USA - Shure Incorporated has combined the sales, marketing, and support staff of the company's International Americas Business Unit with the US Business Unit to form the new Americas Business Unit.

"To drive sustained growth for the Company, we decided to align these two business units into one," said Chris Schyvinck, Shure's executive vice president of global marketing and sales. "This new structure enables us to offer a broader set of resources to support our channel partners throughout the Americas - Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean - while continuing the same high level of service and support to our sales reps and customers in the US."

Mark Humrichouser has been appointed general manager of the Americas Business Unit. In this c

UK - Vaughan Sound Installations (VSI), part of the PAI Group, has installed its i-Sign room numbering system, ambient lighting control and an iPod driven audio system into all the newly refurbished rooms at The Royal Horseguards hotel, London. The 5 Star 281 room luxury property is located on the banks of the River Thames opposite the London Eye, in the heart of the UK capital.

VSI was employed by the main contractors Beck Interiors for the end client, Guoman Hotels, after being initially commissioned for the project by interior designer Lorna Griffiths. The brief was to create a stylish, state-of-the-art, simple-to-use in-room IT, AV and lighting solution.

The first element of the installation for VSI was to specify a recessed i-Pod interface to link to the in-room flat screen TV and compact audio system, allowing guests to hook up their own iPod or MP3 device and play their

USA - Aviom has introduced its Pro64 Network Manager PC application at this week's InfoComm. While the Pro64 Series is designed with a simple, front-panel user interface that makes it possible to design sophisticated networks without PC-based programming, the company is introducing a software control application this year for those users who desire centralised control and status monitoring.

This new intuitive, easy-to-use graphical interface provides global and device-specific information to the user, allowing simple management of even complex audio networks, says the company. With Pro64 Network Manager, users have remote control of every Pro64 device in a network using a PC connected to the I/O module set as the Control Master. Both network settings and audio parameters for each device can be managed from one location, simplifying network management, streamlining the workflow,

USA - Teer Engineering recently completed the installation of high-performance, networked audio systems from Harman Professional for the conference room facilities at the redesigned Reliable Plaza building in Orlando, Florida.

The systems for four discrete, networked conference rooms, comprise components from BSS, Crown, and JBL in addition to playback, video and control technologies from other providers such as AMX. Considered to be the greenest commercial building in downtown Orlando, Reliable Plaza is designed to meet Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification and houses municipal and commercial offices including the Orlando Utilities Commission customer service centre.

Reliable Plaza is designed to use 28 per cent less energy than a typical similarly-sized facility of its kind, so the audio systems for the conference rooms needed to be highly a

UK - With this year's Wimbledon Championships just a few days away the redevelopment of the world's most famous tennis venue has moved another stage forward-and a North East company is involved.

Sunderland-based Current Thinking has recently extended its VoCall system, which combines both fire telephones and disabled refuge points with incident logging facilities, into the Wimbledon Court Number 2.

Current Thinking managing director Anthony Smith explains: "We were delighted when we were asked to play a part in the Wimbledon redevelopment project and we developed a system specifically to meet the needs of a venue which during the Wimbledon tournament attracts around half a million spectators.

"Our network is designed to provide easy communication for members of the public who cannot easily use usual methods of evacuation and also to assist the emergency services to

featured content

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

UK - Global Design Solutions' innovative LiteWare range recently made its Television debut on the BBC's Friday Night with Jonathan Ross show, which featured Lionel Richie and Sparks.

Episode eight of the current series of the BBC show saw Lionel Richie performing an impromptu duet with Jonathan Ross. While the pair performed Lionel's classic number 'Three times a lady', LiteWare fittings, controlled wirelessly by DMX, illuminated the underside of the piano and along the front of the stage. At the conclusion of the duet, the lighting crew removed the fittings and deployed them at the front of the performance stage for the live performance from US Pop Rock band Sparks.

Richard Martin Lighting, who supplied the BBC show from their inventory of LiteWare hire stock, decided to undertake a screen test on the LED uplighter to ascertain its performance in front of the camera. T

UK - The Black-E community arts project in Liverpool has completed a £6m refurbishment to become the North-West's only in-the-round auditorium. Its triple-height performance space has been transformed by a beefy central cluster of Nexo Alpha-E PA, designed and installed by SSE Sales, who had to overcome a number of acoustic challenges set by the architecture of this former Congregational Chapel.

The Black-E originally derived its nickname - the Blackie - in the 1960s, as over 100 years of smoke and grime had stained the chapel's stonework black. It was at that time when the building was given a new lease of life as the UK's first community arts project.

SSE Sales was approached in late 2008 by Dan Mills, technical manager of The Black-E, to provide a sound reinforcement system for the newly-refurbished performance space, but this was by no means straightforward. T

featured content

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

UK - The Underglobe, as the name suggests, is situated in the depths of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre in London and has recently installed a sound system comprising Meyer Sound speakers and Allen & Heath digital mixing products, including the new iLive-T Series. The Underglobe is host to the Globe Exhibition, and venue for the Globe's corporate and educational events.

