USA - Acoustic Technology Group has announced a strategic alliance with Knitting Factory Entertainment to upgrade all existing sound systems in their venues as well as installation in future Knitting Factory venues worldwide. The alliance was forged after extensive listening tests at a recent ATG demonstration of their LS1000 system in Los Angeles.

The alliance will provide continuity of equipment and sound quality throughout the chain. The first venue to upgrade to an LS1000 system is in Boise, Idaho followed by The Federal in Los Angeles. These venues will be replacing EAW and Meyer systems respectively.

"The alliance with The Knitting Factory venues is much appreciated recognition of the superiority of our LS1000 system and the technology we have developed over that of t

Nepal - Investment in Alcons Audio systems is being made by cinema owners in an ever-increasing number of countries across the globe. The company has recently broken yet more new territory with the installation of systems in Nepal.

Located in the Sundhara district of the capital Kathmandu is QFX Civil Mall, the country's largest shopping area, covering a total of 25,000sq.ft.This houses a new three-screen multiplex cinema, the QFX Cinemas, which are capable of seating up to 939 viewers at any one time. This is Nepal's first truly world-class Cineplex and is one of a trio of cinemas owned by QFX in the city.

QFX is the brand name of Quest Entertainment (QE), which was launched in Nepal a decade ago with the QFX Jai Nepal Cinema. The company is also involved in film distribution and production and as such has a thorough understanding of how important high quality sound is to mod

USA - Meyer Sound is helping SoundGarden Hall, Philadelphia's newest live music concert venue, deliver an all-encompassing experience. Since its September opening, the 2,100-capacity live event space has been serving the local nightlife scene with electronic, alternative, rock, pop, and R&B music to great acclaim. Artists who have performed here include Paul van Dyk, Cosmic Gate, Super8 & Tab, Nadia Ali, and Tritonal.

Ian Hoffer of Aurora Sound and Light Design LLC provided design, sale, and installation for SoundGarden Hall, which was handled by several personnel who also worked on the Meyer Sound-equipped Rumor nightclub one year earlier. Rumor's UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers were a hit with management, so when the time came to design SoundGarden Hall's system, the choice was clear.

Hoffer says, "The people involved in SoundGarden Hall were so impressed with the UPJ-1Ps I u

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LD Systems ICOA PRO series – high-performance coaxial PA speakers for professional demands

The popular ICOA PA systems have been further developed to include two active full-range coaxial speakers – ICOA PRO 12 A and ICOA PRO 15 A – as well as the active 21″ bass-reflex PA subwoofer ICOA PRO SUB 21 A. With its professional features and high output power, the ICOA PRO series is aimed at ambitious bands, musicians and DJs as well as hire companies and commercial customers looking for a compact, robust and powerful PA sound system. The ICOA PRO series is rounded off with modern connection and control options via Bluetooth 5.1 and the specially developed ICOA PRO app, for use on smartphones and tablets.

ld-systems.com/icoapro

USA - X Factor, the popular UK television competition that migrated across the pond, is now in its sophomore season in the U.S. The series debuted this past September on Fox with snarky Brit personality/producer Simon Cowell at the helm with a pair of pop mavens (Britney Spears and Demi Lovato) and industry stalwarts (LA Reid) judging a slew of hopeful singers vying for a five million dollar purse.

The Los Angeles-based production took a bit of a different tact this year for its audio footprint, adopting one of the newly released DiGiCo SD5 consoles and a pair of SDRacks at FOH, with an SD10 for monitors - provided by ATK Audiotek - connected via an Optocore fibre optics network. [The six-city audition tour also employed DiGiCo SD8 and SD9 consoles.] ATK, the company that handled the Grammy production, successfully made the switch to DiGiCo for the elite music awards show

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ETC Halcyon Silent

High End Systems Halcyon Silent builds on ETC’s legacy of fanless automated fixtures by incorporating features from the highly sought-after Halcyon family. Halcyon Silent perfectly balances silent operation with brilliant output of 18,400 lumens and high-impact features. 

For more information visit us at www.etcconnect.com

UK - Production Resource Group is continuing its relationship with producer Michael Rose Limited. MRL's general Manager, Dave McNeilly contacted PRG back in the summer of 2011 with regards to PRG providing them with a temporary flying system for the production of Aladdin at a purpose built theatre at the London Piazza in the O2 Arena. PRG supplied a custom Flying System, rigging and lighting for the production.

