Poland - Located in the heart of Warsaw, the InterContinental Warszawa hotel provides an architectural landmark as one of the highest buildings in the city. It has 326 guest rooms and suites, and 75 residential suites, all of which fully equipped with the latest technology. In addition, there are three restaurants and two bars, and eleven banqueting rooms with room for 700 guests.

The hotel has installed the Bosch Praesideo Voice Alarm System. Most of the installation work was carried out by local reseller, ANB which has been operating in Poland since 1992. A spokesman for Bosch said: "IEC60849 certification and compliance with the even more stringent Polish regulations underscore Praesideo's high standards.

Praesideo demonstrates flexibility and user-friendliness in severa

Relative newcomer RJS Electronics, showed its new range of illuminated intelligent switches. The SKI range, from manufacturer RGB, are programmable LCD switches capable of showing up to four lines of text and available with various colour lenses. The two-year-old company now boasts a client list including Klark Teknik, AMS Neve and DiGiCo - not a bad line-up.

Sharing a stand with Schnick Schnack Systems, E:Cue Lighting Control showed a prototype of its new Butler Ethernet to DMX gateway with integrated replay unit. This tiny device is capable of handling 1,024 channels and uses compact flash for storage - a medium that more and more manufacturers seem to be adopting.

Control solution provider ShowMagic showed its new suite of products - SL, SLX, AV and Vista. This suite of products allows for the synchronization of lighting, sound and AV elements from a single control package. It also makes use of multiple protocols, audio and video formats as well as PowerPoint files to give the user a single control interface.

UK - Following the change in ownership of Mean Fiddler earlier this year, 2005 is a year that its former managing director Melvin Benn will remember. L&SI met up with him at the Leeds Festival and talked about the event, and about Mojo's new Barrier Load Monitoring System which was being tested at the site.

Noticing there were several representatives from the Clear Channel management team 'monitoring' things on site, it begged the question, how is the new marriage affecting things? "It's business as usual this year," explained Benn. "I'm aware things may change, but I've been left to get on with what is already working, with no interference."

"This is the 7th Leeds Festival and the third on this site and I think it has evolved over the years to what we have today. You always look to learn and improve things and I think we've created a better site this year, a

While Lake didn't have anything new to show product wise, the fact that it is now part of Dolby Labs is a significant announcement and underlines the respect its Contour product has garnered in the industry.

Panphonics produces a patented flat panel electrostatic wave transducer. The sound from one of the panels is so focused that it is impossible to hear unless you are standing directly in-line with the source or, in the case of the stand's 'Sound Shower', directly underneath. Kari Mettälä, CEO of Panphonics, explained that the technology is now being employed across the global automotive and aircraft manufacturing markets for active noise cancellation, as well as in advertising systems in supermarkets, off-air monitoring at the BBC and anywhere that requires excellent speech intelligibility.

Finland - Martin's new MAC 700 profile spot debuted at the recent IAAF World Track and Field Championships, the world's largest sporting event this year, held at Helsinki's Olympic Stadium.

Lighting designer Jussi Kallioinen used 34 of Martin's new 700W fixtures for the Opening Ceremony on 6 August, alongside a host of other Martin equipment including loads of MAC 2000s (135 Wash, 68 Profiles and two Performance fixtures), eight MAC 600 washlights, 54 Atomic strobes (24 with Atomic Colors) and 24 Jem ZR33 Hi Mass foggers. Other fixtures used by Kallioinen included Studio Due City Colors, ETC Source Four profiles, and Lycian and Strong Gladiator followspots, while control was looked after by a pair of Wholehogs. All the Martin gear was supplied by Eastway Sound & Lighting of Helsinki through Lightinen Ltd - Martin Scandinavia's sole distributor in Finland.

Kallioinen, lighting designe

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Rolec Music provide tailored music and AV management systems for the leisure and retail market. Director of sales Mark Bracken explained that Rolec really exhibit at PLASA in order to meet all of its 120 dealers and installers. The company showed the new DJC DJ Controller Software that allows the integration of audio and video plus all of the features a DJ may need for control, such as varispeed, cross-fades and scrolls.

PLASA 2005 was the first major trade show for Amber Sound, founded by Graham Paddon. Although just four months old, the company was discussing several major supply projects that it has already undertaken. The stand featured a range of the company's distributed products, including its exclusive UK distribution of Aviom personal monitor and digital snake systems. With the company also offering sound design and technical support, Paddon was pleased with the level of interest shown.

The theatrical, chandelier-hung Doughty Engineering stand featured a wide range of the company's rigging, lifting and suspension hardware, with its Six Track curtain tracking in constant motion. New for PLASA was a portable meat rack for lighting bars and the company was also showcasing its redesigned Superclamp, now also available at a lower price.

Deco Leisure showed new products including the Pure system - a large, fixed install audio concept developed for two principal markets - large clubs and venues specializing in urban, rap, hip hop and R 'n' B artists. Available only in white, it's extremely quick to stack and robustly built. It sits in the audio market somewhere between the line array arena systems and older stacking systems, neither of which are great for DJ-orientated applications and performance in their own right. The enclosures consist of a physically small full-range box and an enormous sub.

