Bulgaria - Located in the heart of the capital, Sofia, the Bedroom Premium Club is one of the largest and highest profile nightclubs in Bulgaria. A recent upgrade has seen the club's desire to deliver the very best sound satisfied by an L-Acoustics system.

Emil Yanakiev - owner of Forte Music, one of the country's biggest audio importers and rental companies - had previously supplied an L-Acoustics system for events at Bedroom Beach, Bedroom Premium's summer extension venue. Here, sets by high profile DJs had demonstrated the positive difference that the quality of L-Acoustics loudspeakers makes to the clubbing experience, so when Vesselin Borisov, the 800-capacity venue's co-owner, decided to install a new audio system in Bedroom Premium, he approached Emil Yanakiev for advice.

For Bedroom Premium, a team comprising Emil and Forte rental manager Alex Pigov, acoustic consult

Belgium - A crowd of over 200 lighting professionals marked the grand opening of Chauvet's new branch office in Ghent, Belgium, as well as the company's 25th anniversary, by enjoying an evening of festivities, product demonstration, music and a breathtaking lightshow. The invitation-only event, which drew guests from a variety of countries, also featured a cornucopia of food as well as beverages, including a sparkling special edition Chauvet branded champagne.

As Chauvet's second European facility, the Belgium office will cater to demand in the Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg regions. In conjunction with Chauvet's UK branch, the new office will also play a key role in servicing and supporting distributors elsewhere on the European mainland, with particular emphasis on France, Germany and Italy.

Among the highlights of the evening was a lightshow of epic proportions that

UK - Cambridge based alt-rockers Mallory Knox have been rapidly gaining fans and critical acclaim from their energetic live shows and rousing festival appearances this summer running on the back of their second album Asymmetry released in late 2014.

Right in the thick of all the Mallory Knox live onstage action is lighting and set designer Jordon Cooper who has worked with the band since 2013 after initially being asked to light a one off gig which they liked.

On the previous tour, Jordon has used Robe Pointes, and for this one as a floor package he chose 24 x Robe LEDBeam 100s which were supplied by north Yorkshire based R&M Productions together with four strobes and some LED battens. They hooked into the house overhead rigs at each venue.

R&M additionally built the set which was designed by Jordon and the band and inspired by the Asymmetry album artwork.

With

Portugal - Nexo has appointed Merging Select to represent its products in Portugal. Based in the capital city of Lisbon, Merging Select handles a portfolio of blue-chip brands, including Yamaha Commercial Audio, Steinberg and Nuage, which are sister companies to Nexo, as well as AuviTran and Powersoft.

Founded in 2007, Merging Select serves both the rental market in Portugal as well as the installation business. Projects include auditoria, theatres, multi-purpose and conference spaces, hotels and retail operations.

Merging Select aims to offer the Portuguese professional audio market something over and above 'black boxes', complementing technical solutions with a high degree of support, education and training. According to commercial director Joao Velhinho, there are two priorities. "First, helping our market to spend its money coherently in these difficult economic tim

UK - Earlier this year, KV2 Audio reported on its successful collaboration with Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance- one of the UK's top specialist higher educational institutions - during the College's annual symposium.

KV2 representatives were on hand to discuss the company's approach to loudspeaker design and offer information on all KV2 Audio's products and philosophies.

Following their experiences during the symposium, Rose Bruford College chose to invest in a number of KV2 products.

Having listened to a large selection of ESD, EX, ESM and ES products in a variety of the college's performance spaces, technical manager Jonathan Hill decided that a pair of EX 26 active 2-way 2x6" loudspeakers and the EX 2.2 active 2x12" subwoofer would be the ideal solution for a fixed install in their studio space.

In addition to this, six EX 6 active 2-way 6&

USA - The 49th Country Music Association Awards programme took place at a packed Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Wednesday 4 November. With country music stars Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood returning as hosts for the live ABC telecast, the show again lived up to its reputation as Country Music's Biggest Night, with three hours of live performances that combined country royalty with fresh newcomers, while sprinkling in several collaborations with country outsiders.

To keep the packed program on schedule, the production relied on wireless microphones and in-ear monitors for quick set changes, eliminating cumbersome floor wedges and cables. For monitoring, the performers typically bring their own custom earphones, all of which were powered by Shure PSM1000 wireless personal monitor systems.

As always at the CMAs, all major wireless microphone brands were represente

UK - The Tony Award-winning musical In The Heights will stand out from the crowd on a custom printed stage floor produced by Le Mark Floors. With a design printed and produced specifically for the production, the floor is set to endure months of performances. Even more so since the show has been extended due to popular demand.

