Singapore - One of Singapore's leading educational institutions, the Republic Polytechnic, has completed the installation of a Nexo Geo S12 line array in its primary theatre at The Republic Cultural Centre (TRCC).

Designed by Maki & Associates (Japan), TRCC exudes an elegant simplicity and balance of aesthetics and functionality that reflects an appreciation for the arts and culture. Under its fan-shaped roof, TRCC has three main performing arts venues: a 1,000-seat theatre, 300-seat studio and, 120-seat lab, all of which are open to the public.

This is the first upgrade for the main theatre since its opening in 2007. With more international acts gracing its stage, and taking into account the evolving needs and criteria of modern shows, Mark Spencer, former student and Head of TRCC's Audio Division, felt it was time the audio caught up to speed. "Audiences nowadays are mo

Italy - Pope Francis' address to the 37th National Convocation of the Renewal of the Spirit at Rome's Olympic Stadium recently, was clearly received by the gathering of over 50,000 people who thronged to Rome's Olympic Stadium - thanks to RCF loudspeakers.

After walking a short distance across the field, the Pope arrived at the stage where the previous night Italian rock star Luciano Ligabue had delivered a major concert. The audio system used on this occasion was made up of four of RCF's flagship TTL55-A Touring & Theatre line arrays, comprising 84 elements in total. This was not the first time an RCF system has been used to amplify an event of this kind: in 2012 the company provided the audio system for the official and historical visit of Pope Ratzinger to Cuba, an event followed by millions of people all around the world.

Now, two years on, RCF has again amplified t

UK - Aggreko, an official supporter of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, has awarded Showforce a contract to supply local event crew to assist with the deployment of temporary power across the Games' 14 Competitive venues for 17 sports and 16 non-competitive venues including the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) at the SECC, Glasgow.

Showforce was selected following a successful tendering process where the company demonstrated a longstanding commitment to investing in training and development to ensure optimum sustainability for any roles provided on the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games contract In addition local people will be employed wherever possible to maximise the economic and environmental sustainability of the roles created.

Aggreko's Commonwealth Games contract requires deployment of in excess of 120 generators, 1110 distribution panels and over 220 kilometres of

Russia - Novosibirsk-based production company Elkruff specified a wide range of Clay Paky fixtures for its stylish design for global product solutions company NL International's 13th Anniversary Event in Moscow's Crocus City Hall. Overseeing the project was Elkruff's chief technical officer Aleksey Bulgakov who worked with lighting designer Anton Maltsev to deliver a sharp, clean design that focused the audience's attention on the stage's large projection video element.

"Onstage we had a huge video widescreen that displayed a presentation of new online products from NL International," explains Bulgakov. "We created a clever design made up of vertical rows of plastic tubes with RGB LED fixtures mounted in the base platforms that drew audience attention to the centre of the stage and the video presentation. The event was also being filmed for broadcast so we needed

Turkey - Martin Professional has appointed SF SES vs ISIK Sistemleri A.S., also known as SF, as the exclusive distributor of Martin products in Turkey. Istanbul-based SF has been a valued member of the Harman distributor network for over 25 years and this partnership will enhance the sales, distribution, and support of Martin Professional lighting solutions throughout Turkey as well as Azerbaijan and Northern Cyprus.

"As distributors of top brands in audio, video and lighting systems, we are sure that Martin will be a valuable addition to our existing distribution lines, as our reseller and solution partners always look to offer more sophisticated and robust turnkey lighting solutions to present to their end-user customers. Samim Mutluer, CEO of SF, said: "We look forward to providing our resellers and partners with the value-added services in support of Martin's compl

UAE - Rooftop bar White Dubai has invested in an Avolites Expert Pro and Touch Wing as part of the club's entertainment technology system. White Dubai is a large open-air venue and "caters to the Middle East's partying elite". The club, which is located above the city's Meydan Racecourse, offers guests the latest in live audio-visual technology, aiming to immerse guests in visual environments that vary from event to event.

Dubai-based professional lighting, sound, video and rigging company Procom ME worked with concept designers Addmind, the creative brains behind White Beirut, to design and supply the club's impressive video and lighting package.

"Many visit White Dubai to experience the distinctive live lighting, sound and video display," says Rami Harfouch, business development manager at Procom ME. "So synchronisation, originality and avoiding repe

USA - Entertainment and event production services provider Production Resource Group (PRG) has officially begun upgrading to L-Acoustics' new K2 platform with the purchase of two complete line source array systems. Delivered in mid-May, the sale comprised a total of 48 K2 enclosures and 24 LA8 amplified controllers.

