UK - Xtreme Audio Visual has installed a complete audio visual package at Sky Nightclub for client Ware Leisure, including a new sound system from KV2 Audio. The main club is split into two rooms, Daylight, the main dance area and the Sunset VIP Lounge. Daylight presented an acoustical challenge to Xtreme having multiple levels of vaulted ceilings along with raised floor levels. To overcome these problems, Xtreme opted to use the KV2 ES Active driven system consisting of four ES1.0, two ES2.5, 2 x ES1.8 and two ES1.5, powered by four EPAK 2500s, using an Audia Solo for the processing and routing.
The system was designed in conjunction with KV2's Andy Austin Brown. Due to the layout of the venue, and the wide variety of events planned for the system, the design was far from straightforward, but Austin Brown's knowledge of the KV2 products enabled an audio solution for all the pro
Turkey - Biamp Systems reports that AVS in Istanbul, Turkey, has installed a pair of multiple-zone AudiaFLEX systems in the city's newest Volkswagen office and showroom. "To be chosen by AVS for such a prestigious installation as the executive office headquarters and showroom in Istanbul is truly a validation of the versatility and cost effectiveness of AudiaFLEX," said Romano Cunsolo, East European sales manger for Biamp. "It proves that Audia solves the dilemma of offering easy-to-use technology that is still powerful and flexible."
As one of the world's most highly recognized brands, Volkswagen insisted the Dogus Groupe, which manages dealers and service in Istanbul, have its headquarters showcase the newest cars in a state-of-the-art showroom featuring the most advanced technology. This technology was to extend to the executive offices in their main buil
UK - Essential Lighting supplied Martin MAC 2000 Washes and 7kW Ireos Pro Space Cannons to produce the large scale lighting effects taking place along the South Bank, the epicentre of the 2004 Poppy Appeal event. This included turning three bridges - Waterloo, Westminster and Hungerford - red, and supplying searchlights for both banks of the Thames between Waterloo and Westminster Bridges.
The lighting scheme was designed by Rick Hussey, who works regularly with Essential on all types of projects. It was co-ordinated for Essential by Martin Lubach and site managed by Barry Tofield. Overall production manager was Roger Oakley working for event producers The Bank. Oakley dealt with 16 regulatory bodies including MI5 and MI6 to get the necessary clearance to stage the event!
A total of 28 MAC 2000 washes were used to light the three bridges, complete with assorted lenses to optim
Croatia - When the Lisinski Hall - a multi-function venue in the Croatian capital of Zagreb - was refitted recently, great importance was attached to the quality of the sound reinforcement and communications equipment. To achieve the highest possible degree of compatibility (and therefore system security), the managers of the complex, which boasts two stages and seating for up to 2,300 spectators, opted to combine stage manager and public address systems from EVI Audio. In addition to their technical capabilities, ease-of-use and sound quality, the ability of these systems to function flawlessly in tandem was a key factor in this decision, say the company.
The outlay in terms of equipment was considerable: the two systems had to cover all areas (and the entire staff) of the complex. For the 2,000-seater theatre alone this meant the two stage manager's desks (stage right and sta
UK - Famed Italian hoteliers, the Baglioni Group has created an exclusive London location as its UK flagship. Harman Pro UK and authorised installer The Sound Division Group collaborated to design and specify the premier sound system at the recently launched luxury 5-Star Baglioni Hotel in Kensington. The hotel's Brunello club and bar area, used for private parties and functions and as a members club, is a chic new evening haunt.
Following recommendations from high profile clients at top West End nightspots, Islington-based Sound Division specified Harman Pro products to Baglioni. Sound Division is a strong advocate of the JBL brand, says MD David Graham: "Primarily because of the breadth and flexibility of their range, and its uniform quality and power." Turning to JBL's Control Contractor series to handle Brunello's requirements for background music, DJ evenings and
USA - The long-awaited new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center was unveiled last month as part of a three-week grand opening celebration, televised live on PBS and broadcast throughout North America - via a Mackie Digital 8 Bus desk. The $128 million Frederick P. Rose Hall, a 100,000sq.ft building occupying two floors of the new Time-Warner building in New York's Columbus Circle, is the first performance and education facility designed specifically for jazz, and features three acoustically designed live venues.