Autograph Sales was appointed to help design and install the system with sound designer, Sarah Weltman. Having collaborated before on the refit of the Young Vic Theatre in Waterloo, the Globe's technical manager, Paul Russell, asked Weltman to design a system of high quality, capable of fulfilling almost any event that the Underglobe may host.

"Flexibility, versatility and speech intelligibility were the key aims of the system, whilst keeping control and operation simple to enable a non-technical end user to

South Africa - International dance brand Godskitchen brought their successful 2009 world tour show to South Africa, headlined by Armin van Buuren and staged at two events in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Gearhouse South Africa supplied full technical production for the Cape Town event for their client Kilowatt AV, headed by Dillon Jearey, all working closely with international production manager and lighting designer, UK-based Simon Barrington of Production Eye and project manager Andrea Frey from Angel Music.

Kilowatt has worked on previous Godskitchen events, but this is the first time they have involved Gearhouse - whose Cape Town branch supplied staging and structure, lighting, audio and AV for the event at Bellville Velodrome, which was enjoyed by 4000 dance enthusiasts. Gearhouse's 15 site crew were led by project manager Theo van As.

At the hub of the 2009 Godskitchen s

Italy - The philanthropism of Italian Cashmere magnate Brunello Cucinelli has included his investment in the sympathetic restoration and development of the historic medieval village of Solomeo, near Perugia. Central to this project is Teatro Cucinelli, a brand new 230-seat theatre whose design is inspired by the 400-year-old Farnese theatres in Parma and Sabbioneta. Complementing the venue's elegant historic design is a state-of-the-art Yamaha audio system.

Stephan Luthi of Acoustic Light, who designed and installed the audio system, says: "The theatre hosts a range of events, from opera and live music to conferences, and we wanted the system to be acoustically very discreet in terms of the uniformity of sound, and very subtle in terms of it not being obvious that the sound is amplified."

In addition, the hands-on Mr Cucinelli wanted the system to be able to carry au

The Netherlands - Cuelux, the new platform-independent software lighting controller from Visual Productions is now available from stock. The first batch of Cuelux has already been shipped out across Europe to a range of dealers including those that are positioned to feed the webshops, as ecommerce is an easy route for Cuelux to reach its intended audience, says the company.

Designed to suit the entry level market, Cuelux is a DMX512 lighting controller for intelligent lights, LED, dimmers, lasers and various other effects; it is shipped with an affordably priced USB-to-DMX adapter cable. Cuelux is multi-platform and can run on Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Care has been taken to design Cuelux' 100% touch-screen compliant graphical user-interface to reflect the functionality of the industry standard control boards. Programming the lights through the Cuelux cue-list system is id

Hungary - GE Lighting has announced the launch of its new range of High Output LED retrofit lamps.

"Unlike many retrofit LED lamps on the market today, the new lamps from GE maintain a high standard of colour quality and do not compromise on light output," says Andrew Davies, LED senior product manager. "Very significantly, they are designed to fit the international standard size & shape for the lamps they are intended to replace, meaning users will not get unpleasant surprises when attempting to retrofit them into existing sockets."

Included in the range is a GU10 lamp. Consuming only 4 Watts of power, the GU10 offers "superior beam intensity to a 20 watt halogen GU10 lamp, whilst matching the wide flood beam angle given by halogen". This allows for 80% energy saving to be achieved. Colour temperature is a warm white 3100K whilst colour rendering

UK - The 2009 Download Festival was acclaimed a success by fans, media, artists and scooped the Event of the Year at the 2009 Metal Hammer Awards within 48 hours of closing its doors.

Showsec has secured the festival since it's inception in 2003, this year supplying over 600 trained and licensed staff. They ensured the safety and enjoyment of 75,000 rock fans through three nights of music from the leading rock acts, headlined including Faith No More, Slipknot and Def Leppard.

Showsec operations director Simon Battersbsy commented: "The new site brought new challenges, but was a better site for the crowd and for us to work on. Download attracts really keen music fans who like any festival want to move from stage to stage to enjoy the music. Our aim is to facilitate this with ease of movement and minimal stress. The new site engendered itself to this festival: it pro

UK - RC4 Wireless has been awarded Lighting Product of the Year by the Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) in London, for their RC4BlackMagic Wireless DMX and Dimming System.

"We are particularly flattered by this award because of the nature of the voting process," said James David Smith, president and chief product designer at RC4. "The ABTT is a small organisation of in-the-trenches theatre people -electricians, carpenters, lighting and sound personnel - who make live theatre tick in the UK. There are no nominations for ABTT awards, all you need is a great new product on display at the ABTT Theatre Show. Judges are anonymous industry professionals without commercial bias. They visit all the stands in the show, large and small, looking for notable new products."

