UK - Buckinghamshire based Lightsmiths, owned by Bruce Rutter, has made a significant investment in Clay Paky's first professional LED lighting fixtures.

The Clay Paky A.LEDA Wash range offers three models, all incorporating high output RGBW LED engines with a massive zoom range (14°-70°) and unprecedented output. In addition to these features, the Italian manufacturer has also incorporated the capacity for individual pixel mapping. Lightsmiths has invested in a notable number of all three models.

These fixtures are a viable alternative to traditional discharge washlights, and offer a full range of vivid colours that are impressive even in the brightest daylight. As was demonstrated when Lightsmiths used the fixtures at the recent Berkofest event - Berkhamsted's annual m

Japan - Located in the lively Shibuya Ward near the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, the Toho Gakuen Performing Arts College has recently been visited by one of its old Alumni; Shinichiro 'Yone' Yonekura. Yonekura is better known to the professional audio community as the head of d&b audiotechnik Japan, but it was in 1990 that he graduated from Toho Gakuen and he has carried the reputation of that college with him ever since.

"Toho Gakuen was originally established as the Tokyo Broadcast School in 1979 and was approved as an educational foundation establishment a year later," he explained. "Today four colleges comprise the campus: TG Media Training, TG Film Techniques, TG Performing Arts and TG Sound Technicians."

The purpose of Yonekura's visit was twofold; the school purchased a d&b Q-Series system from him a year earlier and he was keen to learn of the experi

Italy - Nearly 300 people attended the Illuminando le Star (Lighting the Stars) conference with Patrick Woodroffe, organised by Clay Paky in Rome. The event was sponsored by AILD, APIAS, the British Embassy in Rome and the University of Rome Tor Vergata, with the technical support of Agorà and DOC.

Lighting fans were not put off by the circumstances that made travelling difficult on the day: flooding, blocked streets and motorways, transport strikes and street demonstrations. The event's appeal - the only one of its kind in Italy - overcame every obstacle and drew people from every region of the country.

Patrick Woodroffe retraced the greatest moments of his career in the splendid setting of the Auditorium Antonianum, made even more impressive by the lights installed by Clay Paky. He particularly focused on the preparation he did for the recent London Olympics and Michael Jac

USA - Two draft Rigging Working Group standards related to the use of chain hoists in the entertainment industry are available for free download and comment at the web address below through 28 January 2013. Materially affected members of the public are invited to review them.

BSR E1.6-2 - 201x, Entertainment Technology - Design, Inspection, and Maintenance of Electric Chain Hoists for the Entertainment Industry, is part of the E1.6 powered entertainment rigging project. This draft standard covers the design, inspection, and maintenance of serially manufactured electric link chain hoists having capacity of 2 tons or less and used in the entertainment industry. This standard does not cover attachment to the load or to the overhead structure.

BSR E1.6-4 - 201x, Portable Control of Fixed-Speed Electric Chain Hoists in the Entertainment Industry, is a standard for the controls ofte

USA - LD Jason Robinson used Martin Professional's new MAC Viper Profile for the first time on the 2012 version of Farm Aid, the yearly benefit event that raises money for family farmers in the US, and found they had "all the stop I needed and more".

"The Vipers really came through for us with their intensity and zoom," Robinson commented about the award-winning 1000 W profile, supplied for the event by Upstaging. "I used them as aerial effects and as my backlight / keys for the band members."

In order to stay out of the large upstage video wall, Robinson had the Vipers trimmed at a considerable height. "They had all the horsepower we needed for camera and to cut through the video," he said. "They had all the stop I needed and more, even after I added gobo's and colour correction."

The MAC Viper Profile is the first fixture i

South Africa - 18 August saw some of South Africa's highest profile musicians come together in Johannesburg's Botanical Gardens to play at Talk Radio 702's Concert In The Park. A Coda Audio PA system and DiGiCo mixing consoles ensured that the large audience enjoyed a day to remember.

