USA - Christmas services this past December never sounded better at Second Baptist Church's 400,000sq.ft West Campus in Houston thanks to a recent audio system upgrade to two DiGiCo SD5 consoles. Installed by local HOW systems integrator Covenant Communications, the new consoles replace a pair of legacy DiGiCo D5 Live FOH and monitor desks for the church's 5,000-seat "in-the-round" worship centre, which also televises its lively services.

Second Baptist Global tech director Mark Sepulveda notes that after seven years of duty, the time had come to retire the previous consoles and make an upgrade. "The SD5s were chosen based on what our team thought were the best overall live audio consoles on the market that continued to give us superior audio with the DiGiCo brand,

USA - In Oak Creek, WI, the Oak Creek Assembly of God recently produced the musical A Little Boys Prayer. Set in a small town but with over 200 performers in the show, technical director Nate Turner needed to create a lighting design that could take the congregation somewhere they have never been before. To do this, he needed both multi-faceted and powerful automated fixtures, so he worked with Clearwing Productions who provided him with VL4000 Spot and VL3000 Spot luminaires from Phillips Vari-Lite.

"The VL3500 Spot had been my go-to light for the last couple of years, but when I found out Clearwing had the VL4000 Spots, I was very excited to use them on this show," began Turner. "I first saw the VL4000 Spot at a Clearwing demo and I was immediately impressed by the brightness, but when you add in the extra gobo wheel and the framing shutters, it makes it

Germany - Keeping digital music files safe is the focus of a special panel being hosted by the Music Producers Guild at this year's Musikmesse/Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt.

Producers Tony Platt, Gareth Jones and Stevan Krakovic will take part in the event which aims to highlight the care that should be taken of recordings and session information, especially when an entire album's worth of creativity can now be contained on one memory stick.

"In the days of analogue recording, the tape box and track sheet logged all the important information, "Stevan Krakovic says "In this new digital age we have become very casual. Too many sessions are badly labelled and too much information goes unreported. Some people even entrust their valuable music to cheap hard drives without paying any attention to how accurately it has been copied. We really need to up our game and get

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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

Fame Academy - Sir Paul McCartney is to induct former Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Starr is the last of The Beatles receive the musical honour. Sir Paul will usher in the 74-year-old at the 30th annual ceremony at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum next month. The Beatles are already in the hall as a group, as are John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison as solo artists. Other inductees will include Green Day, Lou Reed and Bill Withers.

Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine, Starr said it meant "recognition" of his work. He added: "And it means, finally, the four of us are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame even though we were the biggest pop group in the land."

Eagle Joe Walsh will perform some of Starr's music, while Withers' music will be performed by John Legend. It is not known if Withers, who quit

USA - Shaping Sound, the contemporary dance company founded by Emmy-nominated choreographers Travis Wall, Nick Lazzarini, Teddy Forance, and dance visionary Kyle Robinson took their art to stages around the country to tell the story of a girl whose dreams take her on a journey through love, loss and life.

The performances featured numbers by some of the most respected dancers, whose collective work has appeared on American Idol, Glee, The Tony Awards, The Grammys, The Oscars, and The X-Factor and wrapped their 36 date tour in late February.

Seth Jackson and co-designer Nathan Scheuer worked to create a traditional dance plot with modern technology, and with lighting director Teresa Porterfield Fensler out on the road on her own, the designers selected an automated rig provided by Bandit Lites.

House pipes were used to hang the overhead fixtures and carri

Belgium - Lighting designer Jean-Jacques Marotte was the go-to guy for event agency DDMC, when they were tasked with the production and creation of the inauguration of the new railway tunnel in the north of Antwerp.

The tunnel interconnects the left and right banks of the Harbour of Antwerp, and the celebration took the form of a spectacular opening ceremony. The train arrived at the station with prominent Belgian ministers and VIPs on board to experience a live show with performers and lighting effects adding new dimensions to the outdoor railway environment.

PRG Belgium was the technical supplier of video, light, sound and rigging for this impressive project and Jean-Jacques Marotte put the equipment into perfect action.

"We started the installation one week in advance. It was extremely cold during the build-up period. These extreme weather circumstances were the reas

UK - Founder of the London Electronic Arts Festival (LEAF), Rob da Bank, has praised the sound generated at this year's event by Flare Audio's system.

A two-day cultural celebration of electronic music, art, technology and digital futurism, held at Tobacco Dock this March, the event attracted around 20,000 electronic music fans into the heart of London. Flare was selected as the event's only audio supplier.

"I was blown away almost quite literally by the sound quality that Flare provided for our LEAF festival," said Rob da Bank. "Whether it was a live act or DJ, or in a small room to a vast warehouse space, they delivered on every level and were supremely professional all weekend."

Flare Audio products provided sound for both the conference and live performances. Flare's V8C and V12C high SPL point source loudspeakers and flat panel SB18 bass delivered fo

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Strictly FX Highlights

Strictly FX was founded in 1996 by industry veterans Mark Grega and Ted Maccabee. Our expertise and knowledge of the world’s leading pyrotechnic, laser, and flame manufacturers allows us to curate astonishing live events. With over 500+ shows performed a year, there’s good chance you’ve seen some of our work!

