Europe - Robe has revealed its new website, at www.robe.cz with ‘a fresh contemporary look that is action-packed with useful information and resources for all’. The site has been co-ordinated to coincide with the launch of a series of new products from Robe that are being revealed throughout the first half of 2021.
Robe.cz is designed for speed, convenience, and ease of viewing, optimised for use with mobile devices. Faster access to a greater amount of product-related information is a cornerstone of the new architecture.
The site is curated to offer a lively mix of interesting data and multiple layers of technical depth for those needing to drill down further into the complexities of products and Robe’s use of new technologies.
An Innovation section will hi

China - Christie GS Series 1DLP laser projectors are delivering vivid and lifelike visuals in a new dome theatre located in Xiong’an New Area, a self-sufficient and sustainable city in Hebei province developed by the government to prioritize “green development and environmental protection”.
Known as the Five Senses Bubble, it has a diameter of 8.5m and a height of 6.3m and is constructed using air-film reinforced concrete, while its exterior is adorned with golden spirals to create artistic effects that represent the different senses.
Inside, the visuals are powered by five Christie DWU8902-GS 1DLP laser projectors fitted discreetly around the dome theatre to display highly immersive images measuring 3.2m height. The projectors are installed and commissioned by Zhongqing Yingye Group, which has been appointed the distributor of Christie’s 1DLP projection system

UK - Car Park Panto partnered with DTS Lighting for their Horrible Christmas tour that reached more than 40,000 people over 15 venues.
Coalition Agency sparked considerable press coverage for their UK Christmas tour on December 2020. At the end of a very difficult year for the entertainment industry, it was thanks to the drive-in format that 40,000 people could attend this experience which played Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff.
The performance, inspired by the children’s book series Horrible Histories by Terry Deary, explores what lies beneath the holiday season through the story of a young boy who wants to save Christmas.
DTS enthusiastically accepted the chance to participate as technical sponsor to the event where the vintage style of this format allowed the public to watch the show from the safety of their

USA - Last November, rock band Dance Gavin Dance performed their new album Tree City Sessions 2 in its entirety on Tower Bridge in Sacramento, California, a setting that provided a visually stunning framework for the introduction of their latest music.
The PPV concert, executive produced by Danny Wimmer Presents, was lit by Justin Wade and Sacramento Production & Lighting (SPL) using a rig of Elation Professional luminaires.
Formed in 2005, Dance Gavin Dance hail from Sacramento and are local favourites. Last February, the band had just started a tour to promote a new album release when the shutdown hit. Tour manager Travis Wade and Dion Cook of SPL decided to see if there was a market for pay-per-view streaming of the band, a project that culminated in a successful July PPV concert from a recording studio set up in a converted space in SPL’s warehouse.

USA - PK Sound has announced the appointment of James Oliver as chief strategy officer. Reporting directly to founder and CEO Jeremy Bridge, Oliver is responsible for ‘the development, communication, execution, and sustainment of strategic corporate initiatives’. Oliver has also joined the company’s ownership group.
Oliver comes to PK Sound following a seven-year tenure with Adamson Systems Engineering, most recently serving as director of marketing and sales. Throughout that stint, he spearheaded the development of turnkey system offerings and a sglobal distribution network that led to exponential year-over-year growth for the manufacturer.
“Joining PK was the easiest transition of my career. The culture of the organisation and technological advancements of the product line are completely in tune with the live events industry of tomorrow,” comments Oliver.
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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

USA - The DALI Alliance (DiiA), the global industry organisation for DALI lighting control, has announced the winners of the inaugural DALI Lighting Awards during a virtual ceremony.
Held in association with arc (the international architectural lighting design magazine) and the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD), the awards celebrate the best use of DALI control solutions in international lighting projects as well as recognizing the value of delivering quality illumination to clients and end-users.
A broad range of commercial, architectural and industrial lighting projects linked with DALI technology were nominated. The competition selected winners in different categories for indoor and outdoor lighting alongside a separate category for projects employing outstanding use of certified Zhaga-D4i products.
Judges for this year’s DALI Lighting A

USA - Commercial A/V integrator Verta Technologies was recently tasked with upgrading Southwood Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama with a PA system for its sanctuary and live audio needs.
Christian Tuttle, CTS, managing partner, Verta Technologies and his team turned to EAW to deliver the audio to the sanctuary. The audio upgrade included four Anna 3-way full-range ADAPTive array modules, two MKD1064 2-way full range loudspeakers, two SB825 dual drive subwoofers and one UXA4410 Greybox-enabled amplifier.
Southwood Presbyterian Church’s sanctuary was originally designed for spoken word, a choir and a pipe organ with natural reverberation in mind. “The result was a beautiful 50ft vaulted ceiling with an untreated tongue-and-groove wood finish,” says Tuttle. “Over the past 20 years, Southwood’s service has evolved to include a live band, and while the sa
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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

