UK - Digidesign today announced the new Digidesign Mbox 2 Mini, an ultra-compact, USB-powered Pro Tools LE system that packs professional features into a robust, easy-to-use audio workstation. The newest and smallest member of the Mbox 2 family, Mbox 2 Mini delivers superior sound quality and professional hardware design, and is the most affordable Pro Tools LE system ever, says the company.

"When we released our highly successful Mbox over four years ago, we were very excited to make Pro Tools available at just over £300," says Dusty DiMercurio, marketing manager of Digidesign's personal studio product line. "With Mbox 2 Mini, we're proud to expand our Mbox 2 family to include a solution under £200, reaching a new level of affordability for a Pro Tools LE hardware/software system."

Powered by Pro Tools LE software, the Mbox 2 Mini ships with a

Ukraine - Based in Kiev, Ukraine, Gali-Leo's permanent sound crew includes five people and their offices employ about 20 full-time employees, plus several freelancers who are frequently on call for their bigger events. They cover most parts of production including lights, stage, audio and backline. Until now the company was well known mainly as a lighting and staging company, but they have now expanded to full production.

Dimitri Pruidze, the managing director of the company and his team first found out about Adamson's high-end sound reinforcement products at Frankfurt's Music Messe in 2001.The final decision to purchase Adamson came when Roger Waters rolled into town with Adamson as his top pick on the technical rider.

They have now upgraded to a large system comprising of 16 Y18, eight T21 Subs and four M15 Multipurpose enclosures, all of which are powered with Lab.gruppen a

Russia - Community Professional Loudspeaker's Russian distributor, Arsenal Music, was awarded a Gold Medal by the jury of the 'Stations of Russia' exhibition. The award was presented for the company's contribution as a supplier of hardware to the Russian Railways with quality sound equipment.

The 'Stations of Russia' exhibition was held in early November; Community's sales representative for the region, Sylvia Fritsch, commented: "'Stations for Russia' is very different to the usual pro audio exhibitions we're so used to. Being market specific it enables real focus on the needs of the application, and Community is unique in being to able provide such a range of all-weather systems, with high intelligibility over a comprehensive range of distances and coverage patterns. The Russian Railways need a broad range of loudspeakers for indoor and outdoor use and there is no greater

Australian - Specialist Australian contractor Saltec Audio Visual and Electrical of Bankstown, New South Wales has undertaken some significant Turbosound-based installs during 2006, ensuring that the clientele of several Sydney bars have the perfect audio backing for their leisure time.

Describing itself as 'eclectic, warm and decadent', the Dome Bar at the exclusive Crown Hotel prides itself on its ostentatious décor. So not only did Saltec have to provide a top-quality audio system which would primarily handle background music, but also be suitable for the bar's Friday and Saturday night DJ slot, but the loudspeakers needed to be visually unobtrusive.

Saltec's Stephen Askins chose eight TCS35. "The client wanted a good quality of sound with an even coverage throughout the venue," he says. "We chose TCS35s as we had used them in other venues with great s

UK - Andy Abraham, the 2005 X-Factor runner-up, brought the repertoire of easy listening and soul standards from his debut album The Impossible Dream to the Royal Albert Hall this month at the culmination of his tour.

Sound reinforcement for the Production North event saw Wigwam Hire dress the acoustically-difficult RAH with a Martin Audio W8LC/W8LM system, placing the operation in the hands of FOH engineer Mark Littlewood, and his system tech Jon Brooks.

Since first mixing Massive Attack at the venue back in 1998 Littlewood has learnt much of the room's characteristics; and with technology advancing apace both he and Jon noted how well the Martin Audio line array combination had sounded last time the two men rigged it here - for a show by G4 - particularly the front-fill sound created by the Mini Line Arrays.

With a large ensemble including drums, bass, acoustic and

Hong Kong - Bosch Security Systems has supplied fire and emergency voice alarm systems to Hong Kong's new AsiaWorld-Expo exhibition and events centre.

Completed in December 2005, AsiaWorld-Expo adjoins Hong Kong's Chep Lap Kok International Airport built on a man-made island 25 kilometres from the city. With more than 70,000sq.m of rentable exhibition, conference and entertainment space, the new centre is Hong Kong's largest event facility.

