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UK - Ground-breaking technology devised by audience interaction specialist AnswerBack Interactive has enabled Celador International's Who Want To Be A Millionaire? Live to hit the road this summer. Growing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire's 'fastest finger first' from 10 players in a television studio to thousands in live venues across Britain is a challenge AnswerBack MD Paul Krisman has been delighted to meet. He explains: "This is an absolute first and there are a number of vital factors we have to ensure just can't go wrong - from the players' point of view 'fastest finger first' is absolutely essential. We've managed to build technology that can identify the fastest response to within a thousandth of a second. There can be no room for doubt or error. It was quit

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UK - Lake Technology has received a 2005 Technical Excellence and Creativity (TEC) Award nomination for its Lake Mesa Quad EQ digital matrix processor in the category of Outstanding Technical Achievement, Signal Processing Technology/Hardware. This is the second TEC Award nomination in three years for Lake Technology, which was nominated in 2003 for its very first digital loudspeaker processing hardware product, the Lake Contour.

Introduced less than a year ago, the Lake Mesa Quad EQ is a 4x4 digital matrix processor designed for use in stand-alone or networked concert sound, recording, mastering, and broadcast studio applications.

Justin Baird, director of production management, Lake Technology, commented, "To receive a second TEC Award nomination is a great honour, and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all of our supporters out there! The Mesa EQ is being instal

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UK - Roland Hemming has announced his departure from system integrators Live Business International to become an independent project manager and consultant for the entertainment technology industry.

"In four successful years since setting up Live Business International," says Hemming, "we built a very strong team and an excellent client list. Having founded the business and established the team, it was time for me to move on to meet new challenges. The industry continues to evolve and embrace new technologies and I'm excited to be out there at the sharp end of it."

Hemming's 18-year career has included working as a sound engineer and designer at Theatre Projects where he set up the UK's first show control division renting out computer control of sound and lighting in the technology's infancy. In 1998 he was appointed head of sound for the Millennium Dome pr

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UK - As part of Hawthorn's continuing expansion they have just launched a new design studio based around 'WYSIWYG' the lighting design and visualization software. "WYSWYG was the logical next step in our continuing expansion, giving us the focus to develop our 'brand new' state of the art design studio" said Hawthorn's general manager, Simon Wood.

Based in the East Midlands, with easy road access to all parts of the UK, the new facility is part of Hawthorn's ongoing expansion programme, which has seen its warehouse and office facility expand from 50,000sq.ft to just under 100,000sq.ft, with a continued commitment to new technology and equipment. "Clients can now see visuals of their sets with full lighting and AV, be more involved in the design stages and we can better tailor packages for clients' events," continued Wood.

As well as 'in-house' use it is exp

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UK - Graham Paddon has fulfilled a life-long ambition and formed his own sales company - Amber Sound. Paddon has spent his entire career in audio; after 18 years at Micron's Audio Engineering he went on to guide Autograph Sales through nearly two decades of trading. Amber Sound offers a wide range of high end products, and aims to make customer support and after care sales its main concern.

Jamie Gosney has joined Paddon at Amber Sound, bringing with him over 20 years of technical sales and end-user experience across all sectors of pro audio. Mike Charman is on board to focus on communication systems and the broadcast market, while Claire Paddon joins the team, bringing with her experience in sales, PR and marketing.

"Amber Sound is something I've wanted to do for many many years," says Paddon, "I've teamed up with some great manufacturers to offer high-end prod

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USA - TMB PowerPAR lighting instruments are being used to highlight two rotating automobiles from a trim height of 85ft, while conserving fixture count, in a recently installed display in the lobby of the Renaissance Center General Motors HQ in Detroit. Tom Bagnasco, president of Lighting Design Services Inc, located in Harrison Township, Michigan, accomplished the job using only eight TMB PowerPAR luminaires in the 40ft x 100ft atrium at the Renaissance Center. The main entry lighting was designed by Bagnasco, utilizing TMB PowerPARs and other equipment purchased from Light Source Inc of Milford, Michigan.

"After much research, we found the TMB PowerPAR to be the perfect choice for this application. The entire room is stainless steel and glass so overcoming the glare problems required a versatile unit to control beam patterns and spread," says Bagnasco. "Furtherm

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UK - David Ambrose has been appointed managing director of Electrosonic Ltd, effective immediately. Reporting to the Electrosonic Group CEO, Kyle Carpenter, Ambrose will has responsibility for all Electrosonic's operations in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) region.

Ambrose has been with Electrosonic for 15 years and during that time he has worked within the systems, products and service businesses of the company, including a short period in Hong Kong. He says: "Electrosonic has a strong history of understanding and adapting to the needs of our customers. This is an exciting time for the organisation with a significant investment in new products, growth within our service business and some great opportunities for systems integration projects."

(Jim Evans)

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UK - While small warm-up dates in anticipation of a major stadium tour can often prove a nice appetizer for a band, it can cause havoc for sound crews, forced with shoe-horning the stadium-size wall of sound coming off the stage into small-capacity clubs and theatres bearing a wide range of different room characteristics.

