Portugal - After extensive engineering work carefully tuning the system performance to, the new Next HFA Series are coming out from production. The most anticipated system on the series - HFA206P + HFA112s is officially ready for delivery now.

This system uses an active subwoofer (HFA112s) to power the passive satellite (HFA206P). It is a system with a "fantastic ratio between the size and its sound pressure". The quality and the power of the system make it perfect for DJs and small systems for live music, says the company.

The HFA speaker series are fully powered PA systems designed to deliver high output and dynamics, extreme linearity and fidelity for unrivalled performance at a very competitive price.

Entirely made in Portugal, the HFA speaker series uses quality

France - Pop star Amel Bent first took France by storm as a semi-finalist on the pop idol television show Nouvelle Star in 2004. Ten years later, she's still going strong. Currently in the midst of her Instinct Tour, Bent is performing to enthusiastic audiences across France and Switzerland, where a pair of SSL Live consoles, supplied by SGroup's Alès location, are handling FOH and monitors.

Having previously worked with Christophe Willem, Zazie and 1789 Les amants de la bastille as PA tech, FOH engineer Thibault Maestracci joined Bent in November 2013 at the start of the tour. For this production, he takes approximately 50 channels from the stage and handles FOH mixing with a system that incorporates two Pro Tools HD rigs.

"The first Pro Tools system is used as a 'toolbox,' mainly for effects for 'stem group' processing," he explains. "The second system

Qatar - With just eight years to go until they host the FIFA World Cup in 2022, Qatar was keen to get as involved as possible in this year's biggest international football tournament.

Qatar's Brazil 2014 Fanzone, was a specially built, open-air venue with a three tier retractable roof located in Katara Cultural Village. Using a prototype of one of the systems that Qatar is developing to use in stadiums when it is their turn to host the World Cup, the venue was cooled to ensure the environment, if not the atmosphere, was kept at a regular and comfortable temperature for all fans.

With a total project run from build on 18 June to de-rig on 18July to cover the entire tournament and employing a 10 to 14 man crew, Creative Technology's (CT) Middle East operation provided the latest 8mm SMD lightweight product in the form of a 10.2 x 5.7 16/9 main LED screen with side supporting scr

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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.

The Netherlands - Following Elation Europe's popular PRO Service Days in May, Elation Professional is offering Pro Training Days to be held 20 and 21 August at Elation's European Customer Care Center in Kerkrade, The Netherlands.

Day One of the factory-authorized training will focus on Elation's Capture Polar lighting design software and Emulation/Emulation Pro lighting control software. Day Two will cover Elation's Zeus media server including the Arkaos Media Master Pro.

The training will be headed by qualified Elation instructors and costs 30€ per person per day which also covers lunch. Registration is required but there are only 15 spaces available via https://s3.amazonaws.com/Elation/Register_proday_08-2014.pdf

As Elation continues to expand its market presence across Europe, the company has put in place the training and service infrastructure needed to support the high

Scandinavia - Since 2010, Equipson and Yamaha Europe have been cooperating on a range of products under the WORKproCA brand, manufactured by Equipson and exclusively distributed by Yamaha across Europe.

Today both companies have announced that this arrangement has been modified to focus the distribution of WORKproCA products on the Scandinavian markets of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. From 1 September, the distribution of Equipson products will be managed directly by Equipson in all other European markets.

"We have enjoyed great cooperation for over three years and I believe both companies have mutually benefitted throughout this period", says Juan Jose Vila, VP marketing at Equipson S.A. "In the meantime, Equipson and Yamaha's installation products have positively evolved to a level where Equipson needs to continue developing the international m

World - When it came to lighting superstar Katy Perry's current Prismatic world tour, lighting and show designer to the stars Baz Halpin selected the Clay Paky Sharpy and Sharpy Wash 330 to create a series of surprise special effects.

Engaging in a bit of theatrical trickery Halpin designed a series of 36 bespoke hydraulic flippers onto which are attached 36 individual Sharpy fixtures supplied as part of a lighting package provided by UK Neg Earth and US hire outfit Upstaging. The flippers are built into the sides of show's giant onstage triangular LED screens to provide a range of fast paced special effects.

"As the LED screens move up and down the stage the Sharpys 'flip' up or down allowing the screens to pass by each other," explains Halpin. "At one point in the show the dancers interact with the fixtures by using mirrors attached to their hands. They

Europe - Top Gear Live (TGL) - the show that presents all the adrenaline, excitement, humour, serious motoring stunts and moments of the top TV show in a breath-taking arena extravaganza - has just completed a whistle-stop European tour playing Prague, Budapest, Zagreb and Turin.

Lighting designer Steve Sinclair lit this using nearly 200 Robe moving lights - and for the first time no generics - not even a single PAR can or Molefey in sight!

The show saw TV show hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and The Stig add their irreverent and quirky humour to this extraordinary motoring theatre event, alongside some of the world's most expensive, powerful ... and most absurdly modified cars.