Community UK became its own entity on 1 July this year, making this the first time the company has exhibited at PLASA in its own right. On show was the expanded iBOX range of installation speakers, which has numerous array and dispersion pattern options, all in cabinets of identical size. The new iBOX HP3500 series, which are slightly larger than the existing 1200 and 1500 series, are a high performance 3-way system. Both the iHP3564 and iHP3594 are loaded with a 15" and 8" low- and mid-range drivers plus a 1.4" throated, edge-wound voice coil compression driver. Dispersion from the two boxes varies from 60° x 40° for the iHP3564 to 90° x 40° for the iHP3594, and both loudspeakers can operate in either passive or bi-amped modes.

To complement the range, two subs have also been released in the form of the i118S and i215LVS, and have the same physical dimensions as the

TC Electronic, who recently acquired TC-Helicon, was proudly showing the high end vocal processor developed by the company, the VoicePro, released earlier this year. The ultra realistic processor, aimed at the studio, post and live markets, gives users up to eight voices that can be altered in a variety of ways including pitch and time shift, character, harmony, transducer, reverb, delay, EQ and dynamics. Also on the TC stand was version two of the EQ Station, with new features and improved latency.

APB Dynasonics' Spectra C and Spectra T consoles are separated in their specification by EQ: the C variant boasts four band (two bands on the mid), with hi/lo switch; while T is sweepable on all four bands, hi/lo shelving (in boost mode is two-thirds of an octave wide, in cut just quarter octave) while the two mid bands have a wider boost of one octave, with a commensurately tighter one-third octave cut.

Consoles come in 24, 32, 40, 48 and 56 mono input, plus there's a 24-channel expander (stretch). The highly regarded Jensen transformers are used on all outputs.

Although with a long and illustrious history, Zero 88 could be said to be the company that Frog built in recent years. PLASA 2005 saw the launch of version 10 software for the highly-successful Frog console range, initially launched in the spring of 2000. This new version includes parameter level programming and move on dark functions. Also on display on the Zero 88 stand was version two software for the Frog 2 console and the newentry-level Jester console.

Batmink showed a wide array of RGB LED products, many of which were being launched at the show. These included Par 36, Par 64 and pin spot fixtures in a choice of black, white or polished finish. Also on display was Neon Flex, an LED-driven flexible tubing that mimics neon-filled glass. A new range of aluminium ARCLED fixtures was also on show, designed for the retail, architectural and entertainment markets.

DJ audio specialist Numark released several new products. Probably the most eagerly awaited is the company's iDJ mixing console for Apple iPods. The system allows two iPods of any flavour, including the new Nano, to dock with the mixer. The familiar iPod controls are then mirrored on the console with the addition of a 3-band EQ and gain control on both channels. The iDJ can also act as a charger and docking station with the inclusion of an integral USB port.

Another, more familiar looking product, the HDX, was launched at the show and looks and operates like a vinyl turntable except the HDX is actually a tabletop HD/CD/MP3 player. The 12" platter is used as a normal turntable, but other controls allow any track from the removable 80Gb hard disk drive to be selected and mixed as if it were on vinyl. The HDX also boasts an ultra-high torque direct drive motor (for that real turntabl

Although it seems to have been with us for some time now, this is in fact the first appearance at a UK trade show, on the Shuttlesound stand, of a Midas Sienna console. Midas were also happy to announce the 10th birthday of its flagship console, the XL4 - seems like only yesterday. Of greater significance, Midas announced its adoption of the AES50 standard interface for multi-channel digital audio, and that it has licensed the AES50 (SuperMAC) and HyperMAC technologies from Sony Pro-Audio Labs, Oxford, for implementation into Midas and Klark Teknik equipment.

Blue Microphones is a new brand to be seen under the wing of Electro-Voice. The retro appearance of the Cardinal and Raven mics is deceptive; these are derivatives of Blue's experience in producing high quality studio mics, but are aimed at live (but not high sound level) applications. A dual swivel on the yoke mount makes them es

Wenger has been manufacturing audience seating systems, acoustic shells, sound control rooms, music stands and chairs for many years, and at PLASA was represented by its UK distributor, Black Cat Music. The company specifically highlighted its Upper Deck Audience Seating System, which offers fast, tool-free set-up and de-rig: a 200-capacity audience system can be setup by two people in two hours. When not in use everything breaks down and is stored on custom wheeled carts.

Forward-looking Digidesign presented several new augmentations for its digital desk, the Venue. D-Show 1.1 is a free update, giving a new Variable Group mode that permits operators to configure 24 discrete mix busses, in addition to main LCR bus. Drawmer TourBuss gives live sound engineers four plug-ins for the desk, noise gate, expander, comp/limiter and a bracketing filter. D-Show Script Tray is a simple flat transparent tray designed to fit above the console surface and roll across it without disturbing any controls, while supporting notes, cue sheets - even a Laptop, anything reasonable the operator needs to hand. Personal Q Monitoring software and hardware allows for remote mixes from the main desk transmitted over a four-pin XLR to PQ wired controllers.

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