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UK - This November has seen the Top Gear Live show wreak its particular brand of motorised mayhem around the British Isles. Screeching to a halt at London's Earls Court, Birmingham's NEC and Dublin's RDS Simmons Court, the audio for Jeremy Clarkson, James May, The Hamster, The Stig and the thousands watching has been in the hands of Gareth Davies, front of house engineer for the entire tour.

"I've done this show for the past three years," he says. "We have had issues with RF in the past so when I approached Stage Audio Services of Stourbridge to put together the specification and the quote for this year's show I said it had to be Sennheiser RF technology."

With the three presenters in the middle of a large arena floor, often surrounded by speeding cars

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USA - Daktronics recently upgraded the sound system at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, home to the University of Mississippi football team in Oxford. The audio upgrade is part of a $6 million overhaul that includes the largest high-definition video display in the NCAA Southeastern Conference.

Home to the Ole Miss Rebels since 1915, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium holds more than 62,000. As part of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), Ole Miss faces some of the top college football programmes each year. With the addition of the large high-definition LED screen before the 2008 football season, an equally powerful audio system was needed.

To that end, Daktronics designed and installed an end-zone system consisting of 12 JBL VLA601H line array loudspeakers configured in left-right hangs of six loudspeakers each. The system is supplemented by two JBL PD743 loudspeakers and two PD5212/64 loudspeak

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France - The famous crocodile logo celebrated its 75th anniversary and René Lacoste's presence was once again felt in Paris as the Roland Garros stadium hosted the first-ever commercial event to be staged on the famous centre court.

Attended by 800 fashion and tennis fans, the presentation celebrated 75 years of Lacoste Clothing. Production company Prodeo had pulled off a coup by staging the event at the Roland Garros stadium, where Lacoste, the first true French tennis star, won three French Open championships.

Nicknamed the Crocodile by the press and his fans because of his pugnacity on court, in 1933, he introduced his tennis shirts with the famous crocodile logo, probably the first time that a brand name appeared on the outside of an article of clothing.

For the corporate celebrations, event services company Euroson constructed two stages on court, to accom

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UK - Stage Electrics supported World Diabetes Day by lighting up the Liverpool Playhouse in blue. The historic Grade II listed theatre was lit in blue for one evening only as part of the Monument Challenge. World Diabetes Day Monument Challenge involves iconic buildings and landmarks around the world lighting up in blue as beacons of hope for the millions of people worldwide living with diabetes.

The event coincided with the production of Horrid Henry! - Live and Horrid presented by Watershed Productions in association with Sheffield Theatres. Stage Electrics provided a selection of Lee Filters Gel along with 10 150W MBI floods with blue lamps to create the blue effect. The floods provided worked alongside existing exterior lighting.

Robert Longthorne, building development director at the Liverpool Playhouse comments, "With Stage Electrics' generous help, we rose t

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India - Ohm's Indian distributor, Harness Overseas has been busy of late with two major dance club renewals.

After two years of continuous use, Mumbai's premier nightspot, Poison has been renovated and re-opened in October. Club owner Aqueel, one of India's top DJs, loved his original Ohm TRS system but wanted to upgrade to something "out of this world" says the company.

Harness reworked the system completely and after carefully studying the venue suggested a Saturn system. Given seven days to reinstall the system, it was completed two days before the official opening. "Poison now has a three way active system, which not only rocks the venue but sounds sweet like honey. It is now truly an 'iron glove in a velvet hand.'" says Harness principal, Lalit Chopra.

The 6000sq.ft club has a 2000sq.ft foot dance floor, three VIP decks and three bars. The Ohm syste

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UK - Showsec was the official security partner at this November's international Sports Event Management Conference and Sports Security Summit two day event. Six Showsec staff from the London office secured the conference area within the Novotel St Pancras (London) throughout the two day conference.

