Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
Doughty - Banner - ABTT (27 May - 5 June)

Events

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Italian manufacturer LDR is one of the few companies around which has enjoyed significant sales growth over the past 12 difficult months; director Lisa Papi puts this down to the company's compact and therefore manageable size, and also the relatively tight market focus of its range of stylish but functional theatre luminaires. On the same stand, Jan de Jonge was showing the latest dimming products from IES, with emphasis on custom units for differing power requirements.

A bespoke solution designed for the National Theatre in London is now offered as standard - a 6 x 2.5kW dimming pack switchable to 3 x 5kW.

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The new iSpot 1200 from Coemar, previewed at SIB, is a moving head fixture available in normal or electronic ballast (EB) versions. Utilizing a 1200W discharge lamp, its includes a five-colour wheel, a high-resolution colour-mixing system, two gobo wheels (each with six gobos), two rotating prisms, proportional frost, CTO correction filter and iris.

Also from Coemar, the ShowColor 3200K and ShowColor 1200 have a halogen lamp and a discharge lamp with electronic ballast respectively. These moving head spotlights are designed for stage and TV studio applications, and form part of a new range of luminaires engineered to provide maximum light output from the source, say Coemar. Both offer colour mixing via an "innovative radial CMY system", while the discharge version additionally offers a strobe effect.

The iWash LED brings LED technology to Coemar's moving head fixtures. Addi

Doughty - Banner - ABTT (27 May - 5 June)

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Another SIB exhibitor quietly enjoying significant growth is Dutch company Highlite International, which now produces a huge range of lighting, audio and trussing products. Company owner Huub de la Haije told me that since the company was founded in the early 90s, it has doubled its turnover every two years. Highlite has always manufactured its products in China, and has more than 10 years' worth of relationships with Chinese manufacturing interests under it belt. Consequently it is somewhat ahead of the game now that everyone's eyes turn are turning eastwards.

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On the Ianiro stand, Artistic Licence's Mark Thompson was showing the intelligent Pixi-Led array which demonstrates Remote Device Management (RDM) in operation, with each individual fixture feeding back status information to the controller - the same technology Artistic employed in the Broadgate installation. Also with Ianiro was High End Systems, whose Fons de Vreede, Phil Mercer and Tony Magana were on hand with the Catalyst digital media server system and the Catalyst DL1 moving head.

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Spotlight was present in its role as both manufacturer and distributor. Its own new products included the Evolution series of high performance profile spots, which now consists of eight models available in both halogen and discharge versions, and ranging from 1000W to 2500W. The discharge units feature a built-in electromechanical dimmer which allows the fixture to be dimmed through a dimmer channel in the same way as a halogen profile spot, while taking advantage of the higher performance levels of discharge sources.

Spotlight also introduced the ARC Video Performer system. The ARC is an intelligent yoke-mounted video projector, which in combination with the Video Performer digital media server system provides a complete package for video content manipulation, processing and projection. In its distribution role, Spotlight was joined on stand by a number of leading brands including Com

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Studio Due's highlights included the 'Photowall', a 1200e large format scrolling projector, and the CS2 (2 x 250W) and CS4 (4 x 250W) moving multi-par fixtures. Also new is the Silver Line of architectural lighting products, including the Hercules 800e and 600m models, the CityColor 400 and 300 models and the MiniCity 250/SL, 150/SL and 100 models - all of which are IP66-rated.

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Of the lighting players, Clay Paky's launch of the impressive Alpha range of 575W moving head fixtures was one of the highlights of the show. The three Alpha models are the Alpha Spot, Alpha Spot HPE and Alpha Wash. 'HPE' signifies 'High Performance', and accordingly the Alpha Spot HPE boasts a redesigned optical system, a 10-40° zoom and electronic focusing. With CYM colour-mixing and a seven-colour wheel, linear CTO for colour temperature correction and pastel shades, plus its three gobo wheels (of which two are indexable, interchangeabe and bi-directional), two prisms (2-facet and 5-facet), three frost filters, 0-100% dimming and stop/strobe effect, the Alpha Spot is a fully-featured unit. Another new feature is its 'fast-clamping' capability which provides quick switching of graphic effects discs.

