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DiGiCo brings benefits to Epcor Centre

Details: 14 March 2016

Canada - Calgary's Epcor Centre is one of the most vibrant centres of the arts in western Canada, annually attracting over 600,000 people to around 960 events. This year the venue has invested in no less than six DiGiCo mixing consoles, the direct result of the positive experience with a single example installed in 2012.

Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts (then known as the Calgary Centre for Performing Arts) was officially opened in 1985 by Dr Martha Cohen, Sandra LeBlanc and Vera Swanson, three women who were instrumental in establishing and raising funds for the facility. It is housed within two historic buildings - the Burns Building, constructed in 1917, and the 1931-built Calgary Public Building.

Covering six floors and over 400,000ft2 (nearly 37,200m2), it is one of the

An opportunity to experience the latest Green Hippo technology

Green Hippo sets free ISE conference

Details: 14 March 2016

The Netherlands - Green Hippo will be holding a free conference during ISE in Amsterdam in February 2015.

With the recent launch of Hippotizer V4 media servers and AViary Video Tools, this is an opportunity to find out more, have live demonstrations and hands-on play with the latest Green Hippo technology.

To register you interest in attending the conference please sign up on either of the website links below:

Hippotizer: http://www.hippotizer.com/calendar/70/105-ISE-2015-Show-and-Green-Hippo-Conference

AViary Video Tools: http://www.aviary-videotools.com/ise-conference-2015

(Jim Evans)

Big Week NYC - a week-long, heart-pounding EDM celebration

KM Productions adds pop To Big Week NYC

Details: 14 March 2016

USA - In the city that gave us Times Square, New Year's Eve is just too big to be confined to one night. That is why RPM Presents created Big Week NYC, a week-long, heart-pounding EDM celebration, to ring in the New Year with sick beats by superstars like Martin Garrix and Kaskade and a scintillating lightshow created by Kevin Mignone and Mike Gionfriddo of KM Productions using a collection of fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

Held in Manhattan starting 27 December and going on through the wee hours of 1 January 1, the event drew visitors from around the world. Most of the performances took place at Pier 94, a 135,000sq.ft historic dock and warehouse that was converted into New York's hottest pop-up concert venue.

Artists like Carnage, Armin van Buuren and Disclosure rocked the famous Pier 94 stage. This all-star lineup preforming at a world-renowned venue required an intens

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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 GrooveBoston dance phenomenon at the College Park Centre at the University of Texas Arlington (photo: Chris Dutton)

GrooveBoston rocks Texas with Robe

Details: 14 March 2016

USA - The GrooveBoston dance phenomenon made a recent high-impact appearance at the College Park Centre at the University of Texas Arlington (UTA). The spectacular lighting and production design was created by Nathan Almeida of East Coast Lighting & Production Services (ELCPS) and GrooveBoston production director Ed Slapik.

Almeida has been involved with lighting the legendary college-oriented EDM experience - renowned for high production values, awesome visual environments and some of the best dance sounds on the planet - for the past 10 years, and for this year's show, he once again utilized Robe Pointes, CycFX 8s and LEDBeam 100s.

Creating a new look for GrooveBoston was a priority, and the venue offered plenty of stage space and headroom. To ensure an efficient get-in and set-up in a tight timeframe, they decided on a trussing structure to make up the main set architecture

Professor Green grows up with Yamaha

Details: 14 March 2016

UK - Rapper Professor Green hit the road in November and December to promote his latest album, Growing Up In Public, culminating in a sold-out show at the London Roundhouse. A Yamaha CL5 digital mixing system helped front of house engineer Neal Allen to make Waves with the mix.

"As this was primarily an Academy tour, which all have in-house consoles. I wanted a desk with footprint that would cause the least problems, whilst maintaining the sound and functions I was after," says Neal. "I had used a CL5 with Professor Green on the Music Cube shows we recently did at London's Westfield shopping centres and really liked the sound, especially when using the Premium Rack compressors.

"I needed to purchase a console which would drop into the Dante network for the stage and in-ear monitors package that we'll be using on the summer festivals we are playing in

ETC Source Four Mini luminaires were used to light the Hollywood Costume exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

ETC centre stage at the Hollywood Costume exhibition

Details: 14 March 2016

USA - The words "costume exhibition" don't promise a lot of drama. Perhaps we have seen too many costumes imprisoned in glass cabinets under bland eco-friendly display lighting. Perhaps we got bored reading the vital statistics of each item of clothing as we strolled through hushed museum halls.

