Pharos - Leaderboard - May 2024

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Independents' Days - This week, the UK music industry celebrates the third Independent Venue Week (IVW) with a week-long series of gigs all across the country. Led by London-based agency I Like The Sound of That, the seven-day long campaign is supported by the Arts Council through its Grants for the Arts funding programme. Its reach is expanding with 120 venues now taking part, from Aberdeen to Exeter and Belfast to Norwich. Among venues joining this year are Quay Arts (Isle of Wight), The Soundhouse (Leicester) and Nambucca (north London).

Helen Sprott, director of music at Arts Council England, says, "Arts Council England is pleased to be supporting I Like The Sound of That and their brilliant Independent Venue Week project for the second year running. It is vital that ind

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USA - Bandit Lites has made a sizeable purchase of Ayrton's newest fixtures, including Ayrton CosmoPix-R, IntelliPix-R, MagicBlade-R, MagicDot-R and MagicRing-R9.

"I'm very excited that we have added a large variety of Ayrton products to our inventory," said Jake Tickle, Bandit's director of technical services. "Ayrton has taken a refreshing approach to their fixture design, adding innovation and consistency to their entire product line. From a service and maintainability stand point we couldn't be happier."

These products will all be seen on upcoming 2016 tours, including Dave Butzler's lighting design for Garth Brooks, Mike Swinford's lighting design for Jason Aldean's We Were Here Tour, Nick Whitehouse's lighting design for Thomas Rhett and Little Big Town's 2016 tour.

Las Vegas-based Morpheus Lights, the exclusive US distributor for Ayrton, was ple

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Ireland - Croke Park in Dublin has been at the heart of Irish sporting life for over 100 years. Boasting a capacity of more than 82,000 people, the stadium is home to the Gaelic Games and the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association. The venue is also a prime location for meetings and events, so when its flagship Hogan Suite recently underwent refurbishment, Doughty Engineering was called upon by Cine Electric to supply all the new facility panels.

David McKeown, project manager at Cine Electric explained: "This is an extremely prestigious job for us - Croke Park isn't just a stadium, it's Ireland's national stadium and is held in very high regard both by those of us who live here and visitors from around the world. We were initially brought on board by the electrical contractor, CJ Ryder Lawlor, to facilitate all the specialist infrastructure, LED lighting and rigg

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ETC Ministar

ETC introduces the High End Systems Ministar, a game-changer in our automated lighting product line. Ministar brings exceptional versatility and performance at an affordable price point; with a compact footprint, punchy output, and a professional feature set, Ministar fits the spec and budget for small to medium-sized venues.

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Qatar - During Qatar National Day in December 2015, Creative Communication Group (CCG) was the company responsible for the sound through the whole Corniche area that included five different locations including the fireworks show. In order to cover the whole area with audio, CCG incorporated Xirium system, purchased from local distributor Nicolas Kyvernitis Electronics Enterprises (NMK), to ease the set up on areas where cable crossings were difficult and extended more than 100m.

The purchase of Xirium system for the event included four transmitters and 20 receivers. One of the challenges of whole project was to get signal across roads and extended it more than 300m. Xirium was used in the repeater mode and thanks to the system's software technicians were able to see the signal strength in different areas and plan accordingly.

CCG was established in 1998 in GCC as a full serv

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Germany - In Berlin the New Year is traditionally greeted at the Brandenburg Gate. To welcome in 2016, TLT Event AG was once again in charge of production and technical implementation of the popular event. The turn of the year was also the go-ahead for TLT to invest in a RockLink system, which came into operation for the first time on NYE to provide a redundant fiberoptic network for the MA-Net between FOH and Dimmercity.

"As we are placing great value on reliability for our productions, we have been working with Rock Solid Technologies' RockSwitch Mk2 for some time. Moreover, there was an increasing internal necessity to invest in a redundant fiberoptic network", stated Helge Rabethge, technical director Light and Rigging.

