Japan - Turbosound has announced the formation of a new pro audio company dedicated to the promotion and distribution of its professional loudspeaker systems in Japan.

Turbosound Japan, a new partnership between Turbosound Ltd and All Access Inc, will be launched at the Inter BEE show which takes place in Tokyo from 17-19 November. To accompany the launch, a wide selection of Turbosound products will be exhibited - including the Flex Array tour sound systems; the new TFM-560 and RACKDP-50 professional bi-amped floor monitor package; the IMPACT architectural loudspeakers; and Turbosound's complete range of dedicated sound contracting products - with experts from Japan and the UK on hand to advise and demonstrate.

President of All Access Cozy Hattori commented, "I am greatly looking forward to working with Turbosound. The brand has a long and rich history in Japan, and I am

California Calling - This week's 129th AES Convention in San Francisco will feature a strong element of live sound-based seminars, workshops and presentations. Included in the convention programme is Lunchtime Keynotes which will offer attendees a series of three lunchtime keynote presentations.

Convention co-chair Valerie Tyler reports that, "Lunchtime Keynotes provide an opportunity for attendees to take a break from the hectic Exhibition Hall and concentration-intensive workshops, master classes, platinum and educational programmes and relax as acknowledged industry leaders provide the benefit of their years of experience in a quiet and informal environment. Last year's Lunchtime Keynotes benefited from extremely positive word of mouth, and we're confident that this year's programme will draw appreciative audiences."

Kicking off proceedings wil

UK - When Welsh National Opera was commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government to host an event at Wales Millennium Centre as part of the Ryder Cup celebrations, they wanted to give their guests something special to remember the evening by.

They decided to make a live recording of the performance of the Chorus and Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, which would be reproduced during the evening, burned onto pre-printed CDs, placed into pre-printed wallets and handed to each of the 350 guests as they left after dinner. This ambition was achieved in a special partnership with a team of technicians from Sennheiser UK.

The guests included the respective American and European Ryder Cup teams, their wives and partners, management, Ryder Cup sponsor representatives as well as significant VIPs from Europe and America. Sennheiser's team of Dave Wooster (live sound specialist), Andy Lil

Australia - White Light is continuing its involvement with the hit musical Mary Poppins, supplying the EvenLED cyc-lighting system which forms the heart of the show's lighting design to the show's new Australian production.

White Light first supplied the EvenLED to the British tour of the show in 2008. It was specified because it solved the problem of the lack of space in many of the venues the tour visited, which left no room to achieve the complex cyclorama and cloth lighting the show demanded using traditional techniques.

Instead, the show's design team built a 13m by 8m wall of EvenLED panels upstage of the skycloth. Each EvenLED panel features a four-by-four grid of three colour LEDs, each of which can be individually controlled, and which together will evenly backlight a cloth or screen positioned as little as 25cm away from the EvenLED.

Controlled using the pix

UK - DiGiCo's UK dealer, Stage Electrics, has recently supplied an SD7 digital console to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) in Stratford Upon Avon. With this sale, Stage Electrics completed triple sales of the SD Series which includes the sale of the SD7, SD8 and 2 SD9's.

Since winning the contract to supply all the loose equipment as part of the £112.8m project ongoing at the RST, Stage Electrics business development manager Andy Elsegood, in conjunction with DiGiCo supplied the top of the range SD7 digital console into the RST, which is due to open its doors this month for a series of preview events and activities.

Stage Electrics technical sales manager for audio Vince Borrelli comments, "With a culmination of a lot of work from Stage Electrics sales team, we have been able to demonstrate and supply the whole range of DiGiCo's SD consoles. Clients from differen

USA - The Wybron Mobile Showroom will return to the road 15-19 November, making stops in Illinois, Indianapolis and Wisconsin during the fourteenth leg of its first national tour.

The showroom will make its first stop Monday 15 November at Indianapolis Stage before heading to DesignLab, Grand Stage and Chicago Spotlight - all in Chicago on 16, 17 and 18 November respectively.

On Friday 19 November, it's off to Clearwing Productions in Milwaukee, Wis., for the showroom's final stop of the month.

Each stop will provide visitors with a hands-on survey of new and classic Wybron gear, including the new Cygnus advanced colour LED line, as well as a chance to chat with Wybron staff members and enjoy complimentary food.