The concert drew on the heritage of the original Concert in the Park, which saw 125,000 South Africans pack out the city's Ellis Park Stadium in 1985. This year's event drew a more modest crowd, but all enjoyed a bill including Sipho Hotstix Mabuse, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Steve Kekana, PJ Powers and Hotline, Dr Victor and the Rasta Rebels, Mango Groove and Clint & Co.

The show's technical infrastructure was supplied by Sound Stylists, one of South Africa's leading production companies, which is this year celebrating its landmark 25th birthday.

The main audio system comprised 12 flown Coda Airline

USA - L-Acoustics certified provider Audio Video Electronics (AVE) of Maple Grove, Minnesota, reports that it recently installed a Kiva loudspeaker system at St. Andrews Lutheran Church in nearby Mahtomedi.

According to AVE Vice President Kevin Crow, "St. Andrews has a beautiful 1,200-seat sanctuary with a nearly five second reverb time, so going into this project, we knew that speech intelligibility was one of our primary issues of concern. Furthermore, with an 80-member choir, chamber group and huge pipe organ, St. Andrews' services feature quite an emphasis on music as well, and they were wanting to have it feel more 'present' in the sanctuary seating areas."

With those requirements in mind, AVE specified an L-Acoustics line source system featuring left and right arrays each comprised of nine KIva enclosures flown adjacent to three KIlo low-frequency extension cab

China - Robert Juliat's Hong Kong distributor, Pacific Lighting (HK) reports an extremely healthy market across the region with a bumper crop of Robert Juliat sales over the last quarter.

"The increased appetite for Robert Juliat profiles and followspots is very evident," says Pacific Lighting (HK) Ltd director, Hugh Chinnick. "We have experienced almost unprecedented non-project sales in the last few months, with some very high profile venues choosing to replace their old lantern stock with Robert Juliat fixtures or augmenting their existing RJ inventory with further additions."

The Hong Kong Cultural Centre's 1734-seat Grand Theatre, which already boasts four RJ Cyrano 2500W HMI followspots, has replaced a number of fixtures in its main rig with 42 RJ 710SX2 2500W tungsten zoom profiles. "The Grand Theatre's front of house rig was in severe need of r

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UK - The audio industry should test its products to a higher standard and publish the results in its sales material, according to a white paper released by loudspeaker manufacturer Flare Audio this month. The paper argues that a test currently used extensively by audio professionals to measure the sensitivity of loudspeakers does not tell the whole story about loudspeaker sound quality. It claims that a less well-known test, Waveform integrity (Wi), allows artists, audio professionals and the listener to compare the sound reproduction of different products much more effectively.

Flare Audio believes that loudspeakers should provide 'as pure a sound as possible', to enable an unaltered reproduction of the sound created by the musician. In its white paper, the company defines a sound as 'pure' if it loses none of its detail in the transmission from artist to listener in the proces

Italy - RCF has announced the launch of the DXT 9000 - a digital voice-alarm system with the brains of network technology and the soul of professional audio. The system will be launched formally at ISE 2013 in Amsterdam, where RCF will be demonstrating it on a dedicated stand (7H230) designed to showcase the DXT 9000 system's capabilities in real-world applications.

The DXT 9000 voice-evacuation system is completely scalable. The first fully digital PA/VA system to be designed from the ground up by RCF engineers, the DXT 9000 is sufficiently versatile to be used in almost any kind of application, from the smallest school or hotel to huge campuses that include multiple buildings.

The DXT 9000 is a distributed system in which every component, including the loudspeakers, has its own physical address, can be monitored according to the latest EN 54 standards, and can be configured

UK - NFL fever descended on London once again this October, with the annual Wembley showdown this year playing host to American Football's St Louis Rams and New England Patriots. For the sixth year in succession, London-based Integrated Security Consultants (ISC) was called upon to ensure the complete safety and security of the visit. The company demonstrated its breadth of capabilities, managing a complex close protection operation for cheerleaders of both teams, NFL officials and VIPs. ISC also provided event security management for a large fan rally held in Trafalgar Square before the match.

