Installation

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UK - A Studer Vista 8 digital audio console has been chosen for the new recording studio at the recently-refurbished Glasgow City Halls. Performances given by the venue's principal resident, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, in the Grand Hall will all be recorded in the new studio for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio Scotland.

"Vista 8 technology confers significant practical benefits as well as outstanding audio quality," explains Studer's Andrew Hills, UK sales director. "Using the new fibre optic infrastructure, in conjunction with Studer's portable Stageboxes, the City Halls team will make noticeable savings on set-up time, as they move from venue to venue within the complex."

Glasgow's City Halls houses the Grand Hall, The Old Fruitmarket and the Recital Room. Now merged into one complex, these adjacent, Grade I listed Victorian venues, dating fro

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Singapore - A Soundcraft GB8 40-channel mixing desk is at the hub of a Harman Pro church integration package in Singapore, designed and supplied by system contractor, Electronics and Engineering Pte Ltd (E&E).

Since Christ Methodist Church arrived in Singapore in the 1930s, it had been sharing its church premises with two other congregations for almost three decades. Today located on Singapore's East Coast Road, CMC has not only acquired and financed its own plot of land, but has taken steps to upgrade its sound systems at its congregation halls in the Sanctuary Hall, Berckman Hall and Sunday School Hall.

CMC knew they wanted to replace their existing low-quality MI speaker systems in the 600-capacity, highly-reverberant church with a high quality professional speaker system, and at the same time address the intelligibility problems of those seated at the back of the Church -

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Russia - BSS Audio, a Harman International Company (NYSE-HAR) has announced that Mega Music, a long-established system integrator and strategic partner of the Harman Professional Group, has carried out a multi-zone installation in Moscow using integrated products from the Harman Pro catalogue.

The new 500-capacity Rover Club, which opened this month, occupies a prime position within the recently reconstructed historic shopping arcade of Gostiny Dvor - in the very heart of Moscow, close to Red Square.

Owned by Rover, the major Russian consumer electronics manufacturer, the club has been divided into six zones, incorporating a restaurant, discotheque, virtual reality hall, VIP disco and VIP hall.

Sound systems in the respective zones are controlled by a standalone BSS Audio Soundweb London BLU-16 with four mic/line inputs and 12 line outputs. A control PC running HiQnet London

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UK - Vaughan Sound Installations (VSI), part of the PAI Group, has completed an integrated sound, lighting and AV installation at Castle Leisure in Nantgarw, the latest new build venue of the ever-expanding Castle Bingo brand. VSI teamed up with architectural lighting specialists i-Vision and HLN Architects from Cardiff early on in the project.

The Castle Bingo site in Bridgend had included feature lighting for the Tower Room hospitality suite during a recent refurbishment. The concept was so successful that owners Castle Leisure decided to expand the theme and further invest in lighting and technology at the 1000-seat Nantgarw site, north of Cardiff.

Richard Vaughan led the project for VSI. "We've enjoyed a long and productive relationship with both Castle Leisure and HLN, and benefited from a client and architect who are willing to consult and listen to their suppliers

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UK - 3M Digital Signage has opened a UK office with a mission to bring its portfolio of software and display hardware solutions to a European customer base in retail, entertainment, leisure, corporate, education and other key markets. The business will bebased at 3M UK's head offices in Bracknell, Berkshire.

Simon Birkenhead has been appointed UK sales and marketing manager for 3M Digital Signage, and a team of technical and sales specialists is currently being trained, say the company, adding that it will use this UK office to support a rapid expansion across Europe using 3M's existing offices in most European and Middle East countries.

Although new to Europe, 3M Digital Signage has a 15-year history in the US. In August 2005, 3M acquired Mercury Online Solutions and its FRED content management software. A pioneer in the digital signage market since 1996, Mercury Online acqui

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UK - Stage Technologies have been awarded the contract for stage automation equipment onboard the latest cruise ship to be ordered by Cunard. The Queen Victoria is being built by Fincantieri in Marghera, Venice, for delivery in 2007. Whilst the ship is not on the same scale as the Queen Mary 2, the last ship to be delivered to Cunard, the 800 seat Royal Court Theatre, styled after a London West End theatre will be well equipped. The design has been developed jointly by architects GEM, and consultants NED.

Stage Technologies will supply and install the complete stage automation system. This will be the first non Princess ship to be fitted with Stage Technologies second generation BigTow 2 winches and TanJent guidance system, which guides a fly bar through its travel from the upper to lower limit, not just the top half of the travel as often seen on board ships.

