UK - July 2003 sees the opening of Laser Quest, Trafford Centre, Manchester. Destined to be one of the world's best Laser Quest centres, the venue boasts many new interactive features and a Wharfedale EVPS sound system. The new Laser Quest attraction will be operated by an independent company, Blue Maze. Keith Finnegan, company director, has been overseeing the build and theming process, including the installation of the sound reinforcement system.

"Although the venue is fairly well sound-proofed," he explains, "we do have to give consideration to the neighbouring units in the Centre, one of which is the multiplex cinema. Although we wanted a quality sound system, with a decent output level, we needed loudspeakers with fairly tight focus and dispersion so that our soundtrack didn't spill over into other venues."

Blue Maze sought advice at Sound Control in M

UK - Pro Technical UK recently won the Theme magazine national award for the 'Best use of technology' for their JBL installation at Susumi in Derby. The Theme awards were held at Mezzo's in London on 3 June. Pro Technical designed, installed and commissioned the sound, light and video project using the latest technology, fulfilling the design brief provided by the owner of Susumi, Russell Davidson.

Davidson needed the sound system to have high fidelity reproduction but didn't want it to be so loud that people would have to shout to be heard; the lighting also needed to be unobtrusive. Company director and designer Richard Anderson, who managed the project, says: "For the sound system we chose JBL. The new Control 29AV is a compact unit that can deliver clarity even at high volume."

The main bar area downstairs has a concrete floor so Anderson decided to mount the eig

UK - Northern Ireland-based installer David Dalzell, of DL Electronics, Lisburn, has recently completed the audio refit in St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Armagh.

"We've done several cathedral and church refits now around Northern Ireland, and we always use AKG microphones," he commented.

Three floor-standing GN155SETs, coupled with top-of-the-range CK47 capsules were situated at the Bishop's chair, and at two additional floor points. In addition, two GN30E goosenecks with CK47 capsules were mounted on the ambo along with two further C747s. Dalzell explains: "The C747s and CK47 capsules provide us with greater gain before feedback in this highly reverberant environment and with the architects insisting that the microphones are discreet, then the C747s proved ideal for the altar. With all microphones being fitted with CK47 capsules we had a system, whic

UK - DHA has picked up a design award from the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) for its work on the Magna Centre in Rotherham - the redundant steel works which was transformed into a visitor attraction devoted to science. The company created the acclaimed Electric Arc Furnace feature, as well as designing the architectural lighting for the Great Hall at the Centre. Co-director David Robertson accepted the award at the IALD ceremony in New York with joint winner Jonathan Speirs of Speirs & Major.

(Ruth Rossington)

UK - Turbosound monitor loudspeakers have been installed in two new rehearsal rooms at Music Bank - one of London's main rehearsal facilities. The choice of TFM-450 floor monitors for the project (together with a pair of THL-2 systems as side-fills), reflects the product's growing popularity in the live sound market, with a total of eight systems being installed by UK specialist Crystal Pro Audio.

Music Bank's new facilities - the East and West rooms - offer over 3,500sq.ft of rehearsal space, and are part of a major expansion programme at Music Bank. Nunu Whiting, director and manager of Music Bank, commented: "After an extremely successful install with TMS-3s in our original studios, it seemed logical to contact Turbosound again when it came to fitting outthe new rehearsal studios and programming suites. Crystal Pro Audio and Bryan Grant (Britannia Row) both recommended t

Sweden - Swedish sound rental company Lagom & Gött has installed a Nexo GEO T Tangent Array System in the famous Kungsträdgården in central Stockholm, which hosts free concerts throughout the summer months.

The Kungsträdgården, or Kings Garden, is a well-established outdoor venue in one of the city's parks. There has been a permanent stage at the venue for 50 years, and, for the last 5 years, Lagom & Gött has provided a sound system for the summer events. As many as 20,000 people will turn up for a show, although the audience size is usually around 1,500.

The varying attendance provided one of the reasons why Lagom & Gött specified GEO T for the installation at the venue. "GEO T offers the same level of output to someone 5 metres from the stage, as to someone 50 metres from the stage," says engineer LG Larsson. "It's small but it has a big capacity, allo

UK - A few years ago The Cabinet War Rooms (CWR) in London were opened to the public. These are the rooms, in a former government storage basement, from which Churchill and his ministers continued the work of government during the bombing raids of World War II.