PRG's inaugural K2 deployment came almost immediately - two dozen enclosures were put into active duty for the 25th annual National Memorial Day Concert, attended by countless spectators on the West Lawn of the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. on 26 May. This year's event, hosted by actors Joe Mantegna and Gary Sinise, featured an all-star line-up of performers, including the National Symphony Orchestra, Jennifer Nettles, Megan Hilty, the US Army Chorus and Air Force Singing Sergeants.

Having supported this annual holiday event for over two decades now, PRG's new K2

UK - Miley Cyrus' current tour is eclectic and outrageous, featuring a giant hot dog, a troupe of dancing furry animals and cartoon characters, foam fingers and some very skimpy costumes amongst other things. Critics have been largely positive, appreciating her vocal performance, audacity and charisma, with one critic from Time magazine calling her one of the "most dynamic performers of her generation". On this tour, and for the first time, Cyrus is performing with the new Digital 9000 microphone system from Sennheiser.

Despite the change of image and musical direction of recent years, Cyrus has remained faithful to key members of her technical team, in particular monitor engineer Vish Wadi and FoH engineer Paul David Hager. Both have been working with Cyrus (and Sennheiser) for a number of years. Wadi's relationship with Sennheiser goes back some 17 years, whil

UK - Mojo Barriers' UK office was entrusted to supply the stage barriers for three of the USA's biggest stars, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Justin Timberlake, as they headed across the Atlantic to play their UK and European tour dates.

Katy Perry toured across the UK with 75m of Mojo Barriers' patented aluminium stage barrier, configured to follow the layout of the singer's v-shaped stage which was designed to reflect her latest album's title, Prysm. The layout, designed by Mojo Barriers' CAD specialists in cooperation with Perry's production team, featured a secondary barrier line within the 'v', used to create a custom 'golden circle' for fans to get up close and personal to the Roar star.

Justin Timberlake's 20/20 Experience toured with 18m of Mojo's stage barriers to provide crowd control solutions across all of its UK and European dates. The tour also engaged Mojo B

UK - Manchester-based dbn Lighting supplied lighting production and rigging for five out of the eight primary stages at the 2014 Parklife Weekender festival in the city's Heaton Park and LED screens for one of these five plus one other arena.

dbn has been the lighting supplier for the festival organised by Ground Control since it started five years ago, since when it has grown in stature, popularity and physical size. Last year, it moved from the original site in Platt Fields to Heaton Park to allow for expansion and this year the capacity was increased to 70,000.

dbn's project manager Pete Robinson created an individual production design for each area, all of which served as eye-catching backdrops for the heterogeneity of acts appearing over the two days.

He comments, "It was great to be involved again! We are all really excited to see the festival develop and to be ab

Europe - The internationally famous boy band New Kids On The Block came to Europe for a month of gigs. Their production manager Chris Roberts contacted All Access Staging with the stage design for the tour. It consisted of Versa stage risers stepping down to make various levels that spanned the stage 40' wide and 12' deep.

He also required each step to have LED on the front edge and to be controlled individually to enhance the lighting design by Joshua Koffman. This was achieved by inserting LED strip into the Versa decks extrusion. All the cable management was done in the underside of the deck with all the LED power supplies living in this space.

All the decks packed onto set carts and once unpacked required one loom to be attached each day to get them to work. This method with the LED has been used on many tours with All Access and has been very successful. It allows set edg

USA - Quite a few magical things have happened to Pentatonix since the group won first prize in NBC-TV's hit programme The Sing Off in 2011. They released a YouTube video that garnered 10m views in one week, had a number one hit on the Billboard charts, and performed before sellout crowds around the world. The real magic, though, isn't what happened to this group of five young cappella artists from Texas, it's what they create on stage, says their LD Darien Koop of Darko Design (Nashville, TN).

"It's amazing to watch them step on stage and see how they truly captivate and connect to the audience, making every single person there feel special," said Koop, who has been the LD for superstars like Sara Bareilles, Incubus and Cee Lo Green. "When I took on this project and got to know this group of very special artists, I wanted to create more than a lighting des

South Africa - ARX Systems, the Australian based designer and manufacturer of digital and analogue interface and signal processing products has announced the appointment of Johannesburg based Matrix Sound as their new distributor for South Africa.

