Italy - RCF and Midland, a historic radio transceiver earphone systems company from Reggio Emilia, have developed a new intercom called BT Rush.
RCF has brought its know-how inside the motorcycle helmet to offer ‘a custom, carefully designed and technically sophisticated project’, which the user can appreciate through parameters that are easy to spot.
Features include: better defined bass, thanks to a new custom speaker, driven by power and processing; professional sound, achieved through a DPS (Digital Sound Processor); 40mm round speakers with Peek diaphragm, designed to support maximum sound clarity and definition.
Ear cushions enable improved sound performance and low frequency feeling, thanks to a memory foam heart and protein leather lining.
“The

Germany - At the Department of Music (Institut für Musik – IfM) of the German Kassel University, prospective music teachers are being trained to teach at all kinds of schools. The department also has its own concert hall, which is used for concerts of all musical genres as well as lectures and examinations. Plain concrete walls and a high proportion of glass elements characterize the room - and place special demands on the sound system.
After a PA workshop with Rolf Dressler - probably Kassel's "longest-serving sound engineer" in 2018 - instructors and technical assistants were enthusiastic about the sound of his Alcons system which he set up in the IfM concert hall in addition to the house system.
"Whenever we switched back from the Alcons to the house system during Rolf's workshop, I kept thinking that our speakers had just been broken," says Roman Beilharz, a le

The Netherlands - The 65th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest at Rotterdam’s Ahoy arena, marked the first major live event to take place in the Netherlands since the pandemic. The event was powered by disguise.
The official technical supplier for the contest, Faber Audiovisuals, relied on a complement of disguise vx 4, gx 2c and 4x4pro media servers to power a total of 55 scenes on a giant LED video wall and floors, used across all 39 competing performances, the opening ceremony, the flag parade and all interval acts, such as the impressive Power of Water. The six-week production period was led by ESC head of production Erwin Rintjema and head of video Hand Cromheecke.
Faber’s Eurovision team included disguise workflow specialist Jo Pauly (of Visual Solutions) as media server operators for the show. The two share a long history of successful live projects power

UK - Jakarta-based Mola TV introduced Chill Fridays an interactive weekly livestream that features stars playing mellow music in an intimate setting and, every once in a while, taking questions from fans.
Many of the episodes are filmed at Mola’s London TV studio, where artists like Jacob Collier, Tom Misch and Bruno Major have performed in a set that evokes images of the kind of hotel bars where friends gathered for a pre-weekend happy hours back in the day.
Key to creating this ambience is a warm, inviting lighting design that works hand-in-hand with scenic elements like potted plants and table lamps to engender a homey feeling. Fold Sound owner Tristan Finn, who supplies lights, sound gear, recording equipment and cameras for the show called on Martin Dudley of Martin’s Lights to handle lighting duties, something he’s done skilfully with his ChamSys PC

Romania - Based in the Romanian port of Navodari, Alezzi Yacht – a 42m x 18m, 1,000-capacity catamaran - offers cruises along the Black Sea coast, complete with fine dining, cocktails and glamour along with breathtaking views of the lively beach resort of Mamaia and Constanta City.
The afternoon is dedicated to an experience aimed at the whole family, whilst the evening cruise is reserved for those looking for a full-on party atmosphere. Any good party requires great audio, and Alezzi Yacht is no exception - Constanta-based AV specialists, AudioVision, were asked to design, supply and install a comprehensive AV system throughout the catamaran. AudioVision selected KV2 Audio for the project.
“We were fortunate to have been involved from the early stages of construction, which made AV integration much more efficient,” observes AudioVision general manager, Vasile Ma
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The Netherlands - The Grand Final of the 65th staging of the Eurovision Song Contest event took place at the Rotterdam Ahoy in May, where winners Italy triumphed over the other 25 finalists with their song Zitti E Buoni performed by Måneskin.
Utrecht-based Ampco Flashlight were the ESC’s official technical supplier for audio, lighting and rigging, working with Erwin Rintjema, ESC’s head of production, who was responsible for the whole technical production this year and Jeroen ten Brinke, ESC’s head of live sound.
Ampco Flashlight’s Remco Verhoek was their project manager, audio, for the event and he describes the role which Newton played in their system design: “Newton was used as matrix mixer to sum all the mixers to the PA feeds. There were two DiGiCo Quantum7's and two Yamaha CL1's, matrixed into a number of feeds outputting over Dante - on the oth