Previewing songs from their new album, Oasis played such unlikely London venues as The Coronet, as well as the Astoria, Clapham Grand and Hammersmith Apollo, with PA provided by top rental house SSE Hire, with Britannia Row supplying monitors and FOH sound engineer Bruce Johnston (Bruce Johnston Audio Services) the FOH control. It was a blessing for system tech Dan Lewis, therefore, when SSE Hire's Richie Rowley announced that he could make the new BSS Soundweb London BLU-80 available to afford him greater control options.

Lewis, who has been working with the

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UK - The Church of Christ The King in Brighton has undergone a refurbishment of its audio facilities, including the installation of a new 32-channel Midas Legend console that also operates as a foldback mixer.

Live music plays a prominent role in the Church's services, and a number of touring Christian music bands perform there, so technical expectations are high. After extensive discussions with Shuttlesound, the Midas distributor in the UK, the Church selected the Legend with 32 mono plus 4 stereo channels, supplied to Modern AV by Autograph Sound.

The Church is based in a large modern building that was previously a warehouse but is now home to one of the New Frontiers group of churches. Its services are held in a large meeting hall on the upper floor with regular congregations of around 900 worshippers.

"The layout of the building didn't provide space for a permanent

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USA - A technological tour de force has been installed in Chicago's Millennium Park. The Crown Fountain - thought to be one of the most expensive pieces of public art ever undertaken - is made up of two 15m glass towers, displays the faces of hundreds of people videotaped by Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa. Each digitized face is projected via a Barco video server, which supplies added information to the ETC Emphasis control system which switches colour mixing LED fixtures on or off in each light tower in sync with the video images.

Each face appears for five minutes at a time, smiling and grimacing until it purses its lips like a playful modern-day gargoyle and spits out water. A signal is sent back from the Emphasis system to a Barco show controller to control the intensity and colour saturation of the towers' video.

At night, the towers' faces are supplemented by nature image

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USA - Coldplay's newest video, Speed of Sound, features the innovative use of LED lights and a novel approach to control: the video's backdrop - and its major source of light - is a wall of 640 Versa TUBEs. The Versa TUBE, from Element Labs, looks like a fluorescent tube but contains a row of pixels composed of red, green and blue LEDs. Designers can map pixels from a video signal directly to the pixels in the tube.

What sets Speed of Sound apart, however, is that production designer Michael Keeling used PRG's Mbox media server to provide the video to the LED lights. Mbox allows designers to manipulate source material - including video, still images and effects - directly from a DMX lighting console. Programmers instantly can change colour, scale, 3-D rotation, rate of playback, degree of transparency and other elements, all without waiting for rendering time, say

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UK - Strand Lighting is to supply the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) with five racks of the EC21 dimmer for the Courtyard Theatre development in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The Courtyard Theatre will be the Company's main performance space while the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is redeveloped from 2007. Installation will start at the end of 2005 with The Courtyard Theatre opening in mid 2006 as part of The Complete Works of Shakespeare Festival.

EC21 is the latest high density modular dimming system from Strand that allows the user to mix and match Truesine sinewave, thyristor, fluorescent and non-dim dimmer modules, with no loss of density. Up to 96 x 5kW sinewave dimmers may be contained in each rack. The rack and dimmers are fully web browsable using Strand's ShowNet Ethernet network and support Strand Outlook and SWC architectural controls. They also support DMX512 and come ready t

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Spain - This year's European AES exhibition in Barcelona benefited not just from the great location and excellent weather, but also from the introduction this year of seminars aimed at the live sound sector - one of which was Sunday's Loudspeaker Line Arrays session that was presented by John Taylor and Ralf Zuleeg from d&b audiotechnik.

This was a three-part seminar that took place over four hours and began with a presentation from John Taylor titled Demystifying audio techniques, which embraced visual images, experiments and practical demonstrations that included the assistance of Daisy the duck*. This part of the session was aimed at expanding the participant's knowledge in order to obtain the maximum benefit from sound systems, concluding with what constitutes a well-behaved loudspeaker and how it affects what we hear. Ralf Zuleeg then took the stage to look at

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UK - The HSL Group is to exhibit at ABTT for the first time. HSL is currently supplying lighting to some major UK theatre tours including Blood Brothers, Joseph & His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy, as well as servicing other major arts events like the Holland Park Opera Festival and providing equipment to TV studios across the UK. HSL is also sponsoring the Bar in the mezzanine level of the Lawrence Hall throughout the show."

HSL is now streamlined into three divisions. HSL Rental is "fully committed to ongoing investment in the latest technology to offer lighting designers and specifiers all the cutting-edge creative tools". HSL Rigging provides bespoke rigging solutions to corporate, theatre and live music events and HSL Sales & Distributions is the sole UK and Irish distributor for Community Loudspea

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The Netherlands - HOF audio - lighting - vision has invested in a complete sound package from Alcons Audio. The system consists of 18 units LR16 ribbon line array modules with ALC4 controller-amplifiers and extensive rigging. An AIM (Alcons InclinoMeter) digital incline levelling system has been added to enable accurate bumper positioning.

