UK - Owing to popular demand, Martin Audio has extended its series of monthly educational webinars to include additional products, software platforms and guest presenters on application deployment.
The live sessions, which started in October 2017 and were initially conducted by members of the product support group, are available free-of-charge and also provide the opportunity for an interactive Q&A.
Martin Audio's director of marketing, James King, commented, “We’ve been delighted with the take-up so far, with over 100 people participating in each of the modules around the world. Such has been the success that we’ve extended the modules to cover more products and software, and I’m delighted to announce we are also introducing guest speakers.” The first of

USA - Control products from ETC have been specified to modernise the lighting control at the Anderson Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum in Albuquerque.
The museum’s facade is the silhouette of a hot air balloon, with the top of the building a dome ­ newly washed with colour-changing LED fixtures. The museum wanted to take advantage of capabilities of the LED fixtures and reinforce the iconic nature of the building. The solution was an ETC Paradigm system. Lighting looks were programmed into the system and now the museum staff can choose custom colours for different themes or special events.
“Because we are used a lot and we do a lot of activities all year round in the very early morning or late at night, it gives us a way to add an element of beauty to the building,” says Paul D. Garver, manager of the museum. He has plans to let the lights react

USA/Italy - Marani USA has partnered with US-based Peavey Electronic Corporation to market and distribute Marani USA’s line of digital audio processing products. The complete range of Marani Proaudio loudspeaker management and audio processors will be available through Peavey Commercial Audio sales representatives and distributors worldwide.
“This is a very strong match for us,” explained Michele Marani, founder and managing director of Marani USA and Marani Proaudio. “Peavey has long enjoyed a reputation for pioneering excellence in sound reinforcement and pro audio products. Marani USA will augment Peavey’s considerable portfolio of brands with our unique high-performance digital audio processing products.”
With expanding requirements in today’s sound reinforcement market for more efficient and higher-performing digital audio processors, Peavey Electro

USA - 4Wall Entertainment has added Chauvet’s Maverick MK Pyxis to the company’s rental inventory.
Featuring a ring of nine 15-watt RGBW LEDs with a zoom range of 7° to 45°, a high output 60-watt RGBW LED centre pixel and continuous 360° pan/tilt movement, the Maverick MK Pyxis is capable of creating “an endless variety of looks”. This versatility, along with the fixture’s bright output and reliable performance, played a key role in 4Wall Entertainment’s purchase decision.
“We supply gear to numerous market segments, and we see the Maverick MK Pyxis being a very valuable fixture for many applications,” said Wes Bailey, VP of M&A and product strategy at 4Wall Entertainment. “The endless eye candy looks you get with the Pyxis played a big role in our decision.”
In addition to the Maverick MK Pyxis, 4Wall Entertainment added the Maveric

UK - PLASA Focus Glasgow kicked off the 2018 show season last week, providing a regional platform for professionals in the industry to connect and discover the latest technology in the market.
The show welcomed nearly 800 attendees at the Scottish Event Campus on 17-18 January and exhibitors reported busy stands, with high quality of visitors including key decision makers in attendance.
Over 85 brands showcased the latest products in lighting, audio, AV, rigging and staging, as well as a busy programme of seminars, workshops and product demonstrations.
For exhibitors, the Focus-style show provided a platform to build connections in a new market and meet customers who often don’t travel to the larger international shows.
This approach was embraced by audio exhibitor KV2 Audio, who expanded their offering by hosting a demo room alongside their exhibition

UK - Creative Technology’s London operation has recently recruited Richard Rogers and Chris Jordan to work as senior project managers in their audio team. Richard and Chris have long careers stretching back to the early 80s, spending most of that time working together on a wide range of audio projects in corporate events and theatre.
“Having worked with Richard and Chris many years ago I am really excited to be working with them both again, bringing with them yet more experience and knowledge to an ever-growing audio team,” says Mark Boden, director of audio.
Richard comments: “It’s great for Chris and I to be joining Creative Technology and becoming part of the team. CT has a fantastic inventory, backed up by a team of experts with a real passion for delivering high quality audio for all kinds of events.”
(Jim Evans)

UK - One of SSE Audio Group’s original team members - Carl Reavey - died suddenly aged 61 on 8 January, the company reported.
Reavey was the fourth member of the original SSE Hire team, joining the fledgling rental company in 1977. There he met his wife-to-be, Jan (who was SSE’s second staff member). His enthusiasm for everything he did always shone through, approaching every task with vigour and humour.
Reavey was crucially important to SSE Hire during these formative years, working the all-nighters, doing mad gigs and moving on to become FOH engineer for the Yachts and later the Undertones.
In 1979, after working around the clock for over a week, he went to Glastonbury with the, just finished, Turbosound festival system and ran the front of house with the legendary John Newsham. They were two very different engineers, but afterwards both said how much they