A team of specialists, including the Imperial War Museum (of which CWR is a part), architects HOK and managing contractors Bovis Lend Lease, recently opened up additional areas that have been hidden since the war - a move which also paved the way for an extension of the education facilities and the creation of a new conference and meeting area.

Electrosonic worked with the team to provide AV facilities for the new spaces. The principal space is a flexible room that can seat up to 140 people in auditorium-style. When used as an auditorium the room is set out 'sideways' which brings the presenter nearer the audience and e

Switzerland - Situated in idyllic surroundings at the edge of Lake Geneva and with breathtaking views of the Alps, the town of Montreux in Switzerland is a destination guaranteed to draw visitors in their masses. But while its offerings of vineyards and skiing are crowd-pullers in themselves, the famous jazz festival, held in the Montreux Centre de Congrès for two weeks each July, is one of the most popular events on the town's calendar.

While the festival features predominantly in its annual schedule, the Montreux Centre also hosts a diverse range of other events, from conferences and exhibitions, to product launches and various other concerts and festivals. Consisting of two main buildings, the older of the two recently underwent an extensive refurbishment with ETC brought on board to provide the lighting and dimming control systems.

ETC Europe's David Gray met with Didier

USA - Celine Dion's spectacular new show has opened at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Designed by Franco Dragone, creator of some of Cirque du Soleil's most critically-acclaimed shows, A New Day is the showcase production of The Colosseum, a newly-built 4,000-seat theatre attached to Caesars Palace, which took two years to build and cost $95 million.The new show will run five days a week, 40 weeks a year, for three years.

Dion is performing on a 36 x 24 metre stage, along with her 12-piece band, 48 dancers, a mega LED screen and an impressive lighting system masterminded by Yves Aucoin, Dion's lighting designer for 14 years. Aucoin has specified 60 Stage Profile Plus SVs, the new moving body beam shapers from Clay Paky.

From the start, Aucoin saw this show as a new challenge: "We needed a more theatrical approach - one distinct from the other lighting designs used fo

France - For the first time in its 110-year history, the Eiffel Tower has become a permanently illuminated landmark on the Paris skyline, following the success of the New Year's Eve Millennium celebrations in 2000.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë was guest of honour at the inaugural event on the 21 June, timed to coincide with a popular music festival in the Champs de Mars gardens surrounding the tower. At the stroke of midnight, the 500,000-strong local festival audience, together with viewers of the live broadcast from television station France 2, watched as the 1000s of light bulbs that make up the installation were turned on. The Eiffel Tower shimmered in blues and golds behind the festival stage, where the new Vari*Lite Series 3000 luminaires, mounted on a circular truss, were focused to shine on the tower, adding dynamic colour for the impressive ceremony.

The innovative z

UK - Arbiter Pro Audio supplied Over Audio with JBL speaker enclosures for the main areas of Luminar Leisure's new 1,600-capacity 'Liquid' venue in Aberdeen. Over Audio has used JBL and DBX on many previous installations of all types and the Liverpool-based installer's team of engineers and technicians chose them again for this project.

Liquid Aberdeen's main room and dancing area holds approximately 1,100 people and has a huge architectural 'bulkhead' over the dancefloor containing sound and lighting equipment (the latter supplied by Design Intervention). Within the same building, the smaller upstairs room is one of Luminar's popular 'Envy' brand, aimed at the over 25s, which was also kitted out with JBL by Over Audio.

Liquid itself demanded a large volume of sound concentrated onto the main dancefloor area, so six JBL SP215-6s from the Sound Power series were specified, cont

UK - Duran Audio UK has recently supplied four AXYS Intellivox 2b loudspeaker arrays to Surrey-based installation company Sysco for their installation at the Saga Pavilion, located in the grounds of Saga's headquarters in Folkestone. The pavilion is used for a wide range of events and will be one of the venues for the Folkestone Literary Festival later this year.

Steve Jones of the sound division of the consultancy firm, Symonds Group, recommended the AXYS Intellivox after their survey of the building back in 1999. The pavilion, in contrast to the neighbouring HQ Building, is an architectural statement built of glass and steel with a fabric tent-like roof covering. The result is a reverberant space that poses acoustic problems for its secondary use as a performing arts and corporate presentation space. The choice of Intellivox was based on their ability to control the dispersion

China - Dynacord Hong Kong is installing a new sound system in the Ningbo Exhibition Centre, in eastern China. Ningbo is the largest commercial seaport in Zhejiang Province, and its new venue will host trade fairs as well as a new tourist attraction. With four main exhibition halls, plus one slightly smaller hall, a conference centre and six diversely equipped business centres, this is one of the largest multi-function complexes in the country.

