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UK/USA - Brighton-based technology consultants Visual Acuity has received two top industry awards for its role in developing the technology for specific areas of the California Academy of Sciences. The company has received recognition by Archi-Tech in the 'Best project over one million USD' category and the overall Grand Prize and Pro AV 'Best Museum' project category.

"This project saw six years of meticulous planning, design, consulting and 'green' engineering and to have our role recognised by leading US trade awards for the California Academy of Sciences is an outstanding achievement. We're also delighted that many of our key partners and friends were also able to join us in celebrating the award wins at InfoComm," says Blair Parkin, managing director at Visual Acuity.

"These partners included the California Academy of Sciences as well as Thinc

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Russia - Two years ago the city of Ryazan, 180km south-east of Moscow, embarked on a series of major arts venue refurbishments as part of a self-proclaimed Year of Culture. Coinciding with the start of the world's current financial tempest, the fact that these projects have all largely been successfully completed is a matter of some civic pride. That it hasn't all been plain sailing will come as no surprise, but from what quarter these choppy waters emerged was unexpected. "Unfortunately the new sound system was so good we had to re-record all our tracks due to high noise levels that we had previously been unable to hear," commented Semen Grechko, director of the Ryazan Drama Theatre.

Founded in 1787 and originally an Opera House, the theatre converted to drama and musical theatre after a complete rebuild in the early 1960s. The recent refurbishment in the Year of Cult

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China - Software providers Stardraw.com has announced the appointment of Architectural Audio China (AAC) for the exclusive distribution of Stardraw Control throughout China. AAC has its main office in Shanghai with branch offices in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Shenyang and Nanjing, where each office services 40-50 sales channels (dealers and systems integrators) with a total of 400 channels around China.

AAC is a well-established distributor that already carries a number of pro audio and AV brands, including Peavey's MediaMatrix, Architectural Acoustics, Crest Audio and Opson International.

"AAC is an excellent fit for us," confirmed Stardraw's marketing director, Rob Robinson. "They take a system-based approach and deal with some huge projects: Beijing Airport Olympic terminal; Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport; the Shanghai Railway

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UK - For two days every year, Ravensbourne College in Kent stages its annual broadcasting event, Rave On Air. The college has some notable ex students including Stella McCartney, Bruce Oldfield and Darren Woolfson, now group director of technology at Pinewood Studios.

Adrian Curtis, VP of Sales for Soundcraft Studer said: "We were contacted by the college to help them with a console for a mixture of live and broadcast applications, given the breadth of requirements they had, we loaned them our flagship Vista 5 SR to cope with these demands."

Rave On Air is an entirely student-led event with over five hours of live programming broadcast over the internet and local digital terrestrial television channels (800 and 801). Attended by broadcasting and creative industry professionals including BBC, Endemol and Channel 4, this graduate showcase gives Ravensbour

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Italy - RCF has announced the appointment of Alessandro Barbieri as the new sales area manager for the Far East.

Barbieri is no stranger to travel, having previously worked as area manager for other Italian companies in Asia, Africa, Middle East and Europe.

Commenting on his appointment Barbieri said, "I feel that I'm joining RCF at very pivotal time, both for the group itself and the high level of products that they are manufacturing."

(Jim Evans)

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UK - As well as an extensive PA system, RG Jones Sound Engineering has also installed the Ampetronic induction loop system to meet DDA requirements and ensure the enjoyment of its hard of hearing members and visitors to Wimbledon's All England Club.

"Outside of the two week Championships - when we are continually on site monitoring the courtside PA, umpires microphones and so forth - there are requirements from the Club to use parts of the system throughout the year," explains RG Jones's Jon Berry. "The main areas that are used are the Centre Court facilities, which include a range of bars and restaurants. These are used for private functions and it's in some of these that we've installed the loop systems."

There are seven spaces covered by the loops, and these are situated either next to or on top of each other. "It was quite a mission," says Ber

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USA - Mackie has announced the winner of the 20 Years Running Contest. Marking Mackie's 20th anniversary, the contest encouraged Mackie customers worldwide to submit product stories, photos and videos highlighting their jaw-dropping experiences with Mackie gear over the years. Entrants had a chance to win a new Mackie live sound system featuring the new HD High-Definition Powered Loudspeakers.

