Italy - With the launch of the DWS2400, dB Technologies has produced the worlds first digital wireless system operating in the 2.4GHz range, thus leading the way to the future of wireless transmission. In the past analogue wireless systems have always required a 'compander system' to increase the 'signal to noise' ratio to a usable level, limiting the range of the dynamics. Not so with the DWS 2400 System.
With the digital wireless system, the analogue signal is converted through a high profile 'Delta Sigma 20bit AD-Converter' in the transmitter into digital data. The data packages are then sent to the receiver and converted back into an analogue signal. This technology produces a full dynamic range and the data transmission also avoids the frequency modulation of an analogue syst
Ireland - For about a year now, film equipment rental company Arri has been using a Telex BTR-700 intercom system - most recently on the set of the Touchstone/Bruckheimer production King Arthur. Most of the shooting for the film was done during a six-month period in Ireland, and the BTR-700 played a vital role.
Hans Lehner, one of the Arri technicians responsible for camera and stage equipment, said: "The system was used by key members of the crew - the director, the camera operators, the director of photography and the crane operator. At times, up to five of them were hooked up at the same time during a take, exchanging information and correcting or fine-tuning settings they had tried out earlier - such is the clarity of the system that they were able to communicate in whispers so as not to bleed into the production audio during passages of dialogue. The BTR-700 was
USA - Alabama-based TLS Inc has appointed Alan Grant as a service and production technician to work with the company's growing list of lighting production customers. Recently employed as a pyrotechnics operator and designer, Grant also has experience as a rigger and lighting technician. He brings 12 years of touring and technical experience to his new job, including a number of large-scale productions such as NSYNC's No Strings Attached, Metallica's Garage Days Revisited and Reba McEntire's Starting Over.
(Lee Baldock)
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Strictly FX, Pushing Boundaries
Strictly FX was founded in 1996 by industry veterans Mark Grega and Ted Maccabee. Our expertise and knowledge of the world’s leading pyrotechnic, laser, and flame manufacturers allows us to curate astonishing live events. With over 500+ shows performed a year, there’s good chance you’ve seen some of our work!
UK - Allen & Heath has launched a new dedicated website for its award winning range of Xone DJ mixers. The Xone website has been designed to cater for the needs of the DJ market, providing a balance between visual entertainment and technical information.
Aside from a slick new look, features include streamed video clips of the mixers in use, a forum and feedback facility, user lists and profiles of mixers across the range, various images for download and comprehensive feature descriptions and downloads.
"The Xone site looks and feels great with plenty of technical information backed up with real world examples of the mixers in use.However, this is just the start - it is our intention to add more interactive features and cultural information rather than just a sales tool for equipment," commented Allen & Heath's New Media manager, David Haughton.
USA - Elation Professional has been appointed the exclusive North American distributor for Antari products. Based in Taiwan, Antari has been designing and manufacturing fog machines for 20 years, as well as other atmospheric effects such as snow and bubble machines.
"We are extremely proud to represent such a world-renowned supplier as Antari," said John Lopez, national sales manager for Elation Professional. "Not only do they make some of the highest quality fog machines, but for the past two decades they've been a leader in research and development and have introduced countless innovations to the category."
Elation Professional will exhibit the Antari line at the 2004 LDI Show (Booth #2000) in Las Vegas, October 22-24, and a range of the Taiwanese manufacturer's newest foggers and other atmospheric effects will be on display. "We are very excited t
UK - Robe Show Lighting will launch a number of new products on a brand new, eye-catching stand at PLASA 2004. New products include the ColorWash 575 AT - the latest addition to the Robe Wash range, aimed primarily at theatres, TV studios, medium-sized stage applications. Features include full CMY colour-mixing, variable CTO, colour-wheel with five replaceable colours plus open, combined dimmer/shutter and rotatable beam shaper and indexable 360° with continuous rotation. The ColorWash 575 AT also boasts a 12° - 60° zoom range.