Europe - The inaugural Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) event - a European Union initiative to reform its policies and institutions - took place in May at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The hemicycle debating chamber sits inside the striking Louise Weiss Building designed by Parisian-based Architecture-Studio and opened in 1999. It includes a 60m high tower which is left looking deliberately unfinished and was inspired by Roman amphitheatres and the mythical Tower of Babel.
The event included a welcome speech by French President Emmanuel Macron and contributions by other high-ranking politicians and EU officials. As CoFoE was aimed primarily at a younger audience of under 40s, production company Nimblerr asked lighting designer Dimi Theuwissen of Belgium-based creative practice ID2Q to energise the distinctive hemicycle ensuring it looked dynamic and diffe
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Cameo's P6 is a future-proof LED profiler with a powerful 600 W RGBACL engine and 16,000 lumens. It’s an energy-efficient replacement for 2.5 kW halogen profile lights in theatres and venues. With excellent light quality and natural colour rendering, it fits perfectly in theatres, musicals, TV studios, congresses, and live events.

With an LED life of 50,000 hours and low power use, the P6 cuts energy costs and supports the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ goals for climate neutrality by 2050. It also meets updated eco-design rules for lighting.

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Austria - 4youreye and Rezac employed Pixera media servers for this year’s most anticipated charity fund raising event in Austria, Austria for Life, which involved complex media playout and advanced projection mapping setups.
The Stephansdom Cathedral in Vienna, was beaming not just with the enthusiasm of the countless helpers on the 28 May, but also due to the impressive usage of modern media playout display technologies.
The 90-minute-long live TV charity fundraising show was broadcast on ORF 2 and Krone.tv. The project, which had been initiated by the LIFE+ chairman Gery Keszler, supports the aid organisations Caritas, Diakonie, Hilfswerk, Red Cross, Samariterbund and Volkshilfe.
LIFE+ itself supports socially relevant projects that fight epidemic diseases and helps people impacted by them.
A variety of well-known Austrian artists invited the Austria

China - Following the success of the 1 June online event, LED manufacturer Absen has extended the availability of its virtual booth showcasing its product portfolio and its online event, accessible to anyone who wishes to attend.
The online experience stages Absen’s products, all within a fully interactive and free-to-navigate virtual booth. The online event covered the advantages of LED in immersive experiences and featured a live Q&A for audiences across the globe.
The booth, split into sections such as corporate, virtual studios, retail and MicroLED, enables visitors to see Absen’s products up close and personal from the comfort of their homes. Each section of the booth features a voiceover explaining the section for visitors, and features Absen’s latest products, such as the AbseniCon3.0, Aurora Series and Jade Dragon series, for each market. The products

USA - A mad scientist locks his daughter in a garden full of beautiful but deadly flowers. An earnest medical student spies her and falls in love, but her surroundings have made her poisonous to the touch. Will their romance bloom or wilt? This is the question posed by La Hija de Rappaccini, a contemporary opera based on a Nathaniel Hawthorne story composed by Daniel Catán and live-streamed by the Chicago Opera Theatre this past April.
Drawing on Mexican musical influences, the performance streamed from the Field Museum of Natural History in keeping with the botanical theme. Chicago Opera Theatre’s audio and video production partner Valhalla Media teamed with location audio experts Second City Sound on A/V support, choosing Lectrosonics’ D Squared line of digital wireless. DBSMD transmitter-recorders fitted to the cast members were picked up by a pair of DSQD fo