USA - Throughout the fall and into the holiday season, Showtime Sound and director of design and production Aaron Kovelman staged Showtime At The Drive-In, a series of concerts coproduced with AutoFlex Entertainment. Held at an improvised drive-in venue at the Frederick Fairgrounds, Frederick MD, the series featured popular artists such as moe, Grace Potter, KIX, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, Goose, Dark Star Orchestra, Mt. Joy and Blackberry Smoke.
Holding over 300 cars spread out over a wide area, the drive-in offered an experience that’s far from the ideal concert setting, but extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. “All of us are determined to provide people with the best possible show, regardless of the circumstances,” said Kovelman. “With everyone so spread out at this site, we had to create visuals that were very bold and looked good from any

Brazil - One of the biggest Brazilian live DJ shows in 2020 took place in xR, as local DJ and musician Alok attracted 750,000 people to his Alive live stream in December, also clocking seven million views on YouTube. The disguise xR workflow drove the music special with a vx 4 media server and two rx platforms enabling the show to incorporate content from render engines Unreal, Unity and Notch.
Alok is one of the most prominent players in the Brazilian electronic music scene. Following the cancellations of all his live shows last year, the aim of the xR live stream was to bring a fresh way of broadcasting the artist’s performance to his large fanbase.
Project director Fabio Soares from OkeStudio along with TheForce invited Sao Paulo-based, full-service AV company Maxi to provide the xR workflow for the show, along with disguise workflow specialist Tito Sabatin

UK - One of the UK's longest established safari park attractions, Longleat, recently became home to a temporary spectacular seasonal experience, The Land of Light.
The Land of Light was a journey through several different areas and featured a host of bespoke creations.
Longleat partnered with production and hire company, Zeal, who helped design and bring to life this experience.
Steve Hough, Zeal’s managing director comments: “We partnered with Longleat in May 2020 after they had to postpone their regular Festival of Light. The goal was to create a new unique experience from scratch that took consideration of coronavirus during the installation and the event itself. From there, we developed concepts and went on to design, build and produce an experience focused on stimulating the senses that allowed people to immerse themselves in real li

USA - For the last 20 years, the Cincinnati Bengals have been taking on NFL rivals at Paul Brown Stadium. This 65,515-seat gridiron arena has always placed a premium on the strength and quality of its audio systems. Equally known as the site of performances by artists ranging from Kenny Chesney to Guns N’ Roses, PBS, as locals call it, subscribes to the notion that sound traveling throughout its concourses and seating areas should live up to concert-level expectations at all levels, whether it be on game day or for special events.
To that end, a three-phase project to re-energise the stadium’s original, 20 year-old audio blueprint was just completed this autumn, debuting on 4 October before a reduced crowd that watched as the Bengals beat the visiting Jacksonville Jaguars. Designed and implemented by Nashville, Tennessee-based Durrell Sports Audio Management, the new sys

USA - California’s SilverLakes is best known for attracting sports fans and horse-riding enthusiasts with more than two dozen full-sized soccer fields and five equestrian areas. But this past New Year’s Eve, the complex upped its showmanship game by serving as the high-energy host site for a drive-in concert headlined by superstar DJ Kaskade, who rang in 2021 on an L-Acoustics K2 system deployed by San Diego-based Pro Systems AV.
Completely selling out its maximum capacity of 700 vehicles, the show opened with sets from J. Worra and Ravell before Kaskade took the stage, wrapping up more than six hours of EDM music in SilverLakes’ concert area known as The BackYard.
Presented by Activated Events, Versa, and Nederlander Concerts, the event also live-streamed to an even bigger audience via the online Abracadabra Festival, which prominently featured Kaskade welcomin

When times get tough, artists adapt, relentlessly leveraging leading-edge production technology to explore ever more innovative ways of making an impact with remote live performances. And that’s exactly what drove the deployment of an Adamson Systems Engineering CS-Series loudspeaker rig for Tate McRae’s performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Directed by Jonah Haber and filmed in Brampton, Ontario, the Alberta-based, global pop sensation’s performance of her massive international hit, You Broke Me First featured all the trappings of a high-end video shoot courtesy of Vancouver-based production house, Boldy, and set design, video and staging by Toronto’s Congo Blue Productions.
Typically on video shoots, audio is an afterthought. Not in this case, explains Jeremie Ngandu, who designed the system for the production and credits the Adamson l

Germany - The German Sustainability Prize (Nachhaltigkeitspreis) has been awarded by the Nachhaltigkeitspreis Foundation for the past 13 years, in cooperation with the country’s Federal Government and several public and civil society institutions. Outstanding sustainability achievements in business, municipalities, and research are awarded in several categories. On 3-4 December 2020, the prizes were presented at the Maritim Hotel in Düsseldorf.
There were two premieres this year: on the one hand, the award in the Design category was presented for the first time, and on the other hand, the award ceremony itself (and accompanying congress) were extensively streamed live due to the pandemic. A large number of award winners were connected live, as were most of the speakers. There were also a few guests who formed part of the supporting programme.
12 of the new GLP JDC

