UK - Lighting, dimming and controls manufacturer ETC has released dates of training sessions for its Congo, Eos and Ion control desks at its training theatre - The Playhouse at Gypsy Corner in west London.

Only six or eight places are available for each course, with a maximum of two people per desk, so each student will get plenty of hands on use. All the courses are free and include lunch.

Introduction to Ion and Introduction to Eos courses being held in mid January, February and March both teach the basics and nuances of these control systems. Students will learn to programme conventional and moving lights, work with palletised data, groups and submasters, and learn to create cues and use effects.

If you are about to become a Congo or Congo jr user, you can learn to use those desks in a hands-on, user-friendly environment with a two day introductory course at the end of No

UK - UK and Ireland distribution of the Samson and Hartke brands will transfer to Korg UK from 1st January 2009. Rob Castle, managing director Korg UK comments: "Samson and Hartke will be a great complement to Korg and Vox, whilst also having products relevant to our other brands. We are working with Sound Technology to ensure a smooth transition."

David Marshall, managing director at Sound Technology Ltd commented: "Samson and Hartke have been fantastic brands for us and we are very grateful for the opportunity Samson have given us over the years. However our purchase of Harman Pro UK earlier this year necessitated a review of existing brands to ensure that there is no possibility of conflict. Although we are sorry to be letting these brands go, we wish Korg UK every success in the future."

Peter Jostins, vice-president of International Sales for Samson sa

UK - When the British Music Experience, a permanent, high-tech, interactive music exhibition, opens at The O2 in March 2009, Sennheiser will be a major sponsor.

Sennheiser's involvement goes beyond financial backing. As a permanent exhibition documenting the very best of British music, the creators of the British Music Experience needed quality audio equipment that sounded superb and is extremely resilient. This is why 225 Sennheiser headphones, the HD 215, have been used throughout the entire exhibition, says the company.

Sennheiser's microphone technology has also been used at the exhibition that will cover 2,500sq.m in The O2 bubble, The O2's exhibition space. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience the professional recording environment at first hand; singing along to a classic British hit through a Sennheiser evolution e 935 microphone in the Sennheiser Vo

UK - 5 Star Cases has delivered four Panasonic TH-50P plasma screen trunks to Hertfordshire-based production/event management and technical services company, Production Plus.

The new Tour Grade trunks each house one 50-inch screen display, and include separate compartments for detachable speakers plus an integral space to incorporate a fitted mounting bracket.

5 Star's MD Keith Sykes says: "We enjoy working with companies like Production Plus who follow the same basic ethos and principals of excellence that we do. Consequently there are many parallels between the way we run our respective businesses, and we all strive to complete projects to the highest standards."

(Jim Evans)

Argentina - Latin American Idol is a reality television show that enjoys a huge following. Just like its US counterpart on many other levels, the programme provides contestants with an opportunity to achieve superstardom, showcases celebrity guests, and uses the judge's stand as a pulpit for lively and spirited discourse that sometimes extends into the audience as well.

"We tend to do many things our own way," says Juan Pablo Banchik, sound director of Latin American Idol. "From a production standpoint, standardised methods that apply to Idol shows in other countries don't often work down here."

Banchik works for FremantleMedia, the UK-based production company behind the Idol franchise worldwide. "Fremantle has a series of 'technical bibles' that explain how every aspect of the show should be produced," he says. "I

UK - The Hoosiers have had a busy year of touring and festival dates. And they were using an array of equipment from Sennheiser throughout.

Trevor Gilligan has been Front of House engineer for the band since the beginning of the year. Since then he's weaned the band, all of who provide lead vocals or harmonies, off their previous mics and onto Sennheiser e 935s.

"The old mics sounded fine," explains Gilligan, "but I can get more level out of the 935s. I can get a much more placed in vocal sound with the 935, and I like the background noise I get from it. The stuff it does drag in sounds a lot nicer than what you get from some other mics. If you're working on a loud gig and it's hot and sweaty, and everyone's talking, the 935s cut through that really well. In a live situation, that's the way I like it."

Gilligan also impressed the rest of the engineering c

USA - Jackson Browne launched his 2008-2009 world tour in support of his first album of new material in six years, Time The Conqueror. For the first time, Browne is using LED lighting on his stage.