Managing Director, Mark Harding, spoke to the prestigious audience on the second day of the event, focusing on the critical issues around training in the UK. Speaking alongside the BSIA's Olympic 2012 project director David Evans, Harding focused on the potential benefits and pitfalls for the UK security industry presented by the 2012 London Olympics.

Harding stated: "The security industry contains a lot of experienced, qualified professionals and it should be those people driving the agenda towards the Games. The training programmes and qualifications infrastructure for the Ga

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UK - The new division of XL Video, XL Events supplied cameras, LED screens and a PPU for the Top Gear Live arena at the 2008 MPH Prestige & Performance Motor Show exhibition at Earls Court, London and the NEC, Birmingham, and for its first ever show in Dublin.

Top Gear Live, a co-presentation with the BBC, is an all-action 90 minute performance car spectacular fusing theatre with stunts and turbo-charged fun for petrol-heads. Presented by Top Gear anchors Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, at the 2008 MPH Show, it was staged in a 5000 seater arena that sold out up to four shows a day.

Simon Aldridge from PMI production managed the live show with XL's managing director Lee Spencer acting as project manager. Phil Woodhead directed with the show being engineered on site for XL by Richard Shipman.

XL supplied a four-camera PPU featuring three Sony DXC5

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Finland - Stagetracker, the performer tracking and audio localisation system from Norwegian theatre specialists TTA, has been installed in the Svenska Teater in Helsinki.

The Swedish National Theatre is situated in the heart of the city, one of six professional theatres in Finland to serve the Swedish-speaking population, and is considered to be the Swedish national stage. Why Swedish? Because Finland was part of Sweden until 1809 and its ties to the country remained strong until it became a sovereign state in 1917. Swedish is spoken by 6% of the population with roughly 40.000 Swedish speakers living in Helsinki.

Built in 1866 by a Russian architect, much of the Svenska Teater's interior is original. The auditorium has three balconies and a proscenium arch stage. On behalf of the theatre's sound team, Andreas Lönnquist describes the current system. "We have a L/C/R PA, w

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Sweden - DPA microphones, including the newly-launched 4099 instrument mic range, were used for the grand opening ceremony of a major new Swedish venue, the Malmö Super Arena. The microphones were rented by DPA Soundco, a Danish rental company situated in the Örestad region, for this joint Swedish/Danish venture.

With a capacity of 15,000 for concerts and 12,500 for sports, the Super Arena is the largest in southern Scandinavia, able to attract international performers and pro sports, particularly ice hockey.

The opening ceremony featured a group of Swedish musicians playing alongside the Malmo Symphony Orchestra, a 300-piece choir and eight solo artists, giving a total of more than 200 input channels into the sound system. The musical theme for the shows was The Wonder of Swedish Music, drawing from such influences as early folklore, ABBA, Roxette, Europe and Robyn.<

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World - Celine Dion's Taking Chances tour takes in five continents, 24 countries, 84 towns and features 124 shows. Lighting designer Yves Aucoin uses an MA Lighting grandMA system composed of one grandMA full-size plus one as back-up, one grandMA replay-unit, seven MA NSPs and four MA 2Port Nodes.

The lighting rig controlled by the grandMA includes 188 x Ayrton Dreampanel Floor 256, 122 x Ayrton Moduled 150 AWW, 48 x Ayrton Arcaline 50 RGB, 24 x Ayrton Dreampanel Wall 64, 1.080 x Element Labs Stealth LED-modules, 88 x Vari*Lite VL3000 Spot, 32 x VL2500 spot, 22 x VL3500 wash, 18 x VL3000 Wash and eight Robert Juliat Cyrano follow spots.

Jamie King works as show director, Louis-Philippe Gaudreau operates the grandMA. Francois Desjardins is working as FOH-technician. Solotech delivered the lighting equipment. David Bergeron is the project manager for Solotech.

(Jim Evan

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USA - Concert sound provider Firehouse Productions, known for its tours with Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Peter Gabriel and other innovative artists, chose to deploy L-acoustics LA8-powered Kudo arrays for FOH on Sigur Rós' recent North American tour leg.

