UK - Slingco has installed the largest Cablenet tensioned wire grid system in the world to date at the newly refurbished Bournemouth International Centre (BIC). The 2,500sq.m installation, covering the entire roof space of the BIC's main Windsor Hall was part of a £22 million refurbishment project for the building, undertaken by construction contractor Warings for Bournemouth City Council.

It expands the seated capacity of the Windsor Hall to 4,500 and the standing capacity to 7,200, making the BIC a truly world class multipurpose venue suitable for all types of productions - from conference to arena sized stage shows. The Cablenet installation pips Slingco's previous world record, held by the IFEMA venue in Madrid, by approximately 100sq.m. The installation was completed in just seven weeks.

The Cablenet, which uses 36 miles of steel cabling, is an elegant, practical solution

North America - Martin Professional Inc, the wholly owned subsidiary of Martin Professional A/S, has been appointed the exclusive distributor in North America for the BigLite product series. BigLite products feature high powered Xenon lamp sources in a single arm moving head format and is the most technologically advanced large format intelligent xenon fixture on the market today. This revolutionary fixture was developed and is manufactured by ZAP Technology in Paris, France.

Available for immediate delivery, the BigLite 4.5 offers lighting designers real-time color mixing and diffusion with electronic strobe effects and energy saving standby modes - improving bulb life, fan noise, and heat output. The fixture will generate a spot to wash effect three times per second and moves effortless at speeds up to three times faster than the competition. The space-aged plastic shells are

UK - PSCo were awarded the AV Award for Rental Company of the Year at the ceremony in London last week. The judges commented: "PSCo's commitment to technical training and industry certification, allied to its use of customer surveys and performance measurement, helped it win this category - as did its introduction of new products to the trade rental sector."

Stuart Holmes, Director of PSCo added: "The 2004/2005 period for PSCo has seen a complete change in our business strategy which has set us apart as an innovative and service led company. The CASVP Gold Award recognised the work the whole team has put in to improve their technical knowledge and this award is a brilliant accolade for all their work this year."

PSCo will be showcasing its whole portfolio at Tech Event 2005 held at Reading Football Stadium Conference Centre on October 27.

(Jim Evan

UK - Adlib Audio supplied sound, lighting and staging for ten live venues at the three-day 2005 In The City Live & Unsigned event, part of the ITC international music convention and showcase held in Manchester last weekend. ITC was founded in 1992 by Yvette Livesey and Factory guru Anthony Wilson. Bands who've appeared first at ITC include Oasis, Coldplay and the Stereophonics. At this year's event, over 160 bands played in multiple venues across the city.

"The best thing about using Adlib Audio," says event organizer Phil Saxe, "is that they removed any anxieties from the pre-production right through to the events themselves, which ran like clockwork. We knew there would be absolutely no worries! "

Adlib's production management and logistics were handled by Mark Roberts, who is also the company's general manager. He worked closely with Adlib Lightin

Sweden - Long-time DPA user the GöteborgsOperan (Gothenburg Opera House) in Sweden, has purchased a further eight DPA 4011 cardioid microphones, taking their inventory of this product to a total of thirty. All have been supplied through DPA's Swedish distributor Arva. The 4011s are mainly being used for orchestras, and according to the venue's technical supervisor Lars Olsen, are proving to be equally suitable for woodwind, brass and even timpani.

"We are somewhat different to most traditional opera houses as we produce not only operas but also ballets, operettas and full-scale musicals," says Olsen. "We have found all DPA mics to be of outstanding quality as well as being flexible enough meet our different needs. The versatility of the mics means that our technicians can work with one kind of equipment regardless of the type of music, and this makes their job ea

Germany - Robbie Williams prepared for the launch of his latest album, Intensive Care with a special one-off gig at Berlin's 8,000 capacity Velodrome, complete with production rigging by Summit Steel. The live show was beamed to over 20,000 fans across Europe via high definition cinecast to selected cinemas. The show was also recorded for a TV show to be screened the night preceding the album launch.

Summit serviced the last Robbie Williams tour in 2003 with rigging and automation, and has also worked with the artist before then. The Summit team in Berlin was led by Jon Bray and five riggers from the UK plus nine local riggers.

The show involved a 50 tonne total load - the maximum allowed in the venue - comprising various elements of production lighting, sound and set. The hoist count was 180, and three trucks were needed just to transport the rigging to site.