"For the buying decision, it was important to us to invest in a reliable system that consists of as few individual components as possible

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UAE - Nicolas Kyvernitis Electronics Enterprises (NMK), distributor of Clear-Com in the United Arab Emirates for the live sound market segment, has recently supplied eclipse Staging Services with FreeSpeak II and HelixNet Partyline.

eclipse has purchased two HMS-4X HelixNet digital four channel headset/speaker main stations, 30 HelixNet digital two channel dual listen monaural beltpacks together with four dual channel 4-wire interfaces, two FreeSpeak II base stations and thirty FreeSpeak II digital wireless beltpacks.

Both FreeSpeak II and HelixNet were used at the third annual Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) that hosted over 2000 attendees in Dubai World Trade Centre. 24 wired stations of HelixNet and 16 wireless stations of FreeSpeak II covered intercommunication between the production and technical teams.

"The system was very easy to set up and operate. I w

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Europe - After completing a successful sold-out tour of the US and Canada for much of last year, with a Martin Audio MLA PA provided by Showtime Sound LLC, popular actor-comedian, Kevin Hart, and his production manager, Scott Tydings, ensured they maintained continuity by asking Capital Sound to provide a similar rig when the What Now? tour arrived in Europe.

One of America's fastest rising comedy talents, Hart has released four comedy DVDs and appeared on numerous TV shows and in blockbuster films; he has over 20m worldwide followers each on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

As for Tydings he had clearly enjoyed the MLA experience both with Kevin Hart and fellow comedienne Amy Schumer. The fit with Capital Sound, who also specialise in providing sound reinforcement for top-drawer stand-up comedians was an obvious one - although as general manager Paul Timmins explained, the

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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!

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Switzerland - The last day of March 2016 marks the end of the 25th year of operation for Merging Technologies. Claude Cellier founded the company in 1990 after his departure from Nagra and immediately embarked on a journey involving many ground-breaking innovations.

If Pyramix is the best known, the more recent introduction of RAVENNA/AES67 Networked Audio Interfaces, Horus and Hapi, is no less significant. In fact, these converters very quickly established themselves as the pinnacle of audio excellence as witnessed by the vast majority of Grammy nominations for classical recording using either or both converters. Networking has introduced many benefits and has revolutionized the facilities using this technology and with the industry approval of AES67, the options dramatically expand. Merging recognized the importance of allowing the maximum number of devices to connect to its

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UK - Disney and Cameron Mackintosh's musical Mary Poppins originally opened in 2004 and ran in the West End for three years. Since then over 11m people worldwide have seen the show, which has just returned to the UK, opening in October at Curve in Leicester. The musical will tour the country until the start of 2017.

The demanding tour is packed from start to finish with stunning special effects and in order to be able to re-create the exact same magic in every venue, senior production manager Chris Boone enlisted the help of Unusual Rigging.

"I have a long running relationship with Unusual Rigging - they're my go-to company for all my rigging needs. The last job we worked on together was the Barnum tour, which in comparison to Mary Poppins was far less complex. Unusual Rigging has supplied over 60 chain hoists to suspend the Mary Poppins tour

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South Africa - Rental and production specialist Sound Stylists opened their Durban branch in 2010 to service the growing events, music and entertainment markets in the busy, buzzing cosmopolitan KwaZulu Natal port city, and it's expanded from a satellite operation for the Johannesburg HQ with two staff to a major branch with 11 full time employees, working across all industry sectors.

MD Kevin Glover's intention has been to proactively grow the company's work portfolio on all fronts, providing innovative and imaginative audio, lighting, and staging and AV solutions.

A steady investment in Robe moving lights has featured in the success of the Durban facility as the lighting division has increased its capacity and pushed the proverbial envelope of excellence.

Initially, Durban started with 24 of Robe's classic workhorse 575 E AT ColorSpot and ColorWash series products, but

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UK - Triple E's universal building system, ModTruss, has provided a strong and versatile solution to fly a powerfully bright 18kW Arrimax HMI head in an arc over the stage for the world premiere performances of Morgen und Abend at London's Royal Opera House.