While presenting a special pipe-clamp trophy to Smith in a formal ceremony, the c

USA - After two years, almost 2,000 attendees have participated in Shure Incorporated's Advanced Wireless Seminars around the United States, most recently in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

"We consider this a significant milestone for us, and we're looking forward to continuing this programme," said Gino Sigismondi, training manager for Shure. "With all of the uncertainty surrounding White Spaces over the past few years and with so many unanswered questions about the future of the wireless landscape, our customers need this kind of training now more than ever."

The company has been staging these events around the US since mid-2007 and most recently hosted two of the sessions on the West Coast for dealers, sound contractors, consultants, and technicians from major entertainment venues, including Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, The Mirage, and The Flamingo casino

Upbeat in Orlando - InfoComm International has announced that InfoComm 09 (17-19 June, Orlando, Florida), the annual conference and exhibition for professional audio-visual buyers and sellers worldwide, was the biggest commercial AV show ever held on the East Coast of the United States, with more than 29,000 AV professionals attending from more than 80 countries. There were 850 exhibitors participating this year, representing an increase of 80 since the last time the event was in Orlando. "InfoComm continues to be the one trade show where most professional AV service providers make their important buying decisions for the year," said Randal A. Lemke, executive director, InfoComm International. "Despite the global economy, the AV marketplace has enthusiastically embraced InfoComm as the place to make their purchasing choices, network with product and service provider

World - On Tina Turner's current world tour, sound engineer Dave Natale deployed AKG C214 microphones as well as a WMS4500 wireless system. Natale initially tested the C214 mic on a sound check in AKG's hometown of Vienna, Austria and immediately began using the mic on the current tour.

"While touring Austria on the Tina Turner tour, I had the ability to experiment with the C214 as well as other AKG products and I immediately fell in love with the C214's features and capabilities," commented Natale. "I am very impressed with the C214 and they are now my new standard. The older mics that I use become harder and harder to find, and it is great to find alternatives. This is truly the first microphone, ever, that I have used flat."

In addition to the C214 on the Tina Turner tour, the bassist, Warren McCrae, is pleased with the wireless capabilities of the WMS4

USA - theMovement, a non-denominational church based in San Marcos, California, has chosen the new Soundcraft Si2 digital console as the heart of its sound system upgrade. The church was making the transition into digital for the first time so the sound quality, DSP power and the ease of use were crucial in the decision-making process for the console.

"TheMovement church is very familiar with high-tech gear," reports Chris Matthews, an engineer of over 15 years. "We needed a console that had the sound quality and the power to be able to use all gates and compressors and EQs at one time. We wanted a console with history behind it and Soundcraft has a rich history including the Vi6, and their partnership with Studer is very appealing."

Matthews adds: "The feature I like the most is that there are no real pages I have to go to in order to get an aux or EQ

UK - New Zealander Rodd McClintock, a design student at Leeds Metropolitan University, is the winner of the 2009 Enlighten Design Competition run by Leeds-based High Technology Lighting.

The brief in the fourth annual contest staged by the Middleton Grove lighting design specialist was to design a luminaire for a high-end market using Philips matchbox gear and fluorescent lamps.

McClintock, 37, won the competition - it encourages innovation, raises awareness of the potential the lighting sector can offer and recognises and rewards good ideas - with his entry Lumin-Eye,centred around a sustainable world theme.

He explained: "My inspiration came from the sea, with the design based on brain coral and blown glass, which is made from sand, a highly sustainable resource with excellent reflective qualities and producing beautiful colours, though my winning entry was mad

UK - Adlib Audio supplied sound for the Love Music Hate Racism Festival 2009, staged at Britannia Stadium, Stoke, UK, organised by Stoke City Football Club and Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

The artist line-up included Reverend and The Makers, Beverley Knight, The New Beautiful South, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Ironik & Chipmunk, Helsinki, VV Brown, The Beat, Bashy, Mick Jones & the Rotten Hill Gang. Other musicians and performers including Pete Doherty, Eddie Izzard and Kelly Rowland spoke out against racism.

Adlib's team was crew chiefed by Marc Peers, the system was designed by Tony Szabo and Dave Kay was looking after FOH. They had to accommodate the assorted audio needs of all performers with quick changeovers, and so adopted a festival style flip-flop system at both ends of the multicore.

Szabo chose 16 V-DOSC speaker elements a side for the main arrays on 17m towers

UK - Hawthorn has recently acquired a substantial stock of over 300 painted scenic backdrops on lightweight canvas which are now available for rental on a daily or weekly basis from both its Midlands and London warehouses.

The backdrops come in various sizes ranging from 10ft x 12ft right up to 40ft x 20ft. They have tie tapes and can also be suspended from our free standing pipe and base support system, offering lots of flexibility in hanging to suit every venue.

Themes include: Olympics, Underwater, Circus, Forest, Carnival, Nautical, Pirate, Motor Racing, Football, Tennis, the Jungle, Christmas/Winter Wonderland, 60's, 70's, 80's, plus topics such as Venice, Egypt, Paris, Rio and Africa.

Hawthorn's new battery powered LED up lighters are suitable for lighting the backdrops without the need for cables or power as they are self contained and last for up to 10 hours, offerin

Latest Issue. . .