Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

Business

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UK - Described as a 21st century pentecostal church, New Wine Church in Woolwich has carried out a major upgrade to its sound and vision infrastructure. Leicestershire-based Hawthorn Theatrical was awarded the contract, after having impressed with the PA support they provided for the Church's New Year's Eve celebrations.

Divided into three spaces, the three-year-old church includes a small downstairs chapel and community area, including crèche and catering. However, it was the 1,500-seat main room - set within the shell of the Odeonesque art deco church - that Martin Hawthorn's company was asked to upgrade, in order to provide additional functionality.

For sound reinforcement, they selected exclusively Martin Audio components - and provided a cabling infrastructure for future expansion, as well as over 100 ways of audio patching, a 72-channel Allen & Heath ML500) desk, fully-

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UK - 600 vessels and ships anchored in Leith Harbour, Edinburgh, in May this year, in preparation for the International Festival of the Sea. Amongst them were magnificent tall ships, working fishing boats, a Viking longship, traditional yachts and high-tech sailing boats.

On land, 12-hours of daily entertainment involving bands, musicians, street performers and storytellers was staged as part of the festival, with each day culminating in a spectacular finale, with an impressive display of music, sound and colour echoing around the Harbour.

Edinburgh-based black light designed, installed and operated the lighting for three of the performance stages, the Scottish Executive building and the nightly finale. The company also installed all the general on-site lighting. Alan Jackson, the company's project manager for the event, told L&SI that to address the wide variety of performers

Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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USA - Nearly four decades after Gladys Knight and the Pips performed their first-ever main showroom gig at the famous Flamingo Las Vegas, Knight has once again returned to the resort to headline her own extended run of dates. Five nights a week, the revered R&B/soul singer now performs a musical retrospective in the cosy 720-seat Flamingo Showroom, accompanied by a seven-piece band and four backing vocalists, including brother and former-Pip, Merald.

What initially started out as a single-year performance contract was recently extended an additional three years prompting Knight's monitor tech, John Wrote, to specify an improved monitor system for the diva. As a result, Wrote, who also serves as concert touring operations foreman for ProMix Electrotec's Las Vegas office, spearheaded the early-June installation of a new loudspeaker set-up comprising half a dozen L Acoustics ARCS

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UK - Thunder Ridge utilized state-of-the-art digital audio tools for the One World stage at the recent Glastonbury Festival, opting for Powersoft digital amplifiers, supplied by Arbiter Pro Audio, to power their X2000 system, placing the whole FOH system and the major monitor fills under digital power. At the same time, they employed the latest processing tool from Klark Teknik - the Helix digital EQ system - to control every component of the FOH and monitor systems.

Compared to the conventional amplifier, Powersoft DIGAM technology offers very high efficiency and delivers more power to the loudspeakers with much reduced heat dissipation. The output stages of the amplifiers typically run at 95% efficiency, dissipating only 5% of the input energy as heat. These compact (1U), lightweight (10kg) amplifiers can generate up to 3,500W per channel into 2 Ohms.

The advantages of such

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UK - Osborne Creative Services has designed and produced a new website for UK pro audio specialist distributor, Pure Distribution. The site enables visitors to obtain information on all product lines distributed by Pure, including Aphex, Audient, ETA, Lexicon, Miller & Kreisel and Sanken, as well as Pure's own XIX range of microphones and accessories. Visitors can also locate their nearest dealer and download a retail price list.

Previously marketing manager at Tannoy Ltd, Peter Osborne founded the company in 1985, and provides a comprehensive design and production service for both new and old media applications within the pro audio industry. Osborne Creative Services has recently created websites for Audient plc www.audient.co.uk and Stirling Syco www.stirlingsyco.com. Other pa

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UK - Apple Sound, experts in the design and installation of sophisticated systems for the Ecclesiastical market collaborated with pro audio distributor beyerdynamic to provide an audio control system to Beverley Minister in East Yorkshire. As part of a substantial audio system upgrade, beyerdynamic provided an intuitive control system, which centered on Audia from Biamp and the Cue management/media management system.

Working closely with its sister acoustic consultancy Apple Dynamic, headed by Dr Paul Darlington, Apple Sound designed a system that would counter the massive acoustic challenges (and satisfy the installation restrictions) presented by the cathedral-like, Grade 1 listed Minster. The system had to be visually diminutive and very easy to operate.