Lighting director Dave Davidian put together a rig that includes 20 Elation Impression LED moving heads and 180 American DJ 64B LED Pro par cans. According to Davidian, Browne himself was "pivotal" in the decision to switch to LEDs.

"Jackson was very pro-active in looking for LEDs, because he's a very green-oriented person," said Davidian, who has worked for Browne since 1990. "He felt this would be a way to save power and do the right thing as far as his beliefs were concerned. For myself, I was curious about LEDs too."

Davidian selected products from Elation and its sister company American DJ on the basis of recommendation from his supplier,

USA - Auralex Acoustics has been on active duty in Iraq in support of the United States Army's 10th Mountain Division Band. With approximately 40 members, the 10th Mountain Division Band was deployed to Camp Victory, Iraq earlier this year. Auralex Acoustics took on the challenge of assisting the band with occupation and acoustical renovation of its new rehearsal space.

The band's mission involved transforming an old swimming pool into an acoustically balanced rehearsal facility. The greatest sonic anomaly involved early reflections off the plaster walls surrounding the pool, which is kidney shaped with curved walls, making it difficult to predict the angle of reflections. Sound was reflected in every direction with little attenuation due to the hard wall surfaces. Intelligibility of sound sources was almost completely lost, which resulted in hearing/ear fatigue.

"I've us

Spain - VMB has announced the appointment of Avix Tech as its exclusive distribution partner for South Korea. The company has placed a substantial initial order including both Line Array systems, ADP series and towerlifts.

Avix Tech made contact with VMB in PLASA 2008 and recently displayed and demoed the product at last month's KOSOUND.

Avix Tech president Chang, Joo Hong said: "I am very pleased to have been able to introduce the VMB speakers to the Korean market through KOSOUND. It was a very successful launch for us in Korea."

VMB's export manager, Ben Sinclair commented: "We are really pleased that Avix Tech is going to take over the distribution for Korea. It has all been very sudden. We made initial contact at PLASA and within six weeks we received them here in Spain for meetings, signed the contract and were over in Korea demonstrating the product at K

Canada - Club manager Todd Williams describes Canada's On The Rocks Nightclub and Bar in Fort St. John, British Columbia as an uptown, big city themed club in a small town setting. That big city feel is due in large part to a Martin lighting effects package of smartMAC moving heads and Mania series effect lights.

The venue, a former restaurant converted to nightclub use, lies in British Columbia's sparsely populated north and features the biggest dance room in a 350 km radius.

Spaced evenly around the perimeter of a 21' x 21' truss suspended 16ft above the club's dance floor are Martin smartMACs, Mania SCX600 scanners and Mania EFX700 and Mania EFX800 effect lights. Surrounding a cluster of 17 mirror balls at the centre of the truss are Atomic strobes and Mania EFX500 effect lights.

Dispersed around the club's ancillary areas and providing a splash of wall décor are M

UK - When Coldplay decided they wanted 'Magic Balls' for their Viva la Vida World Tour, XL Video turned to Pufferfish to provide a custom solution. Pufferfish designed and delivered six new 'PufferSphere XL' touring units within the space of two months.

Lighting designer Paul Normandale was tasked with devising a new means of integrating the visual components for the current Viva la Vida tour.

"For my part the band's desire for a viewing surface without the use of LEDs, was an interesting challenge, and one for which the Pufferfish system of internal projection provided a unique solution," states Normandale. "It allows not only media content, but also live relay footage (via the Hippotizers) in large scale arenas worldwide."

In all, six PufferSpheres were commissioned for the tour, forming a major part of the overall visual design as well as

Dubai - UK-based event company TAO Group has won the contract to consult on Dubai's new multi-purpose venue, The Palladium.

The Palladium, built at a cost of AED120 million (US$32.6 million), will be the first venue of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa, edicated to cater for a wide array of events.

Raymond Gaspar of ICE - International Communications and Entertainment, awarded the prestigious contract to TAO Group to consult on the technical fit out of the venue, stewarding and medical appointments, traffic and pedestrian planning, occupational safety and to prepare technical specifications to ease the attendance of touring production.