The sho

USA - While readying the sound system for the Wynn Las Vegas' brand new Aqua Theatre, theatrical audio specialist Pascal Van Strydonck, head of audio for the venue and also the show's sound designer, was presented with a significant problem. The 2,087-seat, in-the-round home of Franco Dragone's Le Reve - The Show was suddenly not the same venue acoustically as originally designed. Fronted by a Yamaha DM2000 digital console, the house PA, a 5.1 surround, 360-degree, six-zone system by Meyer Sound, was already ordered and installed, yet architectural and rigging changes significantly affected its performance.

As a result, Van Strydonck decided that comprehensive acoustic measurement and tuning were in order for the theatre. "The quality of the PA is impeccable," says Van Strydonck. "But unfortunately the cabinet types were chosen for a specific design and it

South America - A Jands Vista T4 lighting console was chosen for tribute band The Australian Pink Floyd Show's first visit to South America by touring LD and console programmer Phil White. Lighting designer Dave Hill chose fixtures to suit the very demanding technical needs of shows, which feature a lot of instant changes and quick movements. To re-create the classic look and feel of the band's light shows, the rig features a circle of light suspended from an outer box truss goalpost behind the band to illuminate the stage in a spectacular wall of light.

Due to a smaller production budget for the band's first visit to South America, and the logistics of shipping the band's tour rig between venues in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Malta, the production team decided to source the lighting rig equipment locally in each region. However, owing to the very cue-intensive nature of the t

UK - This autumn, the Children's Theatre Company opens its Cargill Stage to the theatre going public. The new stage provides an additional performance space for the Minneapolis theatre company with flexible seating for up to 300. Patrons will enjoy state of the art productions, thanks in part to Tomcat equipment.

When designing the new facility, Children's Theatre Company wanted the lighting options to be as flexible as the seating. Working with the Tomcat design team, they could accomplish just that.The order included 65 pieces of medium duty truss (45 x 15ft sections, 12 x 5ft sections and 8 x 4ft sections) with asexual spigots. These truss sections can be configured in a number of ways; however, additional flexibility is provided by the corner blocks, designed with custom-made, spigoted truss attachment brackets (TABs). In addition to the truss, the order included 36 Columbus

USA - For the third year running, Los Angeles-based Visions Lighting helped create the party atmosphere for Spanish-language radio station Super Estrella's annual Reventón concert at The Pond in Anaheim.

Working with Reventón's lighting designer, Chris Reade, Visions Lighting erected an intricate overhead truss structure that dominated the look of the event. The lighting rig itself included 32 Martin Professional MAC 2000 fixtures, 19 Atomic 3000 strobes, 24 High End Studio Color fixtures, 24 Studio Beam fixtures and 20 Molefays.

Visions Lighting, worked around the clock for three days to make Reventón happen. Each of the nine Latin artists playing at this year's event, several of whom had their own lighting designer, played anywhere from a 20 to 50 minute set.

"It's difficult to describe just what Reventón is like for someone who's never experienced it," remar

UK - AnswerBack Interactive, the audience interaction specialists won the Live Event of the Year category in the AV Awards 2005, through its work with Celador International on the Summer 2005 regional theatre tour of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Live.

At the same event, AnswerBack was also awarded the Grand Prix - an award given to a project that delivers the best documented results to the user company, or shows how technical innovation can be best applied.

Guy Freeman, Managing Director of Celador Music & Events, said "We are delighted that AnswerBack won these awards for their work on this key project for us. They delivered to time and budget and provided us with an extremely good quality and cost effective solution that enabled us to launch a unique and exciting new product."

Paul Krisman, MD of AnswerBack Interactive, commented "I am thrilled to h

UK - Electrosonic was awarded four top accolades at the 2005 UK AV Awards held recently in London. For the third year running Electrosonic was judged to be the winner of Systems Company of the Year and Service Company of the Year. The company also collected the awards for Business Installation of the Year and Consumer Installation of the Year.

Electrosonic's submission for Systems Company of the Year was based on the work achieved by its UK Solutions Business, which is a silver level CAVSP qualified company. Electrosonic Solutions divides its activities into a series of inter-connected teams covering sales consultancy, project engineering and management, systems assembly and test, installation, programming and development.

