UK - One of the first of DiGiCo's new D5T12 consoles - designed specifically for theatre productions where space is at a premium - is already at work, touring throughout the UK with the stage production of Me And My Girl.

The D5T12 was delivered to Cardiff-based Stage Sound Services in August and was immediately whisked off to the tour's first show at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, on 1 September. Indeed, so hot off the press is the new console that the show was actually programmed on the prototype console at DiGiCo's UK offices.

Designed in association with theatrical sound designer Bobby Aitken, the new console is a hybrid of the already successful D5T digital theatre mixing system. The D5T12 provides 12 output faders, rather than the standard eight, to provide more VCF co

UK - Over the past ten years XL Video has proved to be one of the fastest growing rental staging video production companies on the global map, establishing itself as a market leader in the concert touring market, as well as in the trade show, television, outdoor and indoor event sectors.

With a UK base in Hemel Hempstead, and sales office throughout Europe and the United States, the XL Video Group maintain a multi-million pound, state-of-the-art equipment inventory. Following impressive year-on-year growth the UK operation is shortly to relocate from its 9,000sq.ft premises to a massive 42,000sq.ft facility in order to accommodate its expanding hire fleet and marketing reach.

Sensing it had a shortage of dependable high-brightness projectors, took delivery of its first consignment of Christie DLP projection in the form of ten flagship S+20K SXGA+ Roadsters. Before the order wa

UK/Iran - Allen & Heath has appointed a new distributor, Shidco, to exclusivelymanage the sales, distribution and service of Allen & Heath product lines in Iran.

"Shidco ticks all the right boxes - existing distribution lines with respected brand names, impressive in-store representation, and proven sales and after-service records - offering a very attractive partnership agreement, and excellent prospects for Allen & Heath in this territory," says Allen & Heath's sales director, Bob Goleniowski.

With over 30 years' experience, Shidco is recognised as a leading importer and distributor of pro audio, visual and lighting systems in Iran. Moreover, the company owns some stores in Tehran and other cities of Iran, manned by highly qualified staff who are dedicated to providing prompt sales and immediate after sales services as well as training programmes to customers.

Sh

USA - Gear-Source, Inc. announces it will launch a completely new version (GS3) of their site www.GearSource.com at LDI 2006 in Las Vegas.

"With GS3, we've grown up a whole lot, and you'll see it shows," says Marcel Fairbairn, president of Gear-Source, Inc. "Not only are we expanding our offerings, and giving the user even more options to search, post listings, purchase, etc - we're making the entire process easier."

GS3 has streamlined the online selling process, and brought the important information to the forefront."It's always been our goal to offer a host of selling methods, options, etc. Until now, we haven't had the tools. The new page designs, and backend software will allow us to start adding features to the listing process enabling the seller who needs his money fast to take advantage of additional tools available."

GearSource.com empl

Denmark - The Exterior 1200 Wash is the newest addition to Martin Architectural's Exterior range of outdoor luminaires. Its powerful 1200W lamp and full range color mixing system make it ideal for dynamic illumination of tall structures, high-rises or any high-visibility architecture.

The Exterior 1200's CMY system blends the colours cyan, magenta and yellow to achieve a full spectrum of colours. Further colour options are also provided on a four-colour wheel.

The Exterior 1200 houses an efficient 1200W metal halide lamp capable of reaches of nine stories and above. Its optical performance results in a uniform distribution of light and colour, and an opti-white front glass gives a pure white light. Ellipsoidal beam shapers and other optical accessories provide precise optical control for pin-point illumination of columns, pylons and very tall structures.

Narrow and medium mo

USA - High End Systems today launches Axon, a rack-mount media server featuring the same graphics engine as the DL.2 digital light. Axon will be shown at High End Systems' booth at the ETS-LDI trade show on 20-22 October in Las Vegas.

Axon is a flexible solution for those who already have their own video display device, and want a world of unlimited image possibilities.

"Axon has been a highly requested product since we first released the DL.2 last year," says Scott Blair, director of digital lighting development. "The ability for lighting designers and programmers to use a media server - which operates like the DL.2 - for other elements of their show represents an enormous time savings when programming a show by not having to switch between the programming syntax differences of other media servers. Axon puts all the features of the DL.2 Graphics Engine into a 3

USA - Royal Philips Electronics (AEX: PHI, NYSE: PHG) today announced that it will present its latest innovations in entertainment lighting technology at LDI 2006, being held in Las Vegas Convention Center from October 20-22, 2006.

At the Philips booth #1455, the company will present its complete Philips FastFit range. Initiated by the launch of Philips MSR Gold 1200 FastFit and Philips Hi-Brite 1200 FastFit, at the beginning of this year, Philips has completed the product range with Philips MSR Gold 700 FastFit and Philips Hi-Brite 750 FastFit. This rear load lamp base system has been co-developed with Bender & Wirth.