"In this first year of touring we've pinpointed some improvements we'd like to make to the showroom and hope to debut a brand-new trailer with brand-new techn

Sweden / USA - LumenRadio reports a very successful LDI show in Las Vegas where CRMX continued to lead the wireless technology race. LumenRadio's participation in the ESTA Connectivity Pavilion proved to be a great hit with the many attendees who got an in-depth introduction to the benefits of RDM in general and the feature rich CRMX SuperNova RDM controller in particular, says the company.

LumenRadio saw a steady stream of OEM's, specifiers, and users in its booth and continued at the show to cement OEM relationships with major industry participants like Robe and Philips.

LumenRadio also welcomed Hans Lau to the company as a director with responsibility for the Americas and entertainment OEM operations. Lau brings with him 30 years of experience with entertainment and architectural lighting control systems from his involvement with AVAB, SAND Network Systems and Wireless Solu

UK - Creative Technology (CT) supported the 2010 Ryder Cup at Wales' Celtic Manor.

The 2010 tournament, arguably the closest in the tournaments history, saw 24 of the Worlds' golfing elite battle each other, and the elements, over four exciting days. Fans around the globe and the live audience at Celtic Manor were glued to the fluctuating fortunes from foursomes to singles matches, culminating in a European team win in the final match on the 17th green.

CT has supplied every European Ryder Cup since 1985, but this was the first time the organisers have contracted the company to provide all of the on-course video facilities. This extended from the 16 screens and supplied feeds to 450 LCD displays in offices and hospitality suites to the generation and distribution of real-time graphics and scores, mixed with live camera action and other event critical data, all tailored to each

UK - DB Systems has once again appointed official AV supplier for the 2011 Mobile World Congress (MWC).

This will be the fifth consecutive year that DB is the official supplier of audio visual systems and equipment. In total, DB has had a presence at the event, which is the world's biggest exhibition for the mobile phone industry, every year since 1999.

The show's organiser, GSMA, is also promoting DB's ecoXpress technology as a sustainable way to distribute literature. ecoXpress helps exhibitors reduce their environmental footprint as it removes the need for printed brochures on stands. Instead, delegates browse the exhibitor's literature on touch screens, choose what information is most relevant to them and email that selected information to their office computers.

Oliver Richardson, DB's sales director, says, "This demonstrates that, as a result of our excellent serv

UK - After the highly successful and widely attended third edition closed with the award-giving ceremony in London on 12 September 2010, the organisers have announced that the fourth edition of the Knights of Illumination Awards is now underway.

The awards are open to UK-based LDs (for the theatre section it is open to theatre productions performed in the UK though not necessarily designed by UK based LDs) with a show performing in the UK between November 2010 and May 2011(For Television categories with a show performing in the UK between June 2010 and May 2011).

The Awards for The Knight of Illumination will be nominated and judged by a panel of professional reviewers working in the specific categories, selected and coordinated by the STLD and the ALD. The award categories are as follows:

Television: Light Entertainment, Drama, Small Studio, Events

Rock: Sta

USA - The North Dakota State Fair in Minot is one of the largest events in the state, held in late July every year since 1922. Attendance has consistently increased since 2000, attracting more than 300,000 people in 2010.

Dubbed "the entertainment capital of North Dakota," the State Fair Centre complex is home to the nine-day annual event that includes agricultural and livestock competitions, carnival rides and concessions, and concerts. Acts featured in 2010 included Brooks & Dunn, Kiss, and Darius Rucker. Other events are held at the facility over the course of the year, including demolition derbies, drag races, and a collectors car show. And during the summer months, weekly stock car races are run on an oval dirt track on the fairgrounds.

In August 2009, after funding was provided by the North Dakota Legislature, the Centre's old 3500-seat grandstand was demolishe

India - tarm Showlaser was engaged to put on a laser show in conjunction with the closing ceremony at the 2010 Commonwealth Games 2010 in Delhi - literally at the last minute.

Exactly seven days before the closing ceremony to be held in the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on 14 October, the laser specialists from Bochum, Germany, received the go-ahead, and within a matter of hours around 7,000 kg of equipment had been packed and transported to Düsseldorf Airport.

The next day, six of its employees were on their way to India in order to install the 10 high-power, full-colour laser systems and forty fog/wind generators that had been shipped. The Indian production team delayed choosing the music for the laser closing until three days before the event, which represented yet another challenge to the company's laser specialists.