Festival Blues - This year's Glastonbury music festival has been cancelled due to coronavirus, organisers have confirmed. Michael and Emily Eavis announced the news on the festival's official Twitter page writing: “With great regret, we must announce that this year's Glastonbury Festival will not take place.”
It's the second year running that Glastonbury will not go ahead, after last year's 50th anniversary celebration was cancelled due to COVID-19. In a full statement on their website, the father and daughter team explained that in spite of “efforts to move Heaven & Earth”, the event would not be happening in 2021, adding that “this will be another enforced fallow year for us”.
“It has become clear that we simply will not be able to make the Festival happen this year. We are so sorry to let you all down. As with last year, we would like to offer all

ETC has announced the release of Hog 4 OS v3.15 software, which includes enhancements to MIDI mapping of third-party control panels, adding tap tempo for effects and internal effect engine optimizations. This version also contains new keyboard shortcuts a number of bug fixes, listed in the release notes.
Hog 4 OS v3.15 is available for download at www.etcconnect.com.
Entertainment controls product manager Sarah Clausen comments: "We are happy to bring improvements to MIDI mapping in this release to follow on our opening up of MIDI/OSC control of encoders and faders in the last release. And many users will be happy to see implementing tap tempo for effects."

USA - Audinate, developer of Dante AV networking technology, has announced the availability of a software development kit (SDK) for manufacturers of Arm-based audio products. This SDK lets manufacturers deploy Dante audio networking as on-chip software in their products, reducing costs and conserving on space while delivering world-class audio performance.
The Dante Embedded Platform SDK provides the tools needed to develop Dante-enabled products built upon 32- and 64-bit Arm Cortex-A processors using a Linux operating system, and supports online license activation for OEMs. The SDK allows manufacturers to validate their own designs for performance and capability, ensuring solid reliability for end users.
“We’re very pleased to offer the first SDK for Dante as software,” says Nick Mariette, product manager at Audinate. “We’re just beginning to see the changes

USA - Preparing the Way Ministries, a small but thriving local church in Lake Charles, Louisiana, has invested in an ADJ Pixie Strip system to enhance the lighting in its worship space. The new configuration of pixel-mapped linear LED fixtures allows low-resolution video playback across the rear of the church’s stage area. This provides a versatile backdrop that can be easily adapted to the style or tempo of worship to help enhance the atmosphere without distracting congregants.
With a capacity of approximately 150, Preparing the Way Ministries’ auditorium is a relatively small but modern space. Worship for Sunday services is led by a multi-piece contemporary worship band and the facility is also used for midweek prayer and worship meetings which tend to feature a more stripped-back music group.
Prior to this recent upgrade, the church’s lighting setup simply inv

USA - When the First Pentecostal Church in North Little Rock, Arkansas (FPCNLR), decided to upgrade its sound system three years ago it became the world’s first adopter of Martin Audio's then new Wavefront Precision Compact and Mini optimised arrays.
Fast forward to the present and the church has added a new mid-size chapel on its campus for multipurpose use and brought in a new sound contractor. However, it has kept faith in the British brand that has served the community so well in the main church.
This time the PA needed to reinforce events that were “too large for our rotunda space, too small for our sanctuary, and not quite casual enough to be held in our Great Hall,” according to the church’s director of communications, Zachary Ward.
With aesthetics a prime consideration, the solution was found in the House of Worship favourite, the discreet O-Line

USA - The ever-evolving Las Vegas strip is renowned for its approach to building bigger, bolder, and brighter structures. One of its latest additions, the Caesars Forum conference centre is no exception, spanning a mammoth 550,000sq.ft and boasting the two largest pillarless ballrooms in the world.
Located in the centre of the Las Vegas strip, Caesars Forum features 300,000sq.ft of flexible meeting space. This consists of the two large ballrooms of 110,000sq.ft each, a further two ballrooms, and six boardrooms and a dedicated outdoor event plaza connected to three hotels with 8,500 guest rooms
As part of the technology integrated into the new event space, Caesars Forum is home to one of the largest single installations of DMX controlled tuneable white lights. The Creston building control system installed and commissioned by NTA and Pulse features over 4,500 DMX lightin

USA - A new immersive orchestral experience has brought back the spirit of live performance in a socially-distanced environment. With audio amplifier solutions from LEA Professional, residents in South Bend, Indiana, can once again enjoy the sounds of their local city orchestra in a more intimate and experimental setting.
The new listening installation, Octet, came about as the South Bend Symphony Orchestra needed to re-think its performances after the pandemic forced a number of cancellations.
“It was very important for us to not only give something back to our community - which was starved of live performance for the last few months - but also to invigorate our musicians,” said Halle McGuire, director of development programmes, South Bend Symphony Orchestra. “We knew that everyone was combating a level of Zoom fatigue and we needed to think outside of the box a

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