Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
PLASA Show 2025 - Banner - June-Aug 2025

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Canada - Two nearly identical venues have become the first theatres in Canada to be equipped with the Meyer Sound Lyon linear sound reinforcement systems: Edmonton's Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium (NAJA) and Calgary's Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium (SAJA).

Both long-time Meyer Sound users since 1983, the 2,538-seat auditoriums selected Lyon as they looked to upgrade from their trusty M2D line array loudspeakers, a decision made jointly by Mark Belkie and Paul Schmitz, technical coordinators for audio at SAJA and NAJA, respectively.

"In our extensive listening and assessment process, Lyon set the benchmark that all other competing loudspeakers had to meet or exceed, and none could do so," reports Belkie. "We've found that Lyon is a significant step forwar

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Poland - Entertainment engineering expert Triple E has designed and supplied 12 of its Chaintrack systems for the newly opened world-class concert hall in Katowice, Poland - a new venue for the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR).

The new building is billed as a concert hall with 'perfectly-designed acoustics'. In addition to smaller spaces and an atrium, at the heart of the building is the 1800-seat Great Concert Hall, which is shaped in a hybrid form mixing classic 'shoe-box' and more recent 'vineyard' designs.

The 12 Chaintrack systems, which were supplied with Spiral storage areas, are installed on the three balcony levels within the Great Concert Hall, with four systems on each level.There are two systems on each balcony side, which share a common stacking area, and the tracks layouts are mirrored on each level and on each side. The installation required over

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USA - At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards held at Los Angeles' Staples Centre, audio manufacturer Sennheiser once again delivered reliable and detailed wireless audio to a host of world-class recording artists including Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Beyoncé, Madonna, Tony Bennett, Annie Lennox, Miranda Lambert and many others.

Sennheiser user Sam Smith scooped up four awards, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album; Ed Sheeran performed a guitar-centric, stripped down version of his blockbuster Thinking Out Loud, singing through a Sennheiser SKM 2000/MD 9235 combination, and Beyoncé delivered the performance of a lifetime through the Sennheiser Digital 9000 wireless system.

During a ceremony that featured no less than 23 live performances, Beyoncé's powerful rendition of Thomas A. Dorsey's Take My Hand, Prec

PLASA Show 2025 - Banner - June-Aug 2025

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Germany - Michael Althaus, the former managing director of MA Lighting, has launched a new distribution company in Germany, called Visionstage. The company begins with two exclusive brands in its distribution portfolio - Ayrton and Oxo, while "a few more exciting brands will follow soon," says Michael.

Michael says he is convinced that there is "a huge demand for innovative and sustainable solutions and disruptive technologies - paired with high sales quality, years-long experience and outstanding customer service."

Visionstage will have two fully equipped showrooms, centrally located in Germany. The flagship showroom is in Frankfurt, the second at the headquarters in Detmold, which is midway between Dortmund and Hanover. Michael and the Visionstage team will be on the Ayrton stand at ProLight+Sound in Frankfurt in April.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - Northern Stage Services Ltd, the specialist lighting, sound and stage solutions provider, has completed the acquisition of the business of Lancelyn Lighting and Lancelyn Theatre Supplies.

Northern Stage Services Ltd, whose client list includes the RIBA award-winning Liverpool Everyman Theatre, Brio Leisure and Manchester Communications Academy, acquired the business on 16 February 2015, enhancing its overall offering to be UK-wide spanning the theatrical, architectural and construction sectors.

Northern Stage Services Ltd managing director, Patrick Colin, comments: "Lancelyn has a long history in both Oxford and The Wirral and its customers very much value the service given by its skilled design, manufacturing and installation teams.

"Similarly, Northern Stage Services has built up a solid reputation within the industry through our ability to work on larger, m

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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

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UK - TSL Lighting is pleased to welcome Andrew Cheshire to its team as Head of Projects. Andrew has over 19 years' of experience in the rental and installation markets. Andrew was most recently technical manager at West End Studios and has also previously worked at Hawthorns. Andrew heads up the project management team at TSL and brings a wide range of expertise and experience to the role and the company.