But a visit to the recently opened Hollywood Costume exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), lit with ETC Source Four Mini fixtures and powered by ThruPower power control, will make you forget all you ever knew about museum visits - and may change forever the way you view exhibitions. Here, the costumes receive as much direction and attention as the actors who once wore them. The creators of these remarkable displays realised that without great lighting, sound and video, costumes are just old clothing once inhabited by a famous person, allowing them inherit

Rocking into Christmas – The Human League

Colour Sound lights Human League tour

Details: 14 March 2016

UK - Colour Sound Experiment ended a very busy 2014 supplying lighting and LED screens for several music tours including for ultimate UK synthpop aficionados, The Human League. The west London based rental company worked closely with lighting designer Rob Sinclair and the band's manager, Simon Watson, both of whom were involved in creating the eye-catching set and look for the stage.

The band tour the UK and Europe every two years in the lead up to Christmas to the delight of their enthusiastic and loyal fanbase. Each tour presents a different stylish look for the stage and Rob, who has now been lighting The Human League for 10 years, reckons that the biggest challenge is to top what they have done previously.

On recent tours, video has been central to the show and this was again the case, complete with their white carpeted stage and set, which has become a Human League tradem

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Velocity Productions was tasked with building out the video wall

Renewed vision drives interactive Maxwell project

Details: 14 March 2016

USA - The John C. Maxwell Leadership Centre at 12Stone Church in Atlanta honours the life and impact of John's global and generational leadership as an internationally recognized leadership speaker, author and pastor. In celebration of his continuing legacy, visitors today enjoy interactive audio-visual presentations of John's life and achievements across an immersive video wall controllable from several user stations. The engaging video and graphical content is driven exclusively by Renewed Vision's ProVideoPlayer 2 (PVP2) software, bringing exceptional reliability and quality to a cost-efficient playback infrastructure.

Velocity Productions, an Atlanta-based production and systems integration company, was tasked with building out the video wall on a curved wall, using a custom mounting system to cleanly integrate multiple 46-inch Barco monitors in a four-wide, three-tall confi

It's the third year in a row that Entec has supplied equipment and crew to the fundraiser

Entec roars with laughter

Details: 14 March 2016

UK - Entec Sound & Light helped the smiles flow by supplying full production - lighting, sound and video - to the high profile Roar With Laughter event staged by ZSL (the Zoological Society of London) at the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo.

It's the third year in a row that Entec has supplied equipment and crew to the fundraiser, which featured another impressive line-up of top comedy talent in Seann Walsh, David O'Doherty, Sean Lock, Ed Byrne, Stewart Lee, Lucy Porter, Phil Nichol and Greg Burns.

Entec's ability to supply all the technical elements from one source made co-ordination easy for the client as well as enabling a high quality yet cost-effective technical production solution which looked and sounded great.

Entec invited Simon Tutchener to join in the hilarity and create a lighting scheme for the evening. "It was a great show for a worthwhile cause and I tho

Through the past and into the future in Edinburgh

Electrosonic AV support for Scotland's Time Lords

Details: 14 March 2016

UK - Fifteen years after providing the complete audio-visual system for the Our Dynamic Earth attraction, Electrosonic returned to help the science centre bring Scotland's Time Lords to life. Electrosonic was charged with the design and systems integration of the AV elements, under subcontract to Studio MB, engineering the new exhibition with reliable components within a simple system architecture.

Scotland's Time Lords introduces visitors to the Scottish scientists who laid the foundation for the modern paradigm of plate tectonics. Three new interlinked galleries take visitors from an 18thcentury themed classroom with magic blackboards and talking portraits back through Deep Time to the Big Bang and beyond. Visitors learn the impact of James Hutton and Arthur Holmes on the evolution of earth science, and celebrate the fact that scientific discovery is at the heart of Scottish c

Jack Calmes pictured at Syncrolite in 2011

Jack Calmes, 1943-2014

Details: 14 March 2016

USA - Jack Calmes, the founder of Showco and Syncrolite, has died at the age of 71. One of the concert production industry's true pioneers, Calmes was also a musician, promoter, live music venue owner, artist manager and film and television producer.

In the mid-60s, Calmes and friend Angus Wynne co-founded Showco in Dallas, Texas, and set about putting on music shows. Among their early successes was a University party in Dallas headlined by Chuck Berry. Showco also brought The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and the Doors to Dallas. In 1967 Calmes and Wynne opened a Dallas music venue, Soul City, played by stars such as Stevie Wonder, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ike and Tina Turner and Jerry Lee Lewis.