Following an in-depth RASTI acoustic analysis, it was apparent that intelligibility was the key factor as the enormous va

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UK - Sennheiser UK has announced it is sponsoring a double bill of free festival entertainment this year at Ashton Gate Park, Bristol. The first Sennheiser Sounds of Summer Festival will be on Friday 8 August and the live finals of the third annual Sennheiser Unsigned Artist Contest the following evening.

The events take place as part of the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta 2003, sponsored by Vodaphone Live! The Friday night free festival features legendary Scottish songsmiths Hue and Cry, supported by the Cosmic Rough Riders, plus performances from Tippi, The Hazey Janes, Jo Stevens, Tony Moore and DJ Miss Behavin'.

The Saturday Unsigned Artist Contest final kicks off at 2 pm, with live appearances by all the finalists - Hooper, Nowhere Near the Garden, The Adventures of B Violet, The Climb, Demon Summer and Range#Eleven. Saturday's show also features the tabla and guitar

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Canada - Olympic skating champions Jamie Sale and David Pelletier christened Princess Cruises' newest passenger super liner Island Princess earlier this week, in a ceremony which also marked the operator's third decade of sailing from the Canadian Port. Island Princess and her sister ship Coral Princess, which joined the fleet in January, will be sailing seven-day Gulf of Alaska cruises from Vancouver and Seward.

The entertainment facilities onboard are second to none, featuring three show lounges including the state-of-the-art Universe lounge. Split over two decks, the Universe lounge was designed to facilitate a diverse range of entertainment options from Princess production shows to movie screenings.

Stage Technologies, perhaps most widely recognized for their work on land-based theatres such as the Royal Opera House and the stage production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

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USA - ANSI's Board of Standards Review has approved ANSI E1.5-2003, Entertainment Technology - Theatrical Fog made with Aqueous Solutions of Di- and Trihydric Alcohols. This standard is now referenced in ESTA's 'A Test Is Worth a Thousand Words' fog testing program and is available for free download from the ESTA website.

The new standard specifies the components of glycol and glycerin fog and the ceiling and the time-weighted-average exposure limits for the fogs. The ceiling limits are rationally based on scientific data and are consistent with the ceiling limits that have been specified in many performer union contracts, but the standard goes beyond those contractual limits by also controlling the time-weighted-average levels. It specifies the glycols which can be used in a conforming fog to proscribe irritating, common industrial glycols and ensure that only those gly

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UK - North London's hottest new nightclub was designed as a 'reactive antidote' to the current trend toward 'superclubs' in London and other major cities. The 800-capacity Egg has been more than six years in the planning. Carved out of a former Victorian warehouse, the venue is described by owner Laurence Malice as "an entertainment leisure space rather than a club."

The venue is something of a work in progress, with the revamping and augmenting of the existing structure being carried out in a series of phases. The industrial minimalist design has been extended into all three storeys of the expanded building, with a plan in place to landscape and enclose the courtyard entryway to extend the club's capacity to around 1,500.

The sound system in the club goes well beyond simply powerful, though power is certainly not lacking. London company Blue Box, led by Mark Metcal

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UK - The annual Hayden Laboratories Cricket Cup Challenge is taking place on Thursday 7 August at Littlewick Green Cricket Club, near Maidenhead in Berkshire. Now in its fourth year, the cricket challenge match sees a scratch team representing the sound and lighting industry line-up against a team drawn from the combined ranks of PLASA Show organizers Clarion Events and PLASA team.

The event starts at 4pm and is followed by a BBQ at 7.30pm, which will be charged at £6.50 per head. All are welcome to attend and lend their support to this popular event. If you are interested in attending please contact Nicky Rowland at Clarion on +44(0)20 7370 8231 (nicky.rowland@plasashow.com) or Simon Curtis at Hayden Laboratories + (0)1753 888447 (simon.curtis@denon.co.uk) for further details and directions.

(Ruth Rossington)

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UK - For the third year running, the television phenomenon that is Channel 4's Big Brother has Audio-Technica microphones positioned throughout the House. Occupying every single fixed mic point, the 31 Audio-Technica products were specified for the show by sound supervisor Oliver France, who, working in conjunction with Middlesex based OB company, Roll to Record, designed and constructed the complicated audio system for BB4 on behalf of TV production company Endemol.

Wherever the contestants go in the house, an Audio-Technica microphone picks up any sound, so that even when they take their personal radio mics off, the viewers hear every single word. Big Brother addresses the house through an AT4050 and when the housemates are in the house's wet rooms, they are picked up by AT871WR waterproof boundary mics.