The opening ceremonies featured three simultaneous programs in its three spaces. The flagship Frederick P. Rose Hall hosted performances by the JALC Orchestra, featuring artistic director Wynton Marsalis directing a tribute to Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Performances by Arturo O'Farrill and special guests inaugurated the elegant Allen Room, which features Greek amphitheat
USA - Just a few weeks before R.E.M was to head out on its current world tour, lighting designer Susanne Sasic had already determined the lighting package she would use for the show. Then she received a phone call from George Masek inviting her to a Vari-Lite open house and product demo in New York - and after seeing the Vari*Lite Series 3000 luminaires, Sasic made a last-minute change to the automated lighting plot, swapping out some of the fixtures she had already spec'd with VL3000 Wash units.
"I went over to the open house and was very impressed," Sasic explained. "The beam spread on the VL3000 fixtures is amazing. We swapped them out for some of the other lights I had spec'd on the rig, and I'm very glad we did."
Making the change was not an issue since Bandit Lites, the lighting equipment provider for the tour, had recently added a number of the Ser
UK - The theatre show Umoja was the inspiration of Todd Twala and Thembi Nyandeni, who created the show as an expression of their South African heritage.
All performers are selected from the Umoja School of Performing Arts in South Africa, which gives free scholarships to underprivileged children as a means to enter the entertainment industry.
'Umoja' translates as "the spirit of togetherness" and there was an abundance of positive energy in this vibrant showcase of South African music and dancing. A narrator punctuates a two-hour journey that takes the audience through a history of African music, from early tribal drummers, through the development the distinctive South African sounds. "Our music helped to keep us human," the narrator tells the audience, "for in Africa, rhythm is life itself."
Umoja first opened at London's Shaftesbury Theatre in Nove
Italy - Blues fans stream into the normally quiet Tuscan town of Pistoia each year for its annual Blues Festival, considered to be one of the most important in the country, with names such as B.B. King, Robert Plant and Van Morrison all having graced the stage in previous years. With Aztec chosen as the FOH console by rental company, Nicola Procopio, this year's festival had all the makings to deliver unrivalled sound quality.
For the last 24 years, concerts have taken place in the shadow of the great Duomo where audiences have seen great performances whilst either standing or sitting on the historical stones in the medieval square surrounded by breathtaking Romanesque and Gothic architechture. With a further 1500 seats in the gallery, the town's accommodation tends to be booked up for months in advance.
Owners of the first Aztec in Italy, Nicola Procopio were hired this yea
UK - Newcastle University's new landmark building, the Devonshire, features a stunning visual display using CFL Colour Changers from the Light Projects Group.
The concept is the result of a local schools competition to create an innovative lighting sequence to illuminate the building whilst focusing on the concepts of environmental harmony and sustainability. The use of environmentally-friendly LEDs was seen as a fitting solution.
UK - In April of this year a new company, Arcstream AV, was formed combining more than 80 years' collective experience in the creation of outdoor and indoor multi-media shows. The four principals of the company bring expertise in theatre and touring concert industries and have now expanded their offering to serve the audio-visual, entertainment and themed attraction markets.
Operating from a studio in West London, the team comprises Brett Salmon and Tony Clynick (both Themed Entertainment Association award winners), as chief executive officer and technical director respectively, Wayne Haxton as production director and Neil Dickinson as operations director. The team has already completed major projects in both China and Malaysia in the six months since its formation.
Salmon has over 23 years' experience in technical management and production of events and in the last few years has foc
China - Renowned French musician Jean-Michel Jarre performed a unique concert on 10 October, celebrating the opening of the French Culture Year in China, within Beijing's Forbidden City, using state-of-the-art sound and vision technology. For the first time in live application ever, the show was performed in Dolby Digital 5.1, providing a great enhancement to the sonic environment. The 15,000-strong seated audience was divided into six zones, each with it's own 5.1 system, comprising six V-Dosc, 18 dV-Dosc, six dV-SUB and four SB218 subs. Lab Co, L-Acoustics' V-Dosc Partner for China, worked in collaboration with Arpège, French V-Dosc Partner, to provide the turnkey V-Dosc system for the show.
The China-France Culture Year is an important event with regard to the exchange between the two nations, and is of great significance towards increasing the mutual understanding and aware
UK - Bristol's latest night venue, Zeebar, is the setting for an imaginative lighting scheme by architectural and feature lighting design specialist Clarity Lighting. The upmarket bar and grill, situated near the city's historic Queens Square, needed to offer a unique environment to stand out, says Clarity's Adrian Britton.
