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Germany - Lab.gruppen will once again be making an appearance at the Messe in Frankfurt in 2013, coinciding with the Prolight+Sound and Musikmesse exhibitions on 10-13 April.

The company is using the occasion to launch a brand new product to market, and while details are being kept strictly under wraps until the official launch in April, a dedicated website - now live at www.thegamechanges.com - hints at what's to come.

However, visitors who want to see the latest innovation from the leading amplifier manufacturer will need to venture into completely new territory, as Lab.gruppen and Lake take over a prime location in the lobby of Hall 4.2 (the hall itself isn't in use) alongside fellow TC Group brands Tannoy, TC Electronic and TC Helicon and distributed brand Dynaudio.

"We won't be making our usual appearance at Prolight+sound in Hall 8.0 this year, but we'll sure be m

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USA - Kid Rock and his band, Twisted Brown Trucker, are once again rolling across the US with two months of arena shows between February and April. Along for the ride are not only opening acts Buckcherry and Hellbound Glory, but also another "old friend" - Sound Image's L-Acoustics K1 system.

The 2013 Rebel Soul tour, in support of Kid Rock's latest album of the same name, marks the sixth year that Steve 'Half Pint' Cross has manned FOH for the group. With John 'Haircut' Tompkins once again serving as systems engineer, and Parnelli Award-winning audio system tech Vic 'Beaker' Wagner assisting with PA. setup and optimization, the tour is taking advantage of a full complement of K1, Kudo and Kara loudspeakers, all powered by LA8-equipped LA-RAK.

Similar to Kid Rock's touring system from his Born Free tour with Sheryl Crow two years ago, the main house sys

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UK - The reconciliation of Status Quo - the Frantic Four - John Coghlan, Alan Lancaster, Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi - formed the highlight of a recent feature-length film documenting the history of Status Quo. So when, for nine UK shows only, the band's classic line-up took to the stage again, the tickets were in more demand than air guitars at a headbangers convention . . . and Yamaha digital mixing consoles played their full part in reuniting the band on stage for the first time in over 30 years.

"Nobody's trying to pretend that it's 1976 again," says front of house engineer Andy May, owner of one of the very first Yamaha PM5D digital consoles to roll off the production line. "But these shows are for the 'hardcore' fans, so we have tried to put on a good, old-fashioned rock'n'roll show."

He and lighting designer Pat Marks have succeeded admirably in t

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Germany - Goethe University Frankfurt am Main is a modern, research-oriented university in the heart of Germany. As a Stiftungsuniversität (a university privately funded by a foundation) and citizens' university, it is closely associated with the city and the region of Frankfurt. Westend

Campus Westend of the Goethe University Frankfurt nestles in a burst of parkland, yet directly borders Frankfurt's downtown, boasting a wealth of eateries, shops, theatres and other recreational facilities. The buildings of Campus Westend are based around the Neo-Realist IG Farben Building , while immediately beyond the campus boundaries you can find splendid art deco residences and cutting-edge modernist architecture.

The House of Finance building is part of a gigantic investment by the State of Hesse to build a new site for the Goethe University. The House of Finance is encompassing 14,000

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Austria - Allen & Heath's iLive digital mixing system was used for the recent Regions of Climate Action (R20) conference in Vienna.

R20 is a non-profit environmental organisation founded by former Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the support of the United Nations. A coalition of sub-national governments, private companies, international organisations, NGOs and academic and financial institutions, R20 supports governments building a green economy.

The two day conference gathered nearly 600 participants, and was hosted by Schwarzenegger. Local broadcast company, RadioMax, led by production manager, Martin Jeschke, was appointed to manage all technical aspects, and freelancer, Andreas Putz, was appointed chief audio engineer.

Based in Austria, Putz specialises in live sound engineering for music and corporate events and also specialises in multimedia AV desig

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USA - In the weeks leading up to the opening of the Cedar Street Courtyard music venue in Austin, Texas, America's live music capital, the venue was already drawing noise concerns. Due to its close proximity to residences and other establishments, Cedar Street Courtyard was looking to minimize its contribution to the noise pollution problem, and RoomMatch loudspeakers and PowerMatch amplifiers from Bose Professional Systems Division were able to solve these issues by controlling the sound with "extraordinary precision".

Nashville-based consultant Steve Durr was called in to recommend a sound system whose sonic quality would keep it competitive with the city's many other music venues, while at the same time keeping the sound highly controlled and away from reflective surfaces, and keeping the energy channelled within the venue and away from neighbouring residences.