The Alpha Spot is a lower-budget option, with a 15-35° zoom, two colour wheels and

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Swefog showed its smart new Live T26, the design of which includes a handy carrying bar and a nozzle that wouldn't look out of place on a drag racer. The unit utilizes Swefog's X-Power heavy duty 2,600W smoke generating system, and produces 1,800m/min output.

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UK - For performing arts professionals and students based in Scotland, it's a long trek to trade shows in the Midlands and south to see the latest products and talk to equipment manufacturers. So this year the Department of Technical and Production Arts at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) added a Sponsors Trade Show to run alongside its annual graduate exhibition. Spearheaded by Ros Maddison and David Ripley (RSAMD's head of Technical and Production Arts and production manager respectively), the combined event was held on 24-25 March.

The show fulfilled three functions: to give the Academy's sponsors something in return, by bringing their products out 'to the market' and providing a forum to informally talk direct to the students; to give the students the opportunity to talk to the companies, to discuss products, working practices, work placements and employ

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UAE - The Middle East is an exciting market for lighting, sound, AV and systems integration providers. For example, the UAE is slated to invest $28billion in new architecturally-driven projects over the next five years. Across the Middle East region, research has indicated that the sound and lighting industry will be worth $2billion per year within five years.

This huge level of investment aims to open up massive new income streams to these previously oil-dependent states, with tourism and leisure on the grandest of scales being the big earner of the future. All good news for suppliers and installers of entertainment, presentation and communication systems.

Against this background, IIR Exhibitions has put the Pro Audio & Light Middle East - PALME - exhibition firmly on the international trade show calendar after just two events. This year's show, which took place in February,

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Switzerland - L&SI was recently a guest at the Geneva Motor Show, courtesy of Barco's Media and Entertainment division. And not without good reason did Barco extend their largesse . . .

Inevitably there was good and bad at the Geneva Motor Show. Bad was the profusion of aggressive-looking cars - you know the type? The shape of car is all squat and muscle - something akin to an automotive Pit Bull Terrier. It's a sad day for western males when even an MG saloon appears obliged to prop up the failing ego . . . whatever happened to those sleek, rounded, curvaceous sports cars of the 60s?

The good news was presentation. Pal Expo Geneva is vast, with acres of floor space, typical of a truly international exhibition centre. But for the car show certain rules are in evidence, primarily one that limits stand design and floor usage. Stands, or at least their vertical scenic elements

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France - Early spring in Paris and the 22nd SIEL show opened its doors to what the organizers claimed were 25,893 visitors. Essentially a national show attracting a largely French audience, SIEL is unsurprisingly dominated by French Distributors. There were few international manufacturers exhibiting independently and those that were hailed mainly from the European mainland.

There was a very relaxed feel to the show with practically everyone stopping for a long lunch at around 1pm (how civilized!). This year the show was divided into two distinct areas with entertainment lighting and sound exhibitors on the upper floor and the rather livelier and more colourful nightlife and events show on the ground.

Siel was attended by many of the usual suspects along with a few interesting new faces showcasing some fascinating and innovative products. LED technology at last seems to be est

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Germany - Frankfurt's ProLight&Sound exhibition closed its doors on 3 April after registering a 30 % increase in visitor numbers, say the organizers. This is the largest number of visitors ever recorded in the 10 years since it was launched. Over the four days of the fair, 26,735 trade visitors - including more than 9,000 industry professionals from outside Germany.

"The fair was very well attended, business people have been able to make the contacts they want and, with the innovative segments of media technology and systems integration, a new, future-oriented growth market is opening up for the sector," said Florian von Hofen, chief executive of Germany's Association for Professional Light, Sound and Event Technology (VPLT), summing up the fair.