Bosch has provided AsiaWorld-Expo with equipment and accessories from its Universal Intrusion and Fire Alarm Panel 2000 Series together with the Fire Monitoring System and Praesideo, the world's first fully digital public address and emergency sound system. The systems are integrated with each other and with external control and emergency monitoring systems. The total project is the largest of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region for Bosch S

Norway - Norwegian city Trondheim has recently been changing the local Dock House into a concert hall called Dokkhuset. Owned by Trondheim Jazz Forum, Jazz Centre of Middle Norway, Trondheim Baroque Music and Trondheim's association of classical soloists, the venue's schedule is consequently turned to both classical and jazz music; Dianne Reeves & Mory Kante feature among the artists who have performed recently at the Dokkhuset.

Scandec Systemer, L-Acoustics distributor in Norway, provided an L Acoustics sound system for the venue. The configuration is comprised of two arrays of thre ARCS, and two stacks of SB218 subs. Two 112P self-powered speakers are used as first delays in mid point of the audience, and two 108P are located at the rear restaurant as second delays.

Bj°rn Johnny Valsgård, sales manager in charge of the project at Scandec Systemer, explained: "The m

UK - Denon Professional has announced the arrival of the DN-A7100 AV professional AV preamplifier/surround sound decoder, which has been comprehensively designed not only to decode industry standard formats but as a fully-featured AV source switcher.

The manufacturer believes AV professionals will appreciate the eight true balanced line-level outputs and the device's ability to decode digital surround sound signals and output them to their specific speaker output. The DN-A7100 is compatible the with most advanced surround sound formats and because of its unique design, is ideal for any installation that requires high-quality, channel-separated audio outputs - especially those installations where adapting unbalanced RCA preamp outputs is unacceptable or the extra weight of ill-purposed, unused consumer power amps is not required.

In addition to the eight balanced line outputs,

UK - Wigwam has announce its sponsorship and participation in the launch of The Charlie Jones Scholarship Scheme - names in memory of a man who played a very important part towards the growth and development of Wigwam over the past 20 years.

Wigwam say: "In recognition of his service and desire to develop the next generation of Sound Engineers, we feel it is time for a company like ours to get involved in providing a training scheme that is worthwhile and that will hopefully will lead to employment within the audio industry."

The past 10 years has seen major developments in technology used within live audio, and the company sees a need for engineers and technicians to have specialist training to use the equipment available to achieve the best end results. "If we can train young people wishing work in our industry in the continued advancements in working practice

UK - ADSworldwide has introduced a new range of headphones and headphone/microphones aimed at the primary and junior school market. The Primary School extensible headphone set, robustly made in re-enforced nylon, is fully adjustable to accommodate all head sizes in the primary school category, says the company. The Senior back headphone has been styled to suit the older, more fashion conscious student with a unique easy to fit profile, while for the primary school student the Media headphone, together with integral microphone, is a compact unit designed for regular and varied use.

(Lee Baldock)

UK - British rock band Razorlight have completed the UK leg of their 2006 tour, enhancing a minimalist stage set with the addition of live action screens, video and effects projection, all supplied by London rental company, PSL Music.

For all shows, PSL set up a 40ft wide white drop centre screen, using a Catalyst digital media server playback source, operated from front-of-house lighting control. Featuring black-and-white stills, moving graphics and effects, as well as simple colour washes, projection on the main screen was fed by PSL's new Barco SLM R12+ units.

Under the direction of crew chief Rod Martin, PSL also supplied a four-camera PPU system and operators Simon Hudson and Bruce Selkirk. Additionally, three mini-cams on the drumkit of Andy Burrows gave video director Steve Price and the PSL engineers a choice of seven feeds from which to mix a rich and dynamic visual c

Australia - Based on the life, songs and music of the entertainer and songwriter Peter Allen, and performed for the first time in 1998 in Sydney, The Boy From Oz has just closed after a sell-out three-month Australian tour. This new production of the original musical especially designed for arena format venues (more than 10,000 people), include a 25-piece live orchestra and 100 singers from the Australian Girls' choir. Australian V-Dosc Partner, Jands Production Services, was chosen to design and supply the sound reinforcement.

Sound designer Michael Waters, who won a Helpmann Award for Best Sound Design for Dusty the Musical, specified a turnkey L Acoustics V Dosc system which includes 36 V Dosc, 27 dV-DOSC, 4 ARCS and 18 SB218 subwoofers.

