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14 March 2016

The enhanced sound quality owed its success to the faith invested by Simon Honywill, sound designer for the control and monitor system suppliers RG Jones, and the support offered throughout by Marquee Audio's digital expert Andy Huffer.

It was Huffer who had proposed the digital solution to Honywill near the beginning of the year - suggesting three of Optocore's DD32E network devices to transmit a maximum amount of digital data at high speed.

Marquee are not only the official UK distributors of Optocore fibre networks but are also Digidesign resellers, and Andy Huffer was on hand at FOH to support the consulting eng

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14 March 2016

Showgun's's main output uses a 2000W short arc metal halide lamp, designed as a joint venture between Philips and High End Systems. The new MSR 2000SA Gold lamp uses a fast-fit socket design that allows for a more compact reflector combination. Combining the high-performance lamp, advanced reflector and revolutionary optical design, Showgun produces more than 100,000 lumens of output.

The LED Tracking System is a homogenously mixed RGB LED circular array, which allows the user to either match the colour of t

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14 March 2016

Jack Kelly of Eye Dialogue was approached by theatrical lighting designer Eric Wink to light up the event, which was called the Studio 50 Party and held in Charlotte, NC at the city's Grand Central venue. "Eric thought I would bring the psychedelic element to the design," said Kelly.

Kelly put together a package of lighting consisting mainly of American DJ and Elation Professional effects. He set the mood with two ADJ Fantasy 250s, a 250-watt discharge unit that creates 3D textured-glass-gobo patterns, projec

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14 March 2016

The festival's 16-day run will encompass the huge array of styles for which it has become famous, offering performances ranging from jazz giants like Chick Corea and Gary Burton to rock artists like Wilco, Jeff Beck, and Norah Jones to international favourites such as Youssou N'Dour and Cacau Brasil. The festival's venues are spread between three main buildings, outdoor performance areas, the Young Planet youth club, and "venues on the move": buses, boats, and trains hosting performances.

Meyer Sound's involvement with the fe

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14 March 2016

Merging's head of sales and marketing, Ken Barnsley, explains the company's decision to open a dedicated British office. "The UK market for Merging has grown incredibly fast over the last four years, to a level where we felt it important to be able to support our customers

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14 March 2016

Lighting designer Paul Normandale and Lite Alternative took the helm this year, controlling an impressive ship. Scissor Sisters, Groove Armada and Razorlight were just a few of the acts to take to the stage. And hanging above them were some of Martin's latest models, including the MAC TW1 and two new LED fixtures - Stagebar 54 and the light curtain, LC 2140.

Normandale was the lighting designer for the entire event and put together a striking design for the three stages. His major challenge was to create a design that would look good live, but would also be clean enough for broadcast, as the whole weekend was televised in HD quality.

Another challenge was ensuring the stage design was flexible enough for the many guest

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14 March 2016

Additionally, they also had two mobile systems, one transit-van based, that were on call for various outdoor areas as needed.

While the band and music stages are relatively predictable in what's upcoming, there's no such consistency of performance in any of the above areas explains Es Siahi, making the 'other' performance stages the most challenging on site for providing audio. The acts can range from a 20-piece Samba band to fire eaters, a juggler or acrobats. "We really have to be prepared for - and not phased by - anythi

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14 March 2016

George Michael has celebrated 25 years as a performer by taking his 25 Live Tour to stadia across Europe this summer. In June he christened the new Wembley Stadium with a performance in front of 140,000 people. Production Manager, Mark Spring, and crew spent four weeks this spring at Litestructures Studios preparing for the tour.

Meanwhile the Arctic Monkeys have celebrated an important milestone in their young careers by debuting at the Glastonbury Festival with a headline slot at the Pyramid stage. It was just one of a string of summer performances for which the band travelled the short distance from their native Sheffield to rehearse at Litestructures Studios.

