Allen & Heath has revealed its new 96kHz digital mixer, Avantis, the third to be based on the company’s XCVI FPGA engine. Avantis puts Allen & Heath’s next-generation technology in a 64 channel / 42 configurable bus console, with twin Full HD touchscreens, extensive I/O options and processing from the company’s flagship dLive mixing system. “Joining dLive and SQ, Avantis completes our trilogy of next-gen 96kHz consoles,” said Rob Clark, Allen & Heath’s Managing Director. “Avantis takes many of the features that have made SQ and dLive so popular, putting them in a standalone 64-channel mixer that offers a new…
Author: TPi
Celebrating its 16th year at its familiar Clapham Common site, South West Four is a familiar August Bank Holiday destination for London’s clubbers. This year it again welcomed the House of Commons Festival, curated by Madness, onto two of its stages for Bank Holiday Monday itself. The event’s long-serving sound production company, Capital Sound, were again brought in by promoters Lock ‘N’ Load Events, with whom they have a long relationship, and of the five stages they equipped, Martin Audio cutting edge PA systems dominated the first four. The event again drew some of the world’s leading exponents of electronic…
Singer/songwriter and RCA Records Nashville recording artist Chris Young kicked off the North American leg of his Raised on Country world tour 2019 in May, playing to over 300,000 fans through the summer. Integral to the stage design – created by production designer Chris Lisle – is a 30-axis Kinesys automation system being used to move six lighting pods and four video screens which are essential visual elements of the show, together with the general lighting and video. Production manager and lighting director on the road was Michael Stanley. Chris Lisle explained that from the initial meetings with Young and…
After a nearly 10-year hiatus, the Jonas Brothers have embarked on a new world tour, which will play 74 dates in North America and 16 in Europe, in support of their fifth studio album. Accompanying the Happiness Begins tour were some 200 Ayrton Khamsin LED profile fixtures. Burbank’s silentHOUSE provided the lighting design and tour production for the show, which features a curved LED videowall at the back of the stage, an LED floor and a talent walkway to VIP seating. “The show’s lighting design works in tandem with the video production,” said silentHOUSE CEO and producer, Baz Halpin. “The…
Held in the city of Cluj, Romania, which is in the heart of Transylvania, the UNTOLD festival is a unique, enchanting mixture of sights, sounds, smells and adventures. This year’s festival was held from 1 – 4 August and attended by more than 400,000 music lovers. The fantastic line-up of musical stars included Robbie Williams, Afrojack, Armin Van Buuren, Steve Aoki, Nicky Romero, Bastille and Fedde Le Grand, to name just a few. UNTOLD’s vision for their 2019 festival followed the worldwide trend of creating a larger and more impressive performance area than in the past, and testing the loading…
Elation Professional has offered three new luminaires in its Paladin series of versatile wash/blinder/strobe lights. The Paladin Cube, Paladin Brick and Paladin Panel – all with IP65 protection – are compact and powerful outdoor flood lights useful for a wide variety of applications from stage/set washes to dynamic uplighting and eye candy effects. Using 15W RGBW cells – 9, 24, and 50 respectively – they add vibrant colour to outdoor events while individual cell control and strobe make them flexible effect lights or audience blinders. RGBW colour mixing gives a full spectrum of colour options, including high-impact white light, for…
The Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) is an international music festival held in August of each year in Pesaro, Italy, the birthplace of the opera composer Gioachino Rossini. The festival – and its technical team – have always paid close attention to technical innovation, often leading new trends in the field of operatic lighting. “Here we’ve experienced the whole journey of theatrical lighting, starting forty years ago with analogue systems, incandescent or discharge sources. Then there was the transition to digital, the advent of the scroller, the first scanners, the yoke, the moving head and now we have LEDs used to…
This year Visarno Arena, in Florence’s Parco delle Cascine, hosted Decibel Open Air, following the huge success reached in 2018. The show, organized by Decibel Eventi, confirmed to have become an important reference point among large international music events. Over 30 performers from the international EDM scene performed on the two stages, with Holland’s Armin Van Buuren as the headliner, probably one of the world’s most influential EDM DJs. To ensure the thousands of fans a unique sonic experience, Tuscan rental company Emporio On Stage from Scandicci equipped the two large stages with Outline GTO sound systems. The hurdles to…
Solid State Logic (SSL) has announced the appointment of Provision AVL as their Live Sound product distributor in the U.A.E., KSA, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. Formed in 2014, Provision AVL have grown their reputation as a sales and distribution company in the Middle East, representing premium brands including Prolyte Group, Chauvet Lighting, Clair Brothers Audio Systems, Admiral Staging, and Le Maitre Effects. The move to distribute SSL’s Live range was an obvious choice as Provision AVL’s MD, Kevin Boujikian, explained: “Back in my college days, the first and foremost audio console brand discussed around our Audio Engineering classes was Solid…