The theatre structure consists of a ground support tower supplied by Star Events and positioned over the stage with an arena tented structure forming the auditorium and connected to the ground support.

PRG designed and installed a 44 x bar Flying System into a Star Events ground support structure, this was managed by PRG's senior account manager, Jay Call. It was 20m high and designed to mimic a theatre fly tower. The system is almost entirely automated using bot

UK - PR Lighting has added the new, super-bright XLED 1037 to its popular XLED moving head portfolio.

Characterised by the use of 37 x 10 Watt RGBW LEDs (containing four colours in one), another key feature is its wide linear zoom, with beam angle ranging from 12° to 54°.

Additional features include a linear CTO from 3200K to 10000K, linear colour mixing with macro function, , 0-100% linearly adjustable dimmer and an electronic strobe (0 to 25fps).

In terms of movement, the XLED 1037 offers speed adjustable pan and tilt (with pan angle of 0°-540° and tilt of 0°-270°) with auto position correction function. It also enables auto speed adjustment of the fans, brightness and contrast adjustment and boasts an advanced cooling system, with LED lamp overheating and DMX512 control display statuses.

There are various control options, since the XLED 1037 is W

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Create new traditions – Cameo P6 - High Output Full-Spectrum Ellipsoidal

Cameo's P6 is a future-proof LED profiler with a powerful 600 W RGBACL engine and 16,000 lumens. It’s an energy-efficient replacement for 2.5 kW halogen profile lights in theatres and venues. With excellent light quality and natural colour rendering, it fits perfectly in theatres, musicals, TV studios, congresses, and live events.

With an LED life of 50,000 hours and low power use, the P6 cuts energy costs and supports the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ goals for climate neutrality by 2050. It also meets updated eco-design rules for lighting.

www.cameolight.com/p6profile

UK - Immersive teamed up with Tait Technologies and Universal Music to deliver video pixel mapping for the X Factor's Final, broadcast, live on 9 December from the MEN Arena, Manchester.

With a live audience of 12,000 the X Factor's dramatic and nail biting final between James Arthur and Jahmene Douglas was hosted by Dermot O'Leary alongside a panel of judges that comprised Gary Barlow, Nicole Scherzinger, Tulisa and Louis Walsh.

The show saw Immersive's multi-skilled team collaborate with production designers Florian Wieder and Matthias Kublik, along with lighting director Dave Davey, to deliver an ever-changing, visually exciting televisual spectacular.

Video was mapped across the entire upper tier of the X Factor audience by way of hand held pixel tablets, which ultimately formed an organic moving video screen as the shows special guest, Grammy Award winning

Greece - Turbosound loudspeakers are a key part of the ambience in Athens's luxury Catwalk Café-Bar. The bar, situated near the seafront in Greece's capital, invited local suppliers Metro Audio Systems to install ten Impact65T two-way loudspeakers and two TSB-110 sub-bass speakers.

"Catwalk Café-Bar features a warm, inviting, but timelessly classy atmosphere," comments Pavlos Symperas from Metro Audio Systems. "The bar is open day and night so the flexibility of the Turbosound speakers are an important part of this changing feel. They help to set the tone with their clear, high quality sound reproduction."

The biggest challenge for Metro Audio Systems was to deliver powerful quality sound, yet ensure that the system had an elegant and distinctive design. "We believed that the Impact series was the best fit for the project," continues

USA - Encompass Technologies has completed a major sound and video installation for the sizeable new restaurant/sports bar/nightclub, John Barleycorn River North in downtown Chicago.

The fast-growing integrator had worked on a host of other venues for owners Sam Sanchez and Michael Gonzalez. As Tim Pickett, principal for Encompass, explains, "There are four John Barleycorns and we've been involved with all of them, two from the ground up and two complete rehabs. Sam and Michael also own two Moe's Cantina clubs that we worked on.

"For John Barleycorn River North, they definitely raised the bar several notches with a substantial budget of $285,000," adds Pickett. "Unlike the club in Schaumburg where there was a focus on live sound, John Barleycorn North functions as a sports bar and restaurant during the day and becomes a nightclub with a DJ upstairs that can

The Netherlands - SGM has kept up its domination of major European dance spectaculars this year by putting on an awesome display at the GelreDome football stadium in Arnhem.