"We're always stoked to hear about the beatings our gear survives, but some of these contest stories were totally insane," said John Boudreau music gear group VP at Loud Technologies. "We had fun going through all of the entries, but the final decision was tough - especially when you get stories like a VLZ surviving a dishwasher's pots and pans cycle. But we had to give the winning prize to Badger Koon with his 'muddy' disaster story - check it out on our contest page

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UK - Sound engineer Walter Jaquiss recently joined forces with Adlib Audio and Lighting for the latest John Barrowman tour and two Soundcraft Vi6 digital consoles were used for the production.

Production used two Soundcraft Vi6 consoles, run in 96-channel V3.0 mode, which Jaquiss filled with around 80 inputs, 56 of which were stage alone, including guest vocals and assorted media. "The Vi6 is a brilliant desk, great sounding and with a very small footprint for this style of tour," he comments. The existing console was upgraded to 96 channels via an additional DSP card, while the sound engineer immediately identified the advantages of the latest software release.

"With both desks upgraded to V3 software, along with the increase in channels, the snapshot and scoping functions had been improved as well. This has now made it a totally usable function of the console

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UK - The prestigious V&A Museum in London has been chosen to host the launch of the first edition of the International Festival of Scenic Arts, an international event celebrating contemporary stage, set and costume design. The world's largest museum of design and decorative arts will play host to a series of talks and presentations by world-class design practitioners of stage design, costume design, video design and 3D animation, scenography and lighting design.

The world's largest museum of design and decorative arts plays host to a series of talks and presentations by world-class design practitioners the calibre of William Dudley, British stage designer, costume designer, video designer and 3D animator, who has most recently designed the sets and costumes for the Broadway musical The Woman in White, produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber. He is joined by lighting designer Rick

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France - An Outline loudspeaker system made up of Doppia II point source enclosures has been chosen as the sound reinforcement system for Théâtre National de Strasbourg.

A member of the UTE (Union of Theatres of Europe), the TNS has had the status of "National Theatre" since 1972 and is the only one of the five theatres with this classification outside the French capital.

With up to 20 productions per season and approximately 200 performances per year, it offers a busy and varied programme. The TNS hosts a permanent theatre company, the Ecole Supérieure d'Art dramatique drama school and two halls for shows.This set-up is completed by the Studio Kablé, with two supplementary halls, rehearsal and work rooms and administration facilities, as well as scenography and costume workshops.

The TNS hosts four permanently installed Doppia II 9075 systems

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UK - Opened by Queen Victoria in 1859 as a national memorial to the Duke of Wellington, Wellington College in Berkshire is currently celebrating its 150 anniversary. The college has organised a series of commemorative events throughout the year, many of which feature Turbosound equipment supplied by Subfrantic Production Services.

Speech Day and the Summer Prom are always the two most important dates in its yearly calendar and both were reinforced by Subfrantic's Turbosound Aspect rig.

"The system for Speech Day had to cover about 2,000 people, but there was no option to fly the rig so we had to use a ground stacked system," says Subfrantic operations manager Sean Murphy.

"As the audio programme was predominantly speech, plus choral and classical music, it wasn't a bass-heavy production so we put in six TA-890L and 12 TA-890H, rotating the mid-high section of

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Norway - Every year, a series of events are held in Oslo and its surrounding areas for Norwegian students to celebrate the end of their high school studies. The main meeting point is the town of Tryvann, the region's top ski resort, which is located only 20 kilometres from Oslo city centre.

Tryvann is noted for hosting the music festival named after it, as well as for being the most popular meeting point for the Russ, the name given to students who have finished their last year of Videregående skole and hold massive graduation celebrations during the months of April and May.

This year, Tryvann Festival welcomed around 10,000 people, and included sets by DJs including DJ Klaas, Xzibit, Adam Tensta, DJ Antoine and MC Roby Rob. About 35 large buses - rented by the various student groups - decked out with sound and lights stationed themselves on a gigantic esplanade spanning an a

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UK - Allen & Heath's iLive-T digital mixing system has just completed a sell out European tour, managing monitors for PJ Harvey. The system was chosen by monitor engineer, Ben Booker.

In collaboration with John Parish to promote their jointly-credited album, A Woman A Man Walked By, the PJ Harvey tour started in the UK at venues including Brighton's Corn Exchange, the Ritz in Manchester and the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, followed by dates in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and France.

