Australia - Abba tribute band Björn Again have been delivering great nights out since their formation in Melbourne in 1988. The only tribute band endorsed by Abba themselves, they have toured the world, played major festivals and entertained the stars. Lighting designer Alex Saad is currently on the road with Björn Again, and chooses High End Systems Hog platform to light up the feel-good show night after night, venue after venue.

"We were in Port Douglas on Thursday, Townsville on Friday and Canberra on Saturday," reported Alex, "and everywhere I go I ask for a Hog and nothing else. Björn Again own a HedgeHog4, we often pick-up a HedgeHog 4N, and I prefer to use a Hog 4. Staying in the Hog family is great because I can go from one platform to the other and not l

USA - Nashville, TN based production and lighting designer Chris Lisle of Chris Lisle Lighting Design has created an elegant stage look for country singer Miranda Lambert's Roadside Bars & Pink Guitars tour, featuring Robe moving lights supplied by Bandit Lites, also based in Nashville.

The tour runs for five weekends in the US over October and is based on the concept of playing smaller and more intimate spaces on the touring circuit, allowing Lambert - known as a great communicator - to be close to her already loyal audience and reach out to potential new fans.

Chris has worked with the prolific and successful star since she opened on a section of Keith Urban's 2005 world tour.

He decided to specify 20 x Robe BMFLs Spots, 24 x Pointes and 19 x LEDWash 600s for his primary moving lights to give plenty of versatility and scope.

The BMFLs and Pointes are spread out al

Brazil - Queen + Adam Lambert's recent Latin American tour comprised six shows in Argentina, Chile and Brazil, featuring a suitably impressive lightshow created by UK based designer Rob Sinclair, who has brought his magic visual touch to the QAL project since 2012.

Lighting for the three Brazilian dates in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre was supplied by leading Latam rental company LPL who are based in Sao Paolo and featured a total of 137 Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 2500E ATs.

This was a continuation of the ongoing 2014-15 world tour which had visited North America, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. The band wanted their enthusiastic Latam fanbase to experience the proper touring QAL experience, so brought their full production including Q-shaped set and ramp, sniffer kabuki, smoke and cryo machines and backline, sourcing the lighting, LED screens a

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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.

Belarus - The ancient city of Bobruisk, in the Mogilev region of Belarus, is celebrating the opening of its new Alexander Prokopenko Stadium. Named after the famous Dinamo Minsk football player, Alexander Prokopenko, the multi-purpose stadium is designed for football and athletics and also incorporates a separate volleyball/basketball field. The stadium has a seating capacity of 1,500, accommodated by the main and opposing spectator stands running down the length of the playing field. With a heated playing surface, the stadium can be used all year and its primary use is for youth football training.

The audio system for the new stadium was designed and installed by Art Ramos Studio. In addition to planning for harsh winter conditions, Art Ramos Studio also had to design the system to meet the stipulations that loudspeakers could not be pole mounted in front of the seating and the

China - Located on Hong Kong's spectacular Clearwater Bay Peninsula, the Clearwater Bay Golf & Country Club has an impressive technological infrastructure and now boasts a high-end audio processing set-up thanks to the installation of a Symetrix Solus open-architecture DSP.

South China House of Technology Ltd (SCHOT) was enlisted to design and install the new processing arrangement, which was timed to coincide with a refurbishment and expansion of the main club house and restaurant areas. The Symetrix Solus DSP was ultimately supplied by regional distributor Soundclassy, whose director Chris Fung explains that the system had to fulfil several primary functions.

"First of all, it had to be able to undertake standalone audio matrix and processing duties for the club house and restaurant areas," he says. "Secondly, it also needed to work seamlessly alongside the AM

Poland - It's taken more than two decades of effort and three years of construction but the Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre finally opened its doors last year. This is a considerable achievement; not only is the building the first drama theatre to be built in Poland in almost 40 years, but it utilizes up to the minute design and technology to recreate an authentic experience of Elizabethan theatre.