The fan rally, which ran from 10am to 5pm the day before the main game, attracted an estimated 10,000 fans and saw cheerleading performances by both teams as well as the cheerleaders of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who will be playing 'home' games at Wembley from 2013-16. Other entertainment

UK - With only four stands remaining, exhibitors need to act now to secure a presence at the fifth annual PLASA Focus: Leeds 2013, taking place at the Royal Armouries, on Tuesday 30 April and Wednesday 1 May 2013.

Following record attendance in 2012, the premier entertainment technology trade show in the North has attracted even more companies that are keen to access the 50% of visitors who do not attend any other trade show during the year.

Mark Priestley, project manager at Unusual Rigging explains the rationale behind their decision to book for the first time: "Although a committed supporter of PLASA, 2013 will see Unusual Rigging making its exhibitor debut at PLASA Focus. We have completed a lot of projects in the north of England and Scotland but we believe we will be able to introduce our range of services to new customers at Leeds. When we visited the show last yea

Canada - CAST Group of Toronto, Canada reports that this week begins the BETA version release of its industry-standard lighting design and previsualisation suite, wysiwyg R30 for testing by the carefully selected Beta Test Team.

CAST's Beta testing programme aims to uphold the highest level of dependability and robustness for which wysiwyg is renown by enlisting typical Members to test drive it in the field under real conditions. CAST carefully monitors the Testers and ensures a reasonable cross-section of uses in order to optimize the usefulness of the feedback. While Testers have come to expect a superior inventory of new features, R30 should serve up some surprises they never expected.

R29, released earlier this year, still continues to receive praise with its improvements that helped prove that wysiwyg is the invaluable tool that designers can't live without, and not just

Germany - Every club owner likes to see a full room; bar owners are no different. What about other public venues? When German pro audio manufacturer d&b audiotechnik announces the introduction of the next version of their ArrayCalc simulation software at ISE in Amsterdam 29-31 January, a room full of sound will become an altogether more achievable prospect.

"This is the planning tool that makes that target of fullness complete," said Ralf Zuleeg from the d&b Education and Application support department. "For any installer or integrator the new ArrayCalc Version 7 offers the ability to perform acoustic simulations quickly, easily and intuitively. One can now choose from a selection of d&b point source loudspeakers, most notably the xS-Series from the White range as well as Black range Q and E-Series loudspeakers. The White range has been specifically developed to a

Spain - In order to undertake the increasingly challenging Neuromarketing research at his Laboratory of Human-Centered Technology (known as LabHuman), at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Prof. Dr. Mariano Alcaniz Raya, needed to improve the interactive technology within a vastly improved virtual environment.

Funding from the Spanish government, in the form of an International Campus of Excellence grant, facilitated this. The former L-shaped VR facility was decommissioned and with the aid of Bedford-based Simulation Displays, working through Spanish-based 3D/virtual reality specialists, Bienetec, a new three-sided CAVE and floor have been constructed, along with a separate HD Active Stereo PowerWall for projecting large computer generated images.

Four different rooms have been remodelled into one large rectangular space for the purpose - with the rear sections of both sy

UK - Global B2B event organiser, UBM Live, has rewarded DB Systems with a new supplier contract for seven UK shows in 2013.

Among these new shows is RESI 2013, the leading event for the residential property market. The 2012 show attracted more than 1,000 delegates.

In addition to the new supplier contract, UBM Live has also renewed an existing contract with DB, which means the AV & IT rental company will continue to work as official AV supplier at four European shows next year.

Oliver Richardson, DB's sales and marketing director, said, "We have a really strong working relationship with UBM and we've been supplying their European events for over many years. These UK shows are a really fantastic opportunity for us to work the London based team.