The raft of difficulties involved was crowned by the fact

Europe - Santana embarked on the European leg of their Universal Tone tour throughout late September and October with an L-Acoustics K1 line source system provided by L-Acoustics rental network agent Satis&Fy. Setting off in Dublin and ending in Hamburg, the 21-date tour did the rounds of Europe's leading arenas, covering hits from Santana's four-decade career.

"The K1 system has met and exceeded all of my expectations," says Robert Mailman, Santana's front of house engineer. "The system's features, combined with excellent tour support from the staff at Satis&Fy, have made the Santana 2010 European leg a great success."

The main system consisted of 14 K1 large format line source cabinets and three dV-DOSCs as down-fill per side, with six K1-SB low frequency extensions flown beside both arrays. The system was driven by LA-RAKs housing LA8 amplified co

UK - Located on the top floor of London's Millbank Tower, venue Altitude London offers panoramic views of the city and beyond, adding an extra dimension to corporate and private events. With four separate spaces able to host a variety of functions, keeping noise levels down is a priority. This has been solved by the installation of four Apex Audio Argos units.

"We host a wide range of events, which often involve DJs, bands and presentations," says Altitude audio visual manager Jonjo Glynn. "Of course, these have the capacity to create large amounts of noise, so keeping levels under control is very important to ensure that both the adjacent rooms and floors below are not disturbed by both our own and visiting PA systems."

The Apex Argos prevents audio systems from producing excessive sound levels, but without producing unwanted sound degradation.

Using a (

Denmark - Film location recorder Allan Holmberg has been using a DPA 4017 shotgun mic for Susanne Bier's new film, The Revenge (Haevnen)

"I'd used the 4017 on a documentary I'd worked on, called Blekingegadebanden," explains Holmberg. "The clarity and natural sound of the 4017 was a huge success on the documentary, so I decided to try the mic on this feature film.

"My only concern was that the mic pattern may be too wide, resulting in extra background noise and ambience, but after a short talk with Eddie M°ller, the film's supervising sound designer, we both agreed to give it a try. The film contains some improvisation, and we wanted to avoid dubbing as much as was possible, so that was another good reason for using a wider mic."

Once on set, any misgivings Holmberg had were quickly dispelled. "The 4017 performed excellently, a

USA - GDS reports that it received an overwhelming response recently, when it exhibited at the LDI show in Las Vegas alongside its US distributor ACT Lighting who distribute LiteWare, Cue SystemNet, SMConsole and MOBAL for North America market.

The company showcased a host of new and existing products whilst introducing for the first time to the US market, the innovative CueSystem NET, a networked cue light system which launched earlier in the year and the SMConsole. Since its launch in 2006 GDS has designed and manufactured SM Consoles for venues around the world including, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, LAMDA, Hong Kong Performing Arts Centre, Theatre Chatelet Paris and several colleges in Australia and many more.

Matthew Lloyd, managing director GDS commented, "LDI was a really busy show for us this year, we have worked extremely hard over the past 12 months t

USA - Renkus-Heinz will present a full schedule of informative presentations during the upcoming Audio Engineering Society Convention at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Centre.

The presentations will cover a wide range of subject matter, ranging from alignment of subwoofers and full-range line array systems, audio measurement tools, advances in modelling and measurement, to practical uses of EASE Auralisation, and a summary of an award winning White Paper on line array simulation.

Presenters will include Bruce Olson of Olson Sound Design, Stefan Feistel of Ahnert Feistel Media Group, and John Murray of Optimum System Solutions, as well as Renkus-Heinz VP of sales and marketing Rik Kirby, national sales manager David Rahn and application engineer Jonas Domkus.

(Jim Evans)

UK - DM Audio played a key role in the sound and light show The Enchanted Forest: Force of Nature in Faskally Wood near Pitlochry in Scotland. The show brings together the talents of sound designer / composer RJ McConnell and lighting designer Simon Wilkinson to create a site-specific son et lumière promenade. The audio system was supplied and installed by DM Audio, who were appointed as a sub-contractor by main technical contractor Northern Light.

The technical requirements of the project were challenging as they involved the distribution of 24 channels of audio around a kilometre-long promenade for a month of Scottish autumn weather, making reliability as important as sound quality.

The audio system had been programmed and thoroughly tested before travelling to site, minimising the labour required in the forest. The show runs on a continuous loop, with set pieces at

Italy - Club Zen in Porto San Giorgio, in the Marche region, is changing its look for the 2011 season.

Calling on the experience gained in working with some of the most exclusive clubs in Italy, like Pineta in Milano Marittima and Tocqueville in Milan, the team that worked on this project at Merli Entertainment designed an exclusive venue for a demanding and fashion-conscious public: Club Zen Royal Suite.