Clarity, with Zeebar owners EPC Ltd, decided on a combination of bespoke and off-the-shelf LED lighting, together with conventional luminaires and lightsources. The main technical lighting challenge was to make Zeebar's 40m exterior canopy appear look black during the day, and then come alive with colour and movement at night. The solution used a combination of Clarity's Ionic RGB colour changing strips and Microdex panelling with a black underlay. Clarity's Microdex appears as an evenly illuminated surface when lit from along one edge with the Ionic strips. Once th
USA - Production Resource Group (PRG) helped lighting designer Tom Kenny "bring down the house" in Miami at the only awards show geared towards Hip-Hop music. With a resume that includes designs for The Who, Santana, David Bowie, Jimmy Page & Robert Plant, Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Lopez, as well as numerous award shows, Kenny is well-known for his high profile projects. "I wanted to fill the venue with lights from every angle without putting together a large rig," explained Kenny. "I collaborated with Tom McPhillips to come up with a design consisting mainly of MAC 2000s over the stage and Studio Colors and Spots over the audience."
Kenny has been a PRG client for the past 14 years. For this event, his lighting package included 48 High End Studio Colors, 50 High End Studio Beams, 40 Martin MAC 2000 Wash lights, 32 Martin MAC 2000 Profiles, two
USA - Sennheiser products were again the primary choice for featured vocalists, presenters, and backline instruments at the recent Country Music Association Awards show, the company reports. The star-studded telecast was broadcast in the UK on BBC2 and live in the US by CBS from the world famous Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, and featured top country artists using Sennheiser wireless microphones.
McGraw picked up two of the year's top awards, Song of the Year and Single of the Year. McGraw and his band, long-time users of Sennheiser RF gear, adopted Evolution 500 Series wireless systems with e865 capsules and Sennheiser personal monitoring systems earlier this year.
The hybrid Sennheiser SKM5000 handheld RF transmitter with Neumann KK105-S capsule microphone has become a staple on televised music and entertainment events, and the three-hour 2004 CMA Awards broadcast was n
UK - Sales of Pixeon Colour Stream, the LED colour strip marketed exclusively by Lighting Effects Distribution, took on a new momentum this month when it appeared on further high profile tours and television shows. Lighting designer Al Gurdon has used a total of 50m of the 55mm diameter tube on the current series of Thames TV's The X Factor at Fountain Studios, and used a further 24 x 1m lengths for the European MTV Music Awards in Rome - all supplied by PRG Europe, which stock Pixeon in its rental fleet.
PRG account manager James Barnfather said: "With the latest version of Pixeon you can create more effects and colour mixes than before." In addition to The X Factor PRG also has Pixeon out on the set of The Good Food Show.
The latest mains-powered version of Pixeon - an LED tube, containing a dense array of RGB LEDs arranged in individua
Italy - The MTV EMA's attracted the crème of international pop, rock and dance artists to Rome for a glitzy ceremony hosted in a giant Kayam marquee transformed for the evening. To accommodate the guests and artists in comfort, Arena designed and installed the seating plan. In addition to the seats for 3,000 people, the company installed nine staircases and over 150 tonnes of system scaffold to create the elevated tiered seating that ensured a good view for everyone.
Arena Seating worked closely with fellow suppliers StageCo and Kayam through the design process and rain-flooded installation, to interface its equipment to create a safe infrastructure for the televised event. The company had been given only two weeks to translate Italian seating regulations and design a layout to conform, before being given the go ahead to ship the 10 truck loads of equipment and nine crew to Rom
USA - This year's 'Hot 97 Summer Jam', taking place in New York's Giants Stadium, attracted about 27.000 people. The concert was organized by the most important Hip-Hop broadcasting station in New York, and included stars such as 50 Cent, R Kelly, Alicia Keys, Ludacris, Big Boi and Keny West. The show also featured a large-scale lighting rig, which included 180 moving lights, 200 conventional lights and five media servers, as well as three full-sized grandMA lighting consoles from MA Lighting.
Gary Westcott was responsible for the lighting design. The show was pre-programmed and transferred to the grandMA full-size, although the team also had the chance to optimize the show locally for a further two days. The consoles were programmed by Demfis Fyssicopulos, with Andrew Findley responsible for programming the media server.