"It has been a real honour for Litestructures Studios

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14 March 2016

Unusually, two additional screens were configured and flown above the side stage monitor positions at right angles pointing away from the front of stage and directly at the restricted view seats around the back - to ensure that everyone in the stadium got an equally good view of the action. These were also made up from Lighthouse R16 in a 5 x 4 panel format.

Onstage, XL supplied six 10m high by 4m wide Barco MiTrix columns on a tracking system, that formed three pairs of 'doors' for stage entrances and exits and also tracked

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14 March 2016

Mike Glover, ESL managing director, comments: "Three years ago we invested in a large KV2 Audio ES system, of the original design, which was used extensively on a wide range of commissions from live music festivals, gigs and presentations to the Labour Party conferences in Brighton. The original systems were designed as 'plug & play' systems and they were fantastic, providing huge output from a small footprint.

"It was the very method and way in which this system performed that made this decision to re-invest that much easier. After having attended a few live, on-site demonstrations with Andy Austin-Brown of

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14 March 2016

This is organised by OISTAT - the International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians - and is the world's largest scenographic exhibition. The event took over three halls of the Prague Industrial Palace at the Exhibition Grounds to the north of the city.

Scenofest featured two main performance spaces. The first was the 18m high Tower of Babel, built from scaffolding and steel and conceived by Sean Crowley, head of design at the UK's Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Technical design of the Tower was by PQ's technical director Ian Evans, head of technical studies at the RWCMD.

Crowley, Evans and Jean Guy Le Cat also designed the other main performance sp

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14 March 2016

The Nokia Rock Up & Play set-up features a stage which is open to everyone who wishes to perform. Anyone can turn up as individuals or bands and play on their own or with the house band - with predictably mixed results. The stage also attracts the more 'non musical types' who enter the air guitar competition with a signed 'air guitar' as first prize, there is also a DJ for late night moshing.

Scenic elements supplied by Stage Electrics included the main bar, DJ bar, performance stage, Q & A stage and graphics walling. The company also provided download units and phone display pods.

This year, the teams worked to demanding ti

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14 March 2016

Chambers' monitoring is more physical than most. Tim Briscusse, Tour Manager for the Pretenders explains, " For his on stage monitoring, Martin expands on the usual wedges and drum-fill and uses specially designed 'thumper' speakers. These are bolted directly to his seat! This way he literally gets a kick out of his playing and finds that this unique setup really helps him keep the beat."

The two rack space, 8.5 kg C 10:4X produces 250 watts per channel into 4, 8 or 16 ohms and has a universal power supply. The C 10:4X, normally used for permanent installations, is perfectly happy in a touring situation being built to the same standards as Lab.g

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14 March 2016

This year, the roadshows took place in Dublin, Liverpool and Guildford, and included a prize draw for one of the limited-edition C414s at the end of each day's product presentations, technical Q&A sessions and PA masterclasses.

"This year's roadshows were the best attended ever," said Amanda Chester, marketing manager at Harman Pro UK. "It helps that we are releasing some great new products in 2007, including the excellent mics being produced by AKG in their 60th anniversary year, like the very popular C5 and D5. The venues were superb too - the Temple Bar Centre in Dublin is always lively, and the mass of students that atte

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14 March 2016

"ChamSys continues its substantial growth and is delighted to be able to welcome another distributor to the ever-increasing network from around the World," says a company spokesman. This is an exciting time for ChamSys with the appointment of several new distributors about to be announced and confirms the growing popularity of the MagicQ range."

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

Instigated by Kirsten Eicher and operating from an office and small workshop storing and dispatching a small product range, Look Solutions soon found it necessary to move into its own large premises in Ronnenberg. Now, with distributors in 31 countries and a subsidiary in the US, Look Solutions is a truly global company.

"Our product range is very different from the small beginnings of ten years ago," explains Eicher. "We now produce machines which will cover all aspects of the market from the Viper range of fog generators to the Unique 2 hazer with its quick warm up time, the adjustable output and the very low fluid consumption.