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UK - Robe was again a major sponsor of the TPi awards, supplying their latest moving light technology including 38 x BMFL Spots, 46 x Pointes, 32 x LEDBeam 100s, 21 x CycFX 8s and 70 x PARfect 100s plus an MDG theONE hazer in a design by Jack Sayer from Hawthorn, lighting rental partner for the 2015 event. Jack worked closely with Hawthorn project manager Tom Ring.

The annual jamboree - produced by TPi Magazine, part of Mondiale Publishing Ltd - honours the technical and creative achievements of the live production / event industry over the preceding 12 months - seriously upped the ante this year, moving to a new venue, Battersea Evolution in London, which offered more space for both guests and the production.

Over 1,100 leading industry professionals and personalities enjoyed an evening of entertainment, networking and fun, hosted by comedian and actor Russell Kane who presen

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Create new traditions – Cameo P6 - High Output Full-Spectrum Ellipsoidal

Cameo's P6 is a future-proof LED profiler with a powerful 600 W RGBACL engine and 16,000 lumens. It’s an energy-efficient replacement for 2.5 kW halogen profile lights in theatres and venues. With excellent light quality and natural colour rendering, it fits perfectly in theatres, musicals, TV studios, congresses, and live events.

With an LED life of 50,000 hours and low power use, the P6 cuts energy costs and supports the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ goals for climate neutrality by 2050. It also meets updated eco-design rules for lighting.

www.cameolight.com/p6profile

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France - Airstar, lighting balloon technology specvialist for the event and staging industry, has been at the centre of the Val d'Isère Airstar Night Light since 2012. Every Thursday evening, between December and March, the manufacturer showcases various lighting technologies, and all its savoir-faire, to illuminate the French ski resort.

This year, over 30 Airstar lighting balloons of various shapes, sizes and colours were deployed: The Tourism Office square boasted a magnificent Star shaped balloon as well as four hanging Crystals of various sizes (130cm to 160cm), covered by a printed << planet >> cover, while the main road hosted six Crystal Diamond 130, three air inflated Stars 160 on a pole and 12x DMX controllable standalone Towair Evo Flame. A further four red Airstar Towairs (four metres high) lit up a live show.

During the ski holiday season, the Airstar Night Light

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World - Ed Sheeran is currently on a major worldwide tour, with lighting and production designer Mark Cunniffe using super powerful Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20 and Sharpys to hold their own against his video-heavy theme.

Cunniffe's design is beautifully multi-layered and sees the Clay Paky fixtures, supplied by NEG Earth, working with the video to give variation to the solo artist's stage set up.

"As Ed's show is one guy with an acoustic guitar on a 60ft wide stage, it ends up looking pretty bare, so we made the show very much video-based," explains Cunniffe. "The B-EYEs and Sharpys perfectly supplement this as they deliver a plethora of varying looks. I put 30 Sharpys upstage behind a broken screen arrangement of video, where they stab through the gaps unexpectedly to add another dimension that no one will have seen before. I use them to 'paint' rather than as a

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UK - Large format projection artist Ross Ashton was commissioned to create a new projection artwork for the 2015 e-Luminate Festival in Cambridge, UK, which lit the front fascias of two of the city's magnificent historical buildings - Old School and Senate House - which are part of the University of Cambridge.

Ross and his team from the Projection Studio received technical support sponsorship from locally based live event and technical production company Hawthorn for the five day festival, and the four PT-DZ21k projectors were supplied by Panasonic.

It was the third time that Ross has created bespoke light works for these buildings.

This was also the third, largest and most successful year of the e-Luminate festival to date. The concept showcases the city 'in a different light' through a series of innovative installations and interactive events highlighting how light and lig

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UK - Welsh four-piece Catfish and the Bottlemen, winners at the inaugural BBC Music Awards in December 2014, have chosen Shure microphones for use live and in the studio. The band are now using Shure PSM1000 wireless in-ear monitoring, and an extensive complement of frontline and backline mics, including a KSM9 vocal mic for lead singer Van McCann, and KSM313 ribbons on guitars.