The pair sold their interest in the venue the following year and concentrated on Showco, promoting the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969. Despit

Linkin Park recently performed at London's O2 Arena in front of a spectacular backdrop powered by Avolites Ai Infinity servers running version 8

Avolites releases feature-rich Ai Version 8

Details: 14 March 2016

UK - Having won awards from Live Design, PLASA and Prolight & Sound for their products and innovation, Avolites could be forgiven for simply tweaking some minor features in their Ai software. Rather than rest on their laurels, though, they have introduced a host of new features and improvements for latest iteration, Version 8, which they're describing as "everything you always wanted" in a media server.

Building on their initial success, Avolites Ai V8 is the result of a feature rich development programme lead by intensive user feedback.

Dave Green, lead developer for Ai explains, "We've spent 12 months listening carefully to what our users felt they needed from Ai V8. The results of this programme are illustrated in an impressive feature set and a more unified workspace that delivers 'everything you always wanted in a media server."

Distinctly setting it

DPA on Kate Bush's Before The Dawn shows

Details: 14 March 2016

UK - Greg Walsh, sound design and front of house mixing engineer, chose a selection of DPA microphones to capture the sound of Kate Bush's successful Before the Dawn series of concerts at London's Hammersmith Apollo.

After 35 years away from the live stage, these much anticipated concerts received high praise from reviewers and fans who frequently commented on the exceptional audio quality and the clarity of Kate's vocals.

The decision to use DPA microphones was made following extensive testing by Greg Walsh and the production team, which included renowned audio engineer Stephen Taylor who was responsible for Kate's vocal processing and monitor engineer Ian Newton, who sadly passed away earlier this month.

"I knew about DPA, having originally discovered Bruel and Kjaer [DPA's predecessor] in the mid-1980s," Walsh says. "The larger capsule microphones su

Kings of Chaos featured special guest Steven Tyler

Kings of Chaos rock SA with grandMA2

Details: 14 March 2016

South Africa - Lighting designer Willie Bothma once again lit the Kings of Chaos on their latest tour to Sun City and at GrandWest's Grand Arena in Cape Town with a grandMA2. The full technical was supplied by Gearhouse Group's Cape Town branch and supported by Gavin Taylor, Sean Caie and the team at the Grand Arena.

Kings of Chaos featured special guest Steven Tyler alongside Billy Gibbons, Matt Sorum, Gilby Clarke, Duff McKagan, Robin Zander and Nuno Bettencourt and was brought to South Africa by Andrew Mac of AMP Events.

"It was a great show to do," said Bothma from Gearhouse who also lit the performance in 2013. "The only request was that the band should be seen all times and this was done. At the end of the day it's about the band and that is why people come to the show."

The rig and design were the same at both venues. The main challenge was setting

Reflections of contemplation - Double Space for BMW

Details: 14 March 2016

UK - The divisions between architecture and art have become ever more blurred in recent years, so no one should be surprised to find room-spanning mirrored structures suspended in the Raphael Gallery at London's Victoria and Albert Museum as part of the London Design Festival. Designers Edward Barber OBE and Jay Osgerby OBE, in collaboration with BMW, devised 'Double Space for BMW', a kinetic installation that altered the viewers perception of space and movement in relation to themselves and the Raphael Cartoons on display. Total Solutions Group (TSG) were tasked with suspending the structures in the revered halls of the V&A.

"Manufactured by Millimetre and engineered by Arup, the two structures are in fact shallow ellipses 15m long and 10m deep made from polished Alucore panels mounted to a lattice framework, much like the construction of an aircraft wing," explained

The L-Acoustics system helped the dragons to sound as impressive as they looked (photo ©Yurun Group)

How to Train Your Dragon with L-Acoustics

Details: 14 March 2016

China - Created by DreamWorks Animation, the How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular was produced by the storytellers at DreamWorks Animation and Global Creatures, the masterminds behind the international phenomenon Walking with Dinosaurs, the #1 grossing world tour of 2010. Following its launch in Australia and New Zealand, as well as a successful run in North America, How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular landed in China. Over 145,000 spectators turned out to enjoy the premiere at a newly built theatre on the grounds of the Beijing National Stadium - the famous Bird's Nest, built for the 2008 Summer Olympics

Featuring more than a dozen impressive dragons with 40-foot wingspans, the audio challenge for Rightway Audio Consultants and sound supplier Dadong Huahan was to make the dragons sound as impressive as they looked, while also superbly representing spoken voice and so

The new twotwo sub2 is a subwoofer designed to complement the twotwo range

PMC extends TwoTwo range at NAMM 2015

Details: 14 March 2016

The Netherlands - UK-based reference monitor manufacturer PMC will be launching a new addition to its twotwo range of active nearfields at NAMM 2015, as well as giving West Coast audio professionals another chance to see the QB1-A large-scale studio monitor, launched in Los Angeles in Autumn 2014.

