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 e

UK - Nick Gray of London, UK-based creative lighting design practice Renegade designed lighting for the main British Fashion Council (BFC) Courtyard Show Space at Somerset House for London Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2013.

Offsite, he lit a variety of leading shows including Vivien Westwood, L'Wren Scott, Rocksander, Mark Fast, Kinder Aggugini and Pringle.

It's the seventh season that Gray has lit the BFC space, featuring up to five or six shows per day for a plethora of leading designers including Marios Schwab, Issa, Emilio de la Morena, Bora Aksu, Jasper Conran and numerous others.

Working for show producers Bacchus, Gray's lighting design featured a three truss format overhead - centre and two sides - running the full 25m of the catwalk.

The set this year featured a wider entranceway for the models and an elegant chevron-shaped wood / black carpet runway, all of which r

UK - Popstar Olly Murs' first ever UK TV performance of Army of Two, on ITV's Dancing on Ice, was set in motion by automation equipment from LS-Live.

The singer opened the show accompanied by his marching band of female dancers to perform his new single. As he entered onto the stage, the set was flanked either side by four of the dancers, who marched and danced up and down two 10' long travelators below that constantly moved throughout the song. Their fluid movement was mirrored by the ice-skating contestants who took it I turns to make their entrance onto the rink, all choreographed by Nathan Clarke.

Creative director for Olly Murs and staging producer for Dancing on Ice, Dan Shipton, wanted to add an exciting effect that hadn't been seen on the show before. He said: "Initially I was worried that there wouldn't be a company out there who could provid

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OPUS X4 PROFILE – the most powerful LED moving head from Cameo to date

The OPUS® X4 PROFILE is the new flagship model from Cameo and is among the most powerful LED moving heads on the market. Equipped with a 1,400-watt LED white light engine, this spot profile moving head produces an enormous light output of 50,000 lm, providing powerful spot and gobo projections on even the largest stages and much more.
www.cameolight.com

Germany - Win, design, share - connect and be the first to experience Martin's new RUSH range of affordable effect lights.

You could be the first worldwide to get your hands on Martin Professional's new range of affordable effect lights - RUSH by Martin.

Martin will be giving away some of the very first RUSH effect lights to a few lucky winners via a competition at the upcoming Prolight + Sound exhibition in Frankfurt, 10-13 April, Stand A93, Hall 9.

All visitors need to do is get a RUSH badge from the RUSH area of the Martin stand and wear it around the trade show floor. One lucky participant will be stopped and announced as the winner each day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Martin is also offering RUSH fans a chance at design stardom. Send Martin a unique design for a new RUSH t-shirt and if your design is a winner, Martin will splash it on a t-shirt for the world to se

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

USA - Rosco Laboratories, Inc has signed an agreement to acquire the assets of Los Angeles-based GAM Products Inc. The addition of GAM's widely regarded products such as GAMColor, GAM Patterns, Blackwrap and TwinSpin, among others, will dramatically expand the creative solutions Rosco offers to designers, technicians and artists, the company says.

GAM has provided high quality lighting products to the theatre and film community for more than 35 years, and Rosco says it will continue to market and promote them worldwide through its extensive global distribution network. "For existing and loyal GAM customers, it will be business as usual with GAM's entire catalog of products available through Rosco. But we're especially looking forward to leveraging our world class dealer network to expose these excellent products to new clientele," said Mark Engel, CEO of Rosco.

GAM w

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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Case Study: Hans Zimmer Live

When award winning film composer Hans Zimmer brought his smash-hit tour Hans Zimmer Live to North America fall 2024, the show's audio team sought out to bring infrafrequency bass to the show to add new depth to the show's audio experience. The team chose Danley Sound Labs.

UK - Stage Electrics has been successfully delivering training for a wide range of technical entertainment disciplines nationwide for over 10 years. New courses include Equipment Suspension aimed at professionals working specifically with rigging equipment in the theatrical and live events industry.

"The Equipment Suspension training was a great success at The Hawth and everyone found it relevant and useful to our venue," commented Quentin Whitaker, The Hawth, Crawley.

Other training topics include courses and workshops on maintenance and troubleshooting with intelligent lighting. Health & Safety and manual handling training in the entertainment environment, as well as pyrotechnics safety awareness; all designed for individuals who are responsible for health & safety at their venue or an event, freelancers and technicians who want to burden their skill set.

USA - Country singer Luke Bryan's 20-city Dirt Road Diaries Tour may have a down-home name, but its lighting inventory includes some pretty cutting-edge equipment, including Clay Paky's new A.LEDA Wash K10 and K5 LED moving heads provided by Elite Multimedia Productions.

