swift development in a number of areas, not least through major out sourcing activities. The growth potential within the sports, entertainment and event i

UK - J&C Joel's new fabric binder not only won over the company's customers at the ABTT Show 2007, but also made the stand look so good that it won the prestigious ABTT Best Stand award.

J&C Joel sales director James Wheelwright said: "We were thrilled to receive the award. The stand was designed specifically to showcase the new binder and it's terrific to receive public recognition for the months of hard work. This is the second time we've won the best stand award, and it's testament to our great staff and business partners that the judges saw fit to give us a second beautifully polished presentation Hook Clamp."

(Jim Evans)

UK - Mendip District Council has stated that, despite challenging weather conditions, it is very pleased to date with the overall management of this year's Glastonbury Festival. The key issue this year has been the increased numbers, and the council feels that this has been managed well.

Charles Uzzell, council business manager for planning and environment, said: "The extra numbers seem to have been effectively managed. We will be reviewing this post event with the organisers but we certainly have no significant concerns at this stage.

"We have noticed however that many of the camp sites were very full so this is something we may need to pick up on after the festival. The ground conditions have clearly been testing but we have been working with the organisers to ensure that this doesn't affect the management."

He added, "For us the most significant breach

Germany - ETC's new Eos lighting control system has won the Showtech 2007 trade show's Product Award for Lighting and Projection. This award is the second such honour for the Eos, which took the Product of the Year Award for debuting product when the desk was introduced last autumn at LDI. But the Showtech award is the first ever European award for an ETC desk and marks ETC's strong presence in the European entertainment lighting market, says the company.

ETC's CEO Fred Foster, who accepted the trophy at the Showtech ceremony, says, "We are extremely proud to have Eos recognised in the German market by this award. Eos will be a very powerful tool for the lighting designers and lighting programmers in theatres, television studios and events."

(JIm Evans)

UK - DMi D&M Installation is showing a wealth of new products at CEDIA Expo 2007 in London this week. The new dedicated CI division of D&M Europe is exhibiting products from its five distributed brands - Denon, Marantz, Escient, Opus and Boston Acoustics.

Major new products are being launched from Denon and Escient. These include the Denon ASD-3W dock for iPod, the Denon AVR-4308 AV Surround Receiver, Denon RC-7000 pre-programmed and programmable IR remote control, and the Denon RC-7001 IR to RF Base Station.From Escient there is the FireBall FP-1 Music Manager is equipped with a universal dock for iPod, and Fireball SE500 Digital Music Server.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Robe ColorSpot 1200E ATs took centre stage at Glastonbury's Jazz World arena, supplied by Essex based rental company DPL who were making their first Glastonbury appearance as a lighting supplier.

Jazz World featured a strong line-up including Amy Winehouse, Corrine Bailey Rae, the Guillemots, John Fogerty, Mr Hudson and the Library, Rodrigo y Gabriela and many more.

DPL's Darren Parker says, "It was a great honour to win the pitch to supply Jazz World. We had to design a flexible rig that would accommodate a wide variety of top quality international artists and the creative requirements of an array of visiting LDs. We chose the best equipment for the job which was Robe moving lights."

He adds that with the notoriously unpredictable nature of the Glastonbury weather, they also wanted really robust and reliable lights that would withstand the elements.

Pete Wa

China - In the first week of June, China International Entertainment Technology Forum was held in CTS Plaza Beijing. The seminar's subject was The Application of Entertainment Technology in Stadiums. It was attended by the Chinese Ministry of Art and Culture and the organising committee of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Outline's exclusive distributor for China, Guangzhou ACME invited Outline's Sales & Marketing Director Giorgio Biffi to talk about Outline's experience with large sound systems in Stadiums.

Biffi spoke about the recent experience gained by Britannia Row Productions who have had experience with not only the Barcelona Olympics but also the newly built Wembley Stadium where they carried out the initial sound tests.

These tests resulted in their decision to combine the use of a temporary concert or 'touring' PA system with the permanently installed 'house

UK - As Brighton's Great Escape Festival entered its second year, prominent local PA hire company, Alstublieft Audio discovered the benefits that using a DiGiCo console brings to a festival situation.

Headed up by Giles Bristow, Alstublieft was employed by festival organisers The Barfly Group to look after audio production across the entire festival, which this year featured around 150 bands playing across 20 venues. Featured acts included The Happy Mondays, Captain and The Magic Numbers.