As Service Company of the Year, the turnover of the Electrosonic UK Service Business showed a 43% year-on-year tur

Switzerland - Butterfly line-arrays played a key role at the St. Jackob stadium in Basle, on the occasion of an ecumenical mass attended by 5,000 people. Blackburn Productions deployed 24 CDH 483 Hi-Pack modules, backed up by eight Victor Live subwoofers. H.A.R.D. 212 monitors were used for the musicians and choir and Bomber systems on side-fill chores. Amplification was courtesy of T series power amps and the system was controlled by new Genius 26 DSP, also by Outline.

Christof Mäder, owner of Blackburn Productions, commented: "The area to be covered in the stadium was 140 metres long, but I didn't need delay systems. The VIP software, as always was very precise and reliable. It would be no exaggeration to say that the sound was wonderful and intelligibility really high."

(Jim Evans)

UK - Automation specialists Kinesys provided all the control equipment for the new grid arrangement at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

The Millennium Stadium wanted the option of reconfiguring the stadium space as a smaller, arena style venue, enabling the staging of a greater variety of shows. Kinesys were asked onboard to deal with this specific area of the project by lead contractors Blackout. The two companies have pooled skills and resources on several other large ventures.

The largest section of the project is a moving mother grid system that has been installed into one half of the Stadium's opening roof. It consists of 18 five tonne Liftket motors permanently fixed to hanging points in the roof. Kinesys installed all the wiring, designed a complete cable tray system and designed and built all the required control cabinets into the roof itself. All equipment is specif

UK - Thirteen Ampetronic induction loop systems have been included in a brand new hostel at St Evelina Children's Hospital, London. Installed by regular Ampetronic client Scanaudio, the hospital features 12 ILD20 and one ILD252 loop amplifiers.

At the hospital's main reception, two ILD20-driven base station loops ensure the communication process is as clear as possible from the moment that visitors arrive. Ten further ILD20 loops are installed at nurse stations and in the wards throughout the hospital, ensuring visitors with a hearing impairment can discuss anything they need with the staff, while not disturbing patients. They also have the additional benefit of helping any of the patients who may have a hearing impairment.

A perimeter induction loop is also installed in the hospital's main meeting room, powered by an ILD252 and including a condenser microphone for presentatio

USA - St. Joseph's and St. Patrick's Church in Escanaba, Mich, has a new sound system installed by Eagle Communication and featuring EAW DSA series loudspeakers. The system was installed by Eagle's co-owner Tony Rogalski who has installed systems in more than 1,200 churches. The long-established church was having problems with noise reflection from its shiny gloss-painted surfaces.

"The church described the exact problem I had just solved for a massive old church in downtown Detroit," explained Rogalski. "With hard surfaces like marble, wood and stained glass, old churches frequently battle reverberation when it comes to the spoken word. At the same time, these same churches often reject traditional damping methods, such as acoustic panelling, because they don't want to cover or in any way mar the traditional and well-loved aesthetic of the old buildings."

Germany - Over 65,000 concert-goers attended this year's Popkomm festival in Berlin, where more than 1,500 musicians from 23 different countries provided over 400 hours of live music in 30 different clubs and halls around the city. In the thick of the action was the Berlin production company TSE AG: the team lead by Marcel Fery was responsible for both the lighting and the sound at many of the main events, including one of the real highlights of this year's Popkomm, the MTV Designerama Fashion Show.

The centrepiece of the sound design, for an event that received widespread media coverage within Germany and drew a large TV audience throughout Europe, was an Electro-Voice X-Line, Midas consoles and processors and EQs from Klark Teknik.

Commented Fery: "The extremely wide stage in the Berlin Arena held no terrors for the EV system, with its coverage angle of 120 degre

World - The White Stripes tour has seen the minimalist rock duo delivering performances to sold-out crowds on several continents. Six years and five albums into their careers, the duo of Jack and Meg White show no signs of slowing down.

Detroit-based Thunder Audio has been providing the sound for much of this year's foray, based around an array of 24 Meyer Sound MILO high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers. FOH engineer Matthew Kettle, mixing the band on a Midas Heritage 3000 console, favours a stripped-down approach that calls for little in the way of effects, other than a bit of compression and a slight touch of reverb. Two LD-3 compensating line drivers provide system drive processing, while status of the loudspeakers are monitored from a laptop computer running RMS remote monitoring system software.

