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PLASA Show 2025 - Banner - June-Aug 2025

Events

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UK - Pearce Hire promoted its three specialist divisions, united as a production package, to event organizers at this year's Showman's Show. The three divisions - audio, lighting and temporary power - have invariably worked independently, or in various combinations at events over the years. The new package will now combine the specialist skills and equipment of the three divisions.

The company believes that event organizers will experience improvements in efficiency if they deal with a single contractor supplying these three key areas of production, as it gives one point of contact for the client, maximising co-ordination between the services on site. Secondly, clients will experience reduced production costs through economies such as transport and crewing levels.

Pearce Hire's owner, Shaun Pearce commented: "We have been surprised at various shows this year by organizers

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UK - 'Celebrating the spirit of beauty' was the theme at this year's Pantene Pro-V Style Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall. Stage Electrics was contracted by Big Chief Productions to design and project manage the technical elements of the show, which included lighting, sound, set and staging.

The set design for the event comprised a backdrop of white sails, stretched in a variety of shapes framing a central entrance through which guest presenters would appear. The design required an extension to be built in front of the existing Albert Hall stage, as the client wanted to use the stage as a dance floor for the after-show party. Over 100 pieces of Maltbury Metrodeck, three pallets of chipboard and 200m of white vinyl flooring later, the Stage Electrics team had built a custom stage extension that followed the curve of the arena and met all of the venue's Health and Safety requ

LSi 40 - Banner - July-Nov 2025

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Germany - With little more than 18 months to go to Showlight 2005, the search is on for those contributions that make Showlight one of the most stimulating and rewarding event in the lighting diary.

Taking place in Munich, at the beautiful Prinzregententheater, Showlight 2005 will look forward to tomorrow's technology, to the ideas and equipment that will take lighting design into the next decade. The show will also look back at what has been achieved in the worlds of theatre and television, film, concert and architectural lighting design. A major part of the Showlight show is devoted to presentations, of 15 to 45 minutes, by people working within the lighting industry. The organizers are now inviting ideas for papers from lighting designers and directors, scenographers and equipment manufacturers - although sales pitches are not welcome!

Six main topics have been chosen for b

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USA - Visitors to the Entertainment Technology Show - Lighting Dimensions International (LDI) will have the opportunity to see prototype devices networked with draft versions of the control protocols E1.11 (DMX512-A), E1.17 (ACN) and E1.20 (RDM) at the ESTA Interconnectivity Pavilion in booth number 121. These control protocols are being developed by the Control Protocols Working Group, part of ESTA's Technical Standards Program, and are designed to take us into the next generation of self-configuring and almost limitlessly extensible lighting control networks. Equipment from a variety of manufacturers will be shown communicating bi-directionally with equipment from other manufacturers, demonstrating the progress that has been made in developing these protocols and the benefits of voluntary, consensus standards developed in ESTA's open industry forum.

The Entertainment Technolo

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UK - A record number of visitors from 18 different countries attended the UK's main outdoor event services exhibition this October. The 2003 Showman's Show combined decades of experience with the latest trends and new products to create a showcase of 300 companies. With all of the components of outdoor events on show, there was something of interest for all of the 4,471 visitors. The attendees, who braved rain on the Wednesday and enjoyed a sunny Thursday, came from varied backgrounds, ranging from charity event organisers through to multi-national Clear Channel Entertainment.

Exhibitor Steve Hayward of Amazing Parties, talking from his Mongolian themed Internet Café said: "We were over-run by hoards of visitors on both days, many thanks to the Lance family for delivering once again." On the Wednesday evening the annual Showman's Directory Dinner was once again a suc

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USA - The Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award, established in 2002 by the Board of Advisors of Pro Production, the award was christened the 'Parnelli' in memory of the late tour manager Rick 'Parnelli' O'Brien, who passed away in October of 2000. The award is presented each year at the annual Parnelli Awards during the Pro Production conference. The recipient, chosen by the Advisory Board, is honoured for their lifetime of work within the industry and who best represents, in their own endeavors, the 'Four H's' - Humanity, Humility, Honesty, and Humor - which symbolized the life's work and ethics of Rick O'Brien.

The Pro Production Advisory Board has announced that Chip Monck will be the recipient of the 2004 award. Monck is perhaps most widely known as the "Voice of Woodstock" for his work as master of ceremonies at the industry's first 'Mega Event'. However, Monck's t

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USA - Fox Television has purchased six 32-fader, 96 in-line channel Solid State Logic C200 Digital Production Consoles to serve their on-air promotion and sports departments. The first four consoles, slated for installation in late 2003, will be used for on-air promotion replacing the SSL Scenaria digital post-production mixing systems in use since 1992. The remaining two C200 consoles will arrive in early 2004 and be used for Fox Sports projects.