A DiGiCo a D1 Live 48MDR, featuring a local Minirack and eight analogue I/O and eight AES I/O at FOH, and a stage rack with 48 in and out, was used for shows at the Corn Exchange and The Brighton Centre, East Wing. "Initially Giles was a little hesitant about using a digital desk in a festival situation," says DiGiCo's technical sales manager, Tim Shaxson, who was on site throughout

UK - The ABTT Show's organisers, The Association of British Theatre Technicians, have described its 29th edition staged at London's Royal Horticultural Halls 13-14 June "a resounding success".

With its attendance figures showing an increase on last year, UK visitor numbers were boosted by a strong attendance from mainland Europe as well as by attendees from the Theatres Trust annual conference which the ABTT co-sponsored.

The Show's three halls were packed to capacity with 100 exhibiting companies. Show director, Roger Fox comments, "It is particularly interesting to see how the show has evolved into a key industry event. This year we had many important product launches and with visitor numbers showing a steady increase year on year, we are confident of the show's continued growth into its third decade."

(Jim Evans)

USA - Elation Professional was commissioned to light this year's InfoComm Show Awards Ceremony held at the Anaheim Hilton on 18 June 18, 2007.

"Of all the lighting companies in attendance at InfoComm, it was a great tribute to have our company and its products chosen to provide lighting and visual effects for this very prestigious industry event," said Eric Loader, director of sales for Elation Professional. "The Awards Ceremony offered an excellent opportunity to showcase some of our most popular fixtures and cutting-edge technologies to the AV industry."

Staged in the Anaheim Hilton's spacious Pacific Ballroom with more than 1,000 attendees, the Awards Ceremony was a full production event that required substantial illuminative power to light up the massive room and stage.

Four of Elation's Power Spot 700 CMYs led the way. The Power Spot 700 CMY created

Canada / UK - Cast's latest version of Wysiwyg, R20 offers more tools, smaller file sizes, improved images, broader compatibility, support for Windows Vista and more. The company says that with the compression in R20, every new file will start off up to 10 times smaller than in previous releases, which means faster loading time and the ability to email even complex Wysiwyg files to clients and team members.

R20 also features a range of new 'Merge Objects' tools, which include such actions as Subtraction (subtracting one object from another), Union (uniting two objects into one), and Intersection (the tricky operation of merging two objects and then deleting everything outside of their common area, or intersecting point). In wysiwyg, these new tools can be used with any object, 2D or 3D.

R20 also allows users to choose from a series of pre-defined line thicknesses (weights), an

UK - A whole host of new information has been added to the PLASA07 website to ensure visitors and exhibitors can learn all about the full plans for this year's relaunched event. The site - www.plasashow.com - now carries extensive information on PLASA07, which runs from 9-12 September 2007 at Earls Court in London.

The striking website has been designed to help exhibitors and visitors quickly access everything they need to know about the event. It features an easy-to-use menu system, quick links to essential information such as the exhibitor list and floorplan and a straightforward online registration area where visitors can pre-book their tickets at the reduced rate of £9.00 - a saving of 50% on the on-the-door price of £18.00.

The site also carries details of the radical new floor layout, which sees PLASA07 transformed into a two-hall, single-level show as a resu

UK - Avolites lighting consoles once again proved a popular choice at Glastonbury. A total of 21 Avo consoles and 20 Avo Art2000 racks were used site-wide at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Music & Dance.

At Jazz World, an Avolites Diamond 4 took centre stage, supplied by Essex-based DPL, who were enjoying their first year as a Glasto supplier. This controlled 18 Robe ColorSpot 1200E AT moving lights, 22 pieces of the new Martin Professional Stage Bar 54 LED battens, over 150 PARs, 8 cell Molefeys and a Hippotizer digital media server driving 24 square metres of ChromaQ ColorWeb LED screen configured in six columns.

Dimming was also Avolites ART 2000 including a new rack purchased by DPL for their busy summer schedule.

The Jazz World rig was designed by Darren Parker and Pete Watts, and the console was programmed by Watts and operated by him plus DPL crew membe

UK - Southwest production company, Fearless Audio, employed an Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing system for one of the stages at the Glastonbury festival. Fearless was contracted to manage audio on the G stage, part of the growing Dance Area of the festival,which also comprised the East and West Coast stages, Dance Lounge, and Pussy Parlure.