Europe - Cross 3 is a new high-performance cable protection product launched by Penn Elcom. Described as tough, durable and fire-retardant, the product is suitable for festivals, concerts, shows, events or exhibitions.
Cross 3, the first product in this new series, was revealed to the public earlier this week at the CUE 2018 expo in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It’s a three channel ‘crossover’ product manufactured from Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU), chosen for its strength, high resistance to abrasion, flexibility and recyclability.
All elements of the Cross 3 product - top and base - are fire retardant and compliant to DIN EN 13501-1.
Penn Elcom has been developing Cross 3 over the last year based on extensive research and communication related to event industry demands for portable cable protection.
(Jim Evans)
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The Netherlands - The Institute of Sound and Communications Engineers (ISCE) is exhibiting at ISE 2018 and can be found on stand number 7-Z190 in Hall 7.
In 2017 the ISCE was approved by the Electrotechnical Certification Scheme (ECS) to assess and issue ECS Cards for sound engineers working within sound and communications industries. This agreement allows ISCE to issue and renew ISCE sound engineer ECS cards to existing and newly accredited ISCE members.
Helen Goddard, vice president for the ISCE, comments, “A recognised ECS card is increasingly requested by clients and main contractors to gain access to sites and venues for equipment upgrades and routine maintenance. The ISCE is the only dedicated provider of ECS cards to sound industry professionals.
“We look forward to meeting lots of visitors to ISE in Amsterdam who are looking to become ECS accredited

USA - ADJ is set to introduce eight new products at NAMM. Those are: a moving head wash, a blinder, a ‘dim-to-warm’ pinspot, an illuminated lighting stand, two all white housing fixtures, a POW-R BAR and a new addition to the American Audio range of wireless mics.
Expanding the Vizi Series of professional-calibre moving heads, the new Vizi Wash Pro is ADJ’s most powerful wash fixture to date. Powered by 19 x 30W RGBW Osram LEDs and boasting motorized zoom that offers a beam angle of between 5 and 50 degrees, “this potent fixture is equally suited to tight mid-air beam effects as it is to far-reaching wash lighting”.
The Encore Burst 200 will also be showcased for the first time at this year’s NAMM. This innovative new addition to ADJ’s Encore Series of professional stage lighting fixtures is a dual blinder unit featuring high intensity 110W COB warm white

USA - NAMM 2018 marks the introduction of GigaCore 10, the first truss-adaptable switch in the GigaCore family. The 19-inch half unit can be mounted in truss, on a wall or in a single or double rack.
In addition to the GigaCore 10 introduction, Luminex will be presenting the new GigaCore v2.6.1 firmware bringing some major improvements on PTP, PoE management and network monitoring. With the constant growth of Audio over IP solutions, Luminex has enhanced the performance of the Precision Time Protocol handling, especially with applications running AES67. PoE handling now offers advanced power management settings allowing users to select between class-based consumption and class based allocation providing even more flexibility when connecting PoE devices such as cameras or PoE loudspeakers.
“The recent expansion of Winter NAMM gives us the perfect venue to introduce so

The Netherlands - Cadac will launch its MegaCOMMS platform at ISE. MegaCOMMS enables mixing, control and networking of multi-channel studio quality audio, across networks of up to 3072 channels of time-aligned, phase-coherent audio, at distances of up to two kilometres.
MegaCOMMS’ ‘total through-system propagation delay’ - from on-stage inputs to outputs (including all console processing, A-D / D-A conversions and three stage internal latency management) - is less than 400 microseconds (millionths of a second). Additionally, the MegaCOMMS protocol synchronizes all audio samples before summing, for absolute phase coherency at every output.
At the heart of the MegaCOMMS network is the software programmable CDC MC Router. The 2U 12 port MegaCOMMS router is a powerful tool for creating large, resilient networked audio systems, comprising up to 12 separate MegaCOMMS d

The Netherlands - ARX Systems is adding to its range of Dante enabled products with the release of the new NetSplit Audio Distribution Splitter on their Booth Number 6 - E160 at ISE 2018 next month in Amsterdam.
The new NetSplit Dante Digital-to-Analogue Distribution Splitter extracts audio from the Dante protocol network and converts it to studio-quality, transformer-isolated, low-latency analogue audio suitable for connection to multiple amplifiers, powered loudspeaker arrays, mixing consoles and other analogue audio devices using standard Ethernet hardware and cabling.
Extending operating flexibility, the NetSplit can be operated in either of two input modes, Dante or analogue. In Dante Mode, it will extract two channels of digital audio from the network via a RJ45 Ethernet input, and split them to two channels of 1:4 splitter/distribution amplifier. In Analogue Mod

USA - sE Electronics has announced the RNT, a premium large-diaphragm multi-pattern tube condenser microphone created in collaboration with Rupert Neve Designs. “All in all, the RNT brings the larger-than-life sounds of classic tube mics into the modern age with greater depth and clarity than ever before.”
The RNT is the third microphone in the collaboration between sE Electronics and Rupert Neve Designs, founded by audio designer Mr. Rupert Neve. From sE: “Much like the RNR1 Active Ribbon and RN17 Small-Diaphragm Condenser, the RNT is something truly special, developed over several years of careful listening and measurement by Mr. Rupert Neve, Mr. Siwei Zou, and the engineering teams from both companies.
“The partnership between sE Electronics and Rupert Neve Designs is an extension of the great friendship between the two founders. This elegantly different tub