The new twotwo sub2 is a subwoofer designed to complement the twotwo range, providing greater headroom and dynamics than its smaller sibling, the twotwo sub1. The new sub2 is a low-distortion, active subwoofer featuring PMC's ATL bass-loading technology, Class-D amplification and DSP-based filtering and bass management, which extends bass output significantly with negligible harmonic distortion. The sub2 also features a highly rigid, braced cabinet, ensuring that unwanted colouration is reduced to inaudible levels.

The built-in amplifier delivers an impressive 400W of power to the LF

Damon Crisp joins Elation UK sales team

Details: 14 March 2016

UK - Elation Professional EU has announced that Damon Crisp is the company's new sales representative for the south of England, which includes London and surrounding counties.

Damon, who operates DAC Pro-Media LTD, a distribution company for entertainment technology, has a wealth of experience in the industry having operated as sales director for Lamba PLC, managing director for Numark Alesis Europe and managing director for Monacor International GmbH at their UK operation.

Tasked with growing Elation's presence in the rental, theatre, and stage segments in southern England, Damon's knowledge of the UK market and long list of contacts will help Elation raise its profile in one of the lighting industry's leading markets.

"I am truly delighted to be representing a brand that I have watched from afar get better and better," Damon stated about the new opportunity. &quo

Ashley Hanson moves to the design services manager role

Meyer Sound strengthens product management team

Details: 14 March 2016

USA - Meyer Sound has promoted Michael Creason to the newly created position of product manager- system applications and training, while Ashley Hanson moves to the design services manager role.

The former head of the design services department, Creason now joins the growing product management group to expand the company's technical content and training resources. The goal is to give users a broader range of tools to work more efficiently and effectively in loudspeaker system design, rigging, and commissioning.

He joined the Meyer Sound design services department in 2008, following years of theatrical sound design and mixing experience on and off Broadway. In addition to credits that include The Pajama Game and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, he was audio supervisor for Glimmerglass Opera Festival for eight seasons, and designed and mixed a range of productions in the New York

Luis Hinojar (sales director), Domingo Melé (I+D director), Enric Casimiro (managing director), Joan Rius (production director) and Daniel González (marketing director)

Ecler is acquired by NEEC Audio

Details: 14 March 2016

Spain - Effective 1 December 2014, NEEC Audio Barcelona acquired the Ecler pro audio brand and business including the personnel and management team under the leadership of Enric Casimiro who will continue to manage the business.

The Ecler business is known for its focus on technology. The brand is also well known by its creative design of Audeo speaker cabinets, in collaboration with the Italian company Italdesign Giugiaro.

NEEC intends to invest in innovation in the pro audio field and to ensure that the Ecler brand is associated with both advanced technology and excellent design.

Over the last decade Ecler has focused its efforts in commercial audio solutions, always striving to improve sound quality, innovation and sustainability. Its main markets include retail shop fitting, education, corporate, hospitality and sports & fitness. ECLER product solutions can be found in w

Powersoft's Stefano Rocchi (managing director & owner) and Pierluigi Bottazzi (technical department)

Audiosales and Powersoft forge Italian partnership

Details: 14 March 2016

Italy - Audiosales has taken over as the exclusive Powersoft distributor for the Italian market, adding the audio manufacturer to its portfolio of leading brands.

Audiosales will be managing the nationwide distribution and sales of Powersoft rack amplifiers, for both the touring and fixed installation markets.

"We are very pleased to begin this collaboration with Powersoft," says Stefano Rocchi, owner of Audiosales, "The products and technology embraced by Powersoft perfectly match the requirements of the market in both the touring and installation sectors. With the addition of Powersoft to our brand portfolio, we can now provide our clients with solutions at the very cutting edge of innovation. Our goal is to make Powersoft amplifiers the standard on the Italian market."

"With Audiosales, I believe that we have found the right partner to continue to