Fox Digital made a thorough and exhaustive evaluation of all market offerings, large and small, to find the right console for their future post-production needs. As part of the studio upgrade, they needed a console that would deliver great sounding audio, sophisticated routing capabilities and integrated surround sound mixing ability to address high definition audio standards. The C200 was the choice for both on-air promotion and sport

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A few interesting microphones turned up. Audio-Technica's ES991, ES993 and ES995 mics joined the Engineered Sound range, a dual-element cardioid condenser gooseneck and two dual-element cardioid condenser rigid-pipe models respectively, aimed at boardrooms, schools, courtrooms, council chambers and places of worship. AKG's TriPower Series makes models D 3700M, D 3800M and C 5900M available either wired or wireless in the same package. Also, finally, it will be interesting to see how many people take up Blue Microphones' 'The Ball' for stage use. It's billed as the first phantom-powered dynamic mic, and uses an active balancing circuit in the output stage to maintain 50 ohms resistance across the full frequency spectrum - while retaining a dynamic's SPL handling. Elvis would probably have liked it.

On the amp front, Crest extended its Pro 200 range with the P

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Apart from the D5T, arguably the other big technology announcement was Digigram's bi-directional EtherSound, although EtherSound itself has been around for 18 months or so. Going in both directions means that a network based on EtherSound is a 64-channel virtual buss, carrying 24-bit, 48kHz audio in every channel.

"Audio can be inserted in the down-stream," explained Digigram's Frank Siedel, "and the last device in the network sends every channel inserted back to the Primary Master device - the first in the network. From this up-stream, audio can be extracted from the network. Previously, we used the whole bandwidth of a 100Mb Ethernet to go one way. However, it's a full duplex network and we've now exploited this."

Only for those who don't need the 'star' configuration of a network, that is: bi-directional EtherSound only works in a daisy-chain. Naturally, star c

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In among the equipment debuts were one or two significant corporate manoeuvres. In the making of Digico's D5T, an offshoot of the D5 Live designed for theatrical production and launched on the first day, Autograph Sound Recording figurehead Andrew Bruce both contributed ideas and formed a US-based company to participate in the sales and distribution of the console. The company is called Autograph A2D, and Bruce was there for the launch. "As soon as I saw the D5 Live, I knew that it was the right vehicle for us to develop something digital for theatre use," he said after the presentation. "So we've given the operator 16 master faders in a row, slightly wider spaced than the eight-plus-eight on the D5 Live, and we've given the desk an off-line editor for the type of cue-lists we use in theatre. Live sound cue-lists are quite short: ours are typically 100-150 cues long. Arran

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Yamaha premiered two new input cards for the PM1D, each of which uses the head amp circuitry of the new analogue flagship, the PM5000. This heralded a "warmer, punchier and more open sound" admitted Yamaha's publicity, while also being smaller. In the original system, the AI8 input frame could only hold 16 A/B units. With a 4-channel card, each AI8 can now hold 32 inputs - resulting in a 96-input system of only three frames, rather than six. The LMY2-MLAB is a 2-channel mic/line with A/B input card and 28-bit A/D conversion. The 4-channel LMY4-MLF is a mic/line input card with 24-bit conversion.

It was also revealed that Yamaha has succeeded in supplying a PM5000 to Carnegie Hall, the very place where the PM1D was fanfared four years ago; and that a DM1000, together with no fewer than three DM2000s, have joined the largest fixed installation of V-Dosc in the US at The Aladdin

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In its inimitable style, the final edition of the AES Daily newspaper trumpeted: 'The Biz is Back', quoting a 'mobbed' show floor; 12,000 visitors over the first two days of the four; and exhibitors 'blown away' by the traffic. Despite the hyperbole, which has a habit of sounding very similar whatever the empirical circumstances of the show, it's hard to refute that the numbers seemed up in every department, and that most anecdotal comment was genuinely positive.

Quite a lot was made of a 'new generation' coming into the industry, and 'young blood' rejuvenating its financial muscle. The best example of this was Digidesign's tangential spree at the relocated School of Audio Engineering opposite Macy's, where every evening SAE itself hosted informal tours while Digi and other manufacturers put on seminars. Chief among these was the appearance of cult techno figure Richie Hawtin, revealin

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Lesa Kinney, once at Apogee, is now international sales manager at Furman Sound, the established audio and music technology manufacturer also located in Petaluma, California. Here was a genuine agenda, with the emphasis on the word 'international' in her title: "Furman Sound has placed a lot of its marketing and engineering resources lately in the home theatre industry, data communications and systems integration," she said, "while continuing to focus on the MI and contractor market. Until recently, most of this activity has been focused on the domestic North American market.

