Belgium - Dave Gahan and Martin Gore were never known for their skills on the basketball court, though their group, Depeche Mode did contribute to the soundtrack of the NBA 2K15 video game. However, the English electronic musicians did cause something of a full court press at the FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying match between Belgian and the USA.

That contest took place at a sold-out Antwerp’s Sportpaleis on 9 February, just three days after Depeche Mode rocked the arena with their music. This left little time for Bart Aelbrecht and his team at AB Sound to buil

Australia - Bruce Johnston mixed bands including Hoodoo Gurus, Divinyls, Boom Crash Opera, Crowded House and Midnight Oil in his native Australia, then for a 12-year stint took care of front-of-house sound for Oasis and, later, for building one of the world’s most respected sound companies.

It was in his early days with the Gallagher brothers that Bruce first came across Nexo.

“Oasis needed serious volume. At the time, line arrays had just started but they weren’t giving me what I needed” says Bruce. “We mixed on a Nexo Alpha system, and it was j

China - Duke Kunshan University has a team of faculty members located all over the world and has requirements for blended smart education. Duke Kunshan University has installed 116 Sennheiser TCC 2 Ceiling Array Microphones in 50 classrooms and various other spaces across its campus, providing students and faculty with an immersive blended learning experience that is easy to operate.

Located in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, Duke Kunshan University (DKU) is a 1,200-acre campus dedicated to creating a world-class educational and research university characterized by lib

UK - The multi-award-winning musical Hamilton has selected ETC fixtures and control for its UK and Ireland tour. The hit musical – which has already been a huge success around the world – is composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and tells the story of America’s founding father Alexander Hamilton.

ETC dealer Encore supplied the equipment for the tour which included High End Systems Halcyon Titanium and Halcyon Platinum automated fixtures, Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr entertainment luminaires, and Eos Apex 10, Gio @5, Ion Xe and Ion XE RPU for lighting con

Taiwan - The Taipei Performing Arts Centre (TPAC), which contains three performance spaces – The Grand Theatre, the Globe Playhouse, and the Blue Box, has recently invested in 40 x Robe Spiider LED wash beam luminaires, which will help light an array different of productions staged at the venue.

Production values are high on the agenda at TPAC which has around 150 full time employees, a third of whom are designated to work across assorted technical disciplines, including TPAC senior technical officer Yi-Ming Liu (AKA Birdie), who explained that Robe’s Spiider

USA – Artis—Naples is a leading destination for the visual and performing arts in Southwest Florida. The Kimberly K. Querrey and Louis A. Simpson Cultural Campus in Naples includes two performance halls: the Frances Pew Hayes Hall and the Myra J. Daniels Pavilion, as well as The Baker Museum and the Stabile Education building.

Most recently, the 283-seat Daniels Pavilion, whose diverse range of programmes includes music, film, dance, comedy, lectures, and exhibitions featuring international artists, received an upgrade in the form of a new DiGiCo Quantum225 co

UK - After playing a stretch of intimate in-store shows at independent record shops across the nation to announce their debut album I Wonder If The World Knows, The K's arrived at one of their local concert venues, the 1000-cap, Grade II-listed Parr Hall in Warrington on 10 April.

To ensure an optimum audio experience for their fans, Martin Audio rental partner, dBS Solutions were brought in to provide their flagship WPS (Wavefront Precision) scalable line array. This was set in a ground-stacked configuration, as due to weight limitation flying the PA was

USA – Shure and Neat have announced an alliance to deliver an enhanced meeting experience in large and acoustically challenging spaces.

By joining forces, Shure and Neat ensure seamless integration between Neat Bar Pro, a powerful video meeting bar from Neat, and multiple Shure Microflex Ecosystem Solutions, providing uncompromised audio and video in complex workspaces, say the companies.