The stage will b

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Australia - BSS Audio, a Harman International Company (NYSE-HAR) has played a pivotal role in the new upgrade at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). Preparing for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, the Melbourne Cricket Club undertook a substantial renovation of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), which included building a new Northern Stand and the installation of a new property-wide public address system featuring Harman HiQnet protocol technology.

The previous public address system consisted of a single speaker cluster positioned at one end of the facility, providing limited speech intelligibility. Answering the call for complete and intelligible speaker coverage for every seat in the stands, Rutledge Engineering and Acoustic Directions, in conjunction with audio consultants Marshall Day Acoustics, designed a new fully distributed sound system featuring Harman HiQnet protocol techn

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New Zealand - Allen & Heath's New Zealand distributor, Jansen Professional Audio & Lighting, recently installed an Allen & Heath iDR DSP system in Auckland's Epsom Girls Grammar School.

Opened in 1917, Epsom is recognised as one of New Zealand's most prestigious private schools, and boasts an alumni, which includes New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark; TV personality, Petra Baghurst; news presenter, Kate Hawkesby; and New Zealand's first female District Council judge, Dame Augusta Wallace.

Jansen were tasked with replacing the sound system in the School's main hall. Equipment includes Proel speakers, powered by Phonic amplifiers, all controlled by an Allen & Heath iDR-4 16x16 matrix mixer. There is also an accompanying PL-6 remote 8-fader panel controller, to simplify standard functions.

"The new sound system is very easy to use and I have been able to let the studen

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UK - Leading names in UK theatre architecture and consultancy will be providing facts, figures and ideas at the Theatre Engineering & Architecture Conference 2006. Speakers will include Mark Foley, Susie Bridges and Jonathan Adams, along with consultants, Anne Minors, Neil Morton, Iain Mackintosh, Andy Hayles, Michael Holden and Richard Brett.

These speakers will be complemented by a number of international players - including Himanshu Burte from India, Sergio Pascolo from Italy, Martien van Goor, Louis Janssen and Gerbrand Borgdorff from the Netherlands, Gerry van Hezewyk from Canada and Duncan Webb, John Coyne and Peter Rosenbaum from the US. Representatives from many other countries will be involved in the debates and discussions about the form of auditoria, backstage facilities, uncomplicated spaces for drama, and theatre building on a budget. Present booking from overseas r

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Germany - City Scene is a newly created high-end multi purpose venue that combines the needs of the performing arts, theatre, musical concert and club worlds. The sound system was designed by Terje Engedahl from Lyd-Systememer AS together with house engineer Jon Karstensen and features 24 channels of Lab.gruppen C Series amplification supplied by AVAB/CAC, Oslo, Norway.

The facility was built around a former nightclub in the Hotel City at Fredrikstad, Norway. To facilitate live performances a stage was added in an earlier atrium. City Scene's capacity (in theatre mode) is 448 persons; 330 on the main floor and 118 on the mezzanine developed around the old dance floor.

City Scene has already played host to a diverse range of performances including, Cityfjolls til Fjells (a comedy theatre production), Olsenbanden Jr. på Cirkus (musical theatre with a circus theme)

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UK - Lisburn-based Zest Audio has completed the installation of a PA system for the Corpus Christi Church in West Belfast, built as part of an inner-city regeneration programme. The church is a new-build, designed for congregations of up to 400.

Commissioned to provide the PA by the M&E Consultants, Zest installed the system using Clock Audio MR66 automatic mixers, QSC ISA amplifiers, Phonic EQ and crossover processing, AKG hard-wired microphones, Shure radio microphones and Community loudspeakers throughout.

Commenting on the choice of Community loudspeakers, Zest MD David Honeyford said: "For intelligibility and vocal quality, the Community loudspeakers and excellent with very high output from such compact, discreet boxes. As with all modern church installations, aesthetics were an important consideration. Well controlled dispersion from the distributed CPL27 and CPL42

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Australia - Following on from a recent series of installations overseas, most notably in Hong Kong, Coemar De Sisti Australia has completed another high profile architectural illumination project in conjunction with Australian company Laservision - this time in their hometown of Melbourne.