Th

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UK - This year's Winter Jam Tour has had upwards of 300,000 attendees and sold out 23 arena shows to date. Headlined by TobyMac, the 10-artist, 44-city concert tour is powered by a potent system built around the Meyer Sound Milo line array supplied by Blackhawk Audio of Whitehouse, Tenn.

Winter Jam serves up a wide range of music styles-from the dub step of the Capital Kings to the acoustic pop of Jamie Grace, the guitar rock of Red and the rap of headliner TobyMac.

"It's a challenge for the PA because you can't simply tune it for a certain style," says Jerry Holcomb, production manager and one of the FOH engineers on the tour. "Fortunately, the Meyer system shines on all of them. It's a very musical PA at any level. It doesn't have to be loud. The lighter bands early on all sound great, and by the time TobyMac comes on it's still very high fidelity-only much lo

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Australia - The Hills SVL Group has been appointed distributor for L-Acoustics. The agreement between the Hills SVL Group and L-Acoustics covers Australia and New Zealand and sees the Hills SVL Group promoting and supporting the range through its seven sales offices and warehouses across Australia and NZ.

Don McConnell, head of product, for the Hills SVL Group, commented, "We're delighted to be involved with such a respected and innovative company. The timing of the agreement is perfect with new products including ARCS WIDE, ARCS Focus and ARCS II sure to create a lot of interest. This along with respected line source products such as Kiva, Kara and Kudo, and the coaxial range, provides us with a wide yet complementary product offering. We're looking forward to introducing the full range of products to our customers. We know they'll be impressed."

Tim McCall, sales m

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UK / Sweden - Working in collaboration with the production team at this year's Eurovision Song Contest, PLASA is pleased to announce plans for a unique event: PLASA Focus: Backstage Malmö, taking place on 7-8 May, one week prior to Eurovision's live broadcasts, in Malmö, Sweden.

As one of the world's most-watched live music productions, attracting in excess of 100m television viewers each year, the Eurovision Song Contest has become a major annual showcase for the technologies at the cutting edge of the show production industry.

This year's Eurovision Song Contest, produced by the European Broadcast Union (EBU) and SVT, the national broadcaster of last year's winning nation, Sweden, will be preceded by PLASA Focus: Backstage Malmö - an opportunity for industry professionals to take a first-hand look at these technologies in context.

The event will include a series of excl

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UK - Manchester-based lighting and rigging specialists dbn created an elegant, bespoke, self climbing, ground support truss design to achieve the perfect positioning for key production equipment in The Pavilion Suite at Ascot Racecourse, Berkshire.

This allowed a conference and awards event to be staged in-the-round; ensured that all delegates in the room had a clear view of the proceedings with the installation of 16 plasma screens in strategic positions ... and maximised the very low and idiosyncratically shaped headroom of the space.

dbn's project manager was Nick Todd and the company was working for event producers, WRG.

The Pavilion Suite is a long rectangular room with a very low ceiling height of just under three metres down each side but up to five metres in the middle.

In addition to making this full ceiling area into usable space ... the other big challenge was a

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The Netherlands - Ampco Flashlight Rental BV has announced the appointment of Dennis van der Haagen, who has joined its board as commercial and operational director.

Van der Haagen, for the last 17 years the leader of one of Holland's most successful live entertainment production companies, Sightline Productions, brings his enthusiasm and commercial management skills to aid the growth of Ampco Flashlight, the leading technical production group in the Netherlands with expertise that spans audio, lighting, video, rigging and every related service.

Dennis van der Haagen commented, "Sightline Productions has grown to the level that, from the foundation of the company, we always had in mind. It's with a lot of satisfaction to hand over the daily management to the safe hands of a younger generation that has grown up within the company.

"And now, I have decided to work fo

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Germany - MilTec (UK) Ltd will be using the Prolight and Sound show in Frankfurt to launch their new Blakite and Blakite TR ranges of speakers.

The new speaker will be built entirely in the UK. "We wanted to help bring back manufacturing to Britain and to fly the flag for home grown products." said technical director Graham Gosden. "We will be using high quality materials and components with a hard wearing, professional finish. The speakers will be made from European birch ply and will be fitted with high quality drivers supplied by British and European manufacturers. Manufacturing in the UK will also enable us to greatly improve stock control."

The new speakers will replace the highly successful TP range which has been a standard fixture in clubs, bars, schools and rental companies for the past three years.