General manager of The Palladium, Raymond Gaspar said, "This venue can be set-up in a variety of creative ways to suit any event theme and size. We will provide all the elements to facilitate the work of promoters and event org

UK - Skins 3 is coming to e4 soon, and the programme's creators are looking for some bright young things to help them with a very special project. They'll be creating an online mini-episode of Skins that will feature some of the series 3 cast - and four very important behind the scenes roles still need to be filled.

The producers are looking for a writer, director, costume designer and production designer to join the team. No experience is necessary as the Skins creators will be mentoring the winners and providing support. Not only that - they get to join the set of series 3 for paid work experience. The mini episode will be screened online in 2009.

Entrants need to be between 18 and 23 years old and the closing date for all four competitions is Tuesday December 9th at 6pm.Directors: Skins are giving one budding director the opportunity to ge

Germany - An L-Acoustics V-DOSC system has been used for the 35th anniversary show of Höhner, a German folk music band, at the 14,000-capacity Lanxess Arena, Cologne.

The concert - Wenn Nicht Jetzt Wann Dann (If Not Now Then When) - which featured special guests Guildo Horn, DJ Ötzi and the Kölner Symphonie, was televised by German broadcaster WDR and recorded for a live CD. While popular across Germany, the band are enormous in their hometown of Cologne and sing in the local dialect of that region.

Cologne-based PA rental company Event-Solution put together a large and complex L-Acoustics system to cover the stalls and lower balcony of the arena.

Event-Solution's Jochen Gotzen used 12 V-DOSC line source cabinets per side as the main PA system, with a total of 20 dV-DOSC compact line source speakers: three per side as down-fills and seven per side as out-fills.

T

UK - LSI Online has learned that the organisers of the Beachdown Festival in Brighton have not paid an estimated £30,000 in bills, more than three months after the event. Nick Love, a Brighton-based site manager, contacted LSI Online to say he was still owed £3,000, and said he was "incredibly disappointed" for himself and his team.

Brighton's Evening Argus newspaper reported yesterday that "at least a dozen businesses involved in the Beachdown Festival have complained they have either not been paid or their cheques had bounced since the event in August".

Many of the businesses involved are angry that tickets for Beachdown 2009 went on sale last month despite the unpaid bills. However, the organisers have said they will be able to pay people once they receive an expected tax rebate.

Winner Plant in Worthing provided fork-lift trucks to

China - The well-established Beijing International Hotel (BIH) is a 916-room 5-star hotel located on Chang'an Street, in the central area of foreign affairs and business in the city. This summer, the BIH has turned several floors of its multi-storey building into a conference destination; out of a total construction area of 33,128sq.m. has been carved a number of flexible meeting venues, including a 2000sq.m banqueting hall and a 625sq.m theatre.

Collaborating on the design of the new Centre were the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design and the American firm of Heitz-Parsons-Sadek, which specialises in high-end hospitality interior design. The installation of the sophisticated AV and communications systems was completed by China Construction Third Engineering Division. Corp.

China Construction has a long-established working relationship with TICO, the Chinese distributor

Canada - PA Plus provided live sound reinforcement for Heaven's Rehearsal a multi-denominational musical event that featured a house band, full orchestra and five-hundred member choir. The event took place at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

PA Plus utilised 80 Crown I-Tech amplifiers to power the large format JBL VerTec line array. "In order to maintain both group and independent control over all the arrays, we chose to use the Crown I-Tech amplifiers along with HiQnet System Architect software to provide all the required processing," stated Mark Radu, systems engineer of PA Plus.

"We tuned the basic 30,000 seat system within System Architect and stored it as a preset. As we added array sections to attain coverage up to the full 55,000-seat capacity, the system was re-tuned and saved as a preset. The Crown I-Tech amplifiers and System Architect gave us all

UK - A co-production between the BBC and Metropolis Music, the 2008 BBC Electric Proms was staged last month at London's Roundhouse and featured a broad spread of contemporary music acts.

All lighting was supplied by High Wycombe-based Siyan for the third consecutive year. Lighting director Bryan Leitch utilised 16 i-Pix BB7 LED wash lights and 20 BB4s. Leitch came up with an original design concept that was developed by himself and Nick Whitehouse who produced all the technical drawings and programmed the show together with Leitch.