With heavy foot traffic throughout every performance, both the stage floor and the printed design needed to be incredibly durable yet still provide a comfortable surface for the performers themselves.

"We explained what we needed and Le Mark were quick to provide a quality product. They were professional all the way: from placing the order right through to delivery. It was exactly what we needed for this musical." said Tristan Baker, producer at Runaway Entertainment.

The bespoke design was printed on to Le Mark's most popular floor

Slovakia - The Malá Fatra mountain range in the north-west of Central Slovakia is both a national park and a popular winter sports area.

In this beautiful scenery, Hotel Impozant is situated in Valca Valley. The hotel owner has for a long time sought the nearby creek illuminated by a light source which could be hidden under the bridge. His intention was to increase the attractiveness of the site to a new and higher level. Therefore, he turned to Milan Ondisko, sales manager of City Light Slovakia s.r.o., who quickly arranged a demonstration on one summer evening during sunset.

"The hotel owner preferred two strong quality lights instead of several smaller fixtures. Once we turned on the light, no more words were necessary. The SGM P-5 talked for itself and proved to be the perfect tool; plenty of rich coloured light output to illuminate the creek with its banks and sur

UK - The Great Hall in Winchester, built almost 800 years ago, is an impressive building by any standards, having borne witness to some important events in British history, as well as containing King Arthur's Round Table.

The Hall is all that remains of Winchester Castle, after Oliver Cromwell ordered the demolition of the Castle, keeping the Great Hall for assemblies and the county Assizes, and it is where Sir Walter Raleigh stood trial in 1603 and where the notorious Judge Jeffreys condemned supporters of the Duke of Monmouth to death as part of the Bloody Assizes of 1685.

The famous Round Table of Arthurian legend hangs on the west wall, attracting thousands of visitors every year to admire not only the table, but also the magnificence of the Great Hall, which has been dubbed 'one of the finest surviving aisled halls of the 13th century'.

So it comes as no surprise to

Finland - Matrox Graphics reports that the Kamppi Centre shopping mall in Helsinki has upgraded its digital signage installation with a 14.4m-high LED screen powered by Matrox Mura MPX Series video wall capture & display cards.

Selected by integrator Craneworks to power the installation - roughly three times the size of its predecessor - Mura now delivers the platform to showcase everything from advertisements to live events.

Craneworks, who also manages the day-to-day operation of the digiLED outdoor screen, leverages a Mura MPX-4/4, four-input, four-output board, inside an HP Z600 system, to display content from various inputs, including a Mac mini media player, local DVI input, and live feed. Mura also scales and switches between content for different ad campaigns, with the resulting signage seen by the 700,000 Kamppi customers every week. Meanwhile, Matrox MuraControl fo

UK - Edinburgh-based lighting and sound theatre rental specialists Blue Parrot has bought the West End to Glasgow having taken delivery of its new Meyer Leopard Line Array system. With only one day to check and test the system it was straight out to Glasgow Kings Theatre for The Pantheon Club's production of Legally Blonde the Musical.

Head of sound Mike Somerville explains: "It's a very busy show for sound and having Leopard for our sound reinforcement was the ideal solution to deliver the best overall sound possible. With nine Leopards and 2 900-LFC subs each side I've never heard anything in that theatre sound so good. I was extremely impressed by the way the sound was very even across the entire frequency range as you walked both towards and away from the arrays. It was a much smoother progression, in both level and consistency of frequency response. To me this

USA - Shaping Sound, the contemporary dance company founded by Emmy-nominated choreographers Travis Wall, Nick Lazzarini, Teddy Forance, and dance visionary Kyle Robinson is back on the road with Bandit Lites, bringing their energetic and visually compelling story that is part pop show, part traditional dance, and part rock concert to stages all across North America.

The dance team that can be seen in Carrie Underwood's Something in the Water and So You Think You Can Dance? created a show that is immaculately choreographed, requiring lighting designers Seth Jackson and Nathan W. Scheuer to create a rig mainly comprised of VL 3500 Spots.

"We needed the framing shutters, the zoom, the iris, all of those elements to lock in with the incredible specificity of the choreography," said Jackson. In addition to the Spots, Bandit provided Impressions for wash f

USA - Way back in 1955 American Reformed Church held its first service with just 30 families in the lovely city of Luverne, located in the extreme southwest corner of Minnesota. After decades of steady growth, the now vastly-larger congregation recently completed construction on a new 800-seat state-of-the-art worship centre.