After successfully using Allen & Heath's modular iLive system with Danish pop act, Alphabeat, Booker selected the compact iLive-T system, comprising an iDR-48 MixRack and iLive-T80 Control Surface.

"The small footprint and convenience of iLive-T has made life easy on this tour because we're mostly playing quite small venues. The entire system takes up a mere

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China - APG France and its distributor BV Cam used PALM EXPO in Beijing to make a special presentation of the new APG UL210 line array. Ground stacked for the occasion on its new multipurpose bumper, the Line Array was exhibited, allowing visitors to take a close look at it, prior to its installation for a comprehensive presentation with listening tests.

Later, the listening session took place at the Beijing Workers Stadium which has a seating capacity of 70,000, in the presence of a selected panel of 40 sound engineers, system designers, sound hire contractors and installers.

The programme included a theoretical presentation of the UL210, its Isotop technology issues, followed by an outdoor listening session. The system configuration was composed of two clusters with six UL210 each, with low frequency reinforcement managed by the TB218S subs.

(Jim Evans)

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Germany - SPL has updated the look of the channel strips Track One and Channel One. Both units are now available and join the Frontliner, SPL's flagship channel strip, to form the new family of SPL designed products.

The new design features include a horizontally brushed aluminium front panel with the controls seated into new smooth milled rounded openings, the brushed aluminium also has the practical advantage of retaining its classic look for longer as it will repel marks such as finger prints, says the company.

According to SPL, technically nothing has changed, "Over the years, thousands of users have created and experienced amazing results using the Channel One and Track One. So, we see no reason to change these SPL classics, especially as they have been so successfully tried and tested." says SPL's CEO, Hermann Gier.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Despite being less than a year old, the Midas PRO6 live audio system made multiple debuts across the Glastonbury festival this year, joining the XL4 and Heritage packages which retain a familiar and much-requested presence at festivals across the summer.

APR Audio deployed two PRO6s at front of house for the Jazz/World Stage, alongside an H3000 for engineers preferring to use an analogue console. One PRO6 was used for mixing the bands while the second was connected to the stage via AES50 tie-lines. This allowed engineers to practice mixing the live band on headphones prior to moving to the 'hot' PRO6 for their own show, and for APR and Midas staff to demo the console to interested parties.

"We thought the usability and the audio quality of the PRO6 were second to none," says Andy Reed from APR. "Nearly half of the visiting engineers of the acts playing on

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Michael Jackson - Concert promoter Randy Phillips says Michael Jackson's death will not spell the end of his company, AEG Live. "People have speculated that this is going to bankrupt our company," the businessman told Billboard magazine. "The truth is, it isn't." Phillips said insurance was in place to cover Jackson's advance, although insurers may not pay out if the star's death turns out to be drug-related. He added that money could be recouped from footage of the tour rehearsals.

AEG will have to refund up to $85m (£52m) to fans who purchased tickets for Jackson's 50-date residency at London's O2 arena. It is also believed to have spent $23-25m (£14-15m) on production costs. Phillips said those "hard costs" were covered by insurance, although profits were not. Phillips admitted the biggest problem facing AEG at the moment was w

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USA - Shure Incorporated reports that the X2u XLR-to-USB signal adapter is now shipping and is available by itself or in bundles with either the SM57 or SM58 microphones.

"Over the past several years, more and more musicians, both professional and amateur, have taken recording into their own hands at home, on the road, in their bedroom, basement, tour bus, wherever," said Chad Wiggins, Shure's category manager for Wired Microphones. "With this new product, we're bringing the legendary heritage of Shure microphones to every level of performer and home recording artist as the proliferation of digital recording continues."

The X2u adapter is a modular accessory that connects any XLR microphone to a computer to create "better-than-CD quality recordings". As home recording flourishes, the X2u redefines what musicians and podcasters can do in their home

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Spain - In the city of Tudela, in northern Spain, all the talk is about the new Discoteca Botanic, a 1500sq.m nightclub with two different club rooms to maximise its attraction to customers of different ages and musical tastes.

What the two individual environments of Magnolia and Dalia have in common are high-SPL Vieta sound systems, powered by Powersoft. Installers Kiko Sound liaised closely on the system design with Vieta pro products supplier SeeSound.