The design was shaped to fit the natural architecture of the building, accentuating the curves and spheres of the quirky Victorian former train-turning shed. The creative goal was to provide a dynamic multi-layered visual backdrop for the myriad of artists appearing over five all-action days of performance, including headline slots by Oasis, Burt B

UK - Having successfully made an impact at the Academy in Sheffield, Nexo's Geo D line array technology has again been chosen by installers Adlib Audio as the house system for what is now known as the O2 Academy in Oxford.

The Academy in Oxford, which was opened just 15 months ago, recently asked Adlib Audio to install a new front-of-house PA in its main venue, capacity 1,020. The club required a brand-name system that would support its endeavours to attract a strong calibre of international touring artists to the city.

Roger Kirby, Adlib Audio's sales manager, describes the unusual room acoustics of the Academy's main room. "It has a very low ceiling, and is a long, asymmetrical shape, which makes it quite a tricky proposition acoustically. After our experience with Nexo's D10 cabinets at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and in the Academy in Sheffield, we felt that the v

UK - Stage Electrics has launched its new and improved website. The new site has been designed with a clear and easy to navigate style which is more customer focused and user friendly.

New additions to the site (www.stage-electrics.co.uk) include case studies detailing the range of completed Stage Electrics projects from educational installations to West End shows. There is a new look web shop with over 4,500 items available.

(Jim Evans)

USA - As the oldest outdoor music festival in the United States, Chicago's Ravinia Festival boasts a rich history dating back more than a century. The festival runs from May through October, making it less of a typical festival and more of a semi-permanent summer venue. Performances ranging from the Chicago Symphony to Sheryl Crow and Tony Bennett attract 600,000 visitors a year to join in the celebration at Ravinia Park, located in the north-eastern suburb of Highland Park.

Mike Gotshall, owner of Chicago-based wireless provider A Sound Choice, oversaw the audio needs at the festival this year along with IATSE Local 2 FOH engineer Norm Kruger. Gotshall also partnered with New York's Masque Sound to provide self-powered Meyer Sound Mica and M'elodie line array loudspeaker systems for Ravinia's two main venues.

"My relationship with Masque enables me to take on the bigger

New Zealand - Selecon has launched launch a completely redesigned website (www.seleconlight.com ).

Navigation around the wide range of product information and support together with the extensive technical and educational resources that the site contains has been made simpler and easier, says the company.

New back-end enhancements allow for a more flexible operation of the Selecon site with a new 'search' function on products by either family name or luminaire type via the Support section in the main menu bar. This function is a one-click way to pull a quick overview, lighting calculator, specifications, downloads, related products and accessories together in one place for the product which is of interest.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Peace Apostolic Church in Carson, California, has installed an Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing system in the 900-seat Worship Hall, and a GL2800 in the adjacent 300-seat Fellowship Hall. Handling multiple services each week - in addition to rehearsals, bible studies, and other events - the iLive system is configured with 40 inputs and 32 outputs in the iDR10 mixrack with an additional eight inputs and eight outputs on the iLive-112 control surface.

"We are running a full band with acoustic drums, guitar, keyboards, piano, MPC click, six praise team mics, six choir mics, the Minister's wireless mic, and Pastor's wireless mic," says Andre Lamb, Peace Apostolic's music director. "We've also integrated a full Aviom system in addition to overhead and floor monitors for the podium and Choir area."

(Jim Evans)

USA - Daktronics designed and installed a new JBL VRX-based audio system for the Lloyd Noble Centre in Norman, Oklahoma. The Centre is home to the University of Oklahoma basketball teams and also serves as one of the largest concert venues in the region.

The audio system features more than 60 VRX932LA line array loudspeakers in a distributed 'exploded cluster' configuration. Supplementing the main system are VRX928 8-inch, portable line array elements for the upper seating areas. The entire system is powered by Crown XTi amplifiers.

"We have successfully employed VRX line arrays in the past and found them to be an ideal solution for the system at the Lloyd Noble Centre," said Doug Dodge of Daktronics. "The system has performed exceptionally and provides smooth, even coverage to all areas of the arena."

(Jim Evans)

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