This year, Club Zen opened with a new architectural look. During the summer the interior of the club was renovated and made even more chic with elegant furnishings built around a gold color-theme.

A strong point of this popular venue is the innovative Proel Lighting system. The owners of the club and the Merli Entertainment team brought in installation contractor Gianluca Ponzanetti's Orione Contract, a company based in Porto San Giorgio that designs and installs audio, vid

UK - Providing education for the audio professionals of the future is one of Sennheiser UK's core policies. Early Autumn saw that commitment bringing benefits to 200 first year students at Bucks New Uni, as they enjoyed a Sennheiser-run education day at the British Music Experience, the interactive museum of rock and pop within London's The O2.

Sennheiser UK has a close working relationship with the British Music Experience, which benefits students from a number of educational establishments. This, however, was the biggest session the company had hosted so far, with no less than six coach loads of eager new students on the Music Management and Audio & Music Production courses at Bucks New Uni attending.

As the number of students was so high, the party was split into two halves. The first half of the students toured the museum and its many iconic exhibits, while the other half

UK - Production North principle Iain Whitehead and lighting designer Dan Hardiman worked with Bandit UK CE Lester Cobrin for the latest McFly UK tour, and took the show in a green direction. The I-Pix BB7's were called into play as the heart of the system by Hardiman and they were supplemented by Pixel Range Pixilines.

This green beginning was augmented with Martin MAC 2000 Washes and Profiles, as well as Atomic Strobes with colour changers. Thomas 4 and 8 lights with changers were also employed to produce power washes. Lycian Starklites were Hardimans' truss spot of choice and the entire show is controlled by a Whole Hog 3 Console, operated by Paul van den Heijkant. Crew Chief Steve Rusling and staff member Neil Scrivener kept the system runningfrom day to day.

McFly's current tour is in support of the release of McFly'sAbove The Noise. Their first album in 2004, Ro

UK - Liverpool-based Adlib is supplying a complete sound, lighting and AV package for the current John Barrowman UK Tour, with Steve Rayment tour managing the operation and Paul Crockford as tour director.

It's Adlib's third tour with Barrowman and a full Adlib crew and sees the debut of Adlib's new Coda Audio sound system.

FOH is being mixed by Walter Jaquiss. The main left and right hangs are 24 Coda Airline LA12s, with 24 LA8s for side hangs (10 a side) and in-fills. There are eight SC8 subs ground stacked in four columns of two across the front of the stage and all of it is powered by Coda C10 amps.

They are using the Coda DNC 260 processors across the system which are very high resolution, and systems tech Kenny Perrin is using the standard Adlib Dolby Lake processing set up for EQ and time alignment.

The FOH console is a 96 channel Soundcraft Vi6, on which Jaquiss is

USA - For three weekends every autumn, smooth jazz drifts from the Avalon Ballroom overlooking the Pacific Ocean, when this legendary venue hosts the Catalina Island JazzTrax Festival.

Constructed in 1929, the Casino in Avalon Harbor was an iconic entertainment spot during the golden era of jazz, when some of the most famous big bands were broadcast nationally from the ballroom. Hollywood celebrities and tourists from around the world visited the Casino during its heyday in the 1930s and '40s to dance to the sounds of Jan Gerber, Kay Kyser, Bob Crosby, Dick Jurgens and Jimmy Grier.

JazzTrax producer Art Good has chosen to hold his festival at this historic Catalina Island landmark for the past 24 years. With its rich music tradition and breathtaking scenery, there could be no more magical venue for jazz.

The ballroom is on the second floor of the Catalina Casin

USA - The National Association of Music Merchants has announced plans for its Hands-On Training (H.O.T) Zone at the 2011 NAMM Show, offering the broadest educational experience for professionals in the recording, live sound, DJ, house of worship, and stage and lighting industries in the history of the show.

The H.O.T. Zone will offer attendees free one-hour classes on more than 85 educational topics over four days, including Basic Live Mixing Techniques PROTools 101, Social Marketing for Your Music Business and DJ Equipment Integration. On 13 January 2011, the opening day of the NAMM Show, the H.O.T. Zone will be offering Boot Camp Day with an array of basic courses designed to provide foundation-level instruction in music technology and business.

The H.O.T. Zone will be located on Level 2 of the Anaheim Convention Centre and is being held fo

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