Jim Straw, general manager of Jands Production Services, stated: "The Boy from Oz is a complex and ambitious are

UK - Formula Sound has followed up the successful launch of its new FF-4000 modular mixer by announcing that the unit is now available with a factory-fitted Pro X Fade crossfader from Eclectic Breaks (Ebsel). This new crossfader has been receiving highly enthusiastic reviews in the media, and its inclusion as an option on the FF-4000 (and also on Formula Sound's larger 6-channel FF-6000) reflects the growing reputation that these FF Series mixers are enjoying among the DJ and club market.

"We weren't surprised at the great reaction that the original FF-6000 6-channel mixer received from the DJ community when it was launched in 2005," commented Formula Sound's Barry Penaligon. "The mixer was designed in conjunction with Funktion-One and a panel of leading DJs. We took the DJs' comments on board and provided the things they asked for such as larger control knobs on

USA - Symetrix Inc, a provider of signalprocessing technology for the installed sound, broadcast, and recordingmarkets, announces the appointment of Paul Roberts, director of domestic andinternational sales.

Roberts spent eight years as inside sales manager for Symetrix from 1995 to2003. He is returning from Loud Technologies, Woodinville, Washington wherehe worked in sales management for the past two years. "I'm thrilled to beback at Symetrix at this particular moment in our proud 30-year history,"commented Roberts. "The acknowledged breadth and depth of our four brands,Symetrix, SymNet, Lucid, and AirTools have poised the company for evengreater growth and expansion. I'm especially excited about the newIntegrator Series and its first product, the Zone Mix 760. The 760 isdesigned to meet the needs of restaurants, hotels, and similar venueswithout any unnecessary

USA - Solid State Logic, a manufacturer of analogue and digital audio consoles and provider of creative tools for music, broadcast and post production professionals, has announced the hiring of Fadi Hayek as national sales manager, Workstation Partner Products.

Hayek comes to SSL from Yamaha Corporation, where he served as national sales manager for Steinberg products. During his 11-year tenure at Steinberg Media Technologies, which continued through its 2005 acquisition by Yamaha, Hayek was instrumental in the planning and development of the Nuendo platform. Prior to Steinberg, he worked as a recording engineer at several New York studios and served in a management role at Sam Ash Music, also in New York.

"The idea of Solid State Logic claiming its place in the digital audio workstation market is what attracted me," Hayek comments. "It clearly has a role to pl

UK - The Arts and Entertainment Technical Training Initiative (aetti) has announced a new qualification. The Awarding body Edexcel has approved their submission for a BTEC Award in Sound. The approval lasts until 2011. The first course will be delivered at the Assembly Rooms in Derby in February 2007.

The new Sound course will sit alongside the existing BTEC qualifications; Technical Skills in Live Entertainment and Stage Lighting, Rigging and Operation.

Loughborough College's head of enterprise and workforce development, Chris Garner, says: "The original proposal required some altering to suit the Edexcel criteria for a formal award and I would thank the aetti members for responding quickly to ensure that the delivery of the programme can proceed as planned. If the BTEC in Sound is as popular as the existing Lighting course then we would expect more than a 150 technician

UK - Every year, British digital signal processor manufacturer XTA Electronics rewards those of its distributors that have achieved the most significant business growth for XTA products over the previous year, known as the Xemplary Territory Awards.

This year saw Ampco Belgium, Sennheiser Canada, R&A Services in China, Prodance from the Czech Republic, SC Sound APS in Denmark, Estonia's Eventech, TM Audio from Holland, Pro Audio & Light Systems in Russia, Swiss distributor Decibel, Turkey's Sevcan Electronics, Group One from the United States and PAXT in the Middle East and Africa all take awards back from PLASA.

"We've got an extremely good distribution network," says XTA marketing manager Guy Lewis. "This means the companies that won awards have done exceptionally well as sales have been exemplary on a global scale."

PAXT's Tim Pollard agrees: "We

Eastern Europe - Over 400 visitors attended four ISE Roadshow events in Eastern Europe which concluded at the Istanbul Hilton last week. The organisers reported that attendee levels exceeded all expectations and the events attracted positive and enthusiastic comments from both visitors and sponsors alike.

Mike Blackman, ISE managing director was delighted with the results, which justified the decision to take this event beyond the existing European frontier. "Attendance was excellent and initial feedback has been extremely positive. We had visitors who came ready to talk and were prepared to do business. They brought with them an optimistic approach to the exciting opportunities in the AV and electronic systems industry. These events have demonstrated to us how influential and exciting the Eastern European and Turkish markets are for our industry. In every location attendee

UK - The Light Viper 32/8 digital line system has provided The X-Factor sound supervisor Robert Edwards (of Video Sound Services) with a neat fibre transmission solution, overcoming the obstacles created by a complex set at Wembley's Fountain Studios in an environment rife with RF.

