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14 March 2016

Madden's main objectives in investing in equipment were for everything to be brand new and absolutely state-of-the-art, and his choices included the XTA DP428 working in conjunction with Audiocore 8 software for loudspeaker control. "Rory knew the high standard of audio performance he wanted to achieve, plus the required wireless capability to make it easy to get this performance," says XTA's Guy Lewis (the only Guy in the village!). "With 500 or so DP428s already in use around the world, we could point to a lot of successful

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14 March 2016

Speaking on behalf of Masque Sound, Walter Yurgel commended the sound quality of the Camco amplifiers: "We own nearly 200 of the Vortex amps now, and use them a lot. We find them to be very warm, and they match up really well with the dV-Dosc loudspeakers. In fact, Camco has become one of the staple amplifiers of our concert touring division, used by artists such

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14 March 2016

Mylo's lighting designer Ian Tomlinson first worked with the band on a string of summer festivals, which then continued into the autumn with their own UK and Irish headline tour. He collaborated closely with video designer Dave Ross from Phantom to develop the stage visuals, taking the concept of moody back lighting, silhouetting and shadowing as a starting point. "The band prefer being lit from behind," he explains. "It's a challenge to start with, but once you get your head around the philosophy, there's h

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14 March 2016

The studio elements of the show are recorded at Studio 2000 in Milan, directed by Egino Romio. The show is broadcast live on RAI 2 every Wednesday, pulling an incredible average of 42% of the viewing figures.At times, the rating has hit 55%, and it's arguably the most popular entertainment show in Italy.

The lights are being supplied by Romanengo-based Mixer Sound & Light, one of North Italy's top rental companies, who are also supplying additional studio sound to the show. Porcaru first used Robe fixtures on the original series of "L'Isola", and has increased his fixture count steadily for each one since. He has also specified Robe fo

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14 March 2016

On Saturday 19 November the show's triumph was further established when Evans played to world record audiences for a single stand-up comedian of 10,108 at the Manchester Evening News Arena (MEN). Stand-up comedy is inherently intimate, which is at odds with the arena environment, so consolidating the performer/audience relationship in these huge spaces threw up its own unique set of challenges for Evans' technical design team. As production manager Mark Harris points out: "Lee's comedy style relies wholly on his audience's ability to see his every facial expre

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14 March 2016

The UK has long been acknowledged as a creative hub, leading the world in the design of entertainment and events. The new award will be one of the few that actively champions the work of designers in this field, creating much needed wider recognition for the art and practice of lighting design.

For the last few months, PLASA has been working with the Lighting Design Awards team to develop the new category to ensure it reflects the innovation to be seen across the country. The judging

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14 March 2016

Over 40 world music acts performed in three spaces over four days. Opening act in Hall One, The Sage Gateshead's variable acoustic main house, was Robert Plant and his band Strange Sensation.

For the venue's head of sound, Dan Adams, the event has been particularly exigent. He temporarily gave up his usual role and became production manager, handing the audio reigns over to Paul Astbury who can ordinarily be found at the South Bank Centre, where he is himself head of sound. With these changes in mind, you might be forgiven for thinking that to then road-test the late

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14 March 2016

In the product awards, Strand Lighting's C21 Dimmer range won Lighting Product of the Year. C21 and EC21 dimmer racks are designed for global operation and provide a number of advances in technology, say Strand. In addition to providing support for conventional SCR dimmers including Quad, Dual and single modules with ratings up to 12kW, sophisticated Sinewave dimmers are also available. Dual Sinewave modules can be mixed and matched with standard dimmers in the same rack for full flexibility.

Altman Lighting collected the Lighting/ Architecture Product of the Year Award for its Smart

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14 March 2016

The theme this year was Animal Magic, which required video sequences of the animals - created by Birmingham video artist Jonathan Lee - to be projected 50-60m high over a 30m distance, across a small lake and onto the trees. This was one of a number of spectaculars staged during the year by the Council, which led it to believe that projector ownership now represented a more cost-effective option than rental.

Bruno Edwards comments: "Aside from the performance, the main advantage of the Roadster was that, thanks to

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14 March 2016

After a number of years at its Highbury base, the company recently completed the move to the Neasden site, which offers more flexibility in terms of equipment warehousing and office space. Director John Hastie described the company's current workload in the UK as "manic": engineers are involved in a variety of projects including the refurbishment of London's Royal Festival Hall, due for completion in 2007. The company can now be contacted at 9 Falcon Park, Neasden Lane, London NW10 1RZ.