The seventh Ubud Village Jazz Festival (UVJF) was staged at the Arma Art Museum in the Bali Uplands, Indonesia, welcoming a host of local and international artists. As the event has gained status in the jazz world, the production values have steadily increased. This year event curator Yuri Mahatma gave a clear brief about the ambience he wanted to see and achieve on all of the stages, which was interpreted by set designer and artistic director Klick Swantara who also co-ordinated the production lighting design for the main ‘Giri’ Stage. This involved several Robe lighting fixtures – with 24 x…
Stage Audio Services’ (SAS) 15-year-long relationship with the Shambala Festival in Market Harborough continued over this year’s August Bank Holiday weekend—but with something of a difference. While they again deployed the full-sized Martin Audio MLA that they had acquired in time for last year’s event, the festival coincided with the birth of system engineer/crew chief Nat Hopking’s daughter Mila. This necessitated giving colleague Phil Warwick a crash course in MLA technology before he raced back to welcome his new-born. “I literally set up the system, put the presets into the Preset Loader and having done a training session, handed over…
Cashless and NFC specialist PlayPass enjoyed a record-breaking summer, operating at over 250 events across 22 countries across five continents and processing 12.82 million cashless transactions, worth €78 million Euros. Globally, 2019 has seen the company grow its event roster by 40%, May-Sept 2019. The UK has seen the sharp end of this growth curve, with a 400% increase in events embracing the company’s event tech solutions. This year saw PlayPass deliver more than 80% of the UK’s commercial cashless and RFID festival activations, reinforcing its position as the market leader and building on a solid four-year track record for…
To drive Mark Knopfler’s Down The Road Wherever Tour 2019, lighting director Tellson James, used High-End Systems Hog 4 lighting console. The ten band members backing the former Dire Straits frontman collectively played 49 instruments from guitars and whistles to saxophones and fiddles, thereby offering lots of “sound textures” to light. “I’m doing lots of pixel mapping of the eye candy in this show,” James noted, “and the Hog 4 is great for that. It is so easy to do on a Hog.” This was James’ second time as lighting director for Knopfler. Lighting Designer Mark Henderson drew the lighting…
Powersoft, the lightweight and energy efficient amplifier platform, announced that it has appointed industry veteran Tom Knesel to the position of General Manager, North America. Knesel, who will be located at the company’s US headquarters in Kearny, NJ will report directly to Luca Giorgi, Sales & Business Development Director of Powersoft. The announcement follows the successful relocation of Powersoft’s North American headquarters two years ago, and coincides with the company’s increased focus on the systems integration market and launch of the Mezzo amplifier platform earlier this year. “We are very pleased to welcome Tom into the Powersoft family,” commented Luca…
Continuing to build upon their line of next-generation LED luminaires, Altman Lighting has announced the new Siren Series AFS-500 and AFS-700 followspots. Designed to be a powerful yet economical solution for any theatrical design, the new Siren Series followspots provide the full functionality of a traditional followspot but are packed with powerful new feature sets and operator enhancements. “Understanding the need for high-performance LED luminaires in today’s theatrical environments, we are very excited about the introduction of our new AFS-500 and AFS-700 LED followspots,” said Nicolas Champion, Altman Lighting Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “Along with the recently released…
The German-based rigging company Litecom, which has its roots in Denmark, has invested in the new Dynamic Stack Track System (DST) from the well-known Italian chain hoist manufacturer EXE Technology. DST is a traverse system with integrated rails to move, lift and rotate any object. “Scenic movement will certainly be the future of upcoming tour productions. With the DST system, we invested in a scalable system solution that gives us the opportunity to best meet the growing demands of everyday touring. The comprehensive DST product portfolio offers many possibilities for scenic movement. I have been on the lookout for a…
American rock band Halestorm was out on the road with a lighting system supplied by Bandit Lites, blasting audiences with both lead singer Lzzy Hale’s powerful vocals and a deluge of light that matches the ferocity and energy that the Grammy-award winning band is known for around the world. The tour also wrapped a co-headling tour with Alice Cooper and was out with Godsmack on a fall run. “As the co-headliner, we had access to the whole air package, however, Alice Cooper had a large set piece that needed to be covered,” said lighting designer Craig Richter. “We had to…
With its 400 lighting fixtures and video panels, the 103 universe main stage rig at this year’s Made in America festival packed an intense punch. That was very fitting, given that it was located at the foot of the Rocky Steps outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But like the famous underdog pugilist, the Rocky Stage rig drew its power from something other than size. “This was our boldest rig yet, but ironically we used a little less gear overall this year than in the past,” said Patrick Dierson of The Activity, who oversaw production on this, and two of…