The new Shure equipment arrived in time for a single warm-up concert before the band played at the BBC Music Awards, where they walked away with the 'Introducing...' award for best newcomers.

"The KSM9 lends a beautifully natural sense of air and sparkle to Van's vocal, getting him to sit crystal clear on top of the mix without it sounding too forced or piercing," explains Catfish's front-of-house sound engineer Mike Woodhouse, "and the KSM313 ribbons naturally capture all the low and hi

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USA / Europe - Media Networking Alliance, Bothell, Washington, USA. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio AB), Focusrite, Genelec, Riedel Audio & Acoustics and Shure Incorporated, are among the latest organizations to join ALC NetworX, Archwave Technologies, Attero Tech, Bosch Security Systems, Directout, Lawo, QSC, The Telos Alliance and Yamaha, in signing up to membership of the Media Networking Alliance.

The fast growing pace of membership follows the alliance's inaugural membership meeting at last October's AES Convention, and the recent AES plugfest which proved AES67 interoperability between equipment from 10 different manufacturers. Both the BBC and Swedish Radio were present during the plugfest in an observer capacity. Membership applications from several more AV manufacturers are currently being accepted.

Speaking for Shure, among t

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USA - The Audio Engineering Society hosts its 57th International Conference, the Future of Audio Entertainment Technology: Cinema, Television, and the Internet, on Friday 6 March through Sunday 8 March 2015, in Hollywood, California, at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres.

The conference will feature the AES's first-ever Immersive Audio Day (Sunday), an entire conference day packed with panels, papers, workshops and demonstrations focusing on one of the most active new areas of audio technology: immersive sound. Starting with the day's presentation by Francis Rumsey entitled Immersive Audio: Status and Challenges, the day will delve into issues pertaining to mixing, asset management and processing for these massive multichannel formats.

Immersive Audio Day will bring together both pioneers and up-and-comers in the field to discuss immersive audio formats and how they cont

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Israel / The Netherlands - Kramer Electronics has announced its exclusive global distribution agreement with cyber-security manufacturer HighSecLabs (HSL). The migration to secure switching solutions in areas such as healthcare, finance, government, and command and control was a key theme for Kramer at ISE 2015.

The agreement lets Kramer incorporate HSL's secure signal-extending products in combination with Kramer's extensive AV switching product line. All products are backed by Kramer's seven-year warranty.

"Security is fast becoming a requirement for our global customers," said Aviv Ron, vice president of business development and strategy at Kramer. "With the HSL agreement, Kramer raises the bar in switching solutions, providing the ultimate in security, accuracy and reliability. This exclusive global distribution agreement with a fantastic innovator like HSL

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UK - PAI Group has appointed Martin Draisey as its new business development manager. Martin is an experienced sales professional with a wealth of industry knowledge. He will be responsible for the delivery of specialist integrated audio-visual, sound, lighting and control solutions, working directly with clients and design teams across various sectors.

After receiving a diploma in Multi-track Recording from the Gateway School of Recording & Music Technology at Kingston Polytechnic, Martin started his career as a recording engineer at Harp Recordings Ltd before becoming a Sound Engineer for independent local radio station Swansea Sound.

He joined PA Installations Ltd in 1993 as a field engineer, working his way up to customer support manager and then Technical Sales Manager during an 11-year spell with the company.

In 2004 Martin took up the role of regional sales manager at

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USA - Life Church of Rock Run is a Pentecostal church in Joliet, Illinois with an unabashed flair for engaging, contemporary services. Outfit with drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, and plenty of spirit, Life Church rocks its message every Sunday. Knowledgeable in technical matters, the church had acquired a high-performance Danley Sound Labs sound reinforcement system but for budgetary reasons had omitted low-end from the system.