Meanwhile, the company has also announced the opening of a permanent US office in Las Vegas, Nevada, to be headed up by company director Kevin Taylor, with support from two full-time staff. The move follows Stage Technologies

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14 March 2016

"The move comes at a time when the synergy between the two brands is stronger than ever, and it makes sense to have one distributor handling both," says Midas and Klark Teknik sales and marketing director David Cooper. "Texim is consistently one of our best European Klark Teknik distributors and we are confident that they can repeat this success with the Midas range. Their tec

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14 March 2016

The technical difficulties included combating the high ambient light levels created by the thousands of public lights of night-time Milan. Buroni says that apart from this problem, he was also faced with the only available site to project from being located 200m from the building. Buroni explains: "The image to be projected was divided into 15 sections using an extremely precise graphic process and a complicated series of calculations and tests in order to obtain the perfectly rec

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14 March 2016

The brief was to provide a thoroughly modern yet sympathetic environment for exercisers using the latest technology. However, it had to be a system that would be easy for untrained personnel to use and operate. Sound Division installed 24 Audeon 28 RX6 wireless personal receivers on the CV machines and the same number of Audeon 28 CS wireless Csafe docking chargers. The AV distribution s

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14 March 2016

Framing the stage for the Gorillaz performance, Blackout supplied 4 track systems fitted with red velour to represent a secondary proscenium arch. Two 12m x 9m white filled cloth and red velour Kabukis drops added a projection surface. A "Peppers Ghost" effect was created using two translucent panels and a projector truss and projector beams bounced images back on screen where they were combined with life size silhouettes of band m

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14 March 2016

The band's long term LD Benoit Richards and their video designer Bert Baldwin worked together on developing the 2005 show's 'visuality', which united both lighting and video in an integrated stage 'look', matching the band's huge energy. Both Richards and Baldwin have been involved with the band for some time. "It's very much been a collaborative effort this t

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14 March 2016

GLP UK is a division of Chepstow based i-Vision, specialists in architectural, LED and feature lighting. Complementing i-Vision's bespoke and standard ranges of architectural fixtures, GLP UK offers a massive choice of entertainment lighting fixtures from fully-specced professional level moving heads for studio and touring applications, to a vast range of conventional lightsources, to a myriad of club and disco effects. This includes lighting control systems - dimmers and desks, stands and rigging, and all imaginable accessories.

GLP UK is the exclusive UK distributor for German Lighting Products. The new user-friendly and easily navigable website is geared to clients with all levels of knowledge

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14 March 2016

Artistic director Anton Corbijn, visual director Blue Leech and lighting designer Paul Normandale created the visual concept to reflect an 80s space feel and the lighting was carefully selected to complement the tradition of a band with a history of visual spectacular as well as musical presentation.

One of the key elements to both the set and lighting design is the custom-built futuristic looking stage facia and synthesiser stations. Perforated with small holes they house a total of 59 James Thomas Engineering's PixelPup LED fixtures. Paul Normandale explains: "I wanted

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14 March 2016

MMM nominated its in-house Jaguar event management team for the award and won because of its innovative approach to live branding exercises, the huge success of the experiential events that it produces for Jaguar and the way the company works with the client on a strategic level. This involves a truly comprehensive understanding of Jaguar's business on all levels, says the company.

MMM has handled Jaguar's account for over 15 years and is made up of a core team of five people - a director, two event managers, an administrator and a warehouse manager. The judges were impressed with the longevity of the relationship, which has needed a lively and constant creative evolution to develop the brand identity and keep pace with the times.

The Team del

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14 March 2016

The reputation of these compact loudspeaker systems, say Outline, is based on their ability to reproduce the human voice in a focussed manner, with natural timbre and high intelligibility - even at high volume, and without feedback, say Outline.

For the area of the studio hosting VIPs, eight Outline H.A.R.D. 212 stage monitors with the company's unique (patent pending) "acoustic architecture" were used: these continue to make a name for themselves in high profile e

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14 March 2016

The splitter system went straight out on David Gray's UK tour, making its debut on Gray's Parkinson appearance, then moving onto another TV slot with Jools Holland before heading out across the UK for the December dates. The DN1248s Pluses have been used to their full capacity, with the need for FOH, monitor, multitrack and broadcast splits on several occasions, say Skan.

(Lee Baldock)