At the heart of the sophisticated audio system is a Dynacord Promatrix System, which provides safe and precise control over 84 loudspeaker zones, 28 fire alarm inputs, four digital DPC 4520 paging stations for the main exhibition hall and the control room, a CD multiplayer controlled by the DPC 4550, four different sources of background music (selectable via a DCS 409 interface control card) and 32 amplifiers, controlled by the system and

UK - The traditionally sedate world of ocean cruises is undergoing a revolution. In a move intended to attract a more youthful clientele P&O has just refitted the Arcadia, now re-named the Ocean Village, as an eclectic and vigorous entertainment centre. Central to this reorientation is an entirely new presentation concept by film director and choreographer Micha Bergese (of MBP), the man responsible for the aerial spectacular that proved the most successful and well-regarded element at the Millennium Dome. "What I've done is create a series of four events," said Bergese. "A themed narrative, like Inspector Morse, episodes of discovery, which take place over the course of a one-week cruise. Three are staged within the ship's theatre, the fourth, and arguably the most spectacular, is presented up on the main deck."

There is a strong aerial content to all four e

Malaysia - D.A.S. Audio's Factor 5 loudspeakers have been installed in no less than 120 McDonalds restaurants throughout Malaysia. The compact two-way systems have been installed in 75 restaurants in the Klang Valley, with the rest located in Penang, Ipoh, Malaca and Johor.

D.A.S. Audio's distributor in Malaysia, Syarikat Instraco, was in charge of the design and installation project and found the Factors to be ideal for the requirements of the McDonalds installation. The installation of the products lasted almost three months. The Factor 5 systems handle background music and paging in the restaurants.

(Lee Baldock)

UK - Leading installer Hawthorn Theatrical was recently appointed by DB Capital Partners - owners of successful holiday concept Center Parcs UK - to supply a sophisticated integrated sound, lighting and video system to its recently refurbished Elveden Forest site. Due to re-open on 11 July 2003 following a multi-million pound rebuilding and development program, Elveden Forest will benefit from a considerable re-design and the addition of several new features and facilities which will make it Center Parcs' flagship site in the UK.

Hawthorn Theatrical was commissioned to supply a sophisticated AV system to Elveden Forest's new multi-purpose Sports Café, designed to be extremely flexible, interactive and, above all, simple to operate. The Sports Café contains a variety of sports facilities including table tennis, snooker and a swimming pool. It also hosts twice-weekly cabaret sho

UK - The Edinburgh Corn Exchange has installed Colorflow in its recently converted Conference and Banqueting Centre to give this multi-functional up-market suite maximum impact.An unusual conversion, the Edinburgh Corn Exchange has left behind its agricultural origins as a converted cattle market and corn exchange to become Edinburgh's premier conference and banqueting facility.

Bert DeMarco, director of Edinburgh Corn Exchange, commented: "I first saw Colorflow at Leisure Industry Week about three years ago and was then looking at it with a view to creating a feature of the concourse area that joined the old cattleman's restaurant with the corn exchange. I wanted to give the area some life. However, after further discussions with Atmospheric's sales team it was clear that the area was too bright for Colorflow to have the impact that we wanted."

However, DeMarco and

UK - Stagetec, the Slough-based lighting and sound sales and installation specialist, has designed and installed two complete show lighting rigs for two different arenas at Ice Sheffield - the new £15.7million international sports venue.

Ice Sheffield's two Olympic-sized rinks will host world-class sporting events, ice shows and ice sports, as well as family fun and corporate entertainments. Stagetec's MD Andy Stone and Matt Miles managed the project for the two rinks, which both called for completely different lighting set-ups.

The Leisure Arena is utilized for everyday public use and for private bookings and corporate events. Lighting here follows more of a club theme, so to add colour and movement, 8 Martin Pro 918 scanners and 6 Martin Pro 400 colour wash fixtures were specified. These can be run on their own, or boosted with 48 PAR cans that supply a blast of incandesc

USA - When the officials at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, decided to add seating behind the famed 'Green Monster' wall in left field during this past off-season, it meant the loudspeakers previously installed there needed to be moved. Since the old system needed upgrading, the Red Sox took advantage of the opportunity and contacted WJHW Consulting of Texas to assist in designing a whole new speaker cluster for the outfield.