On Edwards' recommendation, production company talkbackThames purchased the Light Viper system to cover signal transmission from mic to desk, and for talkback via returns on the latest series of the reality show.

With transmission to ITV1 and ITV2, VSS were looking for a more efficient means of delivering the sound from the studio floor to the control room, and turned to a FiberPlex Light Viper VIS-1832/VIM-1832 fibre-optic snake to create far more effective tie lines over greater distances.

Light Viper's fibre optic system offers immunity to ground loops, RFI, EMI and electromechanical noi

Italy - A&AG S.r.l., Italian-based manufacturers of the Kind range of high quality professional power amplifiers, has introduced the DSP Board-1 input card that can provide all of the functions of a loudspeaker system crossover/controller without the need for an external processor.

Suitable for KDL, DDX and DQX series amplifiers, the 2-in / 3-out processor has crossover, EQ, compressor and delay functions, providing a cost effective and tamper-proof system solution for most applications. The card is programmed by PC with the provided software, giving a high quality graphic interface for logical and easy access to all settings and functions. Facilities, such as 'copy left' and 'copy right', speed up the process by allowing parameters to be set for one channel and transferred to the other at the press of a button.

The input card utilizes 24-bit (26-bit inner processing) with 48

Italy - Link Srl, has introduced the CVS LKSPKAL 12/3 U2A2 - a new line of intelligent self-powered speaker cable that includes a 12/3 double shielded power cable, two AES individually jacketed and shielded pairs and two colour coded UTP Ethernet lines, featuring Link's cross-spacer (CAT6 style) construction. These cables are specifically designed for self-powered loudspeaker systems that incorporate CAT5 control and/or signal connectivity.

JBL Professional utilises numerous sets of Link's new CVS LKSPKAL 12/3 U2A2 cable in 23 metre (75 ft) lengths for its portable touring sound systems that are used for onsite customer evaluations, including Vertec DP Series and the new Venue Performance Series powered, network-compatible products. "The growing number of JBL systems in the field was Link's inspiration to develop this new hybrid cable," says Marco Piromalli, president

Germany - The sun has set and the Mercedes Sprinter door closed for the last time this year on the Tannoy & Friends Tour 2006 in Germany. This year the Tannoy tour team was the strongest it has been to date, with special guests Panasonic, Shure, Crestron and Simax all on board and presenting their latest new products. Kicking off in Frankfurt on 17th October, the tour travelled clockwise around the country stopping at seven cities in nine days! (Frankfurt, Remscheid, Hamburg, Berlin, Halle, Munich and Stutgartt).

Celebrating 80 years in business this year, Tannoy presented their latest products to feature their renowned Dual Concentric drive unit. Since its invention six decades ago, the Scottish-based loudspeaker manufacturer's point source drive unit technology has been constantly refined. The latest incarnation of the 'Dual', a miniature 4" version, is used in the highly

UK - Stardraw Control, the multi-award winning control application from design and control software systems developer, Stardraw.com has been named as a finalist for the Technology InAVation 2007 award in the category of Most Innovative Control Product for Commercial Use. The nomination coincides with the landmark 5,000 user tally, an astonishing achievement in just over twelve months when the product was still only in beta form.

Stardraw's marketing director, Rob Robinson, is delighted that Stardraw Control has qualified as a finalist for the inaugural Technology InAVation Awards which will be held at the forthcoming ISE show in Amsterdam next February. "Stardraw Control has already been recognised at several prestigious industry awards, and the Technology InAVation nomination serves as further testament to the truly innovative nature of the product," noted Robinson. &

UK - ChristChurch, London, has recently purchased an Innovason Sy48 Evolution digital console package to handle all of their FOH and monitoring needs at their new venue, the 1200-seat Piccadilly Theatre in London's West End.

Technical director Rhys Scott was looking for a console that would be intuitive to use, flexible, fast to work on and with high audio quality. Furthermore, as the console is largely used by volunteers, it needed to be accessible and logically laid out. "I met the Innovason team at the Messe in Frankfurt earlier in the year and was given a demo of the Sy48. It was extremely impressive, and there was no doubt that it met all of our criteria," said Scott. "We were looking to have the new console in place before we moved to our new venue at the Piccadilly Theatre, and fortunately for us, Innovason launched their 'New for Old" initiative just

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