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USA - The Spokane Opera House has been rechristened INB Performing Arts Center to reflect its diverse calendar of arts presentations and new corporate sponsorship from Inland Northwest Bank. Along with the name change, the venue has been treated to extensive interior renovations, including a new system of 18 self-powered Meyer Sound loudspeakers.

Mike Tucker, the venue's technical director, felt the recent audio refit was long overdue. Although the system had been upgraded piecemeal since the building's 1974 opening for the World Fair, it still fell far short of what most touring acts now require - and what discriminating patrons had come to expect. "It was a mostly second-generation, mix-and-match system," Tucker says. "It couldn't supply the clarity and 'oomph' we wanted for most shows, so more often than not we had to bring rental systems in."

The rental

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UK - The latest revival of the Puccini opera Madam Butterfly staged in the round at the Royal Albert Hall sees the introduction of ground breaking new audio technology. As in previous years, sound designer Bobby Aitken specified a TiMax Audio Imaging delay matrix to dynamically control time delays from each performer's radio microphone to the vocal reinforcement loudspeaker system, to make all audience members localise to the actors on-stage and not the PA.

Out Board director Robin Whittaker comments, "We only have four or five rehearsals in the RAH and it can be very difficult to know what you are listening to, for example, if an actor is not where they were blocked, or Sharry misses a couple of movement cues because he is focused on getting the orchestra mix right or EQing a mic, then the delay scenario from that actor's mic could be way off."

This year sees

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Finland - The Himos Arena, a new multi purpose hall situated in the ski resort of Jämsä, has installed a TT+ - based sound system from RCF.

Timo Kunnas of Noretron, RCF's distributor in Finland explains, "We had carried out several demonstrations of the new line array system here in Finland, so when this project came up we put the TT+ forward for it".

The design and installation of the system was carried out by Jämsän Discofix, where Ville Rantanen takes up the story, "The arena is very large and is used for a variety of different events including live bands and discos. We needed a system that would cover the entire area. By side flying the TT 33's together with the TTS 28A subs under the stage it gave us the coverage we wanted"

Also specified were Acustica C3110's compact units for the front fill delay speakers, and a pair for the DJ monitors. For th

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USA - Branson, Missouri-based Theatreworks recently supplied 10 Robe ColorSpot 575AT moving lights for the Palm Springs Pavilion Theatre in Palm Springs, California.

"Robe was selected for its price and quality," stated Bob Finical, senior manager of Theatreworks, which has over 30 years' experience in production design, covering all areas of the professional entertainment industry.

The fixtures were supplied to Theatreworks by Robe America's West Coast office who, Finical explains "really excelled themselves in organising a demo at our shop in Branson, showing us first hand all the great features and functionality of the CS 575."

The Palm Springs Pavilion Theatre is a concept of Dick Taylor Productions, designed to provide live, family entertainment on a year-round basis. It is located in the heart of downtown Palm Springs on Tahquitz Canyon Way directly

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UK - Entertainment lighting supplier White Light was reunited with long-time collaborators The Admirable Crichton and Private Drama for Party Under Construction, a showcase for the best in the events industry that took place at Number One Piccadilly, London.

Overlooking Piccadilly Circus, with spectacular views down onto Eros, the Under Construction theme of the party came from the venue itself still being a building site! Nonetheless, it was transformed to host a spectacular party for over 600 guests, who enjoyed performances from the casts of Chicago and Tap Dogs and by Private Drama, food and party design by The Admirable Crichton, sound by Delta and event lighting courtesy of White Light.

White Light's lighting designer Jason Larcombe used a comprehensive range of equipment from White Light's diverse hire stock to create lighting that highlighte

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Russia - Arena Club In the town of Severomorsk near Murmansk in northern Russia recently emerged from the site of an old cinema, outfitted in the latest lighting technology from Martin Professional, and has quickly become the region's most popular entertainment venue.

Martin distributor A&T Trade was commissioned to create a club atmosphere for the multifunctional space, one that included dynamic as well as static lighting. "Use of the installation depends on the type of event," says Denis Bessonov, director of the company MasterMedia. "The fixtures support the work of the professional artists as well as creating different lighting effects on the dance floor. They are used to reflect the mood of the various musical styles."