The mood of the exhibition appeared to be indicative of a new upswing in the sector: according to the organizers' research

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UK - The Museum and Heritage Show (12-13 May) is set for its biggest and best show yet. Taking place from at its new home at Earls Court, London, the event brings together the world's leading suppliers and contractors to museums, galleries and heritage visitor attractions, along with the latest services.

Supporting Museums & Galleries Month's objectives of attracting new visitors to the UK's wealth of museums, galleries, and visitor attractions, this year's show will see and extensive programme of seminars, showcases and technical presentations all designed to provide industry professionals with the information and inspiration needed to enhance their visitors' experience.

Andrew McIntyre, chair of the Visitor Studies Group, will offer an insight into the reasons visitors visit and, perhaps more importantly, why non-visitors stay away, whilst the Museum Trading Association will

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Australia - The organizers of Entech 2004 (5-7 April 2004), Australia's biennial entertainment technology exhibition, have reported a successful show, which offered visitors access to over 500 of the latest brands in the professional audio, vision, lighting, and staging industries. The new demo rooms were well received and in full flight allowing audio companies to turn on and turn up their products. Visitors truly got a hands-on experience both in the demo rooms and on the show floor.

Says ULA's Con Biviano: "We expected a great response - it's been two years since the last Entech, and there is so much new technology and product to show - but this is fantastic. It's fantastic not only for ULA, but also for the industry to get hands-on with the products. Many people, especially end users don't normally have that opportunity to see it all in one place."

Exhibitors w

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UK - The Association of British Theatre Technicians' annual showcase - the ABTT Theatre Show, to be staged in London's Royal Horticultural Halls on 16 -17 June this year, is set to be bigger than ever, say the organizers. By encouraging new exhibitors from areas such as PA/VA, video and building services, alongside those from the more familiar lighting, rigging and audio sectors, the show has broadened its appeal and is already 95% sold out. Among the exhibitors will be VLPS Lighting Services, showing the new Virtuoso EX1 Media Server which brings a whole new dynamic to digital lighting by using a moving perspective camera and four-point lighting in a virtual 3D environment.

ETC will exhibit a selection of its lighting, control and dimming product such as The Source Four Revolution, which has already won the Best Debuting Product/Promising Prototype Award at LDI 2003. Also on sh

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UK - This year's A.C. Lighting North Tradeshow looks set to exceed all expectations for the event, say A.C. Lighting, with more exhibitors than ever before and a record number of visitor pre-registrations. If you haven't already registered for the event, there's still time to do so before the show takes place on 11-12 May at the Royal Armouries museum, Leeds.

Due to a significant increase in the level of interest from manufacturers to exhibit at this year's show, the event has been expanded to take in an additional Seminar Theatre - resulting in over 60 brands demonstrating hundreds of products. Highlights amongst the list of new products include important launches from Clay Paky, Martin Professional, Pulsar, Selecon, Zero 88, Avolites, Jands, Chroma-Q, Allen & Heath, beyerdynamic, Turbosound, Community, Sennheiser and Le Mark Group. Show visitors will be the first anywhere in t

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This relatively young company was launching the new version of its popular A-16 personal mixer, which enables the performer to create a custom monitor mix tailored to his or her personal needs. The monitor enables control over channel volume, grouping, pan, stereo spread and master volume and can create a unique monitor mix for any individual performer.

Up to 16 personal mixes can be saved and recalled as presets and it can be used to drive either floor wedge monitors, in-ear monitors, headphones or spot monitors. Further recent developments have resulted in the Aviom16/o-Y1 output card for the Yamaha digital console. This is a mini-YGDAI format card that fits into an expansion slot in Yamaha digital consoles. It allows the FOH engineer to assign and send 16 mono or eight stereo channels of audio in the digital domain to each performer on stage or in the studio directly from the consol

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beyerdynamic (GB) announced it had taken on the distribution of two brands new to its distribution portfolio - Altec Lansing Professional and Powersoft - while at the same time showing some new developments from beyerdynamic itself. These included the first acoustical boundary microphone with USB connection - the MPC 70 USB - which features a low cut filter, adjustable gain and easily selectable operating modes such as Mic On/Off, PTT (Push-to-Talk) or PTM (Push-to-Mute). Also new from beyerdynamic and serving the conference market, is the SIS (Simultaneous Interpreting System) 1202 interpreter station - developed to allow two interpreters to work in the same booth, using either headsets or headphones and microphones.