UK - Robe lights were right there at the hub of the action for the UK's largest student show and the world's biggest Bhangra competition, Bhangra Showdown, which this year seriously upped the ante, moving to the SSE Arena, Wembley, London for the first time, reflecting the success and popularity of the event now in its eighth glorious year.

The show - organized by Imperial College Bhangra Society also featured its largest and most ambitious technical production to date to accompany the eight top student teams who strutted their talent in the battle for The UK's Best Student Bhangra Team.

Kudos AV, based in Middlesex, have sponsored the event for many years and this year were also the main technical production provider. With the move to the larger venue, they asked High Wycombe lighting rental company Siyan to supply some of the additional kit needed and also assist on t

Philippines - The Theatre at Solaire Resort and Casino has become the first venue in the Philippines to be equipped with a Meyer Sound Constellation acoustic system. Designed and engineered from the outset to combine architectural and electronic acoustics, this luxurious new performance venue has since scheduled a mix of international and local music acts as well as Broadway musicals like Chicago and Singin' In the Rain.

"With Constellation, we can offer the optimum acoustical environment for any type of performance," says Shax Siasoco, technical director for the venue. "We have the most advanced theatre in the Philippines."

The complete theatre technology package was designed and specified by Las Vegas and Hong Kong-based Coherent Design, with principals David Starck and Kevin Potts working in consultation with the Singapore office of Aedas,

USA - Theatre Projects collaborated on the design of the new Amphitheater Hot Shop at the Corning Museum of Glass, which celebrated the grand opening of the 100,000sq.ft Contemporary Art + Design Wing this past weekend.

From a simple beginning in 1951 as a two-room showcase with two employees and 2,000 pieces of artwork, the Corning Museum of Glass has continually expanded its physical footprint and cultural appeal into what is now a wide-reaching tourist attraction with a menagerie of stunning buildings dotted across a sprawling 10-acre campus, and a collection of more than 50,000 works of art.

Over the past 64 years, the museum has introduced many new and compelling attractions, drawing more and more visitors with each addition. Perhaps the most popular of those additions is the Hot Glass Show, where artisans guide audiences through the process of glassblowing, transforming

Spain - Every year tens of thousands of visitors visit the GSMA Mobile World Congress, widely considered the "must-attend" event in the mobile industry calendar. To ensure all of the news from across the show is shared daily, the GSMA created Mobile World Live TV (MWL TV).

For the 2015 show, MWL TV executive producer Jacquie Luscombe contacted XL Video project manager, Nick Askew, to be part of a competitive bid for the studio setup for MWL TV. Prior to joining XL Video, Nick had worked with the client for the previous four years.

For this year's event XL supplied a package that included HD cameras, onsite production studio, HD recordings and media servers, as well as LED truck screens for the exterior of the Fira Gran Via venue.

Mobile World Live TV was operational throughout the four-day show and included interviews, keynotes, press conferences, studio discussion

Canada - With multiple dealerships across the country, the Dilawri Auto Group is Canada's largest automotive group, and it has recently completed construction of several new dealerships in the Vancouver and Lower mainland areas of British Columbia.

The A/V integration wing of Vancouver-based firm Commercial Electronics has been involved in those projects from the planning stages and has now completed installations at new Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Infiniti, and Aston Martin locations. Reflecting the prestige of those brands, the new sound systems deliver true high-fidelity output, helped in large part by Ashly Audio processing, amplification, and user control.

"Good sound is important anywhere, but it is especially important at a car dealership," said Terry Neudorf, pro division manager at Commercial Electronics. "Poor quality sound is distracting and annoyin

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has been appointed exclusive UK distributor for the Fiilex range of premium performance hard source location LED lighting, which is aimed at professionals in broadcast, studio and film requiring high quality colour tuneable lighting.

Manufactured using the very best components and production techniques, Fiilex products are extremely robust, powerful and portable. The range utilises multiple colours of LEDs to produce a spectral curve with significantly less peaks and troughs, resulting in much better colour response on camera than is traditionally experienced from single colour LED light sources.

The high quality, colour tuneable (Bi-Colour) light output, which is a much closer emulation of a traditional tungsten source, reduces the likelihood of variation with natural light at a range of colour temperatures between 3,000K and 5,600

Sweden - LumenRadio has appointed Bellalite as the new exclusive distributor of the CRMX brand in Sweden.

Bellalite is the leading supplier of lighting and sound solutions in Sweden for a wide range of applications ranging from rental, live events, theatre, TV and film to indoor and outdoor architectural applications. Bellalite, with offices located in Växjö, Gothenburg and Stockholm, has an extensive product portfolio from leading lighting manufactures including such well-known brands as Robe, Avolites, ADJ, Antari, ETC and Elation.

The new cooperation got off with a flying start at this year LLB Show in Stockholm, where Bellalite was showcasing the entire CRMX product line in the 'BigBlack' stand.