"I believe our approach of going the extra mile for our clients is why we are so highly regarded in the industry. The ser

Australia - Landmark Australian live music and performance venue The GH Hotel in St Kilda, Melbourne has recently taken delivery of 12 Robe DLX Spot moving lights - which have been added to the lighting rig in the main room.

These were specified by technical manager Jason Rooney and join 16 existing Robe ColorSpot 250E AT moving lights, which were added to the rig in an upgrade of the whole lighting system earlier in the year.

The idea is that the GH Hotel can offer the best quality technology and production values for all its shows, and averts the need for any visiting artists and performers to bring in their own lighting and sound equipment.

The GH is open five nights a week offering a lively schedule of entertainment. This currently includes high-energy stage shows like Boylesque and Saturday nights with 'The Classics', together with DJs, dance events, bands, acous

Australia - Healesville's newly refurbished Memorial Hall is now known as 'The 'Memo', a new cultural focus for the Healesville and Yarra Valley region. It has a contemporary art space, a 300 seat performing arts facility and 3D digital cinema. The programme includes professional touring theatre, live music performances and art house cinema.

Significant upgrades have been made to the stage and backstage facilities whilst the foyer and auditorium have been upgraded to improve the public experience, all under the watchful eye of theatre consultants Marshall Day Entertech.

Jands worked closely with Marshall Day Entertech to supply a comprehensive staging system including a Gala Spiralift motorized stage platform 3.6m x 10.0m. The Spiralift, the world's most compact lifting system, employs a coiled, flexible, flat steel spring (slinky) that expands with the insertion of a thin, ve

UK - Cambridge-based MI Broadcast have been taking full advantage of the flexibility of the Roland S-4000 Series Digital Snakes, hiring them out to their customers including Arena Television for prestigious projects such as the Olympics and Champions League football. Having purchased two systems comprising S-4000S-3208 32 x 8 Modular Stage Unit, the S-4000S-0832 8 x 32 Modular Stage Unit and S-4000R Remote Controller for their hire stock, MI Broadcast have found them a perfect fit for the requirements of their TV industry clients.

"The requirements change from client to client with different configurations of XLR ins and outs but the S-4000 Series offers us the ease and flexibility to adapt," commented Robert Mackman, director at MI Broadcast.

Supplying products and complete solutions including hire, design, installation and commissioning of fibre based systems mainl

Slovakia - Based in Bratislava, the Slovak Philharmonic is the leading symphony orchestra in Slovakia. Since the early 1950s, the orchestra has resided in the Reduta Bratislava, which was constructed in 1773. In 2011 and 2012, the centrally located Baroque building, which is capable of accommodating audiences of up to 700, underwent a thorough renovation that included modernisation of all the building's electrical systems.

As well as new audio and video equipment, the Reduta now possesses a professional communications system designed to cover a wide variety of needs - a modular system offering outstanding sound quality, easy setup and user-friendly operation. To ensure the solution chosen met these requirements, the Reduta's operators called in Bratislava-based specialists Centron Slovakia to plan and install the new system.

After giving the matter careful consideration, Centr

Norway - Midas' long time Norwegian distribution partner AVAB CAC is celebrating its fiftieth sale of the PRO2 and PRO2C consoles in just 12 months.

Although most of the consoles have been sold to rentals companies AVAB CAC has also seen a number go direct to end users, including concert venues, theatres and even individual sound engineers.

"It's good to see engineers investing in their own personal consoles," says Asle Nilsen, head of Audio sales at AVAB CAC. "The ability to use the same showfile on all MIDAS Console models, combined with the new G2 software, makes the PRO2C an extremely powerful control platform in a conveniently small frame."

Midas brand development manager, Richard Ferriday comments, "When we launched PRO2/C, we knew that we were offering a fantastic package - the major concept of the PRO2 and PRO2C is to take the audio quality,

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