During the weekly nominations in the Diary Room, the nominators speak i

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Germany - Three sound companies based in Düsseldorf, Germany, recently decided to create an audio pool and standardize their audio material: after establishing their amplifier rental stock, Merz Concept, Medientechnik Stüttgen and Max Stabel, decided to invest in mixing consoles that could be used for a variety of events and consequently made the decision to purchase three ML3000-32 mixers.

With these three consoles, a majority of their rental business is covered and on bigger events the consoles can be connected via Allen & Heath's Sys-Link 2 system. Merz Concept's Jens Meinke said: "The ML3000 is a hard working, excellent sounding console - a really great tool for the sound engineer - and there is no other VCA console on the market that is so competitively priced. Standardizing our audio material gave us more flexibility and minimizes system failures."

(Lee Baldo

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UK - Star Hire (Event Services) Ltd completed its third year as principal stage contractor for this year's tenth anniversary of T in the Park, held in Kinross, Scotland. Star Hire supplied staging and site structures as T in the Park celebrated its tenth birthday, selling out 55,000 tickets and receiving rave reviews from festival goers and press alike for it's relaxed atmosphere and excellent line-up of bands.

A VT 20-20 FPVL featured as the centrepiece to the event, the main stage. With the recognisable T in the Park scrims, the stage acted as the settings for bands including The Coral, The Darkness, Supergrass, the Cardigans and headliners, Coldplay and REM. The stage measured 47.5m wide and 17.5m high to the apex with a 2.5m stage height.

The NME stage was a newly enlarged Vertech design by Star Hire; the VT 15-15 FL was introduced at T in the Park this year, in place of

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Europe - EAW's new KF730 SLAM (Small Line Array Module) has made its touring debut, joining the Legends of rock, Deep Purple, on their summer tour of Europe. 16 KF730 boxes were supplied by ML Executives, sound contractor for the tour, alongside a 28 KF760 arena system and 24 SB1000 subwoofer cabinets.

Gary Marks of ML Executives says of the inaugural outing: "The new EAW KF730 line array system is the ideal compliment to the EAW KF760 line array, we have until now been using KF850 cabinets for the short-throw side hang applications in arenas but now we have the KF730 - it's the ideal solution. The KF730 is also a great compact stand-alone line array system, which sounds fantastic and ground stacks excellently."

The tour kicked off in Austria in June before playing a further 16 dates in five countries, up to and including the Nandrin festival in Belgium on 10 August.

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UK - Wigwam Sales has completed the installation of an L-Acoustics ARCS system at the Abundant Life Church in Bradford. The system comprises of 2 x 6 flown arrays of ARCS, with each hang delivering 135° coverage in the horizontal plane with 40° down and 20° up in the vertical domain. Each single ARCS cabinet is 22.5° horizontal by 60° vertical due to the asymmetrical Wavefront Sculpture Technology (WST) waveguide. The inverted arrays are complemented by two SB218 subwoofers per side, and the system is powered by a combination of both LA24a and LA48a amplifiers.

Mike Spratt, managing director of Wigwam Acoustics, comments: "The 1,500-capacity church is very wide and also has a long balcony at the back and down both sides, so it was important to be able to cover the entire auditorium from a L/R system without having to use standard delays and fills. The ARCS is the perfe

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UK - Audace Ltd, manufacturer of the Intelliplate programmable control system for audio-visual installations, has appointed Prase Engineering S.r.l. of Treviso - an established distributor of professional audio-visual equipment - to distribute its products exclusively in Italy. The deal was brokered by Audace's global distribution partner Comsec International.

Following the appointment, managing director of Audace Ltd, Bryan Waters, recently visited the distributors' facilities, which are situated close to Venice. The visit provided Prase Engineering staff with an opportunity to view the system first hand, receive technical training and see future plans for the Intelliplate product range.

Bryan Waters welcomed the appointment, commenting: "Prase is extremely well-placed, in terms of resources, complementary products within its portfolio and its status within the Italian m

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UK - Studio design company, Munro Acoustics, has completed the monitor installation and acoustic refurbishment of a new audio dubbing theatre at BBC Post Production in Bristol. The project involved the installation of a 5.1 surround-sound monitoring system based on custom Dynaudio Acoustics C3F main monitors, BM6 surround speakers and custom T1000 amplifiers. This is identical to the system Munro Acoustics installed in October 2002, when it completed the acoustic refurbishment of a similar dubbing theatre.

