Events

Cirque Du Soleil

Details: 14 March 2016

Cirque Du Soleil now has six touring shows worldwide and five resident productions in the US - three of which are in Las Vegas, with a fourth, 'Ka', due to open this month at the MGM Grand. So this was a home-from-home for the company's technical and human resources representatives who were exhibiting at LDI to raise the profile of its technical recruitment program. This is an increasingly vital requirement of this huge entertainment concern, which now employs around 2,700 people worldwide. Among those which Cirque is particularly keen to reach are experienced automation technicians - essential to so much of their performances.

High End Systems

Details: 14 March 2016

The new DL2 is the latest in High End's line of digital lighting. The DL2 combines intelligent lighting with digital video and wireless DMX control to give designers the ultimate in flexibility. The DL2 has an internal, Windows-based media server that features rotation and movement synchronization and movie playback synchronization between units. High End also premiered the new Axon V2, a WindowsXP-based media server. The Axon V2 features movie playback synchronization between multiple Axon V2s and the DL2, rotation synchronization of X, Y and Z axes, as well as montage edge blending, remote configuration and tiling with different viewpoints. Axon V2 is applicable for use with soft LED curtains, plasma monitors, LED displays, LCD/DLP projectors and High End's own DL1 as well. Catalyst, High End's premier media server, is now currently available in three software-only versions to meet a

ETC

Details: 14 March 2016

ETC's stand had hints of decadence with a huge baroque proscenium arch set into it, displaying the company's sine wave dimmers in the 'back stage' whilst control and lighting equipment was mainly displayed in the resulting 'FOH' areas. The stand also naturally echoed the company's Hopper-inspired headquarters unveiled in June this year. ETC launched its Smartfade products onto the American market, the newest addition to its Smart Solutions compact lighting control range. Designed to give users at all skill levels the tools to program a lighting show, SmartFade has three operating modes:

Two-Scene, Normal, and DMX Backup. There's no learning curve for novice or first-time users: the simple two-scene mode provides a concise, easy-to-operate 12- or 24-channel, two-scene preset console with a manual or timed crossfade section, bump buttons with master and a grand master. The Normal mode i

Goddard Design Co

Details: 14 March 2016

Goddard Design Co, responsible for the Lil'DMXter amongst other products, has developed an interesting software accessory for the LDs or board ops - the Virtual Magic Sheet. Now, instead of having pages of channel lists on the monitors, you can display them on the screen as a graphical representation of the lighting plan. Creating a live Magic Sheet at the designer's production desk or on a laptop computer anywhere in the theatre, it's driven via a Wi-Fi link to the DMX output of any control system. Channel numbers can be placed anywhere on the screen with a simple drag-and-drop interface; labels and arrows and other graphic shapes can then be added to organize the drawing. You can then plug in any console's DMX data stream and watch your plan come to life! Everything from intensity, to colour - at last a simple tool that offers the designer the ability to view lighting control data on h

Pulsar

Details: 14 March 2016

Andy Graves was on hand at Pulsar to demonstrate the company's increasingly wide range of LED fixtures, which are finding their way into more and more applications - including club and bar installations, architectural lighting, and television and stage environments. The range was recently enhanced with the addition of a range of 17 decorative MR16-sized fittings for interior design applications. The fittings are based around the ChromaMR16 Heart, which has 18 high-power LEDs and is supplied with 3m of lightweight ChromaFlex cable. Other recent additions from Pulsar include the ChromaBatten200 and ChromaFlood200 - both 200W fixtures rated IP65 for exterior use.

XL Video

Details: 14 March 2016

XL Video is now carrying the new Hibino Chroma Tek 6mm LED indoor panel, which features 12bit color depth, a brightness of 1,200 NIT and can be configured into a variety of shapes. XL also carries Barco products, including the Barco MiPix pixelblocks, as well as plasma and portable video displays. XL provides have offices in the U.S., the U.K., Belgium and Germany.

Holowalls

Details: 14 March 2016

Holowalls' stand was one of the most eye-catching at the show: the refracted colours generated by these films is highly effective - especially when demonstrated with the aid of a Martin Atomic Strobe!

Milos

Details: 14 March 2016

The new, low profile S3S stage from Milos is made of lightweight aluminum. It can be used with standard, adjustable or telescopic legs. Their cell 300 series of clamps are designed for 60-63.5mm tubes, while the cell 400 quick clamp series are used with tubes 38-51mm. Their M520 folding truss come in triangle or box format, and reduces storage and transportation volume by 70%.

Compulite

Details: 14 March 2016

Compulite was showing its Vector lighting control series, offering advanced console design for handling conventional and automated fixtures, dual processor design for high performance and stability, a familiar Windows XP environment, VX Works real-time operating system, and an interactive toolbar for rapid programming. The Vector comes in three colours (Red, Green, and Blue), each of which has specific capabilities.