120 Collins Street, a landmark office tower, is one of the most significant buildings on the Melbourne Skyline. Comprising 50 levels of office space, with a total building height of approximately 264m, the building is topped with a 50m communications tower. Following a collaborative approach from Laservision, Coemar De Sisti Australia's MD Peter Kemp began initial consultations and planning for a project which involved illuminating the communications tower. Initial designs for the lighting incorporated discharge-lamped colour changers spread throughout the tower with the outer uprights highlig

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UK - The people behind the Blue Room online discussion forums have announced the launch of a new service for the entertainment industry. The Blue Room Wiki, it is hoped, will provide the backstage community with an ever-growing knowledge-base of technical know-how. Building on the success of the Blue Room forums, the Wiki will enable forum members to contribute their knowledge in article form to an online encyclopaedia.

The Blue Room now boasts almost 4,000 members, with over 110,000 messages posted since its official launch in January 2003. With over 4.5 million hits each month, the Blue Room has proved very popular. "The introduction of a Wiki is something which we've been working on for a while. We saw that the Blue Room was becoming, in part, a repository for a vast assortment of technical knowledge and advice, and an online encyclopaedia seemed like the next logical st

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UK - PLASA - the Professional Lighting and Sound Association - has announced a joint initiative with CMP Seatrade, the organisers of the Seatrade exhibitions, to host an afternoon presentation in London in early May introducing PLASA Members to business opportunities in the cruise sector.

Contracts won with cruise and ferry lines can be among the most lucrative in the world: there is currently $14.2 billion being invested in new-build activity and numbers in the cruise ship orderbook are at their highest since 2002. There is also renewed strength in the region's shipbuilding industry and the refurbishment and re-equipment sectors are also experiencing a growth surge.

The presentation, led by Seatrade MD Chris Hayman, will cover the opportunities that exist for PLASA Members in the cruise sector and the value of attending the Seatrade Med exhibition in Naples in October where f

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Norway - BSS Audio's Norwegian distributor LydRommet has devised a highly cost-effective solution at the 400-capacity Aal Culture House, which allows a single set of amplifiers to drive two sets of JBL Professional loudspeakers, one for cinema and the other for general PA/conference purposes. According to the company's Espen Andersen, they have been able to implement this thanks to BSS Audio Soundweb London and now plan to establish this as a template for future implementations.

The company is using Soundweb London, which offers dual-redundant CobraNet audio networking, as the base in almost every installation they do, he explains. "In many cases it has been our ability to provide a total HiQnet solution that has enabled us to win the contract; in fact we have been able to show that it is actually possible to save money by implementing HiQnet in smaller applications."<

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UK - Sound equipment from BSS Audio and Martin Audio is being used extensively in the first Minibar, Ministry of Sound's newly-piloted bar concept. The first is at Harrogate's Grade 1-listed original bath house (which also incorporates a Revolution Bar and JD Wetherspoon). Inside, there's a jacuzzi, hanging chairs, a massive chandelier, three VIP areas, touch-screen computers replacing waiters; plus a high-quality sound system and visual effects, which require complex processing and routing.

All system processing, switching and routing is handled by proprietary Soundweb components from BSS Audio, a company with which system specifier, Dave Bradshaw has enjoyed a long relationship. The 700-capacity venue is divided into eight zones, spread across two floors. This includes the pure white 'Kandi Bar' downstairs, replete with giant leather beds. Bradshaw has set up a DSP network bas

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South Africa - The newest premier nightclub to hit Johannesburg - The Manhattan Club - opened to the public at a spectacular launch party on 1 April in Rivonia, an upmarket suburb of the city. Club Manhattan owners, Jonathan Akal and Guy van der Post, have spared no expense on quality finishes and products and a spectacular concept for the new club, including a powerful EAW sound system.

Both the audio and lighting have been supplied and installed by EAW's South African distributor, Johannesburg-based audio specialists, Surgesound. The audio rig comprises four EAW Avalon DC4 full-range loudspeaker systems comprising two 12" LF speakers, one 8" MF speaker, a single 1" exit compression driver each, along with four EAW Avalon DCS2 subs featuring EAW's advanced horn-loaded technology, which maximizes horn length in a relatively small enclosure. The DCS2 subs offer dua

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USA - dbx Professional Products, a division of Harman International, has announced a recent installation at the new Aquatic Center in Ventura, California, which employs the dbx ZonePRO 640 digital zone processor as the audio central controller.

During the Center's design phase, it was decided that great sound was a crucial ingredient, both for enhanced enjoyment of the park and to assure clear, intelligible announcements for security and emergency purposes: the ZonePRO 640 is now providing highly discrete zoned audio throughout the new centre in a compact, easy-to-program and cost-effective system, say dbx.