Jack Wrightson, a WJHW partner, immediately recommended that the Red Sox contact EAW, located about 50 miles southwest of Boston in Whitinsville, Massachusetts. "I told them that there was a local manufacturer with excellent product and a long history of successful ballpark installations," commented Wrightson. "I knew that EAW would be willing to work with the Red Sox and that the resulting collaboration would result in improved soun

UK - TESA UK, a leading manufacturer of high quality self-adhesive tapes, has appointed the Le Mark Group as its 'entertainment technology specialist'. The appointment represents the long-term commitment of the giant German-owned company to develop products specifically for the entertainment industry.

The announcement concludes nearly 12 months of negotiations between the two companies and sees Le Mark become a 'focused distributor' for TESA. Le Mark's managing director, Stuart Gibbons, told PLASA Media: "This is very much a two-way partnership. It will enable Le Mark's design ability and award-winning flair to be developed further. It also ensures that Le Mark's clients have a direct channel to a multi-national manufacturer who recognizes that the entertainment industry is a growing sector which should be given special attention."

One of the first areas of collabora

Portugal - O2 Lx is a highly-designed, new-build club in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, owned by South African, John Blummenfeld.

Blummenfeld committed a million euros to convert the former restaurant and discotheque, with Philippe Starck furnishing and decor forming the centrepiece of the predominantly blue interior design. Around 20% of the budget was allocated to the sound, lighting and video system, which was specified and installed as a fully-integrated system by Lisbon-based Audium, who had worked with Blummenfeld on a previous installation, Rock City, back in 1994.

The 1000-capacity club trades on two levels - the ground floor space and an upper level mezzanine around the dance floor. While the ground floor is open to the general public, the upper floor operates as a kind of private club for VIPs, special guests and private parties.

Serving up a fare of mainly Hous

Greece - A massive AV installation on board the Thomson Spirit cruise liner, owned by Lewis Cruise Lines of Greece, has just been completed. With 1,400 passengers, and a crew of 520, it is one of the largest ships operating out of Palma offering cruises around the Mediterranean.

Now 18 years old, the ship has recently undergone an extensive refurbishment, which has seen major changes across the entire ship, from cabins to kitchens through to entertainment systems. Thomson's consultants provided the specifications and a list of equipment to Live Business International (LBI) who were brought in to provide system design and schematics, installation, commissioning and ongoing maintenance. The LBI team, with Gerry Logue as technical project manager, thus either fitted from scratch, or refitted, 12 entertainment areas.

The Broadway (main show lounge) features a full theatre sound, l

UK - London's prestigious Royal Albert Hall has recently purchased 10 Clay Paky Stage Profile Plus units to add to its existing Clay Paky Stage Zoom 1200 inventory for use in the famous auditorium. Supplied by Clay Paky and Pulsar reseller A.C. Lighting Ltd, these workhorse units will be used to complement all visiting showcase events.

RAH technical manager Mark Jones explains why he chose the Stage Profile Plus: "Due to the diverse nature of the shows in the hall, and the varying distance that the units are from the stage, we were looking for a zoom profile with high light output and overlapping shuttering. After a lengthy product comparison of 1200W shuttering moving head projectors on the market, we chose the SP+ because it is exceptionally bright with good colour mixing, the gobos can be changed easily, it's quiet and most importantly very reliable. The overlapping shut

Italy - A total of 40 Outline Micra Reflex loudspeaker enclosures, powered by Series T power amplifiers, have been installed as the sound reinforcement system for 'Escape from Atlantis' - the latest attraction at Italy's huge Gardaland amusement park. One of Europe's largest water parks, it covers an area of 15,000sq.m, and has already been the setting for spectacular publicity footage transmitted by major Italian and international television broadcasters.

Outline's systems can also be found at Gardaland outside the 'Valley of Kings' - an attraction that's a faithful 1:2 scale reproduction of Egypt's' ancient Abu Simbel temple. Here, two Doppia enclosures, two Victor Live subwoofers powered by DSP Genius 6 and T power amps and two (delayed) Digita Plus N enclosures reproduce the soundtrack for the laser, accompanied by dancing fountains and water walls up to 45ft high.

Outline

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