Local stars and celebrities came out for opening night, including Ivan, the latest Big Brother winner in Spain, and Paola Santoni, the MC for the night. Manager Isidro Navarro Bea explains that the Botanic is more than just a nightclub two nights a week - "During the week, we will host special events like product presentations and private/corporate parties. We don't want to simply offer music, but to create a space which

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UK - Digital media and music agency Kaleidovision has acquired Music Concierge, a boutique luxury brand music profiling consultancy.

Kaleidovision already works with mainstream leisure and retail brands such as Pitcher & Piano, Gala Casinos, Varsity and London Clubs, providing digital media network content and technology services, while Music Concierge has built up an international portfolio of retailers such as Dunhill and Mulberry, and hotels including The Connaught in London, One&Only Cape Town, and Huvafen Fushi in the Maldives.

Explaining the rationale, Kaleidovision MD Andy Pitman said: "We will be positioning Music Concierge as our in-house boutique music profiling brand for clients who need the very highest levels of site-specific music consultancy. Music Concierge will retain full creative control of the music profiling."

Rob Wood, founder and creative dir

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USA - Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia have recently experienced a swell of AV installation activity, thanks to Ashland, Kentucky-based Newtech Systems. A key component of these installs has been a wide range of loudspeaker products from EAW, sold by Erie, Pennsylvania-based North Coast Marketing.

"Our installations take on all number of shapes and sizes, and EAW has the best solutions for just about every application we encounter," stated Newtech's Bill Banfield. "Ashland, Kentucky's Christ United Methodist Church's install was short and sweet: two EAW VR62 compact full-range loudspeakers.

"However, working with Mercer County High School in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, was a different story. There, we installed a multi-zoned system in the gymnasium, featuring six MK5396 two-way full range installation loudspeakers and 10 MK2366 two-way full range installation

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UK - Rodgers and Hammerstein's timeless classic, The King & I was given a 20-date, in-the-round season at the Royal Albert Hall recently, courtesy of Raymond Gubbay.

Starring Maria Friedman and Daniel Dae Kim, the songs were perfectly matched to Bobby Aitken's carefully designed sound system based around a Martin Audio W8LC/W8LM orchestra system. 10 Martin Audio W8LM out-fills per side complemented 10 W8LC's in L/R front facing hangs, with four WLX subs forming the top of each cluster.

"I always enjoy using the Martin Audio line arrays for big musical productions such as this. I am particularly drawn to the detailed midrange of those speakers," remarked Aitken.

"The Albert Hall is a tricky room - tight around the sides - and the W8LM's cover that particularly well; traditionally other loudspeakers we have used for that purpose have not had the vertical

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Germany - dBTechnologies' distributor convention, Prosonic was reported to have been a "roaring success" by organisers and visitors alike. With attendees totalling 70, last month's two-day event in Cologne showcased the Italian loudspeaker manufacturer's newest ranges: Flexsys, DVA, DVX andOpera Digital.

"It was a big - and some would say brave - undertaking," admits Michael Herweg, sales & marketing director. "Especially pitching ourselves against our competitors in live sound demonstrations."

"We wanted to highlight the fact that we can stand up against the big names of the industry. Really there is nothing out there with the amount of features we offer (be it power, weight or sound quality) at such a good price. Judging by the feedback we've received from some of our attendees, we've got our message across. So it was definitely worth it.&q

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USA - Christ's Church of the Valley in San Dimas, CA, has been growing steadily in recent years, making a switch to digital audio mixing a virtual necessity. With multiple locations, six weekend services, and a broadcast component that includes live streaming and re-broadcast in New Zealand and Australia, the number of audio paths has increased far beyond the capabilities of conventional analogue. To meet these needs, this evangelical contemporary church selected two Allen & Heath iLive consoles - an iLive-176 for the main sanctuary and an iLive-80 for the broadcast centre, located in a separate building.

Patrick Gourley, technical director for the church, worked with Anaheim-based Sound Bridge during the console selection process. "All our engineers are volunteers," he says. "So in addition to all the technical requirements, we had to find something with a fast l

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  2. Community offers S4 subwoofer application
  3. Proel system for Rodizio Rico
  4. TiMax2 debuts on The King and I
  5. Kudos reinforce Paris Air Show
  6. d&b T-Series up for the Euro count
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