Sinclair has been lighting the popular TGL show worldwide for some years. This tour featured a completely new design, and the decision to go only with moving lights was to he

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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

USA - Rebelution has been reinvigorating reggae with an irresistible sun-splashed playful sound that's been acclaimed as being "easy on the ears." Its highly anticipated Count Me In Tour is offering something else too: a lightshow that's easy on the eyes and souls of the group's free spirited fans thanks to a colorful and quick moving design by LD Kenny Gribbon of Pulse Lighting that features Legend moving fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

"Rebelution is on a roll, drawing big crowds, and riding high on the charts; so there's a lot of excitement surrounding them," said Gribbon, the group's LD, noting that its Count Me In album debuted at No. 14 on the general charts and topped the reggae list. "We wanted bright, colorful high impact lighting to convey this uplifting feeling."

Kevin Mignone of KM Productions (Hicksville, NY) provide

USA - Cache Creek Casino Resort, (CCCR), located in Brooks, CA, recently completed upgrading the lighting system in its popular entertainment hub, Club 88. Along with extensive audio and video production upgrades, the 700-seat multipurpose venue is now a premiere state-of-the-art performance space equally able to showcase entertainment acts as well as sporting events booked at the Northern California casino.

Club 88's technical team wanted to move beyond the limitations of the original, more conventional lighting equipment. They were looking to more effectively address the audiences' expectations and the technical requirements of the full range of events hosted, including the numerous national and international musical acts, top-bill comedians, and live boxing. It was important to the CCCR team that the production systems are more than capable of supporting the first class enter

UK - Martin Professional is expanding the manufacturing capabilities of both Jem smoke machines and Martin lighting in the UK with a new factory at Louth in Lincolnshire. The new factory will house identical production facilities to those found in Martin's main production plant in Fredrikshavn, Denmark, and heading the new facility will be managing director Soren Kjer and production planner Birgitte Jakobsen.

(Jim Evans)

Hungary - Interton Ltd has designed and installed a Community loudspeaker sound system for the new Nagyerdei Stadion in Debrecen, Hungary. An all-seated football stadium, Nagyerdei has a 20,340 capacity, making it the third largest capacity Hungarian football stadium and the second largest Hungarian League stadium.

Home to the Debreceni Vasutas Sport Club, Nagyerdei Stadion was opened on 1 May 2014 and the first official match was played between Debrecen and Újpest, which ended with a 3-1 victory for the host team. As well as hosting Debreceni VSC games, the stadium will host matches for the Hungarian national football team. The ground also incorporates conference and banqueting suites and has a club shop selling Debrecen merchandise.

Zoltán Horváth, chief engineer of Interton Ltd, explained the basis for the system design, "Community loudspeakers are our first choice

Europe - Designed to be closer to its customers and distributors, FaitalPRO's new website facilitates the search of information that everyone needs in Spanish-speaking countries.

The new website is built on a very fast platform and offers visitors a more complete and easy to use structure as well as being equipped with a new and powerful search engine that can provide faster and more accurate results.

Flavio Naggi, Pro-Audio Division manager of FaitalPRO, declares,"Our goal is to provide a comprehensive knowledge of our professional speakers through a hypertext structure which is easily accessible, in order to present the most viable solutions -and in a better way- to our customers and whoever needs to manufacture professional enclosures for installation, OEM and touring."

The Spanish version site is very rich in contributions and technical specifications needed to

Singapore - The penetration of Martin Audio's MLA multi-cellular loudspeaker array in new territories increases unabated. In the Far East, Singapore-based EXPO AV-INSYNC PTE (EAI) significantly boosted an inventory that also includes Martin Audio W8LM Mini Line Array, by purchasing the country's first MLA System 36 from local distributors Swee Lee.

EAI managing director, Gerard Rodrigues, said he was proud to be the country's first investor in the ground-breaking system. Speaking of the acquisition, he said, "We wanted a larger format, steerable array system to add on to our inventory and it needed to represent a significant upgrade. The other main reason is that the next four upcoming gigs are all rider specific."

He says the latest purchase continues a rich legacy that began with the old Martin Audio Wavefront W3/WS2 range. "We wanted to be the first company t

Russia - Another dilapidated theatre, another story of successful regeneration. Ho-hum. But then Robert Lepage stages a performance of his interpretation of Hamlet and the world begins to sit up and take notice. While Hamlet is the tale of a man who confronts his conscious self, the rebirth of the State Theatre of Nations, Moscow, is one man's confrontation with an entirely different state of being.

Fortunately, Yevgeny Mironov's tale has a happier outcome, but the trials of resurrecting a once grand theatre that had, like Hamlet become insecure and unstable, are no less compelling.

Mironov, an ambitious young star of Russia's stage and screen, was appointed artistic director of the theatre in 2006, just as it achieved independence. His initial verdict of the venue was, "It was a real disaster, the building looked like it had been bombed." It was

UK - Universal Event Production (UEP) supplied full technical production - sound, lighting and video - to the Nike Phenomenal House, a one week only pop-up experience to celebrate football, street culture and style, music and fashion staged at the Old Sorting Office just off London's New Oxford Street.