The production team approached Hertfordshire-based 'theatre magicians' Lamp & Pencil to devise a solution for flying the Arrimax HMI head in a moving yoke across the stage to represent the path of the sun.

The vertical movement of the lamp is achieved with the existing flying system at the venues. The horizontal movement is realised with tracks on a frame with a carriage driven by existing point hoists.

The ModTruss sections were combined with Triple E's Unibeam, carriers and other standard components and required very little custom metalwork. Triple E managed the project, designed and built the mechanical elem

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The Netherlands - A Meyer Sound team of acousticians will demonstrate the flexibility of the Constellation acoustic system at this year's ISE in Amsterdam. Integrators and design consultants seeking solutions for corporate offices and meeting rooms, university classrooms, and restaurants can demo the product every 30 minutes while asking questions of Meyer Sound's expert staff.

"The acoustics of a space define the critical baseline for sound in any AV installation," says John McMahon, Meyer Sound's vice-president of solutions and strategy. "With Constellation and complementary passive acoustical treatment, the design consultant and systems integrator can precisely define the acoustical character of a space to fully optimize the effect of music performance or voice communication. In addition, Constellation often reduces or even eliminates the need for direct ampli

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UK - Christie has scored another technical knockout with the introduction of three new Boxer models featuring 2K resolution, 20,000, 25,000 and 30,000 centrelumens.

Now available in multiple software performance configurations, the Christie Boxer Series offers choices based on resolution, brightness and budget requirements. With an upgrade path to higher brightness, resolution and performance capabilities, users pay only for what they need today, with an eye to the future.

"When Christie introduced the first Boxer projector we knew we had created a champion. Engineered, designed and built from the ground-up in our world-class research and development facility, the Christie Boxer is the culmination of years of experience working closely with leading rental stagers and AV professionals to understand their specific needs and expectations," said Mike Garrido, senior pr

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The Netherlands - Austrian engineering company, AV Stumpfl will return to ISE 2016 to launch an 8K version of Wings Engine Raw.

The upgraded ultra-high-performance super media server now delivers four streams of full 4K uncompressed content at 60hz plus media overlays, text generation and show control on top. It is designed for media-based installations requiring high-resolution content such as themed attractions, cinematic presentation, theatres, live events, or even planetariums.

Users can utilise a single Wings Engine Raw server to manage content over a virtually unlimited amount of LED screens or to drive a 4 by 4K projection system with soft edge blending, mapping and geometry correction. Alternatively, Wings Engine Raw can be used to blend or overlay multiple parallel HD, 4K, 5K or even 6K streams in real-time. Show start and control is frame accurate and without any d

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The Netherlands - At ISE 2016, Hitachi Digital Media Group will showcase an expanded range of high-end installation projection solutions. With large, curved bright projections highlighting the versatility and power of Hitachi's professional offerings, the stand will be the first opportunity in Europe for visitors to see several new products.

Hitachi will show their new LED Phosphor projector family in Europe for the first time. The brand new models on display, LP-WU3500 & LP-WX3500, feature new light source products and will be available from July 2016. This new LED platform features an Ultra Solid engine with High Lumen Density technology targeting 3,500lm and superior Colour Space. Another key benefit is true 20,000 hours System Life, virtually eliminating maintenance as the LED Light Source will never need to be replaced during the projector's lifecycle.

This New LED Phos

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USA - Elation Professional has announced the launch of the new ACL 360i, a powerful single-beam moving effect luminaire with the intensity of a tight ACL beam that is designed for quick-moving beam looks, pinspotting, or stunning large motion effects when used in larger configurations. It is the latest and the smallest high-output luminaire in Elation's ACL Series of narrow-beam LED effect lights.

A single 60W RGBW LED combines with an advanced collimator optic lens to produce a dense and uniform 4° colour-changing beam. Frost lens options of 10 and 45 degrees (included) can be employed to soften and spread the beam for colour washing applications.