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This year's show saw the launch of MC2 Audio's E45 power amplifier, the third in its E-Series of lightweight, touring/rental amplifiers. Aimed directly at the national and international touring market, it follows the successful introduction of the E25 and E15 last year. The E45 is rated at 2250W per channel into 4 ohms, built in a 2U chassis, and has all the sonic qualities and reliability of the MC and T Series amplifiers but without the physical weight, an advantage for touring. The switch-mode power supply is capable of delivering high peaks without any perceptible bass 'sag' at very low distortion and is kept within its safe operating area by the new, MC2 'intelligent' limiter, making it ideal for driving high power PA systems.

Main features include a digital power supply with a large power reservoir, proprietary-designed progressive switching rail output, proprietary current drive

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Alcons showed a range of new products, aimed at both touring and installation applications, including the LR16 line array module, featuring the RBN601 pro-ribbon HF driver on a 'morpher' waveguide. In addition to 'the Ribbon' system, the LR16Bass is a bass extension to the LR16, which can be flown or stacked.

Also new, the LR14, Alcons' ultra-compact line-array module, featuring the patented RBN401 pro-ribbon driver and double 6.5" cone transducers. Designed as either ultra-compact line-array system, or as an under-fill for the LR16, the LR14 has a dispersion pattern of 120° x 15°. The 800W peak power handling offers similar dynamic response as the LR16.

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Renkus-Heinz celebrated its 25th Anniversary on 1 April - and broke out the bubbly to mark a quarter century of audio innovation. They also unveiled a new three-way, high output line array combining - for the first time - the company's proprietary line array technology with its pioneering CoEntrant Waveguide Topology.

Ralph Heinz, VP of R&D, said: "We have had amazing reactions to the PN102/LA, our first foray into line array design. Based on that experience, and to meet customers' demands for a very high power but reference quality system, we developed a unique Renkus-Heinz solution, combining two technologies with lightweight, high power amplification to build a new standard in high performance line array design."Also from Renkus-Heinz, the STLA/9 is a lightweight, 'full-size' self-powered line array module (the STXLA/9 is the passive version). With 139dB peak SPL broadband

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Outline showed the new H.A.R.D. 115 SP. This self-powered, low-profile stage monitor employs a 15" woofer and a compression driver with a 2.56" diaphragm, loaded by the same parabolic acoustic reflector (patent pending) used on the H.A.R.D. 212 monitor, used on tour by Eric Clapton, Steve Howe and by top Italian artists such as Claudio Baglioni (see L&SI next month).

It's a two-way enclosure with a passive crossover and high-powered single-channel amplifier with DSP control. It offers high performance (135dB peak) and weighs just 25kg; it also has the same sound quality of H.A.R.D. 212, say Outline, with wide vertical and narrow horizontal dispersion, as well as the range's characteristic resistance to feedback. Just 39cm high - despite its components being vertically aligned, the unit offers a symmetrical horizontal dispersion, enabling artists to hear the same sound balance

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For the majority of us who sadly aren't part of the fitness community, the specialist audio needs of this group may not be immediately obvious. If you think that musical theatre performers are hard on their audio gear, imagine what kind of stress is placed on a microphone that's used all day for classes in a fitness centre. Sydney-based Aerobic Microphones (Aeromic) make waterproof microphones that are guaranteed to survive seven classes per day, every day, for their first year of use. Available in more than two dozen countries, in all regions, Aeromic also produce a variant for use in musical theatre.
  1. RCF
  2. Tannoy
  3. Proel
  4. ALIA
  5. Logic System Pro Audio
  6. A.C. Lighting North show most successful ever
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Astera - June 2025
GLP - MPU - Feb, Apr 2025

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