The $22 million Ventura Aquatic Center is a state-of-the-art facility that offers users of all ages and skill levels the best in water sports. The Center features a 1.5-mile walking trail perimeter, large grassy malls, two 25ft water slides, a Children's area with two wadin

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Spain - Mecalux is one of the world's leading companies in the warehousing system market. Its activity consists of designing, manufacturing, trading and providing services related to metal shelving, automated warehouses and other storage solutions. The company, whose distribution network spans Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Mexico, USA, Poland, Austria and the UK, recently opened a new HQ - the Mecalux Building, located in the Almeda Industrial Park in the city of Cornella de Llobregat, outside Barcelona. The four storey building and parking area have been outfitted with a D.A.S. paging system.

The paging system consists of 390 CL-6T ceiling loudspeakers equipped with a multi-tap line transformer. The D.A.S. speakers are easy to install thanks to their self-locking turrets and provide excellent sound reproduction capabilities. The speakers are powered by D.A

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UK - Robe moving lights and Anolis LED fixtures have been specified and installed into Fusion, a new 750 capacity nightclub in Wellington - a suburb of Telford, Shropshire. The independently owned venue has been a club in the past but was disused for some time before its acquisition by ER Leisure. It was then completely refitted, with a new interior design by Graham Chance of Breley Design, and a lighting, sound and AV design by Andy Chamley of AC Audio Rentals.

The owner wanted four circular and two S-shaped trusses installed in the roof as visual rigging points for the lights and to give the roof a shape and form, but other than that, Chamley was given complete carte blanche to create an interesting and eye-catching design. It also had to be diverse enough to meet the club's broad-based music policy, and make the reasonably intimate space come alive from all levels and angles.

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Australia - Christian City Church, in Oxford Falls, NSW, Australia has permanently installed Adamson SpekTrix line arrays following a system shootout in Sydney. The Church, founded in 1980 had grown out of its sound system which was installed nearly 10 years ago, and desperately needed an upgrade. With a seating capacity of 2,000 and a membership of over 6,000, it is one of the largest operating churches in Australia.

Christian City Church hired Auditoria Pty Ltd's consultant Scott Willsallen, sound designer for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, to design the room. Willsallen had visited Adamson's HQ in the fall of 2005 to familiarize himself with the products, and arranged a shootout with the aid of Frank Hinton of ATT Audio Controls based in Melbourne. Adamson's managing director, Jesse Adamson, flew to the shootout in Sydney where Christopher D. Ling engineer of the Church's Tec

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UK - Creative sound designers CP Sound continue their work in top quality gastronomic and social environments, having just completed the design and specification of a new JBL sound installation at The Great Eastern Dining Rooms in east London. CP Sound's Colin Pattenden was initially called in by acoustic consultants EMTEC to help advise on the solution to a noise pollution problem, whereby sound from the basement and ground floor restaurant and club was leaking up to the flats above. The treatment for this adopted two routes - building work and active sound design.

EMTEC recommended a considerable amount of structural work to be undertaken to dampen the sound, whist CP Sound worked on improving and controlling the venue's internal audio and simultaneously eliminating areas of spillage. "There are always several lateral approaches to solving noise pollution," explains

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Japan - One amusement concept unique to Japan is 'Pachinko', a fast-paced arcade game popular throughout the country. Sharing elements with both pinball and slot machines, Pachinko is played by some 22 million people, and has spawned a market worth 240 billion yen. Amidst the clattering coins found in the 17,000 active arcades, a clear need exists for high-quality, intelligible audio. While sound sources generally are restricted to CD and broadcast feeds, a venue called LadyBird in Ritto Town has added a different twist.

Since the owner is a former musician, he also wanted the facility to build high-octane live music and DJ sessions into the entertainment programme, and tasked his technical representative Hidenori Kawamoto with sourcing a professional, fully-optimised system that could be distributed throughout the whole facility. LadyBird presented the challenge to Kiyoaki Fuku

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Switzerland - The Sinus Systems Integration Awards were presented on the first day of this year's international ProLight&Sound trade fair in the categories Information, Business and Venue and were awarded for outstanding multi-media projects. The award honours technical and design achievements in media technology and system integration. Two out of three of the projects that won awards were installations made with equipment manufactured by the German loudspeaker company d&b audiotechnik.

The Sinus for the Information category was awarded to Erwin Schenk, the technical manager of The Zentrum Paul Klee centre in Bern, Switzerland, and to Christian Simmen the project manager of John Lay Electronics. The Zentrum Paul Klee was designed by the famous architect Renzo Piano and is one of his most striking buildings. It distinguishes itself from traditional museums in being not just the h

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  5. Earth Treks motivates climbers with Community
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