Preparing to further introduce the advantages of LumenRadio's award-winning CRMX technology to the thriving rental and theatre market in Sweden, Joakim Lundgren, Bellalite's ma

UK - London-based technical solutions company Realtime Environment Systems (RES) has supplied Ai media servers and tech know-how to All Time Low's major Wembley show.

The pop punksters' first UK arena headliner One Night in London with All Time Low sold out in a matter of weeks. RES was brought on board by Video Design and the band's camera director Richard Shipman to supply two Ai S4 Media Servers as well as set up lighting designer Jeff Maker's Avolites Sapphire Touch lighting console to trigger media and effects from the Ai.

"We spent two days programming and re-encoding the media to ensure Jeff had a wide range of control over the Ai S4 Media Server from his Avolites console," says RES managing director Mark Calvert.

"The server played back a 1920 x 512 AIM super stream media and Ai effects library without the need for time code as the show was mixe

Canada - When the Royal Theatre and McPherson Playhouse in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada needed to upgrade their digital consoles, they turned to DiGiCo and are delighted with their investment.

"In 2002, we decided that we were going to have some of the most technologically equipped theatres in Canada," recalls Warren Busby, head of audio / assistant technical director for both venues. "We undertook a multi-million dollar renovation of the 1416 seat Royal Theatre and with that, purchased new technical equipment including the very first Yamaha PM1D ever to be installed in a venue in Canada.

"We continued to be state-of-the-art for many years and then, in 2012, we decided it was time to replace the PM1D - not because it wasn't functional, but rather it was no longer supported by Yamaha and parts were no longer being manufactured."

This started War

USA - Staging and production design company 44 Designs of Nashville, Tennessee, has provided Elation Cuepix Panels and Sniper 2R multi-effect lights for Christian rock band Family Force 5's set on Winter Jam, the U.S.'s largest annual Christian music tour.

Winter Jam, which tours the US South and Midwest through the end of March, features Christian rock, rap, and contemporary music, along with other performances and speakers. 44 Designs worked directly with Family Force 5, providing design and rental gear for their Winter Jam set.

Lighting designer Jeff Lavallee of 44 Designs mounted 12 Cuepix Panels and 12 Snipers in custom set carts on each side of the drum riser to add visual excitement and punch to the band's eclectic mix of music. The custom set carts are stationary during the performance but are on casters should the band decide to change or adjust their position one nig

UK - KV2 Audio's philosophy has always been to embrace the principles of point source speaker system design to provide optimum sound quality and coverage for applications and audiences of all sizes.

Up until now, their VHD2.0 Large Format Point Source System had been the company's flagship, with the capability of covering crowds in excess of 10,000 people with just one or two enclosures per side. The challenge for KV2 in building even larger point source systems for audiences of 50,000 people plus, was to reproduce the low mid energy that certain line arrays provide though the summing of multiple drivers, while maintaining the key benefits of point source technology, being minimal destructive interference in the higher frequency range and accurate impulse response.

George Krampera and his team of highly skilled engineers have overcome those challenges with the development of K

USA - The Next NXT-1 moving head LED display from Chauvet Professional combines fast pan/tilt movement with a tight 6° beam angle to create "brilliant in-motion eye candy displays" that will mesmerize audiences at concerts, festivals and live productions of all types.

The Next NXT-1 is powered by high-performance 4-in-1 (red, green, blue, white) Osram LEDs, configured in 5 rows of 5, which produce a monstrous 15,500 lux at 5 meters. This ultra-bright output allows its sharp pixel-mapped images to cut through haze and washes on stage and -- combined with its extremely narrow beam angle -- deliver maximum punch at long throws, when used as an LED wash, making it suitable for concert/touring applications.

The Next NXT-1 was engineered to make the programming process fast and easy for users of all technical skill levels. The panel is equipped with a "virtual-gob

Italy - Loudspeaker manufacturer Eighteen Sound has announced the appointment of Davwinder Sheena as director of sales, Middle East, Asia and Pacific Rim and Jeffrey Cox as director of sales North America.

Sheena will be responsible for managing distributors, as well as market development, in China, India and other key Asian manufacturing centres.He comes to Eighteen Sound with an array of experience in the pro audio market. Based in Singapore, Sheena has guided sales leadership in various market quadrants in the Asian region for a number of name brands from the US and Europe.

"We are excited to develop this important region of the world utilizing the extensive experience and relationships that Davwinder brings," explains Giacomo Previ, Eighteen Sound director of global sales. "His fluency in so many Asian languages and his comfortable demeanour, make him the id

UK - Specialist asset finance company Medialease has expanded its sales force with the appointment of long term industry professional, Stuart Fenwick, who has held management roles in the European production technology industry for over 20 years and is a familiar face to manufacturers, rental companies and end users alike.

With broadcast, live event and AV technology continuing to evolve at a remarkable pace, Medialease's specialist asset finance services are in more demand than ever to ensure that service providers and rental companies have the most up-to-date equipment. But the company also services a much wider customer base, all of whom need sound advice and dedicated, individual service - which is why Stuart was the standout candidate.

"Stuart's combination of experience, industry knowledge and being a well-known face ideally place him to provide the kind of service

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