ARX managing director Colin Park said, "Matrix Sound are a well known and long established Distribution, Sales & Rental Company in the South African Professional Audio Industry.

"Here at ARX we're looking forward to working with the Trevor Peters and his team at Matrix, they're very enthusiastic about the possibilities for the growing ARX product range amongst their extensive client base throughout South Africa."

(Jim Evans)

UK - The Britannia Stadium is the home of Premiership Football Club Stoke City. The stadium, which cost £15m, was opened in 1997 by Sir Stanley Matthews. As a top-flight arena with a capacity of 28,000 spectators, the need to clearly deliver information throughout the venue is of great importance.

From safety announcements and music, to team changes and minutes of added time, stadium announcer Steve Buxton is a busy man who carries great responsibility. On February 1st Stoke's heroes demonstrated their progress under manager Mark Hughes by putting Premiership giants Manchester United to the sword. On a memorable day for the club, Steve was putting into action some progress of his own.

Prior to that momentous day, Steve was to be found high above the pitch, behind glass and mixing his output from information received by walkie-talkie. This unsatisfactory state of affairs

UK - Richard Martin Lighting has recently taken delivery of a number of the new Clay Paky K20 B-EYEs, the fixture that has won a variety of industry awards since its launch late last year.

In such a crowded market, packed with products from other manufacturers, why have RML opted to purchase the K20 B-EYEs from Ambersphere Solutions, the exclusive UK and ROI distributors and service suppliers for Clay Paky? Gemma Jaques is RML's marketing coordinator: "We have a long term relationship with Clay Paky and many of the Ambersphere team so as soon as it became clear what a popular fixture the B-EYE was going to be we decided it was essential that we invest in them. We only took delivery of the K20 version a couple of weeks ago and we've already had lots of interest in them - their first job was the Sky Sports Awards and they went out so fast we didn't have time to get them fligh

UK - Singer songwriter Passenger (aka Mike from Brighton, as he introduces himself) may be one man busking with a guitar, but this is busking with a difference. Fans turn up in their droves to his impromptu gigs. Both they and production manager and FOH engineer Simon Kemp have discovered the benefits of Sennheiser's LSP 500 wireless loudspeakers.

Announced on his Facebook page only a matter of hours before each performance, and drawing crowds of up to a thousand at a time, Passenger's latest 'busks' have seen him perform in Manchester, Brighton and on London's South Bank outside the Tate Modern and they certainly haven't been disappointed in the quality of the audio.

Simon explains why he chose to use the LSP 500s. "I looked into this long and hard," he says. "The whole vibe of these gigs is that we need to be able to turn up anywhere and be completely self con

Israel - As the largest PA company in Israel, Sincopa Sound & Light has recently used its newly acquired Optocore digital returns racks to service major concerts by Justin Timberlake and the Rolling Stones in Tel Aviv's giant Park HaYarkon for up to 50,000 fans.

In the case of Timberlake they were able to meet the spec by deploying Optocore's sophisticated fibre distribution system comprising four XR6-FX interfaces at the FOH, stage and delay tower ends. One device was configured 8AE/8MI and the other three 8AE/8LO.

Transmission to the L-Acoustics PA and delay towers was via Optocore AES, Analogue and Ethernet on a redundant loop, with two AES lines from the DiGiCo SD-7, through a routing/summing Lake LM-44 to a total of five AES lines on the Optocore rack. These were configured for AES and analogue, while an analogue line was connected for backup.

The two Optocore stage rac

Angola - Doo.Bahr Nightclub, in the Angolan capital of Luanda, recently took delivery of the largest Martin Audio sound system ever shipped to the Portuguese speaking African country.

The work was carried out by Phil Clark and Neil Kavanagh of UK-based Old Barn Audio. They were commissioned by the owners, who also operate the Oon.Dah Restaurant below it in the Edifício Escom, Luanda's tallest tower.

Phil Clark takes up the story. "We had already designed the original system 18 months ago, with assistance from Nigel Meddemmen at Martin Audio, but it was such a roaring success that we were asked to return and make the system louder to satisfy the DJs. This we did by upgrading the nightclub with more subs, bigger amps and processing."

Doo.Bahr is one of Luanda's chicest cocktail bar/lounges with an outdoor terrace offering spectacular views. It was originally designe

Australia - Four Robe Robin MiniMes have been supplied for use throughout the Museum of Australian Democracy (MOAD) located at the Old Parliament House Building in Canberra, ACT, by Elite Sound & Lighting, also based in the city.