In addition to typically flying nine boxes of Kudo per side for the four-piece ethereal Icelandic post-rock band, Firehouse positioned six dV-DOSC across the lip of the stage for front-fill and set up four SB28 subs per side in a cardioid configuration for LF reinforcement. Two ARCS cabinets per side were also flown or ground stacked for out-fill in venues where the seating configuration wrapped around the stage. Furthermore, the tour utilised four of L-acoustics' new LA-RAK touring racks, each featuring three LA8 amplified controllers.

According to Firehouse systems engineer Jamie Pollock, who did a system prediction using S

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USA - Mount Saint Mary's University is the oldest independent Catholic college in the United States. 'The Mount' boasts a history of 125 years of collegiate baseball, culminating with an NCAA Division 1 title in 2008, and a $400,000 upgrade for the school's E. T. Straw Family Stadium.

Audio-Video Group of Frederick, Maryland outfitted the field with two Community R5-66 coaxial loudspeakers, mounted on the centre field scoreboard to provide coverage to the field and adjacent areas, along with three compact R.25-99 full-range two-way loudspeakers hung on the press box behind the bleachers to cover the spectator and dugout areas.

AVG also upgraded the University's Waldron Family Stadium, home to the school's NCAA Division 1 lacrosse and soccer teams, creating a winning environment for matches. The 1000-seat venue has been outfitted with a pair of Community R-5 loudspeakers coveri

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UK - The exhibition windows at Harrods, Knightsbridge have been brought to life with a Chroma-Q LED lighting installation to promote the launch of the latest James Bond movie - Quantum of Solace. The collaboration between the famous department store and the world's longest running franchise in film history sees the main Brompton Road windows decked out with scenes and products from the new film.

Lighting & AV consultant Andy Evans of Practical Creative Solutions approached A.C. Special Projects to supply the lighting for the window displays, and design an AV solution to pipe the two-minute movie trailer to HD TV screens in all other windows along the Brompton Road frontage. Evans wanted a cutting-edge LED lighting scheme to give the window scenes an overall 'wow' factor, bringing them to life when viewed day or night, both highlighting and enhancing the various props.

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UK - Acoustic specialists Vanguardia Consulting has announced that environmental acoustics expert David Trevor-Jones has joined its management team, headed by Jim Griffiths and John Staunton. The enlarged firm also opened a London office near London Bridge on 1 November.

Vanguardia, whose Oxted, Surrey premises will continue to be its administrative base, has grown continuously since its launch in May 2006, with veteran U2 sound engineer Joe O'Herlihy being the first addition to the team later that year.

Jim Griffith comments: "David, John and I have kept in close contact since we worked together on local authority noise research projects at the GLC's Scientific Branch in the late 1980s and early 1990s. With our clients and projects becoming steadily more specialised, and environmental noise being more in the public eye than ever, David's immense knowledge and his reputat

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Romania - The club La Mania on Romania's Black Sea coast which is only open in the summer months features a newly installed Dynacord alpha system. Located in Mamaia, the club can accommodate around 2,500 guests at a time.

Cornel Petcu of the Romanian Dynacord partner HSA Audio described how the system was put through its paces for the benefit of the La Mania team: "The club's sound technicians were already fully informed about the system before we arrived. They knew all about the Dynacord alpha's international references. Even so, when they actually heard the system for the first time with their own ears, they were totally convinced not only by the sound pressure levels the system was delivering but also by the quality of the reproduction."

(Jim Evans)

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Belarus - Distributors FE Belimlight supported German band The Scorpions recently when their Humanity World Tour played in front of 7,000 people at the Sport Arena in Minsk.

Lighting technician Ilya Piotrovsky said that in contracting FE Belimlight, the promoters were seeking a service company with a good reputation and list of complex production credits under their belt. Working with the Scorpions LD, Rainer Becker, Piotrovsky helped design the show around eight of PR Lighting's XL Wash 700, eight XL 700 and 72 Pro Pars.