Robe's ColorWash 1200E AT is a powerful moving head washlight, featuring CMY colour mixing, variable CTO, two colour wheels (each with six easily replaceable slots for colours and effects), a combined dimmer/shutter and many more features, including a zoom range of 10° - 87°, depending on the lens type used.
The electronic ballast enables features
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The Many Looks of Zeo
Delivering ultimate brightness and unique looks, Zeo’s distinct face design is defined by a central LED monolith and four reflectors, backed by four RGBW engines. As a blinder or strobe, Zeo promises powerful impact with 30,000+ lumens. With its sheer brilliance and playful effects, Zeo is ready to amplify the energy on any stage.
UK - tsg, the national media programming and systems design company, has recently relocated to purpose-built premises including offices, promedia production facility and media duplication suite in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. The move is a controlled expansion, say the company, following recent gains across all market sectors, and provides the company with an opportunity to bring its four Sheffield offices under one roof, just 10 miles from the company's 'spiritual' home in Sheffield.
Commenting on the move, Paul Stead, tsg's managing director, said: "As an enlightened SME, we recognized the gains to be had from moving to a new location. The move will allow us to offer a far speedier response to our customers' needs through improved internal linkages, and also provides for a far stronger team dynamic. The staff love our new home and we look forward to welcoming our many custom
Canada - Toronto's Olympic Island was the site of the city's 'edgiest' day of live music this summer as Adamson loudspeakers helped create some all-Canadian sonic boom. Toronto-based sound specialists Towers Productions took charge of providing the system for the day-long festival, which attracted over 8,000 to Olympic Island.
A Y-Axis line array system was employed for the event stage, comprising: 32 Y10s and 16 Y10 Subs. Four Adamson LX10s provided centre lip-fill; and for side-fill, three Adamson SpekTrix and one SpekTrix Sub per side were used. Adamson's compact, versatile SpekTrix and its new companion SpekTrix Sub were also ground stacked 'two and two' to handle drum-fill duty. A dozen low-profile Adamson 12MX were used for on-stage monitors.
Headliners Sam Roberts and veteran alt-rockers Sloan capped off a day of musical acts that included Broken Social Scene, Buck 65 a
UK - DHA Lighting Services, the leading manufacturer of gobos and optical effects, will again be exhibiting at the PLASA Show this year. DHA will have a 'conversational' stand, focusing on their customers not their products, and ensuring visitors are as up-to-date as possible with the extensive range of products and services that the company offers, including its full-colour glass gobo service which, through improved production processes, will soon be available on a reduced turnaround and at a lower price. Examples of these gobos will be on show on the stand.
The improvement to the full-colour glass gobo service follows on the heels of the price reduction to spot colour glass gobos announced earlier in the year as a result of new production processes, systems and suppliers. Diane Grant, managing director of DHA commented: "Although we are the biggest and most experienced go
UK - Sovico Corporation (previously Daiyoung) has recently become the exclusive distributor of Soundtracs/DiGiCo products in Korea. With 30 years' experience of the pro audio industry, the company has distributed many high profile brands - mainly analogue but also several digital processing products - within that territory. "The market trend is going towards the digital domain," says Sovico's Yun Choi. "We have realized the importance of digital equipments and to keep up with this world trend, especially in high-end consoles, we've been tying to find the brand we want to be associated with and finally met DiGiCo.
"Recently, overseas companies have produced many large-scale concerts and events held in Korea. These kinds of events require powerful, large-scale high-end systems and we are now confident that we have a complete system capable of running such perf
ARX Systems, the Australian based Pro Audio manufacturer recently announced the release of the new EarDriver Ultra compact Headphone Amplifier to its AudiBox range of precision tools, designed to perform essential professional audio functions in an ultra compact, flexible package.