The refurbishment is part of general expansion of the audio facilities at BBC Post Production in Bristol, where there are now two main dubbing theatres with Foley facilities and a third, smaller, dubbing theatre with a commentary booth. The complex also houses three track lay areas. Both the large dubbing theatres are equipped with AMS Neve MMC consoles, while the smaller thea

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UK - Pioneer is planning a spectacular stand at this year's PLASA showcase, and the exhibition, held at Earls Court, London from 7-10 September 2003, promises to be better than ever. As well as showcasing the new CDJ-1000MkII, plus the range of professional DJ products, Pioneer is planning to unveil an exciting new product at the show aimed at promising DJs. In addition, Roger Sanchez and the Scratch Perverts will be performing in Pioneer's live DJ Booth - and will also be joined by the amazing Tom Stefan.

(Lee Baldock)

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Portugal - For performing arts lovers everywhere, Portugal is the place to be this summer, with an array of festivals and events taking place right through until September. The programme of dance, music and drama has become a must tour stop for some of the world's most prestigious performing arts companies.

The world heritage village of Sintra is considered to be one of the country's hottest tourists spots for those seeking culture, with much of this accolade owing to its annual festival, Festival de Sintra. Hosting a variety of performances from Opera through to Ballet, the two-month long celebrations take place in every conceivable venue from theatres right through to churches and parks.

The annual success of this festival has seen a number of new builds take place in the small village, the Centro Cultural Olga Cadaval (CCOC) being one of the more recent. Stage Technologies

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UK - Soundtracs has relaunched its website. The new site, which opens with the newly-launched DS-00 digital modular post-production and broadcast mixing system, features more detailed product information, greatly improved navigation and visual design, and full technical support contacts.

Also included are the complete range of Soundtracs digital consoles, worldwide distributor listings, downloadable technical PDFs and details of trade shows at which Soundtracs will be exhibiting. Marketing director Dave Webster commented: "The pace of product development at Soundtracs continues to accelerate and we have completely redesigned the website to reflect this. People can access a lot of information in a clear and easy-to-access format."

(Ruth Rossington)

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US / Europe - Annie Lennox's recent solo tour utilized two Mackie SDR24/96 hard disk recorders used to bring the haunting voice of the ex-Eurythmic to venues across the US and Europe. For programmer and keyboard technician Ozzie Henderson, the Mackie set-up performed even better than expected. He commented: "I used the two Mackie SDRs for the entire 10-week tour of the US and Europe and they performed faultlessly, easily standing up to the rigors of the road without breaking a sweat."

The decision to use the Mackie SDRs came after tour musical director Mike Stevens expressed a need for playing back programmed audio, the ability to cue songs instantly and most importantly, have machines that were reliable. For this reason, he decided to investigate hard disk recorders and subsequently contacted Mackie UK.

The need for a playback option is essential on a live tour due

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UK - Pearce Hire, specialist lighting and temporary power supplier, provided its services for the Forestry Commission tour this June. The tour, now in its third year, took in five forests (Sherwood Forest, Thetford Forest, Bedgebury Pinetum, Dalby Forest and Dellamere Forest) across the country, for a series of concerts involving Status Quo, Jools Holland, Level 42, the Beach Boys, the Wonder Stuff and Motorhead.

Pearce Hire have been involved with the tour since it began in 2001, supplying the lighting equipment, generators and power distribution systems. Shaun Pearce and the team from Pearce Hire worked closely with David Barrow, production manager for the Forestry Commission and event organizer Mike Taylor, to pull the project together. For this year's event, Pearce provided 20 generators allocated across the five sites, as well as a lighting rig for each stage and site-wid

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UK / Germany - Brown Box AV, one of the key wholesalers of quality AV and lighting solutions, has signed a dealership agreement for Germany with Soundcheck GmbH, one of Germany's leading AV providers to the health and fitness industry. Soundcheck has installed AV solutions into top name clubs across Germany, including Reebok, 24 Hour Fitness and Fitness First to name but a few.

Dave Goody, European business development manager, commented: "Soundcheck first saw Audeon [Brown Box's wireless entertainment system for health clubs and gyms] at FIBO and were impressed with the product. Their managing director, Denis Nessler, immediately identified that it was exactly what the German market has been waiting for. I am delighted that we have joined forces with Soundcheck GmbH and am sure that they are an ideal professional partner for our first foray into Germany. Soundcheck GmbH ha

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Astera - Large MPU - June 2025
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