The fixtures are mobile and are being used for a variety of applications involving temporary exhibitions and small events which are constantly staged in the venue.

Elite is one of Australia's leading rental companies and has a substantial number of Robe products - nearly 300 moving lights - in regular hire stock.

Elite MD Darren Russell explained that they have also enjoyed a close working relationship as the in house audiovisual provider for external clients within the venue but also as a supplier to MOAD, which includes introducing them to new, interesting and appropriate technologies as and when they come to the market.

This is exactly what hap

Sweden - Lighting design for Swedish rock band Kent has again featured a strong SGM package.

LD Uffe Jansson of Hysterical Design has taken on the task of delivering Kent's two festival shows as part of their new concept Kentfest, where the Swedish band, now celebrating its 24th anniversary, provides its vision of how a festival should be.

Kent is the festival's headline act, and Uffe Jansson was determined to create a lightshow that matched their status. "For me the important thing is to accentuate the band's music with lighting to make it a great concert. It is a fine line to use the right amount of effects for each song, when you have about 600-700 fixtures," he informs.

Besides the regular festival rig, Jansson added about 120 P-5 wash lights and 35 XC-5 colour strobes exclusively for Kent's performance. "My goal was to incorporate the entire stage,

UK - When Busted/McFly supergroup McBusted announced that it was going to tour the UK in Spring 2014 the band wanted something visually spectacular, so approached LEDsynergy, via SimS custom guitars, to build five LED encrusted guitars to be a key visual element of each stage performance.

Not content to have dot-marker LEDs positioned on the neck of their guitars, McBusted wanted the entire body of each guitar encrusted as well. The three lead and two bass guitars were developed and tested in around five weeks and delivered well before final rehearsals and the opening performance just prior to Easter.

Ultra compact SMD LEDs were used as they are both lightweight and cost effective; having all the colours within the same thin 'chip-bulbs'. These were positioned just 10mm apart and programmed to not only display a myriad of colours but also produce moving patterns and even full

UK - East Anglia-based CEG productions has added a range of Robe Robin lighting fixtures to its rental stock - with fixtures already out on dry and wet hire across the company's diverse range of customers.

CEG's recent investment from Robe includes the Robin Pointe, Robin LEDWash 600, Robin LEDBeam 100 and Robin CycFX8.

CEG's director Ben Bowles explains, "After embarking on a thorough investigation of fixtures that are available on the market, we picked the Robin range. We already own a small selection of Robe's AT series and so we had experienced the high level of customer support from the manufacturer. It was only natural to extend our product range with these new products.

"The Pointe is an in credibly flexible and useful fixture - proving very popular with our growing base of LD clients. We're most excited about the CycFX 8 - although this fixture is a punt fo

UK - National conference and live events services provider Saville Audio Visual has just been appointed as AV supplier to the Jockey Club Racecourses for the Northwest region.

The appointment covers flagship racing venues at Haydock Park, Aintree and Carlisle racecourses. Saville has provided support for events in the venues many times and both parties felt the time was right to enter into a strategic partnership aimed at providing the best possible technical event support for the venues clients.

Carl Pastor, operations manager at Aintree Racecourse commented, "The established close links formed with Saville and the strengths offered by their network of distribution outlets in the North West means that together we can offer a great package to existing and new customers at our three North West venues."

Saville has over 40 years experience in delivering audio visual

Brazil - Allen & Heath is playing an important role in the playback, broadcast and transmission of the 2014 FIFA World Cup taking place in Brazil. Supplied by distribution partner, Teleponto. multiple Allen & Heath consoles are being used at several stadiums, in various remote broadcast trucks, and in the master control rooms.

Fox Sports Brazil, a key broadcaster of the games, is using a GLD-80 digital mixer connected via Dante to 3 LAWO consoles and 3 RTS matrixes for broadcasts from Rio de Janeiro. Broadcaster, Sigma, is using a Qu-16 and a Qu-24 compact digital mixer, plus two iDR-16 and an iDR-48 iLive MixRacks.

Fox Sports' Sao Paulo studio installed a GLD-80 earlier this year. As part of the system, an AR2412 remote I/O rack was selected as a master unit, with two AR84 expander racks installed in the Fox studio with the mixer. This system is being used to provide audio fe

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