Designed by Renatto Rizzi, an Italian architect and professor of the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, the new venue is located on the site of a 17th century wooden playhouse known to have hosted fencing lessons, animal fights and theatrical performances from the early 1600s. It's not by chance that Shakespeare's dramas are recorded among these; the Shakespeare Theatre is a testament to the cultural link between Gdansk and London.

Although the building appears immovable, with its heavy win

USA - LD Nook Schoenfeld was the first lighting designer to use Elation Professional's much anticipated Platinum FLX hybrid moving head, as well as the company's new ACL 360 Matrix narrow-beam LED effect light, and came away wholly satisfied. Both lights had their show premieres at a VIP-only Sheryl Crow concert held on the Trestles Stage just prior to the opening of the inaugural Kaaboo Festival in Del Mar, California.

"I really liked the Platinum FLX and Elation should be commended for this fixture," lighting designer Nook Schoenfeld stated just hours after Sheryl Crow's performance. "Being the first time anyone had used these fixtures I had to get a rushed fixture library to use in my console. So I was actually unsure of what I would see on stage for that evening's performance as I wrote the entire light show in the light of the California sun. But here's where

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BikeFest Spain 2025 - Join the ride!

BikeFest Spain is set to return for its fourth consecutive year, inviting cyclists from across the industry to join the 360km ride towards ISE in Barcelona. From 31 January to 2 February 2025, riders will again rally in Valencia, cycling along the Mediterranean coast in support of industry causes.
For more information and to sign up, visit: www.joinbikefest.com

USA - Global design software developer Vectorworks, Inc. has acquired the ESP Vision product line, including the well-known Vision Pro, one of the most advanced pieces of lighting pre-visualization software available for both PC and Mac operating systems.

For the last 10 years, lighting, film, TV, exhibit, concert, theatre and other designers have been exporting their light plots, scenic designs and event models created with Vectorworks Spotlight software to ESP Vision to cue and visualize award-winning experiences. This announcement creates a path to further enable such workflow collaboration.

"This purchase fortifies Vectorworks' global market leadership position and signals our continuous commitment to the entertainment design industry at a time when visualization capabilities are becoming a more mission-critical, cost-effective means of cueing a show in advance,"

UK / USA - Cadac has appointed Richard 'Fez' Ferriday as director of sales and marketing, with global responsibility for sales and marketing of the Cadac portfolio of audio mixing consoles and high definition networking products. The move sees Ferriday take on direct responsibility for the company's global distributor network and its North America sales and service subsidiary, newly located in Minneapolis, under the management of technical support manager Mitch Mortenson.

The new North American sales and service HQ provides warehousing and greater space for expansion of the product demo facilities. The move is in anticipation of an equally successful launch of the CDC six in the US and Canada, to that in Europe and Asia.

The 139th International AES Convention in New York sees the US launch of the CDC six live sound console.

The CDC six - and the CDC eight - are being shown a

UK - Stage Electrics has announced the relocation of its London operation to new premises in Southwark. The company will continue to offer Hire, Sales and Live Events services from the new London premises just 1.6 miles from the old premises and just 3 miles from the heart of the West End.

Greg Wood of Stage Electrics commented: "We continue to offer our London customers our full range of services, we move a huge amount of hire equipment and sales goods through the London operation each month and having a central London premises to coordinate this is an important part of our strategy.

Stage Electrics provides audio, lighting, staging and video equipment to a wide range of theatre, events, broadcast and corporate clients in and around London. The London operation carries stocks of consumable items, including a comprehensive range of lighting filters, tape and batteries ava

USA - At LDI 2015, Clear-Com will launch HelixNet Version 3.0, a free software-only update to the HelixNet digital network partyline platform. The new version unlocks the HelixNet system in response to the growing need for more communication channels to support live performances and live productions.