The tour is using 12 K10 and 36 K5 fixtures as part of its "big, powerful rock 'n roll rig," says lighting designer Justin Kitchenman of Fadeup Design Group. He was introduced to the A.LEDA Series at LDI 2012 where he was "looking for the next generation moving light." After seeing the A.LEDA fixtures, "We feel we found the best the industry has to offer," he says.

The A.LEDA Series is the first professional Clay Paky product line to use LEDs as light sources. An alternative to discharge lamp wash lights, it offers all the benefits of LED technology: low energy consumption,

Egypt - Clay Paky's powerful pure-beam Sharpy luminaires dazzled fans as they enjoyed top-selling Arab singer Amr Diab's sell-out concert in Cairo recently. Lighting designer Walid El Hariry specified 66 Sharpys for the show at the 75,000-capacity Cairo Stadium where Egyptian singer Amr Diab - known as 'the Father of Mediterranean Music' - performed.

"My entire rig comprised Clay Paky fixtures," says El Hariry, "The Sharpys performed brilliantly. The strong beam they deliver give a really contemporary feel to the show. Also, by playing around with the prism, we created a variety of very distinctive looks for Amr."

Clay Paky distributor for Egypt, Cairo-based Audio Technology, which is well respected for its service and product knowledge in the Egyptian market, supplied the Sharpys. Audio Technology managing director, Emad Adly comments, "At just 189W t

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

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

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

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

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

Canada - The CAST Group of Toronto, Canada and Rushworks of Dallas, Texas have announced the integration of the award-winning BlackTrax Solution realtime tracking technology with Rushworks' VDESK Integrated PTZ Production System, adding the extra dimension of robotic camera tracking control to the arsenal of BlackTrax tracking solutions. This integration creates a cost-effective, fully automated realtime video tracking solution for just about anything from live entertainment to houses of worship.

PTZ cameras (Pan, Tilt and Zoom) are typically controlled remotely by an operator using a joystick to "frame" a shot or follow the action ... although "following" is, in reality, more about reacting than truly tracking. Some controlling devices support the creation of presets associated with user-defined positions. Most hardware controllers allow the user to position

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

Germany - Clay Paky has a formidable line-up scheduled for ProLight+Sound 2013.

Sharpy Wash 330 is an extraordinarily compact, lightweight 330 W washlight, with the luminous efficiency, graphic and optical performance of a 1000W fixture. It is extremely silent and quick, and fitted with a complete CMY color system, special colors, 6.5°-48° zoom, mechanical dimmer, beam shaping filter and motorized top-hat. It is an eco-friendly light, allowing considerable running and consumption cost savings.

The Alpha Profile 800 ST is the most modern moving beam shaper in existence today for use in theatres and studios. Clay Paky used highly sophisticated micromechanics to obtain a compact, light, silent unit with an extremely bright light and a zoom capable of producing an extraordinarily sharp, perfectly uniform beam.

Exclusive Features: miniaturized four-blade framing system, 1

Germany - Czech Republic based moving light manufacturer Robe lighting is set to launch six new products at the 2013 Prolight+Sound exhibition in Frankfurt.

Topping the list is The Pointe. This and four other innovations are from Robe's multi award-winning Robin range and also new is the latest in Robe's DigitalSpot series - the DigitalSpot 7100DT.

The Robin Pointe is a new dynamic beam, spot and wash fixture from Robe - a small, super-bright and very fast 'signature' unit with an intense and sharp parallel beam .... plus a host of features making it a truly unique and versatile lightsource.

These include a 5 - 20 degree zoom with full focus control, variable frost, two separate prism effects, a rotating and a static gobo wheel and inbuilt colour wheel.

The lightsource is a 280W Osram discharge lamp making the Pointe a dynamic, fixture for using to create WOW factors on a

USA - ETC has announced a new arrival in the Source Four family of lighting fixtures: the Source Four Mini.

At 23cm long and weighing just 740g, the Mini is the tiniest Source Four ever, but it still lives up to the family name. As Jim Uphoff, ETC Fixtures product manager, says, "Don't let the size of the Source Four Mini fool you. It may be cute, but it's a serious lighting tool. Its 50 watt lamp is brighter than you'd expect from an instrument of this size."

The Mini is designed with the DNA of the Source Four family, with crisp optics, crystal-clear image projection, a bright, even field, and user-friendly operation.

The size of the Source Four Mini means even more installations can have Source Four functionality. Joe Bokelman, ETC architectural market manager, explains, "The Source Four Mini is a perfect fit for small-scale installations, like low ceiling

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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