Arena is housed in a two-story building with a ceiling height of 12m. The original plan called for lighting fixtures to be fixed on the

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UK - Soon after taking over the former Wardour Street nightclub, The Trap, and converting it into Stringfellows Soho, the impresario after whom it is named had a change of mind. Peter Stringfellow decided that while his table dancing concept would work in Soho on the midweek nights, the weekends would be better suited to a full-on luxurious nightclub, capable of taking on the West End's elite. And by changing the venue's name to The Wardour he knew he would also avoid confusion with his Covent Garden club of 26 years.

By this time London-based Viba Sound had already filled the Wardour Street venue with distributed 12" ceiling speakers. "While these would have been fine for the girly nights, with the new direction something with much more punch was now required for the dance weekends," said the company's Peter Kellet. So he opted for a complete Nexo solution.

The

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Belgium - Following successful line-array installations in Belgian concert halls such as Roma in Borgerhout(W8L/W8LD) and the AMT complex in Antwerp (W8LM), cultural centres are becoming more and more intrigued by what Martin Audio line arrays have to offer, says the company.

Martin Audio territorial distributors, Ampco Belgium, report that after careful market investigation, followed by a W8LM demo, it became clear that this would provide the best solution for De Schakel's main hall in Waregem. Measuring 19m wide and 20m deep, the 536 seats stretch right down to the front of the stage - thus to give every seat almost identical sound quality and coverage was no easy task. But the W8LM Line Array concept proved it could cope with this demand and deliver from a small footprint precisely what the customer wanted.

Local supplier, installer and rental company Big Dynamic was appoin

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UK - Wembley Arena has beaten off international competition from Zurich, Barcelona and Ireland to win the Best International Arena Award at the recent 18th Pollstar Concert Industry Awards held in Los Angeles.

This is the fourth time Wembley Arena has been awarded this accolade, and the first since the £36 million refurbishment of the Grade II listed building, undertaken by Quintain Estates and Development, who own the Arena and an additional 70 acres of land surrounding Wembley Stadium.

The new-look Arena, re-orientated to face the Stadium, has attracted a record number of fans since reopening its doors in April 2006 after a 15-month refurbishment programme.

The transformed Arena is part of a mammoth £2.6 billion regeneration project that will include a 17-screen cinema and a boulevard lined with restaurants bars and cafes. The scheme is expected to inject

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UK - George Michael is to play the first concert at the new Wembley Stadium, it has been confirmed. The former Wham! star will perform at the 90,000 capacity venue on 9 and 10 June as part of his British and European stadium tour.

Alex Horne, managing director of Wembley Stadium, said it was "fantastic news" that Michael would perform the first concert at the prestigious venue, adding: "He's no stranger to this great stage having performed at the old stadium with both Wham at Live Aid and as a solo artist." Muse will also be among the first acts to play the revamped stadium, having previously announced a date on 16 June.

The new £757 million venue was due to reopen in August 2005 but was delayed following a series of hold-ups and legal wrangles that led to a number of musical and sporting events being postponed. Among them were concerts by Bon Jovi, R

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Europe - Lighting&Sound International magazine is making an unprecedented special offer to European industry professionals at the forthcoming ProLight&Sound exhibition in Frankfurt (28-31 March).

For the first time ever, L&SI is offering full-time professionals on the European mainland the chance to sign up for one year's FREE subscription to L&SI magazine - a subscription that would usually cost around 75 euros (£50). Visitors to the show can sign up for this great offer by visiting the PLASA/L&SI stand at the Hall 8.0 Walkway, stand J80. (Look for the VPLT, ESTA & PLASA signs).

(Lee Baldock)

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Sweden - Newly-appointed Apex distributor Electrosound has supplied andinstalled Sweden's first Intelli-Q22 sound optimiser at the well-known nightspot and video gallery Berns Club in Stockholm. The club boasts a high-quality profile, which is reflected in the sound system. The Intelli-Q22 is the first of "a new breed of fast, easy-to-use, digital problem solvers" from Apex, the company says.

According to Apex, one of the Intelli-Q22's strengths is the fact that it combines a wide range of sound enhancing applications like a 30-band graphic equaliser, a 10-band parametric equaliser, shelving filters, variable high & low - pass filters, delay, multi-band compressor, and a BrickWall limiter per channel.