"We are extremely excited to unveil the updates in HelixNet Version 3.0 at LDI," said John Wyckoff, Product Manager at Clear-Com. "The additional capacity and simplified control functions create a whole new world of possibilities on this digital network partyline platform."

With this new update, the HelixNet multiplies its basic channel count by three, with a new offering of 12 channels per HMS-4X Main Station. In the previous version, users had to link three HMS-4X Stations together in order to achieve the same number of channels. This capability brings greate

Switzerland - Schertler has added to its family of acoustic amplifiers with the release of the new David, a compact three-channel amp that combines a number of new features and updated technology with a new look.

Equipped with a 1" dome tweeter and 6" woofer, David essentially offers 100W (30W + 70W) of bi-amplified power. However, improvements to the amp's acoustic construction have led to an increase in its internal air volume, an optimization of the bass reflex construction and a larger power supply, resulting in actual sound pressure levels that are typical of more highly powered amps.

David's inputs will accommodate a microphone, an instrument and a stereo device such as a computer, MP3 player or CD. The instrument input and the jack input on the microphone channel both feature a Bootstrap technology that enables the input to automatically adapt to any impedance

Brazil - Held annually since 1998, PrΩmio Multishow (the Multishow Brazilian Music Awards) is hosted by cable TV channel Multishow. Broadcast live across the country, the 2015 event took place on 1 September and featured six DiGiCo mixing consoles.

Multishow is part of GloboSat, the cable television arm of Globo TV, Brazil's biggest television channel. Presented for the fourth year by singer Ivete Sangalo and actor Paulo Gustavo, PrΩmio Multishow 2015 was enjoyed by a huge television audience. The live and broadcast audio was taken care of by São Paulo-based Epah! Estúdios, in collaboration with Globosat's engineering department.

The brief for Epah! Estúdios was complex and included providing the PA and monitors for the ceremony, which took place over three stages; broadcast mix in stereo and 5.1; 128 channel multitrack recording; 'master room' and all internal

Europe - Spandau Ballet recently played their Soulboys of the Western World world tour with a lighting and stage design by Patrick Woodroffe.

The lighting was operated by lighting director and programmer Roland Greil using two grandMA2 full-size consoles and four MA NPU (Network Processing Unit) which were controlling nearly 130 moving lights and, amongst others, 315 LED panels.

Says Roland, "It was our intention to have a straight and elegant design that could provide theatrical as well as rock'n'roll looks. Therefore we focused on using only three different types of moving lights, amongst them Clay Paky Mythos and Philips Vari*Lite VL3500 Washes. That offered the flexibility we needed. Furthermore, the grandMA2 system was a great choice and proved once more its advantages and power, especially when adapting the show to various different lighting systems in the gi

UAE - Over thirty Philips Showline SL NITRO 510C LED strobes have dazzled audiences at the packed opening party for WHITE club Dubai's third season.

WHITE Dubai is situated on the rooftop of the Meydan Grandstand racecourse. Each season sees a roster of international DJs take to the decks, with the club offering one of the most extravagant audio-visual party experiences in the Middle East.

During the opening party's 'reality-altering' light show, the Philips Showline strobes were employed to deliver bursts of colour that filled the space with light. The SL NITRO 510C is the colour version of the highly popular SL NITRO 510 and boasts an array of 264 tightly packed RGB LEDs to ensure maximum output.

"The SL NITRO 510C fixtures played a huge role in providing intense colour washes in conjunction with the LED wash lights," says the club's lighting designer Dave Parry

Germany - When veteran Berlin punk rock band, Beatsteaks, had the idea of staging a fund raiser for local refugee support organisations at the Dresden Eventwerk recently, local PA company, Complete Audio offered their services to ensure that the sound was first class.

Fielding his Martin Audio MLA Compact system, André Rauhut, who heads Complete Audio, reports that the band had originally planned to end their 2015 touring schedule at the Lollapalooza Festival until this came along. "And it turned out to be the longest Beatsteaks show ever - running to two and a half hours!"