Ideal for recording and broadcast applications requiring flexible headphone monitoring the EarDriver comprises two sets of Stereo inputs feeding two channels of headphone level outputs. Channels 1 and 2 are AutoLinked into Channels 3 and 4 unless other inputs are jacked into 3 and 4, allowing up to 4 separate headphone outputs, all with separate level control.
The EarDriver is housed in a heavy duty all-steel chassis finished in attractive matt textured powdercoat, with hardwearing epoxy screen printing and slip resistant rubber pads. Security features include Kensington-type computer lock slot and option
UK - Allen & Heath's New Zealand distributor, Jansen Sound & Lighting, has recently installed iDR systems in two venues in the Auckland area. The Cock & Bull public house in Lynfield, Auckland, is the latest in a chain of Old English themed taverns, with full restaurant facilities and live bands performing three times a week. An iDR-8 digital mixing processor has been installed to distribute audio to various zones around the venue, programmed to automatically change the volume and lighting levels at predetermined times of the day. Eight PL-4 wall panels were also installed around the tavern to allow remote control of multiple sources, including a CD player, computer music system, various TV channels and a wireless mic used for Quiz nights.
The IDR-8 provides EQ and routing to the main Proel TFL speaker system - which consists of six Proel TFL10P and two Proel TFL115 subs - and a
USA - Color Kinetics Inc has been issued with a US patent relating to a miniaturized, integrated, intelligent solid-state string light, in which individual LED nodes in a string configuration can be independently controlled. US patent number 6,777,891 relates in part to technology that is implemented in Chromasic, the company's proprietary integrated circuit that allows a reduction in the cost, size, weight, and complexity of systems requiring many small light sources. One commercial application of this technology is the iColor Flex SL product, introduced by Color Kinetics in September 2003 - a flexible, multi-purpose, intelligent solid-state string light comprised of individually controllable tri-color LED nodes. By refining control down to the singular LED level, this technology enables complex and intricately designed effects that may span many thousands of nodes - making previ
UK - This year has seen a sharp rise in new investments by Terry Jones of Cambridge Disco Hire and Sales. After completing his long-planned move to new premises, over the last 24 months he has built an enviable showroom of the latest lighting effects and audio products, as well as a hire and production department which includes everything from staging to dressing rooms.
As part of the investment for the production and hire department, Jones had been looking for a compact but high output and scaleable audio system for some time. He relates: "I had the opportunity to see and hear several systems, but when Andy Austin-Brown presented the KV2 Audio ES system to me last year, I knew that I had found what I had been waiting to hear. Compact, but incredibly potent, I was astonished to hear such vivid resolution and integrity. Just to make sure that I wasn't kidding myself, I call
Germany - DPA Microphones recently announced it has promoted one of its German dealers, Mega Audio, to the status of sole importer and exclusive distributor for the country. Based in Bingen just outside Frankfurt, Mega Audio had previously represented DPA as a dealer for the past four years, along with Analog Audio (Munich), Hamburg Pro Audio (Hamburg) and HL Audio (Berlin). The decision to appoint Mega Audio as its sole distributor was viewed as an amicable one all round, with the three other companies remaining as dealers for DPA products in their respective territories.
Mega Audio was originally set up as a recording studio specialist and a wholesale company for recording equipment. When the studio market started to decline, Mega Audio made the move into high-end pro audio distribution. Today, as well as DPA, its product portfolio includes Fostex, InnovaSON, Apogee Electronic
UK - ETS Sales & Hire is based just outside Norwich, where it provides a comprehensive repair service to the sound and light industry as well undertaking full electro/mechanical installations.
Run by partners Les Bell and Paul Saunders and ably assisted by Jenny Wright, over the past six years, the company has developed a simple, methodical approach to acquiring clients and building business relationships. Naturally included are many of the holiday and leisure groups who operate along the East coast from Lincolnshire via Norfolk to Hampshire in the South.