The ACL 360i is controllable via 3 DMX modes (16/18/20 channels) and the unit is also RDM (Remote Device Management), KlingNet or Art-Net controllable. It comes with a host of standard features like 5-pin DMX In/Out connection

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The Netherlands - Showlogix, a developer of show and media control software, will be introducing their version 2 which offers a real-time 3D rendering engine, along with a tool to project on complex objects.

Content creation can be entirely separated from the positions of the projectors. Showlogix can use content rendered as unwrapped UV-texture of the 3D model, or also accept any 2D video, images, external inputs or text which will appear non-distorted, using projective texture mapping.

By dragging the projector point, the outputs are calibrated in real-time. Edge-blend masks are automatically calculated.

Optionally, warping and masking can be done manually on each projector to compensate for any model problems.

Interactivity can be added to the 3D projected object by using the built-in tracking module. You can use cameras to detect motion for visualizing mouse & mult

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Czech Republic - Robe officially launches its newest and brightest BMFL series luminaire to date - the BMFL WashBeam - today, Wednesday 27 January.

An online launch platform was chosen to reach a global audience of busy industry professionals - empowering them to participate in the experience and excitement via computers and smart-devices wherever they are and whatever they are doing.

Robe's worldwide distribution network can be contacted to arrange full physical demonstrations of the BMFL WashBeam, and the fixture will be showcased at the upcoming Prolight+Sound expo in Frankfurt in April and future trade shows and exhibitions.

Delivering 300,000 Lux at 5m - BMFL WashBeam is the brightest BMFL range fixture to date.

The BMFL WashBeam joins the BMFL Spot and BMFL Blade and BMFL Wash, ensuring that Robe offers the most comprehensive range of high powered, fully optimise

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UK - Tape London, situated just off Regent Street in London's Hanover Square, describes itself as, "an exclusive nightclub offering an elegant party experience for an elite, global crowd, attracting influential members of the music industry and music fans alike."

The venue, which opened in Autumn 2015, is a nightclub, recording studio and members lounge that aims to become the "home" of London's music industry. The nightclub offers an elegant and exclusive party experience, with sets from internationally renowned DJs attracting members of the music industry and music lovers. It is a unique, fresh and exciting new concept inspired by Grammy award winning producer Dallas Austin. The 250-capacity nightclub also has a full-sized stage for live performances.

The design brief for SSE Audio Group was to install a high quality audio system throughout the main bar

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UK - Unusual Rigging has been highly commended for its efforts in implementing a circular economy in The Circulars 2016 Awards. The Circulars, the world's premier circular economy award programme, offers recognition to individuals and organisations across the world that have made a notable contribution to driving circular economy principles - where growth doesn't depend on the use of scarce natural resources. Unusual Rigging has been shortlisted from thousands of entries to receive the commendation in the 'Ecolab Award for Circular Economy Enterprise'.

Tom Harper, who heads the drive towards a circular economy at Unusual, said: "This is a huge deal for us as we are in our first year of implementing these changes to our business. The past twelve months have seen us become 55% renewably driven, having just received OFGEM status as a generating site for 100% renewable electri

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Poland - Nearly 150 Philips Vari-Lite professional luminaires, including one of the latest additions to the product line the VL4000 Spot, have been installed into Torun's brand new multi-functional hub the Jordanki Culture and Congress Centre (or CKK Jordanki).

The 22,000-m2 building, designed by world-renowned Spanish architect Fernando Menis, is the culmination of an intense two-year building project that completed in December 2015. The venue is located in the city's Old Town and boasts a unique aesthetic with cutting-edge technical features.

Hired by Wroclaw-based construction company Intersystem, Philips Entertainment distributor for Poland PS TTeatr supplied and installed 144 Philips Vari-Lite moving heads into the venue's 880-seat concert hall and 300-seat chamber hall. Further Philips Entertainment lighting brands were also installed by PS Teatr, including 32 Philips

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  8. Stage Electrics delivers the Sun
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GLP - MPU - May-June 2024
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