"The MILO rigs, in particular, have proved to be quite versatile,&q

USA / UK - Sennheiser was recognized with the Technical Excellence & Creativity (TEC) Award for Microphone Technology/Sound Reinforcement for the Evolution e900 Series of backline mics at the 21st annual TEC Award ceremony. The presentation was made at the New York Marriott Marquis in New York City during the annual AES convention.

The 900 Series microphones are designed for professional musicians, PA rental companies and rehearsal studios, and are optimised to handle a wide range of electric and acoustic instruments.

This is the third TEC Award honour for Sennheiser since 2002. The company was awarded top honours in 2003 in the Wireless Technology category for the hybrid Sennheiser SKM5000-N/Neumann KK105-S, and in 2002 won in the Ancillary Equipment category for the Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones.

• At the recent MIA Music Awards ceremony held in The Savoy, London, S

USA - Color Kinetics Inc and Litecontrol Corporation have announced an OEM agreement. Litecontrol, a leading architectural lighting manufacturer for nearly 70 years, will enter the intelligent solid-state lighting market by applying Color Kinetics' technology, expertise and intellectual property for a unique LED-based product line, say the companies.

Litecontrol's record of innovation includes the development of many widely-used interior architectural fixtures. Recognizing the increasingly prevalent role of LEDs in architectural lighting, Litecontrol will expand its product portfolio with three LED-based offerings that are readily adaptable to common lighting environments, including pendant fixtures and wall sconces. The products will be based on Color Kinetics' versatile Digital Light Engines (DLEs), which apply patented Chromacore technology to efficiently generate colored lig

UK - It's been a busy summer season of corporate lighting projects for White Light, with the Corporate Lighting team led by Steve Bartlett dealing with events ranging from the Labour Party's pre-election tour to the 30th anniversary screening of Jaws on Brighton beach in front of more than 15,000 people.

Labour's pre-election tour saw White Light working with production company Potcakes on the campaign which covered a wide variety of venues. Since the election, White Light has been involved with the Quincentenary of Christ's College Cambridge and the V Fest lit by lighting designer Chris Biddolph; two events for Barclays at the Excel Centre with lighting designer Tim Ball, and the summer season at the Honorary Artillery Company, lit by Jason Larcombe and Simon Jones.

White Light has also been involved with three projects with Oxygen Events, a massive private party in Plymouth,

UK - Sound Division has completed the installation of a JBL background music system into the prestigious china and glassware retailer, Waterford Wedgewood, in London's Piccadilly Arcade off Jermyn Street, Mayfair. The brief was for a high quality background music system zoned into two areas with remote level control for each zone. Sound Division supplied and installed a total of eight white JBL Control 23 loudspeakers on a 100V-line system complete with a Cloud 3650 dual-zone mixer/amplifier and a Pioneer multi-CD player.

"We were working to a very tight schedule," explained Sound Division's David Graham. "We had to be in and out in just one working day in order to cause minimum disruption to the establishment and its customers. It meant a pretty early start, but we got the entire system installed, wired, tested and handed over within the given time-frame. Waterfo

China - Britain's leading induction loop design and manufacturing company Ampetronic has scored a double first in China: the first 'first' was to appoint Shenzhen-based Amtor Ltd as its first Chinese distributor. The next, following on from the deal, is that Amtor is designing what it claims to be the very first induction loop system ever to be installed in China - using Ampetronic equipment.

The system is being designed for the Chengdu Handicapped Healing Centre, an eight-floor facility that will offer education, healthcare, healing and entertainments services. 10 induction loops will be installed, using Ampetronic ILD20, ILD60, ILD122, ILD252 loop amplifiers.

Unlike in the Western world, China currently has no legislation that requires induction loops to be installed, as Amtor's Tony Xu explains: "Induction loops are both a new idea and new technology for China. Governm

UK - Bristol-based Utopium undertook design and installation of the stage and production lighting in the 2000 capacity main room and 400 capacity Carling Academy 2 Newcastle. The stage and dancefloor lighting rigs were designed by Angus Chinn, his fifth Academy project for the Group after Bristol, Liverpool, Islington and Glasgow. Avolites consoles are also used for lighting control in all these other Academy venues.

"We have worked with Utopium on a number of installations at AMG venues and as a group we invest heavily in both our PA and lighting equipment. We set high production values so that all AMG sites can offer the same high quality, in-house production as standard to not only international touring acts, but also talent on the way up," says Group property & development manager, Archie McIntosh.

It was integral that the lighting for Newcastle was designed to c

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