USA - Christie has announced the launch of Core Series II LED video wall tiles, available in a range of pixel pitches, including a new 0.9 mm pixel pitch. Designed for easy installation of near-seamless video walls of any scale, Core Series II is suitable for corporate spaces, like lobbies, meeting and conference rooms, and various digital signage applications to engage, entertain or collaborate with your audience.
Core Series II takes the original Core Series LED video wall tiles and improves them, making them lighter, and easier to install. Tiles in the new Core Series II are 23% lighter than the original, weighing 14.3lbs (6.5kg). Featuring a slimmer form factor, with a scant 38mm depth, and along with a new ADA-compliant direct-mounting structure and concealed cabling, Core Series II video walls are easy to install, and completely front serviceable.
Available in fi

UK – TSL Lighting has joined the events sustainability organisation isla, as it focuses on re-emerging from the challenges of the COVID pandemic with a positive, forward-thinking outlook.
TSL’s management team has for many years championed more sustainable practices, including sourcing renewable energy for its sites, working alongside youth groups and volunteer associations to donate ex-rental equipment and of course re-using its stock as a rental business. Director Loz Wilcox says that the downtime over the past twelve months has allowed them to reflect and further implement environmentally friendly initiatives. Becoming a member of isla marks the significant next sustainability step for the company.
TSL is the first technical equipment provider to join the isla collective, which has members from a range of events sectors including Jack Morton Worldwide, George P.

USA - Entertainment industry insurance solutions provider Take1 Insurance has announced the immediate availability of a new educational white paper entitled Reopening Live Events Safely: An Industry View.
The publication of the new white paper follows last week’s announcement that Take1, in partnership with Intact Insurance Specialty Solutions and the Event Safety Alliance, will provide free Event Safety Access Training to professionals returning to work after more than a year of being side-lined because of the Covid pandemic.
According to Take1 Insurance vice president and programme director Scott Carroll, “The entertainment and live events industry have been through a nightmare scenario as the COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a halt. Virtual events have helped fill gaps, but, ultimately, the desire of people to experience live events in person cann

UK - This April, Volkswagen UK took over Stage A at Millennium Studios in Thurleigh, one of UK’s premier music, film and TV production facilities, to deliver its annual conference.
Traditionally hosted as an in-person event, Volkswagen opted for a virtual setting built around a live, complex agenda that included keynotes, videos, presentation slides, and more. Volkswagen’s team delivered an immersive presentation in front of an LED screen backdrop supplied by technical production and LED screen hire company, iMAG displays, with iMAG’s sister company Graymatter delivering the control infrastructure for a headache-free Virtual Production event.
IMAG’s involvement stems from an initial conversation between its technical sales and relationship manager, Jonathan Dyson, and Simon Garrett, who was working with event producer Second Sight to source a reliable company t

USA - The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a non-profit organisation founded in the United States that helps to fulfill the wishes of children with a critical illness between the ages of two and a half and 18 years. Towards the end of last year, when Becci Smith of the Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area Chapter in Northern California received five-year-old Valeria’s wish to sing on a big stage, she decided to contact the team at the Concord Pavilion. Operated by Live Nation and owned by the City of Concord, the venue has a capacity of 12,500.
What followed was a display of cooperation between entertainment technology professionals that not only made Valeria’s wish come true, but reminded everyone involved just how much they’d missed the shows that are the lifeblood of the industry. Against the backdrop of the Coronavirus pandemic where access to venues was naturally difficult, the

USA - William Mooney, lighting designer for BYB Extreme Fighting, a bare-knuckles form of boxing, is using an IP-rated Elation Professional lighting rig to highlight the action inside the ring while supporting the atmosphere outside the ring.
With BYB’s three-sided triangle cage, known as the Trigon and the smallest ring in combat sports, there is plenty of that. “It’s the most exciting franchise I have ever been involved with,” states Mooney, a man who has worked on boxing and mixed martial arts projects such as ESPN’s Friday Night Fights (2008-2015) and Combat America MMA Fights. “I’ve worked on all the major networks but I feel more excited about this show than anything I’ve ever worked with in my life.”
Although the fights take place indoors, Mooney uses a multi-environmental IP65-rated rig as a peace-of-mind layer of protection. “To have most