Having road-tested the system on other productions, Fearless installed an iDR10 DSP rack onstage with iLive-144 FOH control surface, managing a total of 34 DJ acts over the three-day event. G Stage acts included The Plumps DJ's, Rennie Pilgrem & MC Chickaboo, Adam Freeland, Andy C, Adam F, Shpongle, Freq Nasty, Scotch Egg Band (Drumize), and Atomic Hooligan & Jay Cunning.

"Despite the terrible weather conditions, iLive performed flawlessly - it's a fantastic system," commented Fearless Audio owner, Kevin Allen. "It made loa

UK - A technological breakthrough on Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage this year was the implementation of a digital signal path from the Digidesign D-Show FOH desks right up to the Funktion One loudspeakers on the main stage - using an Optocore optical fibre solution.

The enhanced sound quality owed its success to the faith invested by Simon Honywill, sound designer for the control and monitor system suppliers RG Jones, and the support offered throughout by Marquee Audio's digital expert Andy Huffer.

It was Huffer who had proposed the digital solution to Honywill near the beginning of the year - suggesting three of Optocore's DD32E network devices to transmit a maximum amount of digital data at high speed.

Marquee are not only the official UK distributors of Optocore fibre networks but are also Digidesign resellers, and Andy Huffer was on hand at FOH to support the consulting eng

Czech republic - Robe moving lights were in action in the main Scenofest Hall of the Prague Quadrennial 2007 - the International Competitive Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture.

This is organised by OISTAT - the International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians - and is the world's largest scenographic exhibition. The event took over three halls of the Prague Industrial Palace at the Exhibition Grounds to the north of the city.

Scenofest featured two main performance spaces. The first was the 18m high Tower of Babel, built from scaffolding and steel and conceived by Sean Crowley, head of design at the UK's Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Technical design of the Tower was by PQ's technical director Ian Evans, head of technical studies at the RWCMD.

Crowley, Evans and Jean Guy Le Cat also designed the other main performance sp

UK - Stage Electrics supplied and installed set, lighting and generator power for the Nokia Rock Up & Play structure at the 2007 Donington Park Download Festival, formerly known as Monsters of Rock, working for The Dobson White Partnership.

The Nokia Rock Up & Play set-up features a stage which is open to everyone who wishes to perform. Anyone can turn up as individuals or bands and play on their own or with the house band - with predictably mixed results. The stage also attracts the more 'non musical types' who enter the air guitar competition with a signed 'air guitar' as first prize, there is also a DJ for late night moshing.

Scenic elements supplied by Stage Electrics included the main bar, DJ bar, performance stage, Q & A stage and graphics walling. The company also provided download units and phone display pods.

This year, the teams worked to demanding ti

UK - With Digidesign's Venue D-Show and D-Show Profile occupying the FOH position on the main Pyramid Stage, this year's Glastonbury Festival was presented with the event's first all-digital festival format.

The Venue environment was specified as the resident system by Simon Honywill, system designer for the control system providers, RG Jones Sound Engineering. His decision was justified when around 85% of the main stage acts, spanning the gamut of artistic performance - from Shirley Bassey to the Arctic Monkeys, Paul Weller to the UK Youth Orchestra - had their sound mixed on a D-Show.

Two D-Shows piggy-backed between the main stage acts throughout the Festival, allowing the incoming sound engineers to pre-programme their mix, and these were output via AES into the master D-Show Profile for digital distribution to the loudspeaker system.

The consulting engineering team cons

USA - At this year's International DJ Expo to be held 13-16 August at the Atlantic City Convention Center in Atlantic City, N.J, GCI Technologies will be showing a spread of new and established products.

"International DJ Expo is always an important show for us to connect with and educate the mobile DJ and entertainment industry on GCI's latest products and newest innovations," says president Alan Cabasso.

Gemini will be presenting its newly released MPX-40 Professional Touch-Sensitive MP3/CD Player, along with the CDM-500 Professional DJ Station, the latest edition of its GX line of 2-way ABS loudspeakers and new wireless products.

From the Cortex brand will be the rack-mountable HDC line of digital music controllers, including the HDC-1000 and HDC-3000 units along with the DJ industry's first USB-compatible professional digital music turntable, the HDTT-5000.

G

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