"Our alliance with Neat brings the best of video and audio into a single room”, says Peter James, VP global business development at Shure. "Our integrated solutions c

UK - Manchester-based audio specialists, tube uk, has taken delivery of a new d&b KSL line array speaker system plus assorted rigging elements in a significant investment underlining the strength, diversity and buoyance of tube’s business and operational planning for the immediate and longer-term future.

This initial order comprises 20 x KSL8 and four KSL12 top cabinets plus eight KSL-SUBS, a complete new system which is added to tube’s existing stocks of d&b Y and V-Series together with the associated D80 amplifiers that the company already owns.

Finland – The popular TV contest Tähdet, tähdet returned for 2024 with a host of singers belting out numbers ranging from 1980s pop to Eurovision classics. Broadcast on Finnish channel Nelonen, audiences watched performances backed by nine Roe Vanish V8T LED screens with live and pre-made content manipulated using tvONE's Green Hippo brand of Hippotizer Media Servers.

“The set design required visual appeal tailored to the viewers both in the studio and at home,” explains Varpu Sipilä from Finnish visual design company Visual45, which was brought

Germany - When updating its auditorium lighting, the historic opera house on Hamburg's Dammtorstraße opted for LED double-focus downlights from Erco, achieving not only energy savings in excess of 80 per cent but also lighting quality and high visual comfort.

The citizens of Hamburg take great pride in their opera house, a cultural institution with a lineage tracing back to the original opera house at Gänsemarkt, established in 1678. In 1827, it found its new home on Dammtorstraße. Today, under the leadership of general music director Kent Nagano, the State Ope

Japan - ARTA Mechanics & Inspirations is a converted warehouse in the Shinkiba area of Tokyo that serves as a hub where visitors can immerse themselves in the complete ARTA brand experience. The installation of Genelec’s 4000 Series loudspeakers throughout the space elevates that experience.

ARTA's journey began in 1997 as a project aimed at nurturing world-class drivers. Born from a collaboration between Japan's leading F1 racing driver, Aguri Suzuki, and leading Japanese car parts manufacturer, Autobacs Seven, today ARTA is the largest racing team in Japan

USA - British progressive metal band Haken recently wrapped their North American tour with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites. An Evening with Haken featured the band playing their recent record Fauna in its entirety as well as fan favourites. Lighting designer Harry Merrison of Hazzmo sought to formulate a new lighting design that would be simple yet memorable as well as compact and easily constructed.

“We wanted to create something that could match the versatility of Haken’s music,” explained Merrison. “With the progressive roc

France - The distinctive folded concrete triangular-shaped vaulted ceiling of the CNIT (National Centre for Industry and Technology) building at the La Défense CBD in Paris has been subtly illuminated with Anolis Calumma XL SC LED luminaires.

This new lighting project is part of a modernisation initiative led by architect Jean-Luc Crochon of Cro&Co Architecture who approached BOA Light Studio to create a plan to enhance the underside of the ceiling with lighting.

The scheme is designed to bring a ‘living-breathing’ resonance to the structure, pull

USA - Sphere Entertainment presented a special Exosphere content show in celebration of Earth Day featuring work from multi-Grammy Award-winning Grateful Dead and Dead & Company percussionist Mickey Hart, and filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg.

Hart’s and Schwartzberg’s artwork combined into an 11-minute content show that ran through the day. Their art featured individually at various times throughout the day as well. Hart and Schwartzberg are the latest artists to design for the Exosphere as part of Sphere’s XO/Art programme, which features artists’ work on

UK - It is a year since Lightroom, a performance space in the heart of London’s King’s Cross, opened its doors. The Moonwalkers is the latest experience at the London venue, following the successful David Hockney show, Bigger and Closer (not smaller and further away).

In this experience, The Holoplot X1 Matrix Array helps to transport audiences ‘out of this world’, showcasing the impact of its powerful software toolset on the creative workflow and audio quality.

This new production is narrated and co-written by Tom Hanks and inclu

UK - Johnny Marr embarked on his UK tour, The Spirit Power, earlier this month, finishing at Rock City, Nottingham on 14 April.