The benefit of this new lamp concept is not only a fast lamp replacement due to the unique lamp and lamp holder design, it also includes an increased brightness, provides the opportunity to reduce fixture size and weight, assures reliability due to pinch protect

USA - FOH Engineer Dave Rat and his company, Rat Sound Systems, has worked on The Red Hot Chili Peppers' tours for nearly two decades now.

For the Peppers' most recent album, Stadium Arcadium, Rat Sound chose to augment its L-Acoustics amplifier arsenal with the addition of two dozen more LA48s to drive the tour's V-Dosc and dV-Dosc rig.

"After the June 2004 European stadium tour with the Peppers, where we used nine local vendors for shows in a dozen countries, I was able to get a good idea of the similarities and differences between the three amp types used in Europe," says Rat. "Though the differences in audio were relatively subtle, our decision to use the LA48 amplifiers was ultimately based on the fact that they greatly reduced our overall touring weight without any sonic sacrifice whatsoever."

For the current Stadium Arcadium outing, t

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USA - Launched at London's PLASA Show in September, TurboDrive network control software - a new software package from Turbosound that will help to make the jobs of live sound engineers easier - was also shown for the first time in the US at the 121st Audio Engineering Society Convention at San Francisco's Moscone Centre from 5 to 8 October.

The TurboDrive package gives online access and fast, intuitive control of Turbosound controllers and powered speakers, either individually or in a BVNet network of up to 100 devices.

User control of input EQ, delay and mute is available, while key factory settings such as limiters and driver correction are locked out to ensure maximum flexibility to the user, whilst maintaining consistent voicing and driver protection in the field.

Every parameter of an LMS-D2X controller is allowed, either by typing in exact values or by using on-screen

USA - Bandit Lites has teamed up again with lighting designer, Seth Jackson to light Toby Keith's most recent Hookin' Up and Hangin' Out tour. Toby Keith will play sixty-plus shows to cities throughout America from August through November.

In his fourth tour with Toby Keith, Jackson says that he and Keith are very in sync when itcomes to lighting needs and expectations. "Toby Keith is a rock show. It is big, bright, and anything but subtle, "explains Jackson. "We try to interact with the set design yet still give ourselves a lot of layers and positions so we can create as much depth as possible, while still accommodating the necessities of a rock show: heavy backlight, lots of floor angles, audience lighting, and a lot of pyrotechnics."

Jackson and lighting director, Eddie Connell, are using the VL3000 spot as thebase of the system. In addition, Jack

UK - PRG Europe has been working on several corporate events recently, including a press launch for Persil Be My Coach, which aimed to encourage parents to get involved in sports with their children, and an event for Virgin Cosmetics in September.

At the end of August, the Z Room at the old Truman Brewery was designed to look like a garden while assembled journalists and camera crews took photographs of England cricket captain Michael Vaughan with groups of children. Then a larger event on the same afternoon, including performances by Mr Woo - widely acknowledged as the world's greatest football entertainer - and the Gandini Jugglin' Project launched the Be My Coach programme for children and families. Produced by event management company So Just Add Water, PRG Europe supplied leaf gobos to add to the back garden effect. Craig Bennett, project manager for PRG Europe, explains: &

UK - Clear-Com, a Vitec Group brand and global leader of intercom solutions has introduced a new choice of service contracts and extended warranties for customers.

While Clear-Com products are recognised throughout the live performance and broadcast industry for their construction and reliability, with the increasing complexity of systems, Clear-Com has decided to enhance their after sales service with a choice of service contracts and extended warranties. These new services ensure complete customer confidence through a dedicated global support team, says the company.

The Clear-Com Service Contract can now run for three or five years and is available as an optional service, to all customers. Key features include: technical customer on site training; a maintenance visit; an annual site visit and system service check; global 24 x 7 technical, multi-lingual customer support desk;

UK - From Broadway hit to West End spectacular. The new musical Wicked that tells the untold story of the witches from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz has opened at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. Magical scenery and special effects create the world of Oz and are controlled by Stage Technologies' automation system.

Stage Technologies has supplied 27 moving axes to automate this new stage show created from Gregory Maguire's book of the same name. Scenery is flown using counterweight assist winches and also slides from the wings on floor tracks, while automated lighting ladders are lifted up to let them pass. A performer lift enables dramatic entrances and exits and a large bridge is flown down just in front of the proscenium. This heavy scenic bridge is controlled by two BigTow390 winches which were built in situ in the venue's organ loft due to their size.<

South Africa - d&b audiotechnik have appointed Stage Audio Works as a new distributor based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

"We started in business seventeen years ago", said Stage Audio Works founder Will Deysel. "Back then there was no one providing a repair service for loudspeaker systems, spares from overseas were just not available, so I started the country's first domestic re-cone and repair company, making everything ourselves."