"The main idea was to select fixtures that could implement fast and precise changes," he said. "The XL spot and wash lights were used right across the stage while the Pro Pars were clamped onto the front, side and back trusses." These central effect were complemented by conventional Par 64's.The lighting was controlled from a Hog iP

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UK - Summit Steel is supplying a large trussing and motors package, together with a 20-way Kinesys automation system and control for Elton John's Red Piano touring extravaganza, which kicked off in Europe last week after a gig at the UK's Birmingham National Indoor Arena.

The project is managed by Jon Bray at Summit, who has liaised closely with the tour's head rigger Richard Wythes and production manager Henry Crallan to ensure that that things are running smoothly now the show's on the road.

10 trusses have been supplied by Summit to Red Piano, which are being used to suspend a variety of dramatically camp scenic pieces, drapes, two side IMAG screens and a 24.5m wide by 8m high upstage MiTrix video screen weighing seven tonnes.

To meet the tight gig scheduling, specific rigging, automation and lighting elements are being advance rigged on certain shows, so Wy

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Germany - QSC Audio has appointed Hartmut Reichert as its new sales manager for the European, Africa & Middle East (EAME) territories.

Reichert set up and led the European sales and marketing office for Shure Inc in Chicago, establishing a European sales and marketing office from the company's European base in Heilbronn, Germany. He subsequently worked for beyerdynamic, setting up an international sales, marketing and distribution programme.

"I am certain I will be able to use the good relationships I have created with distributors, dealers and system integrators to QSC's advantage," he says. "In recent years I have followed the company's development in the market and have been enormously impressed by how they have developed from being a well-known power amplifier manufacturer, to becoming one of the most innovative and expanding systems companies in the industr

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UAE - Atlantis, The Palm - the focal point of the man-made island of Palm Jumeirah, billed as the ultimate fantasy hotel and estimated to have cost around 1.5 billion dollars - launched itself upon Dubai on 20 October with a much publicised event attended by stars from stage, film, music and sport. Audio specialist Delta Sound, which has recently expanded its Dubai office, provided the sound system.

"We were recommended by technical director Simon Ransom, and worked directly for Atlantis's owners, Kerzner International," says Andy Jackson, in charge of Delta Dubai and sound designer and project manager for the Atlantis launch. "Simon asked me to design the sound design and so it made sense for Delta to look at the whole project, including supplying equipment."

With an 11-month planning period and Delta already in a significant growth period, it gave the co

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Korea - The Studio '80s Dance Club in Seoul's Shin Chon university district specialises in music of the 70s through to the 90s, playing almost everything except for current chart tracks. Kim Gino, one of Korea's top DJs and a music business veteran with more than 30 years experience, owns the club which launched five years ago.

The venue's old sound system was deemed too small and inflexible, so the Studio '80s Dance Club was recently treated to a new rig. And the system of choice was an HK Audio Actor DX.

Kim Gino comments: "We selected HK Audio Actor after trying out several systems. The records of the '70s, '80s, and '90s sound really powerful and much more dynamic with Actor. That's probably because tracks weren't compressed as much back then as they are today and that's closer to the real live sound."

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Together with London's Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD), ETC recently gave students a chance to undertake a comprehensive training programme with the aim of giving them a view of entertainment technology, from the perspective of the manufacturer right through to the spectator.

The training was carried out by ETC's Luke Delwiche and saw students undertake responsibilities including redesigning, upgrading and reinstalling the rig in the 'theatre style' training room - known as The Playhouse at Gypsy Corner - where staff, dealers and distributors learn about the workings of ETC lighting products. The 150W HID lamps were replaced with more environmentally friendly 70W HID lamps and the students serviced all the luminaires on the rig with help from Martin Professional. In addition, they also completed training on the Eos, Ion, Congo and SmartFade lighting control

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