Lighting designer Ed Warren, of Next Level Lights, put together a compact yet impactful lighting design for the 10-date tour with Ayrton laser-sourced Cobra fixtures playing a key role.

The full rig included 16 Ayrton Cobra rigged on two over-stage trusses with four more Cobra units sited upstage of the band, the latter of which formed the touring floor package.

“We used them as big, bright wash lights with whic

Austria - Tim Ferns from Swiss sound design collective, audiopool, recently specified a 64-channel TiMax SoundHub as the foundation of their design for Rock Me Amadeus, Vereinigte Bühne Wien (VBW)’s latest in-house production, playing at Vienna’s Ronacher theatre.

Called on by VBW as trusted audio design partners to create an immersive and intimate audio environment to engage the audience closely with the lavish and complex production, audiopool’s Tim Ferns asserts, “There was no other choice but to implement this with TiMax.”

Rock Me A

UK - Within 15 minutes of completing victory over Preston North End on Easter Monday, Birmingham City’s St. Andrews stadium had been transformed into a rock concert venue.

The production team behind the staging - enabling local heroes UB40 to kick off their world tour and announce their new UB45 album release - was Martin Audio partner, 22live.

At the same time the football club was able to reveal its new branding. Henceforth known as St Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park, the stadium provided an appropriate setting for this post match entertainment.

USA - Las Vegas-based OSA International provided Ayrton Huracán LT and Zonda 9 FX lighting fixtures, grandMA3 consoles and MDG TheONE atmospheric generators to lighting designer Aldo Visentin for the North American leg of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli’s arena tour. Ayrton, MA Lighting and MDG are all brands exclusively distributed in North America by ACT Entertainment.

Andrea Bocelli kicked off his run of US and Canadian dates with a Valentine’s Day performance in Raleigh, North Carolina and wrapped his tour in Detroit on 14 April. OSA International provided t

USA - The 1,500-capacity Showtime Theatre show lounge and central entertainment hub of the 306m long Carnival Magic cruise ship has been upgraded with the installation of 30 x new Robe Painte, 30 x LEDBeam 350 and 12 x miniPointe moving lights, which were installed while the ship was still in operation around Miami.

Co-ordinating the upgrade project was Carnival Cruise Line fleet supervisor for lighting Silviu Ardelean and lighting manager Alexander Nelson, who explained that the refit saw the replacement of the original moving lights.

The three-tiered sho

USA - On the winter leg of Disturbed’s Take Back Your Life tour, Alex Mungal created a raw, powerful visual dimension that matched the intensity of the music.

Featuring multiple layers of lighting fixtures that projected colours and pixel effects in every direction - and often enveloped the band in brilliant hues – in addition to serving up volcanic eruptions of pyro effects and fog, the production design fused seamlessly with the gripping music to create an overwhelmingly moving and all-embracive experience.

Mungal and the design team were ab

Europe - Lighting designer and programmer Jimmy Olausson was with his client, Avatar, on their European tour, when the metal band suddenly released a new song, Make It Rain, and asked him to programme looks for it.

“Normally, I prefer to do my programming in my office where I can focus on the details, so creating the lighting for Make It Rain during the tour was a challenge,” said Olausson. “But it turned out to be a fantastic addition to our set and gave me the opportunity to think outside the box, crafting a visual style for this song tha

USA - Neches Federal Credit Union Arena at the Montagne Centre, a multipurpose indoor arena and events centre at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, has replaced its ageing audio system with an all-new high-end set-up powered by Powersoft’s cloud-based Unica amplifier platform.

Home to the Lamar Cardinals and Lamar Lady Cardinals basketball teams, both of which compete in the top-flight NCAA Division I, the 10,746-seat Neches Arena also hosts volleyball, gymnastics, wrestling, boxing and martial arts events, as well as concerts and other live entertainment. Lam

Latest Issue. . .