"We are now thinking globally. We now design 230V products as we are developing domestic products. We're doing market research internationally, and directing publicity and press releases to international publications. In order to make it easier for our distributors to get information from us in

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UK - Stanton presented the Third Allies Allstar Beatdown world finals at London club Fabric, which was rammed to capacity as Tigerstyles defeated I:Emerge in the final, after two closely contested opening rounds. Such was the standard that the contest provided a real challenge for the panel of top judges, headed by the Scratch Perverts. Deliberating with them were DJ Craze, Beatdown promoter Tony Vegas and mixologists, Benny and Go.

At the end of the contest, The Allies' Infamous presented the prize of £2,000, the Beatdown Stanton SA5 mixer and a bunch of accessories. The Allstar Beatdown has turned into one of the most respected and prestigious of all DJ battles, drawing audiences of all ages and cultures.

As a team, The Allies have dominated every DJ battle in the world and the Stanton SA-5 2-channel battle mixer, utilizing custom Penny & Giles line faders and crossfaders,

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USA - During the recent LDI exhibition in Orlando, Florida (21-23 October) ESTA (the Entertainment Services and Technology Association) announced the winners of the 2003 Dealers' and Manufacturers' Choice Awards.

The Dealers' Choice Customer Service Awards offer ESTA's Dealer Members the opportunity to publicly recognize those manufacturers that provide consistently good customer service throughout the year, and recognize high performance in four main areas - Customer Service, Shipping & Billing, Technical Support and Quotations/Project Management. Dealers cast their votes for Manufacturers in each of three categories based on the Manufacturers' number of employees, 1-6, 7-25, and over 25. The winners for 2003 are Doug Fleenor Design (1-6 employees category), City Theatrical (7-25 employees category) and Apollo Design Technology (over 25 employees category).

The Manufacturers'

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UK - Gallowglass Ltd, one of the UK's leading suppliers of crew and modular staging for the events market, has extended its hire division to include temporary grandstand seating. "We are always looking for ways to develop our business and open up new avenues for our core operations. The new seating division will help to boost our summer trade and give us an even greater presence in the outdoor events market," said managing director Paul Grecian. He continues: "We do not see ourselves as becoming a large outdoor event supplier. We will be looking to supply the smaller, niche markets with seating solutions. If we can supplement these contracts with additional crew and staging opportunities - then all the better."

Gallowglass' clients over the past five years have included the likes of BBC Radio 1, M2002 Commonwealth Games, Bloomberg, BP, and most of the FTSE 10

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USA / Europe - IAAPA (The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions) and EAASI (the European Association Amusement Supplier Industry) have agreed to form a new company created to own and manage what they claim will be Europe's largest exhibition for the amusement parks industry. The new exhibition will represent all amusement parks, fairs, manufacturers, carnivals and attractions throughout Europe.

Clark Robinson, president of IAAPA, said: "The strength of the partnership is combining IAAPA's role for the industry worldwide and EAASI's expertise in the European market."

Wieland Schwarzkopf, EAASI president, added: "This historic moment . . . will offer a single meeting point for the European amusement industry."

A final agreement is expected to be announced in the next few weeks.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - Shure Distribution UK, sole distributors of Shure, QSC Audio, Phonic, PreSonus, Aviom and Sound Devices will be displaying the latest broadcast related products, at the SBES Show. Stand 53 will be boasting a number of new products including the new Sound Devices 302 compact production mixer which features three high-performance microphone inputs, informative level metering and flexible headphone monitoring. In addition, the highly acclaimed Sound Devices 442 field mixer that now ships with new channel-fader knobs featuring touch and visual feedback for single-finger control.

SBES will also see QSC's QSControl.net, which encompasses the seamless integration of the company's signal transport, control, processing, and monitoring technologies. QSControl.net melds QSC's power amplification and loudspeaker products into a unified system that enables the user to administer it all

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USA - Following the success of the PLASA Show in London in September, it began to appear that business was looking up after a tough couple of years; now, with the successful completion of LDI in Orlando, Florida at the weekend, the current of optimism continues to strengthen.