"The talk of the town is that this room is the best-sounding place people have ever been to. The installation of the Intelli-Q lifted the whole sound picture to a

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UK - The eclectic mix of club, laid back eatery and live music venue that is Cargo nestles in the backstreets of trendy Shoreditch in London's East End. It has recently benefited from an upgrade of its existing Turbosound loudspeaker system, with a new TA-500 Aspect Wide system installed by Marquee Audio.

The venue stages a mix of club nights and live performances. "There's something for everyone here," says Cargo's marketing manager Joe Roberts. "We want to appeal to all tastes, from your hard core clubber to those that want to have something to eat and then see a live band. We are now getting the bigger name, more experienced musicians in here, and they wanted a better monitoring system than we originally had. This has been part of the reason we upgraded our system. If you want the best, you need to have the right equipment."

Head of sound, Matt Smith, wh

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USA -With the installation of a new sound system featuring Meyer Sound's M'elodie ultracompact high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers, North Point Ministries' newest satellite location, Browns Bridge Community Church in Cumming, Ga., delivers their message with the utmost power and clarity.

About 5,000 guests regularly attend Browns Bridge Community Church, which opened in October 2006. As with Buckhead Church in nearby Buckhead, Ga., an impressive, high-definition video presentation featuring senior pastor Andy Stanley's sermons highlights the church's Sunday morning programming. The recently installed Meyer Sound system ensures that everyone in the audience hears the inspirational messages with unquestionable intelligibility.

The loudspeaker system in the 2,100-seat main sanctuary is comprised of 26 self-powered M'elodie boxes configured in two arrays. "M'elodie was

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UK - Sitaaray, a Bollywood-themed two-tier dining and corporate hospitality complex, has opened in London's Drury Lane with a sound system that incorporates JBL Control series speakers, Crown Xs series amplification and a complex BSS Soundweb London DSP routing system and mode switcher, all supplied by Harman Pro UK and installed by the Sound Division Group.

The new restaurant, above last year's much-vaunted Tamarai, completes restaurant entrepreneur Rohit Khattar's mission to combine a restaurant, 5.1 cinema, dance venue, art gallery and corporate entertainment under one roof.

The Sound Division Group was commissioned to install the complex system requirements by the restaurant's parent company Old World Hospitality. The company arrived on site in 2005, soon after Rohit Khattar purchased the former Millennium Club with a view to providing an extravagant sister operation in Lo

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USA - New Covenant Ministries in Lithona, Georgia, has a new sound system designed by Ronnie Stanford of dB Audio and Video. For years, New Covenant suffered through a sound system that provided terrible coverage to much of the main room. "Between the mix position and the first row," recalled Stanford, "there was a 25dB drop! If you got thingssounding right at the mix position, you blew the front row away. Altogether,it was a poor design filled with poor speakers.

"But New Covenant had a very sharp tech team," Stanford continued. "They knew exactly what they wanted in the way of fidelity. Pastor Billy Johnson is an amazing musician with an extraordinary voice. When we brought our first demo over, he asked us to turn it off so that he could play keyboard through the system. That was the real test."

The challenge for Stanford was to deliver 105

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USA - New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music has installed a new 32-axis power flying system from Stage Technologies, making its backstage equipment "as current, sophisticated and impressive as any major new build".

During a dormant period of nearly two decades the building greatly deteriorated and suffered extensive water damage. A major restoration project in the 1980s worked to retain and dramatically enhance the building's historic appearance. Without detracting from the prime aesthetics of the building, a new power flying system has been installed to automate the theatre's existing scenery bars, enabling a much quicker turnaround for performances.

The venue is now equipped with 32 BigTow winches and controlled from an Acrobat control console. The power flying system eliminates the use of counterweight cradles, improving the theatre's health & safety backstage. Sta

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UK - As the largest co-educational boarding school in the UK, Millfield School in Somerset recently commissioned a fully-featured concert hall, the focal point of a newly-developed £12 million music block. The public school brought in Arup Acoustics, who became responsible for sound containment and acoustic optimisation, while Stirling Trading were awarded the contract to specify and fit out the auditorium and provide other music facilities.

Andrew Stirling managed the project personally, specifying a Nexo PS15 system to meet the diverse programme requirements, ranging from orchestral recitals to rock concerts. "The brief for the concert hall was to provide a good quality utility sound reinforcement system that would principally fulfil the vocal requirement," said Stirling. "It needed to be sufficiently powerful without being overly-intrusive, and so we opte

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UK - Stuart Myles, technical manager of the Coade Hall theatre - part of Bryanston School in Dorset - has declared himself "blown away" by their new ETC Congo desk, recently purchased through dealer Stage Electrics.