Deysel, a sound engineer, soon found a ready demand for his business, "It grew and grew, I now have good, well established partners in the three main cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape town; the downside is I no longer get much chance to engineer, but I still do bits and pieces to keep my ear in." Keeping his ear in is what led Deysel to d&b audiotechnik, "I'd noticed more and more technical riders coming

France - With an IP-65 rating and a modular design for optimal flexibility and ease of installation, the DVwall HR is a robust LED display system for distant viewing in entertainment venues, stadiums, theme parks, billboards, as well as the rental and staging markets. Delivering 16 million colours with a pixel pitch of 31mm, it displays high-resolution graphics, animated gifs, Flash, PowerPoint, video and images to delight viewers and maximise the return on investment. It is compatible with Windows Media Player.

The system consists of 0.5m x 0.5m DV modules, each fitted with 2,304 LEDs ingeniously grouped in clusters to enhance brilliance. Each module comes with mounting hardware designed to allow multiple configurations, offering a wealth of creative flexibility. Pixel density is 256 per module or 1,024 pixels per sq.m. With endurance in mind, even the mounting system and conne

Portugal - Built in 1923, Teatro Rivoli is the most important theatre in Oporto, Portugal's second biggest city. The building, which is property of the local government, still has the charm of the last century, but the equipment is ultra-modern. For lighting, the theatre is equipped with 250 dimmer channels that are controlled by a full-size grandMA.

Lighting designer João Guedes explains: "I have known grandMA from the beginning. The evolution it's had over the last few years makes it the best console on the market today! It convinced me, not only because of its many possibilities for every kind of lighting, but also because you get free and regular software updates. MA Lighting's doing a great job and we have a console that we can use for any kind of show."

The grandMA full-size offers real-time control for up to 64 DMX universes (Expansion Mode), extensive networ

UK - Paul Dumpleton has joined Power Logistics as general manager. Dumpleton will be helping to take the company forward through its ongoing expansion and supporting the existing management at their Wiltshire head office.

Dumpleton says: "My focus is on improving internal systems to benefit our client services and hopefully we can deliver more of the same consistently high level of project management the company is known for."

Power Logistics has enjoyed a busy 2006, with projects ranging from the Queen's 80th birthday party, five major bands stadium concert tours, international corporate marketing events in India, Portugal and Turkey, and there are major sporting events on the horizon.

(Chris Henry)

The thundering launch of the Vari*Lite VL500 by PRG Europe at last year's show (£1m in orders before the show closed) continues to resound with continued sales.

The enhanced X Box, now titled X Box Extreme, has the long-awaited Pixel Mapping function, improved 'transition' functions and lots of new tiling effects, as well as some slick new keystone, 3D generator, and masking functions.

Added to the 'for sale' product range is the Sea Changer from Ocean Optics, an easy add-on in-line colour changer for ETC Source Four profiles. Built to insert between lamp house and lens tube on any model, this dichroic colour mixer comes in two versions: 'Extreme' includes green as well as the usual CMY; beside greatly enhanced greens it also extends to blues, ambers and golds. The standard version has a dimmer wheel instead of green.

Also licensed to PRG for distribution throug

Australian DMX tools specialist Enttec Pty Ltdshowcased its latest product, the E-streamer. An Ethernet show recorder, it is capable of recording up to 64 universes of DMX per show. It can record or play multiple shows at once, featuring a built-in scheduler, which allows programming of every conceivable schedule spread over days, months or years. The product Supports ArtNet and ESP protocols, allows simultaneous show recording and playback of up to 1,000 shows.

Legendary reverb manufacturer Lexicon (Harman Pro) presented two new products, seen for the first time in Europe. The MX400 and MX400XL are both four-in four-out hardware reverb units for studio and live use. The 1U rack-mounted units have an independent processor on each channel, with the only difference between the units being the connectors on the XL sporting XLRs while the 400 is fitted with quarter-inch TRS jacks. The four inputs and outputs also allow for surround processing and effects are included, making the units an affordable way to enter the surround sound processing arena.

Roland Systems Group and its Digital Snake system has been gaining market share since its relatively recent launch. On display at the show was a new interface for the unit, an AES/EBU module with internal and external sync' options and word clock. Also on display for the RSS was a REAC (Roland's Ethernet data transfer technology) ASIO driver, allowing 40 channels of audio to be connected directly into a PC and into a multi-track recording system - in this case Cakewalk's SONAR 5 or 6.

Nestling unassumingly in a nearby rack were the AR-3000R and AR200R audio announcement system. The AR-3000R will record, playback and edit samples for announcements and voice alarms, while the AR-200 is a half-rack playback-only version.

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