Two grandMAs were integrated in a multi user network
UK - Utopium Lighting Ltd. has been busy over the last month with its move to new premises. The company has taken the opportunity to restructure and improve the procedures for maintenance and preparation of the equipment and Customer Support. Now housed in a 4000msq 'open', single storey warehouse it has the room to build and 'fly' lighting rigs prior to shipping. Parking is also ample.
During all this upheaval the company has managed to service various tours including: Zero 7 for the second time this year, again lit by Utopium LD Stuart Farrell who operated an Avo Pearl and used Mac500 and Studio Beams mounted over a semi- circle truss. Uriah Heep recently performed in Guernsey with equipment and crew supplied by Utopium. The LD was Chris Bushell who was also LD for the recent Goldie Looking Chain tour. Mercury Music award winner, Dizzee Rascal has just finished his firs
Italy - The Italian version of the BBC's famous music show, Top of the Pops, has returned for the 2004/2005 edition, broadcast every Saturday afternoon on Italia Uno, and for the first time this year, on the satellite channel Italia Teen Television. The show returns with new set elements and an enlarged lighting system: unlike last year, two stages can now be either separated or joined, and the stages are positioned perpendicular to each other and at an oblique angle from the cameras to create a greater sense of depth.
"The most important innovation here," according to LDs Riccardo Barbaglio and Massimo Cavenaghi - is the new lighting system. Last year, the Italian edition of Top of the Pops stood out for the quality of its lighting effects, which received compliments from the BBC. This is one of the reasons why Einstein, the Italian TV production studios which
UK - ADLIB Audio and sister company ADLITE Productions are enjoying a hectic autumn season, including the supply of full sound and lighting production for the current Amy Winehouse UK tour. Featuring a Yamaha PM5D monitor console and an Avolites Pearl 2004 lighting console bought specially for the tour, plus ADLIBs new MP3 wedges.
Front of House engineer Steve Pattison chose JBL's medium sized VerTec line array as the main PA system - utilizing various numbers of VT 4888 elements depending on the size of the venue. This ranged from an average of five a side in the smaller rooms to 12 a side for larger spaces like Brixton Academy.
Subs are ADLIB's double 18 folded horn DF3's, which have a formidable low-end reputation! The system is driven by Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers, in which ADLIB has also recently extensively invested. Pattison has worked with Amy since the 2003 'V' Festiva
Europe - A full HK Audio PA rig based around HK Audio's Cohedra (Coherent Dynamic Response Array) system is currently being used on the Waterboys tour of the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands.
The system, supplied by Concert Sound and John Hornby Skewes, typically consists of 12 CDR 208 T and S mid/high cabinets per side in most of the tour's venues, with four CDR 210 Sub subwoofers per side, and two of the newly-launched CDR 210 F flyable subwoofers at the top of each array for high venues with balconies. The CDR 210 Fs can also be used with HK's new Ground Stacking Frame, and for venues where the system can't be flown, a CDR 210 F is positioned at the bottom of the frame, which also serves the purpose of adding height to the ground-stacked array.
FOH engineer Chris Madden was introduced to the system by HK Audio's Moray McMillin, himself a veteran touring engineer who convin
USA - The Pro-Commander Pro-V, a fully programmable computerized hoist control system from CM Entertainment, received honourable mention in the Rigging Hardware Product of the Year category at the recent ETS-LDI Award ceremony in Las Vegas. The Pro-V provides full load monitoring accuracy along with variable speed operation from appropriately configured hoists. The Pro-V comes complete with a graphical touch screen remote handset with six-inch screen, user-friendly programmability and multi language capability.
USA - Surround Live II - More Surround - A symposium, was held during the 117th AES Convention on 27 October 2004 at The Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco, Ca. For the second year a DiGiCo console was selected as the core of the sound system used during the event. The D1 Live, DiGiCo's new mixing console launched at PLASA and LDI this year, was used to manage the extensive input and source routing needs of the presenters, totalling more than 100 channels of audio, and to provide delay.
All of the 20-plus live Shure microphone feeds were handled using the D1's internal dynamics, EQ and signal processing capabilities. The complex 10-channel output matrix feeding the Meyer Sound Labs supplied CQ based playback system was fed by the D1 through a TiMax processor.
Surround Live produced and created by Frederick Ampel of Technology Visions under the auspices of the Audio Enginee