ETS has just completed its first audio system installation for its new clients Haven, part of the Bourne Leisure Group a portfolio that includes Butlins, British Holidays and Warners holidays.
Bell explains: "We had provided repair facilities for a number of the Haven sites, but had never had the opportunity to present
Canada - On 1 September this year Cast Software will release WYSIWYG R10, featuring long-awaited improvements to the plotting functionality of WYSIWYG. The software is available for download or purchase on the Cast Software website.
Gil Densham, president and CEO of Cast Software said: After discussing the strengths and weaknesses of WYSIWYG with many users from around the world, we realized that a common concern was the ability to create professional looking lighting plots. A new section named "New Plot" was added to WYSIWYG's Presentation mode. In this section, the "model" drafted in CAD mode is transposed into a schematic that users can easily manipulate to create a detailed lighting plot.
For the first time, users can edit fixture attribute layouts onscreen, plot vertical hang structures such as booms, and notate the lighting plot without affecting the
UK - The PRG Europe sales team (formerly VLPS Lighting Services) has announced it is to sell the new product Bak Pak from Entertainment Technology, a Division of the Genlyte Thomas Company.
The new groundbreaking Bak Pak IGBT dimming module is the ideal complementary device for conventional fixtures that require more advanced control. The Bak Pak is an individual dimmer that mounts wherever a need exists for a "single" dimmer, thus eliminating the need for additional rack space. Entertainment Technology introduced the Bak Pak at LDI 2003.
The Bak Pak dimmer is a powerful, silent, compact, affordable, IGBT DMX controlled lightweight dimmer that lives right where its needed. Complex technology - simple solutions.
The module, available in 750W, 1200W or 2400W versions, operates using standard USITT DMX512 protocol. It is also completely functional using on board contr
UK - Corporate and event lighting specialist Colourhouse is enjoying a summer of close collaboration with designers Bluey Design, working with them on projects for General Motors at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, and for British Telecom's Exact Ball in Suffolk. At Goodwood, Bluey Design was continuing an association with General Motors stretching back to 2002, working for Jack Morton in Detroit. The General Motors Orangery is a space used by the executive officers of General Motors worldwide to relax and entertain their guests away from the bustle of the motor-racing outside. By day, the space contains a set creating an elegant and contemporary space; by night, the venue is transformed into a gala dining space.
Bluey Design was responsible for lighting both the exterior and the interior of the Orangery. The interior day set was enhanced with custom-made low-voltage stick lights
USA - The Entertainment Services and Technology Association (ESTA) has announced that Production Resource Group (PRG) has made a substantial $100,000 donation to the development of the new Entertainment Technician Certification Program (ETCP). PRG's contribution brings the total pledges received to date to just over $600,000.
Announcing the donation, Jere Harris, chairman and CEO of PRG, stated: "PRG is proud to be a cornerstone sponsor of the ETCP. We recognize that our future success will be tied to the skills and training of our people, and the ETCP will help us identify the very best technicians available."
"We are very pleased that the PRG has recognized this important program with their very significant and generous contribution. For this program to succeed, it is essential to have support from major employers like PRG," said Tim Hansen, ETCP Council
UK - A variant of Sy40, the Sy48 is a compact lightweight digital mixing console. Extremely versatile, the Sy48 is equally at home mixing front of house or monitors on tour to theatres or houses of worship.
With mixing for 64 channels and input and output resources as follows: up to 48 local inputs (32 mic + 16 line) with an optional stage box giving up to 48 input on stage plus 16 mic/line local inputs. Also available is an LEM (Local External Mix box) giving up to 64 local mic inputs, 16 local line inputs - for busses / inserts, 16 local line outputs - for busses / inserts, up to 48 processed or non-processed analogue digital or Ethersound outputs, with the flexibility of movable I/O cards between local and distant (stage box) slots. There are 32 buses - freely assignable as main, aux, groups or matrix and two monitor buses.
Transmission and Software includes a new MC module