Furman Sound - reissue of Q-Series Eqs

Details: 14 March 2016

The reissued Furman Sound's Q-Series II Equalizers comprise the Q-2312 two-channel, 31-band, 1/3-octave graphic equalizer; the Q-1311 single channel, 31-band, 1/3-octave graphic equalizer; the Q-2151 two-channel, 15-band, 2/3-octave graphic equalizer; the Q-2152V long throw, two-channel, 15-band, 2/3-octave graphic equalizer with VU meters; and the Q-1312V long throw single channel, 31-band, 1/3-band octave equalizer with analogue VU meter.

Enttec

Details: 14 March 2016

Enttec, the Australian manufacturer whose Datagate was a nominee at the PLASA Show's Awards for Innovation this year, was also at LDI. The company's Nicolas Moreau reports that the response to Datagate has been good since PLASA. Sharing the company's stand at LDI was another Antipodean lighting innovator, Martin Searancke, who demonstrated his Light Factory PC-based lighting control software. His motivation in developing this system was a realization that most software on the market tended to cater for moving lights; he was also conscious, he explains, of other packages' poor use of 'screen real estate'. Light Factory, he says, is "a no-compromise approach of traditional dimmer control and fully featured moving light support". Introduced just one year ago, Light Factory is now in its third version and has established a respectable core of users in that time.

L-Acoustics

Details: 14 March 2016

A few blocks away from the convention centre, in the Continental Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, L-Acoustics mounted the launch of what the latter-day pioneer of the technology called the "next generation" of line array - so expectations were high. Kudo (below right) was duly unveiled, and described by technical support manager for touring, Paul Bauman, as "something a bit different from the usual line source array".

Kudo apparently gets its name from 'K-Louvre Modular Directivity', a patent-pending technology designed to enable users to change the coverage pattern of the array mechanically - either vertically or horizontally. It incorporates the company's now-famous WST waveguide fundamentals, and comprises a medium-format, active 3-way system with two12", four 5" and two 1" components. But uniquely, K-Louvre itself is a system of control panels that s

Vari-Lite

Details: 14 March 2016

Vari-Lite introduced its new VL2500 spot and wash lights, however it was the VL3500Q that was one of the stars of the show. Even the normally understated Philip Norfolk became animated when it came to discussing this fixture: with 50% audible reduction in noise output from the standard VL3500, it is ideal for theatre use, perhaps even FOH. It has an incredibly even field of intensity and very fast colour mixing potential: however, the shutter system must truly be the highlight of this fixture, with a nine-motor system it can go incredibly small and still remain very sharp - and the shape is totally repeatable.

TMB

Details: 14 March 2016

With media servers being one of the buzz words at the show, TMB was showcasing the Hippotizer range from Green Hippo, which received much attention at PLASA this year. In addition, G-Lec announced the appointment of TMB as its exclusive sales partner in North America and launched its first for-sale unit, the LightFrame. The TMB stand was also the base for the men of Carallon, namely Nick Archdale and Richard Mead, the former Flying Pigs who have been keeping themselves busy since leaving the High End Systems fold earlier in 2004. Their new Pharos solid state architectural controller was receiving an excellent response at LDI, Mead told us. The system offers a cost-effective solution for controlling entertainment and LED lighting in architectural environments. Pharos offers real-time control of playback selection and lighting levels; playback of scenes, sequences, effects video clips and

A.C.T. Lighting

Details: 14 March 2016

At A.C.T. Lighting the folks from MA Lighting (distributed in the US by A.C.T) were on hand to explain the latest refinements and additions to the grandMA console. The grandMA version 5.3 features a full blind editor, which works parallel to the live programmer. In addition, the console now supports WYSIWYG autofocus functionality via Ethernet directly. Keeping up with the times, MA has released the grandMAVideo, a new media-server application for all grandMA consoles, and coming soon is dimMA sine-wave, a new module with IGBT technology; the dimMA sine-wave modules will feature 4x3 kVA and 2x6kVA dimmer channels and will be based on pulse-width modulation with 40 kHz for extremely smooth waveforms. Also distributed by A.C.T. is the Frog 2 console from Zero 88. In this edition of the Frog line, there are no restrictions imposed by the hardware design. Multiple playback, user-definable co

Rane

Details: 14 March 2016

Rane was demo'ing its Scratch Live system - an interesting product with some pretty clever technology. The Scratch Live interface connects almost any computer to an ordinary pair of turntables or CD players. It can then faithfully track every subtle movement of the stylus on the included control records. The same movement is then instantly applied to any digital audio file in the user's collection, producing a sound and feel that is indistinguishable from vinyl. All Rane products are manufactured in the USA.

Jireh Supplies Inc / The Effects Company

Details: 14 March 2016

Jireh Supplies Inc announced that it is now the exclusive North American distributor for The Effects Company from the UK, and proudly showcased the full product range on stand. There were also live demonstrations of the spectacular CO2 Jet system and Cirrus Lowsmoke. Gene Byce, of Jireh Supplies was very excited about the potential of all The Effects Company's products, particularly their quality and ease of use.