Twin Cities-based Audio Video Electronics (AVE) signed on to the project mostly after the facility layout was planned and designed. The architect for the project was Architecture Inc, based is Sioux Falls, SD with Derrick Knight, Derrick Knight Acoustics, as acoustician.

"American Reformed Church is definitely big into music," said Stefan Svärd, owner and president of AVE. "They have a progressive, contemporary worship style, but their old sanctuary had a distributed system that didn't have a lot of impact. They were looking forward to g

UK - Influential British electronic dance act Underworld has chosen a Solid State Logic L500 as performance tool for its live tours. The console joins founder-member Rick Smith on stage as a fast, versatile, creative instrument, allowing him to combine old-school dub mixing techniques with the best in performance technology.

It has been 20 years since the original release of Underworld's ground-breaking album dubnobasswithmyheadman, and the anniversary was marked with a remastered release, accompanied by a tour that showcased the band's legendary live work. For this and the subsequent global festival tour founder member Rick Smith's new instrument of choice was an SSL L500 console, allowing him to combine old-school dub mixing techniques with the best in performance technology.

To Smith, live performance is about "being in the moment and having absolutely no choi

Sweden - W-DMX by Wireless Solution once again played an important role in the recent Lights in Alingsås event in Sweden. The event is Northern Europe's largest lighting workshop in public spaces, this year attracting a record 87,622 visitors.

Once a year, leading lighting designers and companies are invited to Alingsås to demonstrate their expertise, attend networking events and hold workshops. For five weeks, the dark evenings of Sweden are transformed into beautiful lighting installations around the town.

The theme for Lights in Alingsås 2015 was The Evolution of Light, from the big bang to the present age, with a specific focus on how new technologies such as LED can help reduce the environmental impact. W-DMX was used to demonstrate the elimination of excess cable.

Lighting designers Bertil Göransson and Johan Moritz from the company Luxera were responsibl

Germany - The Bavarian city of Regensburg is renowned for its medieval centre, nowadays a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But just a few minutes away is one of Germany's most modern sporting stadiums, the new Continental Arena, where a Yamaha audio system has achieved the goal of great sound without the penalty of going over budget.

Opened in July this year, the Continental Arena has replaced the city's 89-year old Jahnstadion as the home of football club SSV Jahn Regensburg, which plays in the Regionalliga Bayern (Germany's 'fourth division').

A modern stadium in every sense of the word, as well as being a football ground the 15,200-capacity stadium can host other sporting events and concerts. It features two 'Business Clubs' and four 'Lodges', which host a wide range of business and leisure events, all with a panoramic view of the stadium's pitch.

A major feature of the sta

India - Allen & Heath's dLive has been installed in Mumbai's renowned Hard Rock Café, marking the first installation of the new digital mixing system in India. Installer, Sun Infonet, the distributor of Allen & Heath products in India, selected the flagship DM64 MixRack with an S7000 Control Surface.

The first artist to use the new mixer was national singing icon, Garry Lawyer, who along with his seven-piece band, performed a tribute to Elvis Presley.

Both FOH and monitors were mixed on the same system by sound engineer, Afaque Azad. "I am extremely happy and impressed with the board," comments Azad. "I am amazed at the accuracy of dLive's dynamic processing, EQ, and FX Rack, and the user friendly interface. The ultra low latency of the mixer made it a very positive mixing experience, and the surface's illumination and the dust resistant faders are a bo

The Netherlands - Peerless-AV today has announced Join the winning team with Peerless-AV as the theme of its stand (11-E70) at ISE 2016, in celebration of the 2016 UEFA European Championship scheduled to be held in France from 10 June to 10 July.

The stand will have a football stadium layout with themed zones and content highlighting specific Peerless-AV product selections, including a host of new European launches. Visitors will be invited to show off their striker skills in an interactive penalty shoot-out game to win spot prizes and enter a competition prize draw for two tickets to the final of Euro 2016. One lucky winner will be drawn at random by ISE managing director Mike Blackman on Day 4, Friday 12 February.

Gordon Dutch, managing director, Peerless-AV Europe, commented: "We're excited to go live with our theme for ISE 2016. Whoever wins the Euro 2016 Fin

USA - It was last year in Italy while touring with Jethro Tull, singer-songwriter and frontman Ian Anderson began to toy with the idea of a stand-alone show around the real life exploits of the band's namesake.