Myles explains: "We looked at several desks within our price range and Congo was the one that fitted our needs and requirements. It offers us the ability to run generic lights for theatrical shows in a traditional way, while also enabling us to bolt on the moving lights when we do rock concerts. We also really like the fact that the software updates, which ETC brings out on a regular basis, are free of charge, so as a growing school theatre, we are confident that Congo will grow with us.

"ETC's Jeremy Roberts came to demonstrate the desk to us, and it was not long after we first took delivery that our 15 to 18 year old stage crew were flying aro

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UK - Stage One has recently taken delivery of a Routech Chronos CNC machining centre, a nine tonne, five-axis machine with a working size of 3m x 1.5m x a 800mm Z height - one of only four in the UK.

This technology enables Stage One to machine out both scenery and 3D objects such as moulds or sculptural pieces, in wood or plastic, with the utmost precision, making "an astonishing variety of 3D models a possibility and allowing the company to offer a rapid prototyping service to customers.

"Machines such as these have been used in other industries, such as furniture making for some time," says Stage One production director Chris Augur. "We believe, however, that this machine is unique to our industry and added to our portfolio, will allow us to provide yet another exclusive service for our clients; in fact it has already caused quite a stir."

Purchas

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USA - Blues System's North American debut at USITT, Phoenix was a great success, according to the company. The product range, manufactured in the UK by Global Design Solutions and specifically designed for backstage lighting applications in the working theatre, won the PLASA 2006 Innovations Award at its European launch last year and Blues System has already been installed at various venues in Europe.

TMB has been appointed the exclusive distributor for Blues System in the Americas, Asia and the Middle East. Said Chris Curran, TMB's architectural sales director: "Blues System is truly one of those 'why didn't I think of that?' new products. It solves many backstage lighting problems as well as offering options that were previously impractical. We were almost overwhelmed by the positive response at USITT and also by the various possible new applications that arose during con

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Greece - Chios has long been considered one of the most beautiful Aegean islands. Now, with the 1,200 capacity Palazzo club, Chios has gained a new attraction. In addition to an elegant ambience, the club boasts a Dynacord alpha sound system.

To ensure that the dance floors of the 1,200 capacity Palazzo remain packed at all times, the management regularly brings in internationally famous DJs from abroad to relieve the house roster.

Club manager Tsatsalis Leonidas comments, "Whilst in terms of location and ambience, the Palazzo can easily hold its own with the best in Greece, it's our sound system that really sets us apart. There we really are setting new standards, as we've been told now, repeatedly, by visiting DJs."

The sound system that gives the Palazzo the edge is an alpha system from Dynacord. In use now in many of the world's top discotheques (including the

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USA - Utilising JBL Professional PD Series loudspeakers, Westbury National Show Systems designed and installed the audio system at the new Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, IL. The 11,000-seat arena opened in October 2006, and has already hosted concerts by Bob Dylan and Duran Duran. The Sears Centre is also the new home of the Chicago Hounds (United Hockey League), the Chicago Storm (Major Indoor Soccer League), the Chicago Shamrox (National Lacrosse League) and the Chicago Slaughter (Continental Indoor Football League).

The seating area of the Sears Centre is arranged in a horseshoe pattern, to which Westbury National designed the system accordingly. Four clusters of three JBL PD5212/64 loudspeakers were placed along the north and south sides, while two clusters of two were hung in the northwest and southwest corners. Additionally, two clusters of three PD5212/64's are located

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Sweden - Studer has taken an order for one of its compact Vista 5 digital audio consoles from a new venue attached to the Stadsteater in Gothenborg, the first in Scandinavia to choose the Vista 5 as a front-of-house mixing desk. The sale of the first Swedish Vista 5 has been followed by the appointment of a new distributor in Sweden, LydRommet Sverige A/B.

The Vista 5 console is destined for the Backa Teater company, part of the Gothenborg City Theatre, or Stadsteater, and generally regarded as one of the most interesting and attractive theatre groups in Sweden. Music plays a large role in its live productions and there are five musicians working permanently in the group.

In 1989, the Backa company moved into a reconstructed factory on the Hisingen Island close to the central parts of Gothenburg, but, after eighteen years in that building, the City of Gothenburg has decided to

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