Artistic Licence

Details: 14 March 2016

Less than a month after PLASA, Artistic Licence had even more new innovations on its stand. The latest product is Visual Patch - a fabulous invention for those using lots of fixtures with plenty of channels per fixture. Combining RDM protocol, a lighting console and a video camera, the system allows you to simply point the camera at the stage and press the Visual Patch button. The console then uses RDM to turn each lamp on, analyzes the position, shape and size of the lamp via the video camera, adds it to the patch and automatically sets the lamp start address, solving that dreadful problem of complex number crunching when patching. Soon it'll be possible to forget the boring numbers bit for good!

Outboard Electronics

Details: 14 March 2016

With 16,153 attendees and a near-record 415 exhibitors, San Francisco's AES Convention at the end of October displayed a genuinely positive mood. On the show floor, the typical reaction was expressed by Outboard Electronics' Dave Haydon - surveying four days of the exhibition from his vantage point in aisle one. "Certainly from the point of view of being one of the wallflowers round the edge, it's been very busy," he said. "It seems to me that the ideal combination of having both the quality and the quantity of traffic has applied here.

"There seems to be an AES habit of starting round the edges because you already know who's in the middle and you'll get to them eventually, but there's a lot of cool stuff from small companies in the end booths that kind of sneaks in from the outside. So, even as in some ways a peripheral participant, we've been very much part of it

GE Lighting

Details: 14 March 2016

GE Lighting had several additions to its Showbiz line of bulbs. The Showbiz CSR800/SE/HR lamp is designed for film production settings, the result of a close collaboration with Mole-Richardson. A series of four CSR metal-halide lamps, the CSR400/S/DE, CSR575/S/DE, CSR700/S/DE, and CSR/1200/S/DE are designed for use in moving lights. The 80W F80BX/Cinera Plus 32 and 36W F36BX/Cinema Plays 32 are designed for indoor film shoots using 3,200° Kelvin tungsten lamps. The CHM150/PAR56 lamp is designed for architectural and retail applications.

Meyer Sound

Details: 14 March 2016

Exhibiting on its own doorstep, and two days after a lavish 25th anniversary party at the HQ in Berkeley, Meyer Sound announced that it had finally developed a proprietary digital loudspeaker management system. Called Galileo 616, the product represents the company's first foray into DSP, and comes after a typically cautious watching brief on the true potential of the technology.

"We weren't going to approach it until we could do it with 115dB of dynamic range," said director of European technical support, Luke Jenks. "It's not just a management system; it's also a line driver. So if you put it across your system, it has to perform at low output levels without noise, and at high output levels without clipping. That's where you really need the dynamic range. We have a huge stake in what happens after the DSP stage, so we only embarked on this once we were satisfied that t

Aviom - A-Net Pro64 ASIC

Details: 14 March 2016

A new version of the A-Net protocol behind the company's A-16 (right) Personal Monitor Mixing System, promising increased data capacity and signal control in this and future live performance audio networks.

"Because A-Net was originally conceived for live stage monitor applications, the protocol was designed to transmit in only one direction: from the A-Net input module or distributor hub out to the performers' mixers," said Carl Bader, president and CEO of Aviom.

"A-Net Pro is fully bi-directional and has dramatically increased capacity, while preserving the central performance specs of A-Net: uncompressed, low-latency in a plug-and-play system. The new version of the protocol carries up to 64 audio channels on a single wire pair in a Cat 5 cable, still at 24 bits. In specialized networks, A-Net Pro can carry 256 channels without sacrificing performance."

Adamson - SpekTrix Wave

Details: 14 March 2016

The SpekTrix Wave cabinet has been added to the company's SpekTrix line array system, complete with Adamson's proprietorial wave shaping sound chamber. The product won a PAR Excellence award presented by Pro Audio Review. Shauna Kennedy marketing manager commented: "The PAR Excellence award recognizes promising new audio products that show a combination of innovative uses of technology and performance value for the professional user, we were honoured to receive it."

The 15° trapezoidal cabinet allows for extreme downward angles at the bottom of an array for front row coverage, as well as wide vertical coverage arrays such as multiple-balcony venues.

It's a 3-way cabinet with two Adamson 8.5" Kevlar, neodymium drivers - one ND8-L mid-bass driver and one ND8-M mid-range driver - and a 1.5" compression driver mounted on the wave shaping chamber. This produces a slig

Lee Filters

Details: 14 March 2016

Lee Filters' sales director Ralph Young gave a warm welcome, and reported that the show was going very well and that there had been a great deal of interest in the new designer colours released by Lee earlier this year. The stand also featured an amazing piece of dichroic glass sculpture, which we'd rather like for the office.

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