Understandably, the church was keen to shore up that omission, and it timed subwoofer installation to correspond with the addition of new seating that would require additional system coverage. The church hired Chicago-based Advanced Systems & Technologies (AST) to design and install the additional coverage and to overhaul the existing system. To Life Church's existing Danley SH-60 and SH-DFA, AST added two Danley SH-mini loudspeakers for fill, four Danley

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UK - Shure microphones including Beta series drum mics, KSM9 vocal mics and a UHF-R wireless system are being used extensively on the UK and international dates for Holy Holy's live presentation of David Bowie's album The Man Who Sold The World, featuring original drummer Woody Woodmansey and producer Tony Visconti on bass.

After selling out several UK venues including the Shepherds Bush Empire and the O2 Academies in Glasgow and Sheffield in Autumn 2014, the live show is returning for more dates in June 2015, and will tour Europe, the USA, Japan, and Australia later in the year.

The Man Who Sold The World (released in 1971 in the USA, and 1972 in the UK) was never toured live, as David Bowie had already put together his Ziggy Stardust stage persona and album by the time of his next live tour. In 2014, with Bowie's blessing, the album's original drummer Woody Woo

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UK - Professional loudspeaker manufacturer Void Acoustics has launched a new website (//voidacoustics.com) With a modern, responsive design, the new website is optimised for desktop PCs, tablets and mobile devices and across Mac OS and Android platforms. It is designed to offer a more engaging visitor experience, offering in-depth product information logically grouped together, a news section with current news releases, upcoming events and embedded social media feeds from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The Dorset-based maker of the Incubus system, a mainstay of many of the most popular nightclubs around the world, provides detailed product information and technical resources on its new easy-to-navigate website product pages - from full specifications and high resolution images to EASE data, 3D cabinet drawings, user manuals and crossover settings.

According to Void's sales and

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South Africa - Durban based rental company, Black Coffee, has purchased 12 new Clay Paky Mythos fixtures which will go onto the 14th Metro FM Music Awards for lighting designer François van der Merwe and Dream Sets, the official technical suppliers . The awards will be hosted at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Conference Centre (ICC) in Durban on 28 February and will be broadcast live on SABC1. Black Coffee will also be receiving six Stormy Colors.

Brandon Bunyan, owner of Black Coffee, was introduced to the projectors comprising of The Mythos, The Stormy and The SuperSharpy on the South African leg of the Clay Paky Roadshow held at the end of last year. Once Massimo Bolandrina and Giovanni Zucchinali had completed an indoor demo, they took the fixtures outside to do an informal outdoor demo. "I was late for beers at the demo," remembers Bunyan. "It was night time and

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Czech Republic - Robe Lighting's RnD department has finished an extensive and comprehensive piece of research and testing in conjunction with lamp manufacturers Osram, relating to the longevity of the Lok-it! HTI 1700/PS lightsource used in Robe's new signature BMFL fixture, when run consistently in its brightest 1700 W mode.

This confirms that the lamp life expectancy is exactly the same when the fixture is run in 1700W mode as in 1200W and 1500W modes.

Therefore, Robe can categorically announce that the BMFL lamp life time is the same in all three modes - 750 hours.

The project also examined the lumen maintenance of the source at 750 hours when run in 1700W mode and reports that lumen output was measured at 60% compared to that of a new lamp - representing a 40% drop over the full lifespan.

This means that the lamp is extremely efficient and robust, and maintains brightn

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Europe - GDS has announced that Fernando Freitas has been appointed as its new European account manager.

Fernando will be responsible for the European territory working with GDS's dealer network in Europe and end users in both, the entertainment industry and development of new opportunities in other industries.

Moving from marketing manager to European account manager he changes his role at GDS as part of the ongoing strategy to increase GDS participation in the European market.

Fernando brings almost two years of experience within GDS and a good understanding of the entertainment and event industry.

Fernando comments, "Having settled into the marketing department I am now thrilled to work with our European partners directly in this amazing industry. I am looking forward to this new exciting role and providing the best solutions to current and future customers."<

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