The Blakite mid/top speakers will all include p

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Germany - The annual trip to Frankfurt signals the launch of a brand new product for Audient this year. Breaking new ground for the British signal processing manufacturer and putting its young, creative R&D team to full use, the company is keeping the identity of the product under wraps until Musikmesse, when the unveiling will take place at the Audient booth: Hall 5.1 D73.

The company's 9500-strong Facebook fan base and 2000 Twitter followers will be kept in the virtual loop with clues, and a preview competition in the countdown to the show's opening on 10 April. "Show news and product information will continue to be beamed around the world directly from the stand during the four-day international trade fair, so Audient's clients, distributors and dealers will be fully informed. Whether they can't be at the show, or are tied up in meetings it's important that they don't mi

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USA - Usher, Diddy, Macklemore and Bun B is just a short list of acts that Allen&Heath consoles were used to stream the experience at this year's South by Southwest music conference, one of the world's largest music conferences, just concluded in Austin, TX and Allen & Heath digital consoles were used to stream the experience live to millions of fans around the world. Allen & Heath partnered with The Fader Fort and Dell to stream more than 50 acts during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival (12-17 March). The festival attracted an affluent crowd of music executives and aficionados, technology geeks and celebrities.

The Fader Fort presented by Converse and powered by Dell, has the reputation of being the spot to see live music during SXSW. This year it brought together a mix of today's most innovative and emerging artists as well as many notables including.

"We wer

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UK - Students at Backstage Academy have undergone a series of live sound masterclasses delivered by sector-leading professionals as part of the training centre's mission to align industry skills and knowledge with education.

The Academy draws upon the insight gained through its links to the production rehearsal studio and set construction operation LS-Live, to promote the teaching of current working practices, methods and technologies in the entertainment industry.

The month-long Live Sound module on the Academy's Foundation Degree in Live Events Production (validated by The University of Bolton) was delivered by audio engineer, author and writer Dave Swallow, who held training sessions on The Science of Sound, Digital Sound, EQ, Dynamics, FX Live Sound mixing, and by Nigel Pease of Selva Sound who delivered Pro Tools 101 training.

The module featured training sessions by Fu

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UK - As part of a £24m refurbishment project, the Allianz Park stadium in North London, brand new home to Saracens Rugby Club, now sports a concert-standard audio system designed and installed by Richard Nowell of RNSS Ltd. Working with audio consultant Roger Lindsey who was brought in by Saracens CEO Edward Griffiths, Nowell specified equipment from a number of manufacturers, including a significant amount of EM Acoustics equipment for the new East stand.

The brief from Griffiths, who has driven the project from its inception, was quite clear. He felt that rugby fans deserved better audio than that delivered by the often aging systems seen in many rugby grounds. His view was that expectations are higher now than they used to be thanks to the influx of technology into peoples' homes and better, more sophisticated systems in most music venues. He wanted to be able to offer

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Italy - Is now the time to challenge the traditional concepts of how to mix a live concert? Igor Fiorini of VDM Studio in Rome certainly thinks so and he is not alone. For some years now, the recording industry has used DAWs to record critical concerts with admirable reliability and Pyramix has already been used on Olympic opening and closing ceremonies with no issues at all; so why not mix a concert live with the same technology.

Not only does this reduce the size of the rig needed, it also introduces many less obvious advantages. It opens up the opportunity to use a huge array of plug-ins, offers large channel counts without taking up any more space in the auditorium and offers higher resolution DSP than is generally available with a conventional live mixing console.

The concert in mid-February that gave the opportunity to put theory into practice featured the renowned Frenc

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Germany - German electronic musician and actor, Paul Kalkbrenner, has embarked on a pan-European tour, with Berlin-based Complete Audio fielding a Martin Audio MLA PA system to provide coverage for up to 10,000-seat arenas.

André Rauhut's company first introduced Martin Audio's multi-cellular loudspeaker array system to the artist's production back in 2011, when the two operations started working together. "We first used an MLA/MLX rig for a big outdoor show," remembers Rauhut. "They really loved how the system sounded, and as a result, they have since continued to work with us. MLA has become vital to the quality of the live sound."

For the current Guten Tag tour, which takes in most European countries, Complete Audio are providing a total of 26 MLA enclosures, two MLD down-fills, 16 MLA Compacts and 18 MLX subs (scalable to suit the venue).

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UK - The organisers of the Shakedown Festival and the new Love Supreme Jazz Festival have confirmed Flare Audio as their preferred sound supplier for 2013.

For the past two years Flare has provided the sound for Shakedown's Supercharged Dance Stage, which has played host to artists including Zane Lowe, Chase and Status, Knife Party, The Freemasons and Kissy Sell Out.