Promoted by Dutch entertainment specialists, Q-dance, Qlimax is considered to be one of the leading hardstyle events in the calendar and contains some of the most sophisticated production values of any one-off spectacular.

Lighting/production designers Jonas Smith, Tamil van Draanen and Marcel Binnenmarsch chose a total of 24 SGM Six Pack (SP-6) blinders, operating from the VIP decks, 28 powerful SGM P-5 washlights and 25 x X-5 white strobes flooding the stage for a crowd of more than 30,000 who attended Qlimax last month.

The promoters remarked on how impressed they were with all the SGM effects, but singled out the P-5 as being the best product they had used in any Qlimax show - according

USA - The progressive Bloomington Centre for the Performing Arts (BCPA) in Illinois recently carried out a technical upgrade that has seen a number of GLP's impression Spot One and Volkslicht Zoom LED fixtures replacing traditional tungsten heads.

These were supplied by GLP dealer, JR Lighting Design, Inc. following an experiment by the venue's technical manager Rodney Stickrod to see whether the new generation of LED lighting was technically capable of providing a full theatrical alternative.

BCPA had wanted to make the upgrade in its newly renovated 1,200 seat main performance auditorium. Having seen the GLP fixtures at LDI in Orlando, he was introduced to Jason Reberski, President of JR Lighting Design Inc., who set up a demo.

The traditional tungsten wash system, used primarily in saturated colors, consumed thousands of watts of electricity. "Aside from energy savin

Norway - German media and broadcast specialists Studio Hamburg MCI have followed up the installation of four independently-configured BroaMan automatic routing systems for Swedish national broadcaster SVT, by specifying the same brand for an OB van fit-out at NRK in Norway.

This was the first project MCI had executed for NRK and was the result of winning a competitive tender. A BroaMan fibre solution had been in their mind right from the outset, according to project manager, Götz Ahlert.

Explaining the challenge, he said, "The task was to set up quickly, and with a minimum of cabling, a reliable connection between up to four TV cameras and an OB van - connected via satellite to the broadcast centre in Oslo. The BroaMan fibre units are designed to be located in a stagebox on the camera side, and inside the OB truck on the corresponding side."

BroaMan supplied was a

Albania - Albania is today experiencing strong growth in various areas. This is evident from the development of tourism on the coast and in its beautiful historic castles, its enhanced communications network, which connects it today with the rest of Europe, and the many events that take place each year in its major cities.

Miss Shqiperia 2012 is one of these. It is a beauty contest unlike others, because, as director and producer Petri Bozo points out, "it is first and foremost a cultural event. It has taken place every year since 1998 in Albanian historic sites and castles." In 2012, the contest took place outdoors at a beautiful castle founded by the Romans about 2000 years earlier in the town of Kavaja, near Tirana.

The importance of the event, which was broadcast on all the national television channels, was also clear from the first class TV crew involved. The It

UK - It has been three monumental years for Manchester stalwarts Elbow. Yet whatever their successes, a more unassuming and firmly grounded band you could not wish to meet. This doesn't mean they're averse to the odd risk, as show designer Cate Carter found out on their recent flurry of UK arena dates.

"The tour was to be short, just six dates and we had no production rehearsal. By definition I needed time to have an intricate show pre-programmed on a desk powerful enough to run a complex structure of cues and give me the time and space to be objective: More than anything I wanted time to look at what I was doing and how that affected the way I called the follow spots, the Kinesys movement cues, and how the lighting and video sat together in the show." A taxing self-imposed brief, yet Carter chose this moment to migrate to a new operating system, a grandMA2.

"I'

France - Renkus-Heinz has announced the appointment of a new distributor for France. Renkus-Heinz has signed an agreement with leading French distribution company SoundCo, and from now on they will handle the distribution of Renkus-Heinz products for the French market. They will also cover the North Africa countries Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, on a non-exclusive basis.

With offices in the Paris suburb and a sales agent team, SoundCo offers its customers support throughout the country.

The company works in all of the entertainment technology sectors including the live sound / PA rental market, the MI market (including both online and retail outlets), installation and system integration companies and the broadcast industry, and more besides.