It had been a strategic decision to stage this show in Dresden, with the beneficiaries being the charities, Sachsische Fluchtlingsrat and Dresden Fu?r Alle as André explained. "There had been a lot of right wing activity here over the course of the past three months and by going

UK - Extra temperature controlled storage has been acquired to support the dramatic increase in demand for Le Mark Floors. With a new website officially launching only in September, online interest has produced an all-time high level of site traffic and inquiries, reports the company.

Le Mark's Stuart Gibbons commented, "We've made it so easy, the new site is completely focused around the user. A simple, easy to use layout allows you to find exactly the floor you're looking for with just a few clicks. It takes only seconds to request a sample or a bespoke quotation.

"Everything is geared to make it as time efficient for the user as possible, yet provide extensive levels of information and downloads, if required. We're developing the site further to allow each floor to have its own dedicated case study gallery where anyone can see how some of the biggest names in the

Singapore - An Allen & Heath Qu-16 rackmount digital mixer was employed to manage the live audio and broadcast feeds at the recent Formula 1 Grand Prix in Singapore.

The system, comprising the Qu-16 and Shure microphones, was supplied and managed by E&E, which was tasked with capturing all the live audio to provide media and local broadcast feeds. The Qu-16 sent mic signals from the drivers to the Formula One Management (FOM) systems, which in turn fed the Media Centre, where the international journalist community were waiting to report. The Media Centre also distributed audio to the arena loudspeaker system for the local audience.

The Qu-16 also managed audio for press conferences in the media centre and at the podium area, as well as the broadcast of the winning team's National Anthem.

"The Qu-16 was chosen for its versatility and power-packed features, available in a

UK - Kingston University has purchased 60 Panasonic professional displays for a digital signage roll out across the university's five campus sites.

It follows the installation of 170 Panasonic PT-RZ370 laser/LED projectors within 119 lecture and seminar rooms in August 2014. This project is as a result of the strategic partnership between Kingston University and GV Multimedia.

The digital signage project includes 48 50-inch TH-50LFE7E displays, six 65-inch TH-65LFE7E and five 47-inch TH-47LF6W displays. There is also a single 80-inch TH-80LFC70, which the university will use for more efficient information sharing and wayfaring at the University.

Gareth Day, UK group manager for visual systems at Panasonic UK, said, "Following the success of last year's projector installation, we're delighted that the University has chosen to rollout our displays too. This reinforces our

USA - Underscoring its commitment to providing rental and staging professionals with the latest videowall displays, ultra-large flat panels, and touchscreens available today, APG Displays, one of North America's leading distributors and renters of videowalls, will be showcasing NEC and AViary Green Hippo Par4keet visual solutions at LDI 2015. The presentation will be made at Booth #2349 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 23-25.

"This show gives APG Displays the chance to present rental and staging professionals with the variety of opportunities that large-scale videowalls, displays and video players are offering today," APG Displays President David Weatherhead said. "We exclusively sub-rent videowall displays with full technical support, installation services and logistics, to our rental and staging partners across North America.&qu

UK - Flightcase, loudspeaker component and 19 inch rack manufacturer Penn Elcom has launched a new LED rack light - the RADM-23 Raclite.

The RADM-23 1U Raclite is designed to be fitted to any 19 inch equipment rack, providing a flexible, elegant and practical solution for illuminating equipment in dark and dingy environments.

Suitable for the stage wings or dimmer, amp and control rooms, 25 x super bright high quality cool-white (6500K) LED emitters provide a crisp wash optimised to give clear vision of all the kit in the rack, allowing the status of equipment to be checked and assessed, and all the vital information and monitoring seen at a glance.

A 130 - 150 degree variable beam angle on the LEDs offers further visibility depending on the location and set-up of the installation, and a universal 12 Volt power supply means that it can be plugged in anywhere in the world.

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