USA - Funktion-One is marking its debut appearance at The NAMM Show with the launch of a new bass enclosure - the F124.
Building on design-thinking first utilised for Funktion-One’s powerful F132 horn-loaded bass, the new F124 “takes the company’s bass loading and driver technology to a new level”.
Funktion-One co-founder Tony Andrews says that the new enclosure marks the next logical step in bass speaker development: “With the 32-inch F132, we introduced something unique to the market: transient in the sub frequencies, as far down as 25Hz. From there, we felt there was potential to go further by using the knowledge we’d gained when developing the F132 to create a 24-inch bass speaker.”
By re-visiting a 24-inch frame and tooling they had developed during a previous R&D phase, the basis of the new enclosure quickly fell into place. To create th

USA - The Gordon Centre for the Performing Arts is a 550-seat venue in Owings Mills, Maryland, Baltimore that hosts all manner of musical acts from local to national, dance performances, comedies, plays, lectures, family shows, and films.
With the help of Baltimore-based A/V integration firm HP Electronics, the Gordon Centre recently upgraded its sound reinforcement system with Danley’s Pure Groove PG-96 loudspeakers, Danley TH-118 subwoofers, and Danley’s new DNA-Series amplifiers, with onboard DSP and presets for every Danley loudspeaker and subwoofer.
“When the Gordon Centre decided it was time for an upgrade, several loudspeaker shootouts were arranged that ultimately pitted a dozen or so loudspeaker manufacturers against each other,” explained Joe Schwartz, A/V sales designer at HP Electronics. “At the outset, they wanted to avoid a line array solution b

UK - For the dance anthem generation, it seems there’s nothing in the musical universe that cannot be enhanced by the augmentation of a classic orchestral string section.
Pete Tong, with conductor Jules Buckley leading the New Heritage Orchestra, have just completed a triumphant campaign that saw them present Ibiza Classics through the major arenas of the UK. Whereas once the dance rave genre relied heavily upon the use of light and laser to animate what is essentially a static DJ performance, now the combination of live video and the addition of so many musicians makes for a heady concoction.
The stage was dominated by visceral images portrayed upon a set of moving LED screens immediately upstage of the musicians and Tong. Veteran concert director Mark Davies was shooting the show with all video equipment and camera system provided by Video Design.
“B

Belgium - Luc Peumans of Painting With Light created the lighting and stage design for the 30th anniversary tour by rock band Clouseau.
The visual concept of Clouseau 30 tour - an extensive itinerary visiting 500 2000-capacity venues across Belgium - is based around a lounge-style environment with carpets on the floor, standard lamps dotted around and an upright piano onstage.
Charismatic lead singer Koen enthusiastically engages with the audience as he tells assorted stories related to each song. The set list can also change - with no warning - depending on this audience interaction, as they will often shout out requests for specific songs the band might decide to play. This improvisation keeps Luc and the crew on their toes and is an exciting and invigorating way to work ‘live’.
Luc is celebrating his own anniversary, being back behind the lighting

USA - Harman Professional Solutions with its JBL Professional brand has announced its line-up of guest speakers and in-booth (#14811) appearances at the 2018 NAMM show.
Guests are invited to stop by the Harman Professional Solutions booth for a series of artist interviews hosted by TV and radio personality Nic Harcourt, as well as intimate performances, artist meet and greets, autograph sessions, and more.
The diverse line-up of artists and Harman Professional Solutions ambassadors will include George Clinton and members of Parliament Funkadelic, Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers guitarists Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Grammy Award-winning producer Neal Pogue, and more.
(Jim Evans)

USA - The Long Reach Long Riders and Behind the Scenes will host their annual fundraising raffle at the USITT Conference on 15-17 March in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
This year’s raffle will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Long Reach Long Riders annual charity motorcycle ride. The Riders who have raised over $500,000 for charity in their years of touring, will be riding 23-30 June on the Gap and Notch Tour: A Ramble through New England.
The Behind the Scenes Boutique will also be open for business during the show featuring an assortment of Behind the Scenes swag and the famous Long Reach Long Rider T-shirts and kazoos.
Tickets for the raffle are an affordable $5 each or 5 for $20 and can be purchased at the Behind the Scenes booth #2601 throughout the show. Winning tickets for nine regular prizes and one grand prize will be drawn at 1pm on Saturday, the f

Europe - Feeling the heat and helping create the energy and industrial-strength visuals for award winning Swedish heavy metal band In Flames, lighting and production designer Fredrik Stormby of creative practice Greenwall Designs AB used 156 x Robe BMFLs - a mix of 102 x BMFL WashBeams and 54 x BMFL Spots for their most recent tour.
The band was founded in Stockholm in 1990, since when it has been highly successful and prolific, steaming through a full-on career that’s seen them produce multiple best-selling albums and be credited for founding the nuanced metal sub-genre ‘Swedish melodic death metal’. They have built up a loyal international fan-base over time and tour extensively, known for the passion and vitality of their live performances.
This tour is still part of the 2016 Battles album cycle, and the very latest autumn-winter European arena section

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