UEP was working for brand and live communication specialist XYZ. The Tring, Hertfordshire based company has worked on many different Nike events in recent years and also with Will Mould, MD of XYZ. However this was the first time they had worked in the Old Sorting Office space which is a regular venue for offsite London Fashion Week shows and other events suiting its semi-industrial and slightly edgy ambience.

The lighting design for the Nike Phenomenal was developed by UEP's James Fickling and Mike Lindsay to encompass an eclectic collection of exhibition and interactive areas

USA - KVLA Television in Huntington Beach, California, a TV station that broadcasts to the large Vietnamese speaking community in Southern California, has recently added two new studios and is using LED strip lighting from Elation Professional to colour the sets.

Christian Choi of Emergent Entertainment Group was production and lighting designer, as well as fabricator for the project, and explains that the client initially sought to create three areas within two studios - a segregated news area, two talk shows and a home shopping set (which was eventually postponed).

Choi came up with rendering ideas for both the news and talk show sets, something he says he enjoys doing in order to get everyone's creative juices flowing. "Since the building was nothing more than a warehouse with attached office space, basically a shell, it was a bit difficult for everyone to picture what

USA - Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky held the very first Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks horse races in 1875, the year it opened. The track acquired its now-iconic twin-spires grandstand in 1895 and subsequently added to it on either side in pieces during the last century, bringing the grandstand's current capacity to 52,000.

In anticipation of the 2014 Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs commenced installation of a 171-ft. by 90-ft. video screen, the largest 4k video board in the world. Because the facility's low-fi sound reinforcement system had been designed ages ago for only spoken word reproduction, the new screen would require a serious sound system upgrade to realize its full potential and impact. Dallas-based Marsh/PMK International, LLC designed the new sound reinforcement systems for all of the outdoor areas including nearly sixty clusters in the grandstands comp

UK - XL Video renewed its long and productive working relationship with Robbie Williams, supplying a custom video solution and crew to his current and massively popular Swings Both Ways tour.

XL's project manager was Phil Mercer with Nilkanth Patel overseeing the technical aspects and, for the first time on a Robbie Williams tour, Jon Shrimpton was live camera director.

Once again the stage set and visuals took on a completely new and different dimension and the aesthetic was carefully crafted by show producers Lee Lodge and Willie Williams, both also involved in commissioning the video playback content, mostly created by Shop Studios in Bristol.

A large part of the look and feel of the show was established by the time Shrimpton joined the team, including an impressive 22.8m wide by 10.8m high upstage scenic LED wall made up from XL's Pixled F-12 product. They had als

Spain - Lighting designer Edu Valverde and Madrid-based AV group Geometrica Studio have created an urban-inspired lighting design using the exact beams of the Clay Paky Sharpy for a show celebrating Spanish jewellery brand Aristocrazy at this year's Mercedes Benz Fashion Week (MBFW) Madrid.

Taking inspiration from the 80s cult classic film Blade Runner, the design comprised of a clever mix of architectural, video mapped and lighting elements that combined to create an urban set reminiscent of the gritty architecture featured in the science-fiction blockbuster.

"The lighting acted as the unifying core between the audience and the set," explains Valverde. "The idea was that with the long reach of the Sharpy beams the nocturnal, urban mood of the show would be extended out from the set and into the audience to create a really immersive atmosphere."

Va

Italy - Based just outside of Milan, the latest addition to Audient's global distribution network is Leading Technologies. Responsible for Audient's compact product range, including the USB interface, iD22 and the 8-channel mic pre and ADC, ASP880, the company takes on the mantle of distribution throughout Italy, this month.

"We are very excited to start this adventure with such a high quality brand that perfectly fit into our portfolio complementing and completing our offer," says Leading Technologies' CEO Marco Porro. "The addition of Audient products will help expand our reach into high tech audio across the country," he adds, citing the fact that the majority of the British manufacturer's products feature the renowned mic preamps designed by industry heavyweight, David Dearden.

With nearly 40 years of experience in the pro audio industry, Leading Techno

UK - Allen & Heath's new Qu-24 compact digital mixer has been installed in the prestigious Cambridge Union Society.

Founded in 1815, the Cambridge Union can claim to be the oldest continually operating debating society in the world, with participants including heads of state, business leaders, actors, academics and politicians.

Having extensive experience in the university, cathedral and heritage sectors, installer About Sound was appointed to specify and install a new audio system as part of an AV refurbishment. The brief was to provide a digital console that inexperienced users would be able to walk up to and operate.

"Qu-24 fitted the brief perfectly, and has lots of fantastic additional features. The mixer is housed on a balcony over the chamber, so the Qu-Pad app is a great benefit, allowing the engineer to judge levels and mute and unmute channels from within the

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