The majority of LDI exhibitors that PLASA Media spoke to at the show expressed their satisfaction with both the quality of visitors and the level of business being done. Exhibitor Michael Bridgman of British Optical, a manufacturer of high quality optical components for the entertainment industry, commented: "It's been very good for us this year - I would say back to the level of business of three years ago."

The 2003 ETS-LDI showcased a number of innovative new products. This year the show's awards were split into two categories - Product of the Year and Debuting Product/Promising Prototype. Th

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Germany - With four months to go before Prolight+Sound opens its doors, over 400 companies from 27 countries including Europe, Asia and America have booked exhibition stands at the fair, the organizers report. "The number of registrations and the expectations of the exhibitors indicate that Prolight+Sound 2004 will represent a successful start to the sector's year. Thanks to the first signs of economic recovery in Germany and France, the number of German companies is sure to increase again," says Gerhard Gladitsch, member of the board of management of Messe Frankfurt GmbH.

The new layout of the fair at the exhibition centre takes account of exhibitor wishes and will also make life easier for trade visitors next spring, the organizers claim. Hall 9 features show and stage lighting, lasers, effects and design and installation, and Hall 8 will host lighting and stage tech

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UK - Each December for the past 30 years, the Conference of the International Society for Performing Arts has been held in New York. This year, for the first time ever, it will be held in London at the Barbican Arts Centre, from 12-15 December.

The Conference chair, Anne Millman, together with the Barbican Centre host Graham Sheffield, has assembled a programme titled 'The World in London'. Speakers already confirmed include Germaine Greer, professor at Warwick University, who will be giving the keynote speech; Deborah Bull, former principal dancer and now artistic director of the Royal Opera House's alternative spaces programme; Venu Dhupa of the National Endowment for Science and Technology and the Arts; Hardish Virk, marketing consultant for musicals such as Bombay Dreams; Keith Khan, director of Moti Roti theatre productions; and Robin Archer, artistic director of the

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UK - Total Production magazine has announced the nominees for the 2004 Total Production Awards, due to be held on 9 February 2004 at the Novotel London West hotel. Among the awards and the nominations include: for Front of-house Engineer of the Year - Robert Collins, Pete Keppler, Robbie McGrath, Lars Brogaard and Dave Bracey; for Monitor Engineer of the Year - Martin Wareing, Alan Bradshaw, Paul 'Grubby' Callis, Chris Trimby and John Roden; for Lighting Designer of the Year - Tom Kenny, Barry Halpin, Andi Watson, Liz Berry and Vince Foster; for Set Designer of the Year - Alan Macdonald, Mark Fisher, Jonathan Perry, Bill Laslett and Alan Chesters); Video Director of the Year - Blue Leach, Ian Walker, Ruary MacPhie, Paul Eggerton and Larn Poland.

Among the other awards to be presented are Rigger of the Year, Production Manager of the Year and Tour Manager of the Year, while favou

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UK - The Safety Focus Group, set up by the International Live Music Conference (ILMC), has won a grant of €160,000 from the European Union to produce a vital safety guide. The guide is intended for use by live music promoters and workers throughout Europe and beyond, and will reflect best practice in a number of European countries. As one of the conditions of this grant, the Safety Focus Group must now raise a further €40,000 funding from the live music industry to secure the project.

The ILMC says that the safety guide will provide a tool for concert and festival organizers to assess and manage risks, and will be useful to everyone from the new event organizer to the most established promoters. Scheduled to be ready by late autumn of 2004, it will primarily be accessible via a specially designed website, although a limited number of hard copies will be produced. With its Euro

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UK - The newly re-launched Carling Apollo Hammersmith celebrated its re-opening at the end of October with a one-off special concert by veteran rockers AC/DC - powered by Concert Sound, an EAW PA system and XTA loudspeaker control.

For one night only, on Tuesday 21 October, Carling brought Angus Young, Malcolm Young, Brian Johnson, Phil Rudd and Cliff Williams to London's landmark live venue to thrill a gathering of their most dedicated fans with a live show. The seats were also removed from the venue for the first time in its history, making it the biggest dedicated live music venue in London.

Front-of-house engineer Paul 'Pab' Boothroyd was at the controls of a Midas XL4, while long-time mix partner John Roden mixed monitors. Boothroyd opted for Concert Sound's new EAW KF760 line array system, flown as an impressive 14-a-side rig, "so I could maximize the power and cove

  1. MA, Zero 88 and Artistic with ACT
  2. Midgets from Lycian
  3. Avolites
  4. ShowCAD
  5. SmartMoves for Apollo Design
  6. Other Award Winners
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