"We have machines for specialised uses like the massive 9kW-g

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14 March 2016

A total of 24 Y10's with 12 Y10 Subs were used. John Ryan calculated the shoot by fixing the maximum distance, right behind his head before the glass that separates the first seats from the hockey field. "I had practically no reflection from the empty Plexiglas seats and flat surfaces. The sound was evenly distributed throughout the floor," he says.

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

The Venue environment was specified as the resident system by Simon Honywill, system designer for the control system providers, RG Jones Sound Engineering. His decision was justified when around 85% of the main stage acts, spanning the gamut of artistic performance - from Shirley Bassey to the Arctic Monkeys, Paul Weller to the UK Youth Orchestra - had their sound mixed on a D-Show.

Two D-Shows piggy-backed between the main stage acts throughout the Festival, allowing the incoming sound engineers to pre-programme their mix, and these were output via AES into the master D-Show Profile for digital distribution to the loudspeaker system.

The consulting engineering team cons

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14 March 2016

The system comprised 14 TA-890H three way mid/high enclosures, 18 TA-890L bass enclosures and six TSW-218 18" horn-loaded bass cabinets.

"We're using exactly the same cabinets, same array and the same Dom [Harter] from Turbosound, who came down to help put it in on the first day," says Britannia Row's sound crew chief for the Hyde Park events, John Gibbon. "We decided to stay with Aspect again this year because it worked so well last year and we have the same kind of bands playing. At one point the specification was changed, but as we know what works well in the kayam tent that hous

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14 March 2016

The Butterfly Hi-packs were used along with 20 Subtech 218, and the system was powered by Outline T Series amplifiers. The system engineer for the maxi-concert was Sherif El Barbari.

This same Outline array will be used again at Wembley Stadium this weekend as part of the sound reinforcement for Live Earth.

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

Established in 1994 by the Pelita Harapan Foundation, UPH provides high-quality facilities including TV, photographic and scientific laboratories, and an international-standard sports centre. The University boasts 31 departments and 9,000 students. The latest addition to the campus is the 2,200-capacity Grand Chapel theatre based in the University's Digital Campus, which houses the Faculty of Music.

Local installer, Kairos MultiJaya, was contracted to design, supply and install the sound, lighting and video projection system into the Digital Campus. Central to the installation is an Allen & Heath iLive system, comprising an iLive-112 control surface and iDR10 stagerack, which

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14 March 2016

The tour features a show-stopping stage design by Stufish (Mark Fisher) based on the shape of a conch shell, with a spectacular, gently asymmetric 55m wide, 3000sq.m Barco MiTrix screen forming its backdrop. At the rear of the screen are seven curved metal 'ribs' of varying heights up to 28m.

Thirty-three of the 50 Robe fixtures are attached to these seven ribs, with the balance of 17 ColorSpot 2500E ATs sited on the floor, upstage of the band's performance platform, and providing a powerful back-lighting source.

The towers were a starting point for Woodroffe's initial lighting design. The idea was that they would encompass the stage architecture, and that lights mounted on special pods rode up and down the ribs to cha

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14 March 2016

This free event will gives attendees the chance to see the latest products from Selecon including the new improved Acclaim range, Rama Fresnel and the Performer range of follow spots including the RUA. There will be a series of demonstrations of the Selecon range as well as hands-on opportunities.

Sebastian Barnes from the Midland Arts Centre says, "The day is designed to coincide with a meeting of the, Midlands Technical Forum. Visitors and new members would be most welcome."

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

Broadcast live on BBC One and Two and presented by Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton, the Wembley show featured performances by Madonna, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Razorlight, Snow Patrol, Keane, Corrine Bailey Rae, Genesis, Duran Duran, Paolo Nutini and many more.

Co-ordinating all the video elements between XL and the various event designers, producers and others involved in screen content, was screen producer Chris Saunders.

Although XL already had also a large video system installed at Wembley for the Princess Diana Tribute concert just six days before Live Earth, this all had to be removed in the meantime. Some kit from that system was then re-installed for Live Earth along with several new and different video elements.

Flanking both sides of