The decision to opt for the LR16s was made after extensive testing of the system during a number of high profile concerts with the Dutch Horn Ensemble, North Netherlands Orchestra and the Marines band in such venues as Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Rotterdam's De Doelen theatre.

HOF owner Bart Hof comments: "The projection of the system is impressive, it gives an honest reproduction, perfect imaging, crystal clear response and speech intelligibility is unsurpassed as a result of the ribbon technology. With the LR16 we can now offer a

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Germany - ChainMaster, one of the world's most successful manufacturers of chain hoists and chain-hoist controllers, has been supplying equipment for a number of major projects and productions, including the Spain Summer Tour, which is using 13 500kg VarioLifts and a computer controller furnished by the manufacturer's Spanish distributor.

Meanwhile, ChainMaster has added two more prestige German venues to its reference list, having installed a chain-hoist system for the video cube in the SAP Arena in Mannheim in collaboration with Sauernheimer (due to the enormous weight of the load, four 6000kg computer-controlled VarioLifts with a backup system were needed here) as well as producing the three 500kg BGV-C1 chain hoists delivered recently by Focon Showtechnic to the Mercedez-Benz museum.

Chainmaster has also announced that two more event service providers have recently

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UK - Earlier this year, six famous landmarks around the UK were given a spectacular colour makeover courtesy of White Light and Crown Paints to mark Crown Colour Week - a nationwide celebration of colour.

In each of six cities, residents were asked to vote for their favourite colour via a survey in a local paper. The winning colour was then used to light the buildings, orchestrated by a White Light team and led by production manager Simon Jones.

The buildings chosen were Bristol Cathedral, St Martin's Church in Birmingham, Cardiff Town Hall, the Urbis in Manchester, the Theatre Royal Newcastle and Glasgow University. Each landmark was lit for six hours after sunset. The touring lighting rig included twenty StudioDue CityColor colour-changing floodlights and seven Mac2000 moving spotlights as well as sixty Source Four Pars, and four Philips ArenaVisions. The rig also included o

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UK - Tryka L.E.D. is exhibiting its high quality LED luminaires for the bar and entertainment industry at this year's bar show (7-8 June, Earls Court, London). The company's full range of lighting fixtures will be on display, with units including small MR16 fittings, strips in a variety of lengths and powerful projectors, to name a few. Most products are available for interior and exterior applications, with a variety of optics and either RGB colour mixing, or with a wide spectrum of single colour LEDs, making them adaptable to most project requirements.

Tryka will also showcase the Gorillaluce, a gorilla-shaped 50cm sculpture designed by Shiu-Kay Kan of SKK Ltd and lit with Tryka LinkLEDs, the flexible LED lighting source available in both single colour and colour-changing versions, as well as with optional optic lenses. The aim of this statuette is to raise awareness for the e

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UK - Further to the article in this issue on the future problems concerning radio spectrum trading, there have been some new developments that are too late to get written up for this issue. Essentially JFMG has made its future plans public, and contrary to popular belief is not looking to act as a Spectrum Management Organisations (SMO) - essentially a profit making retailer/manager of spectrum for entertainment use. JFMG says it prefers an alternative model where spectrum rights are owned directly by the users themselves, rather than by intermediaries. The concept is described in detail in the JFMG's document Future Spectrum Management for Programme Making and Special Events which is available from the JFMG website here.

M

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USA - L-Acoustics US has enlisted BYZ International to direct its sales efforts within the Latin American market. Based in Fort Lauderdale, BYZ is led by Adinaldo Neves.

Neves' pro audio industry beginnings date back to the early '90s when he started designing concert systems and studios in Brazil. Over the past ten years, he has been involved with sales and marketing for Digidesign, Loud Technologies and other companies in Latin America. He also co-authored the book Tecnologia aplicada à Música (Technology applied to Music).

"We feel very fortunate to have found Adi for this position," says Paul Freudenberg, vice-president of sales and marketing for L-Acoustics US. "His rich background in electronics, sales and marketing, combined with his intimate familiarity with the Latin American market, will undoubtedly afford us an increased presence from Baja Californi

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UK - London-based Sound Hire has just purchased a DiGiCo D1 Live after becoming one of the first companies to invest in the D5 Live back in September 2002. The rental company, founded by Richard Lienard, has continued its commitment to DiGiCo by purchasing the D1 Live to meet their client's increasing demands for a more compact live console that still provides the versatility and sound quality of the D5.

For Lienard, the addition of a D1 to his console stock was the logical step to take. "You can customise the D1 very easily to suit your requirements for a particular show or event," explains Lienard. "It reduces the need for outboard equipment, and consequently space - a real bonus at front of house and during transportation - because the console has such excellent internal effects processing it's not necessary to carry extra racks with you. It has the added advan

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