Receiving positive feedback from artists and audience members alike, Flare's range of speaker systems "impressed festival organisers so much they have asked Flare to provide the sound for the entire festival this year, as well as for their new Love Supreme Jazz Festival," says the company.

The festivals' promoter Nick Beveridge commented: "Flare Audio will be providing both festivals with the best speakers I've ever heard in a field. With the introduction of Flare's new Space technology to complem

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USA - It's only right and proper that d&b audiotechnik should feel a special warmth for Milwaukee USITT, "Any town that has a famous song about beer is OK with us," said d&b USA marketing manager Roger Keim, "It even has a German name." But there is a serious intent to USITT that's not to be ignored, that's why d&b chose this event to launch ArrayCalc V7 in the USA. "This is a hub for US audio professionals," continued Keim, "These users will quickly realise that ArrayCalc V7 is a potent modelling tool in the designer's arsenal." Loudspeakers on display included models from the V and E-Series, and several elements from the d&b White range.

The essence of the new ArrayCalc V7 is its ability to perform acoustic simulations with mixed point source and line array system configurations; notably the White range installation products from the xS-

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USA - Behringer has unveiled its Eurolive B207MP3, a multi-purpose, 150-Watt, active loudspeaker designed for vocal and/or keyboard monitoring, multimedia, press conferences, and other applications where space is at a premium. Based on the company's hugely popular B205D, the B207MP3 takes high-efficiency loudspeaker design to an entirely new level, one that is as feature-rich as it is versatile, says the company.

The B207MP3 features a built-in high-performance MP3 player for playing audio files from a USB stick, three-band EQ, and built-in four-channel mixer that accepts XLR, TRS and RCA inputs. Phantom power is provided for condenser microphones and one input allows connecting a Hi-Z instrument without the need for an external DI. There is also a dedicated stereo input for keyboards, MP3, CD or other sources.

The B207MP3 is compact and light enough to be mounted on a mic sta

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Olivier Awards - Michael Frayn and Gillian Lynne will be given prizes for their outstanding contribution to theatre at this year's Olivier Awards ceremony. They will both receive their Special Awards at the event, which is taking place at the Royal Opera House on 28 April and will be hosted by Hugh Bonneville and Sheridan Smith. Frayn is best known for writing his 1982 play Noises Off as well as dramas including Copenhagen and Democracy. Lynne has choreographed more than 50 Broadway, West End and international stage productions including musicals Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.

Downsizing - Irish alternative rockers My Bloody Valentine and US singer-songwriter Rodriguez are to headline this year's scaled-down Hop Farm Festival in Kent. Promoter Vince Power said the festival, the sixth to be held since 2008, would be over two days, on

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UK - Queen guitarist Brian May and Broadway star Kerry Ellis played a set in support of endangered tigers at London's iconic St Pancras station, with sound provided by HK Audio's new Linear 5 speaker system.

May and Ellis were playing in support of the Born Free Foundation, which works to prevent individual animal suffering, protect threatened species and keep wildlife in the wild.

Sound at the event came from an HK Audio Linear 5 Big Venue Pack, supplied by Hertfordshire-based entertainment and production firm Mr H Productions.

The Linear 5 Big Venue Pack contains four LSUB2000A active 2x12" subs, two L5115FA Mid/Hi active cabinets and four L5112XA multi functional active cabinets configured as stage monitors. The Front of House system delivers approximately 6.8kw, which was more than loud enough for May and Ellis' six song set.

The pair played classics like Born

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UK - The Conference and Live Events division of leading UK audio visual services provider Saville Audio Visual have recently taken delivery of eight new Roland V-800HD Multi-format Live Video Switchers. Featuring High Definition picture quality and eight multi format channels with independent scalers as well as a variety of output formats including a built-in multi-viewer, the V-800HD Live Video Switcher is ideal for live event and corporate productions as well as web streaming. The addition of the V-800HD to the Saville inventory fits perfectly with recent investment in HD projectors and cameras, providing support for full HD compatible sources and program output devices across the extensive Saville network.

The 8 input / 6 output units feature 10-bit Internal processing with built-in frame synchronisers and scalers on all inputs alongside full SDI support covering 3G, HD and S

  1. Meyer Sound appoints Middle East manager
  2. Olivier Awards with MasterCard 2013 nominations
  3. RCF extends entry-level amplifier range
  4. JoeCo adds more features to BlackBox family
  5. Sennheiser UK launches Sound Academy
  6. RSG adds new lineup of VC-1 converters
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