Using lighting provided by Bandit Lites, lighting designer Mark Wheatley took his knowledge of Anderson's lighting preferences (no haze, no 'mad flashing lights' and dislike of follow spots) to compliment Jethro Tull - The Rock Opera, which features both earlier hits and newly written songs.

"The workhorse fixtures are Martin MAC Viper profiles, GLP Impression X4s on mid and back truss, Mac Auras on front truss and pros booms and Sharpys on back truss and floor," said Wheatley. "We also use Showtec Sunstrips as blinders and effects on floor towers and back truss. An 18k HD projector on the show is rigged either on the front or mid truss depending

USA - Mills College in Oakland, California, is known for its collaborative and experimental approach to music education - and now API will be part of that legacy. Professor Les Stuck oversaw the installation of the school's new 1608 console just in time for the fall semester to begin.

Technical director at the school's CCM (Centre for Contemporary Music), Professor Stuck comments: "The 1608 purchase was a no-brainer, and the best possible option. In choosing an analogue mixer today, there aren't many choices if you want something really good. The 1608 sounds great and has a good reputation; it's a solid, professional console." Jeff Briss, of API dealer Cutting Edge Audio in San Francisco, helped Stuck make the choice for Mills' music department.

Stuck describes the CCM as "small with a large diversity of musicians", explaining that some students are stric

Hungary - Roland is 'the word' in Hungary right now as the Roland M-5000 and M-480 live digital mixing consoles alongside Roland Digital Snakes head out on tour with Grease - the Musical. This 11-date arena tour is produced by long term Roland customers Szatyi Stage Team who, earlier this year, supplied an all Roland setup to produce the live stage sound for local TV2 channel shows Rising Star and The Voice.

The M-5000 was chosen as the FOH console for the tour primarily because of its O.H.R.C.A configurable architecture. O.H.R.C.A stands for three key concepts: Open; High Resolution; and Configurable Architecture. This internal architecture is not fixed to any configuration and can be freely defined within a range of up to 128 input or output channels or busses, allowing the operator essentially to 'build' a console to suit the application.

Mr. Laszlo S

India - Planned by noted French architect Le Corbusier and capital of two of India's state governments (Punjab and Haryana), Chandigarh (The Beautiful City) hosts the headquarters of key rental company A One Global Entertainment, which recently purchased a GTO C-12 line array by Italian manufacturer Outline.

Since it was established in 1980 by Rakesh Thakur, as well as working on television, special, sports and corporate events, A One has provided sound reinforcement, lighting and video for a wide variety of touring artists and its expert audio engineers can cater for events of any size or type.

Working to maintain the founder's motto of "There is no substitute for quality", the company's technicians are led by Nitin Thakur, a certified audio engineer from Singapore's School of Audio Engineering, who also has specialist certification from several top audio manufact

New Zealand - The chic, the cool and the beautiful rocked up in Auckland to check the latest Kiwi fashion trends and catch the insatiable buzz of New Zealand Fashion Week (NZFW) 2015 at the main show-space in the ANZ Viaduct Events Centre (VEC) located in the city's vibrant Waterfront area.

Simon Garrett from Oceania Productions lit the show-space which is also known as 'The Runway' by NZFW fans. Simon has been involved with the event for many years, but this was his first using 12 x of Robe's powerful BMFL Spots, which were rigged on a spine truss above the 30m polished concrete presentation runway.

Fashion - and its increasing penchant for drama and theatrical presentation - is demanding more thought, imagination and lateral thinking - when it comes to lighting, in addition to the pressure to replicate those camera-perfect flesh tones for the massed photographers and video

UK - After five decades as a leading live sound engineer Colin Norfield's roster of acts reads like a who's who of touring giants. In 1994 he piloted the sound mix for Pink Floyd's Divisional Bell tour, and his relationship with band front-man, David Gilmour has endured right up to the five recent performances at the Royal Albert Hall to promote his new album, Rattle That Lock.

Over the years, Colin has become increasingly discerning with his equipment selection, and for the first time on these shows, he introduced the artist to AKG's D7 dynamic mic. This had originally been brought to his attention by the Austrian company's artist & key customer relations manager, Walter Rührig, with whom he has enjoyed a long relationship.

The D7 was designed to blend the subtle and open sound of a condenser capsule with the powerful resonance of a dynamic microphone. The patented

Latest Issue. . .

Save
Cookies user preferences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline
Advertisement
If you accept, the ads on the page will be adapted to your preferences.
Google Ad
Accept
Decline