USA - The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile, Alabama had long struggled with inadequate sound system performance due to the cathedral’s high curved ceilings, large stained-glass windows, wooden pews and other acoustically challenging design features.
An upgrade to the sound system became a necessity, but to preserve the beauty and historical nature of the cathedral’s large sanctuary, the ministry leadership decided against acoustic treatment. Instead, they trusted a high-performance sound system backed by Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers.
The cathedral’s sanctuary was plagued by a great deal of acoustic shadowing due to the building’s columns, with sound sources out of the sightline of the congregation, which significantly diminished levels and effective coverage. The previous attempt to redesign the sound system over-compensated with pairs of

France - Powersoft has appointed Sidev as its new distributor for France, working alongside Powersoft’s other French distributor, DV2.
Founded in 1991 and based near Lyon, Sidev has been a key player in providing audio-visual solutions in France for over 30 years. In that time, the company has grown to offer the largest sales and pre-sales team in the French market, as well as two showrooms in Paris and Lyon, and a yearly turnover of over €60 million in 2020.
Sidev is, since 2010, part of the Midwich Group. More recently, the company developed its market footprint and audio-visual offer on the French market with the purchase in 2019 of Perfect Sound, an audio specialist distributor.
“Powersoft is a recognised and renowned brand on the AV Market, with a strong line-up to address both the staging and corporate markets,” explains Lionel Roudil, general man

Germany - Frankfurt Opera is one of the most renowned opera stages in Europe, having paved the way for many successful operatic careers. Recently, with an extensive d&b audio system already installed, the venue chose to enrich its audiences’ sound experience with d&b Soundscape technology.
A d&b DS100 Signal engine was duly purchased in time for the 2019/2020 season and the staging of a world premiere at the Bockenheimer Depot - Frankfurt Opera’s second venue.
"It was a spatially complex work, with moving actors and an orchestra spread across the stage” explains sound engineer, Margit Baruschka. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic the production was postponed to 2021.
The decision was then made to move the entire Soundscape system to the Frankfurt Opera. Here it could be used to adapt some of the regular programme to allow for social distancing

USA - Xytech has announced Tanya Kelly as managing director for APAC. This appointment follows the closing of Xytech’s acquisition of ScheduALL from Net Insight in April. Kelly’s appointment is effective immediately.
For over six years, Kelly served as a sales and solution consultant for ScheduALL’s broadcast and broadcast service provider customers in the ANZ region. Her background includes technical operations, where she spent nine years as head of studio operations at Fox Sports Australia, as well as a stint at Deluxe as head of bookings
“Tanya has an understanding of the industry and region and has ties to Xytech and ScheduALL reaching back through the years,” comments Greg Dolan, CCO of Xytech. “APAC is critical for Xytech as we move forward to the next phase in our growth. We know with Tanya at the helm our customers are in great hands and her strateg

UK - Hologramica, specialists in the design and production of holograms, is celebrating the opening of its new demo studios on an historic Wandsworth site, thanks to music charity NEKO Trust.
Liz Berry, CEO of Hologramica, comments: “We were struggling to find a home when the NEKO Trust, headed up by Glen Rowe, came to our rescue. We now occupy a beautiful, secluded rehearsal facility, previously enjoyed by legendary bands including Metallica and The Rolling Stones.”
It is from here that Hologramica’s 3D Holonet gauze will continue its ongoing development, along with the company’s production-based activities, which provide holographic hardware, design, content and consultancy for shows worldwide.
“We’ve already installed a stunning 7m wide 3D Holonet rig, alongside one of our portable Holopops Ultra systems,” explains Berry. “Upstairs our filming

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