Another string to the company's bow is the direct import and distribution of pro audio products. SoundCo is the exclusive distributor f

Belgium - Audio XL, Nexo's distributor in Belgium, has supplied PS15 and PS10 systems for a high-functioning multimedia environment in The Villa, a new club and restaurant that has opened in Antwerp. The equipment was specified and installed by local systems integrator ASB, the first time the company has worked with Nexo products.

"The client chose Nexo based on listening tests, and we supported his choice because we knew that we would get great service from Pascal Deneef, installation manager at Audio XL," says ASB's Mathias Jansegers.

The venue owners, working on their second project, required a high degree of system integration, with sound, lights, screens and LEDs all under BSS control. Audio is highly programmed, even down to a basic setting for when the cleaning crew are in. "The most important thing was to give my customer something that all of his staff

India - A massive spiritual convention, in which 350,0000 worshippers descended on the Indian city of Jalandhar, in the state of Punjab, over three days, saw the audio relayed over the vast site using an Optocore network, designed and supplied by the production company SOUND.COM.

Using Optocore's 2.14 protocol in a ring topology, and a combination of single- and multi-mode fibre they were able to deliver the signal digitally over the large coverage area.

Warren Dsouza's Mumbai-based live event production company has long been an advanced exponent of Optocore technology, exploiting large systems for events including the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi and The Oman Tattoo in Muscat. For this mega peace rally, called the Divya Jyoti Jagriti Sansthan (DSM 2012), SOUND.COM. was selected based on its excellent reputation.

"The organisers first needed the reassurance t

UK - The first of Robe's new Robin DLF LED Wash lights to go on tour in the UK were just ideal for Rob Sinclair's lighting design for The Human League's recent UK tour - which incorporated ten of the PLASA Innovation Award winning fixtures.

The rig also contained several other Robe fixtures, including five DigitalSpot 7000 DTs, which together with the DLF Washes, were used to illuminate and project on to a scenic back wall above and behind the band, constructed from ten Airformance Design 'Waben Blocks'.

The concept of utilising the Blocks originally came from lead vocalist Philip Oakey, who had seen these at a festival during the summer and thought they would look very cool onstage - which they did.

All lighting and digital lighting equipment for the tour was supplied by Blackburn-based HSL - who have the largest stock of Robe fixtures in the UK - and like to ensure that al

Denmark - DPA Microphones' new hand-held d:facto vocal microphone delivered quality results for Sting, who used four of them on his recent Back to Bass tour throughout Europe and the Far East.

Sting's front of house engineer Howard Page says, "The d:facto's definition and clarity was a huge update on our Sting shows and worked just as well for the in-ear monitors that Sting listened to. It is an absolutely unique microphone that has an amazing transient response and just the right amount of proximity without the normal problems of on/off tonal differences."

Page, senior director of engineering at Clair Brothers in the USA, was recommended the DPA d:facto mic by recording engineer Donal Hodgson, who had been using it with great success to record Sting in the studio.

"Donal knew that I had been looking for a later technology microphone for Sting on our li

UK - Richmond Theatre in south-west London has upgraded its dimmers to Sensor3, as part of a major electrical upgrade, including the newest ETC ThruPower power control modules.

The theatre had already received a new Eos control desk and RPU (Remote Processor Unit) through ETC dealer White Light; the latest upgrade, installed by Bradbrook Electrical, saw the old dimming units - which were installed in 1996 - taken out and exchanged for the latest power control from ETC.

"We've been so impressed by the new dimming," explains chief electrician Pete Coxall. "We used to have very poor dimming curves, with lights snapping on and off, but the new dimming system provides much smoother fades. We follow the old playhouse production format, with our own rig and lighting control desks, and incoming companies load their show onto the desk. They used to have to make extensive

Saudi Arabia - Sennheiser Group has announced that its Middle East regional office has partnered with Modern Lifestyles to set up a state-of-the-art audio system for Souk Okaz public theatre in Taif, Saudi Arabia.

The historic Souk Okaz was was established 12 centuries ago and has been revived as a tourist resort in Taif. Now celebrating its sixth anniversary year, Souk Okaz which was re-established by Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal is an annual event featuring a variety of cultural events including seminars, poetic evenings and folk performances. At the heart of Souk Okaz is the public theatre which boasts a seating capacity for over 3000 people. The modern day auditorium which is built in the historic marketplace is the venue for the poetry and storytelling competitions which are the highlight of the deeply cultural event.

Eager to ensure the very best listening experie

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