The Stage

Bright ideas

Published Monday 18 September 2006 at 16:30

This year’s PLASA Awards for Innovation have been announced at a ceremony attended by Sir George Martin, recognising the breadth of design and development work going on across the industry. The eight awards went to: Avolites for the mDMX system, Dolby Laboratories Lake Technology’s Dolby Lake Processor, Global Design Solutions for the Blues System, Vieta KV2 Audio Europe’s So Line speakers and accessories, Pharos Architectural Controls for its Audio Visual Controller, TiMax Outboard’s Track The Actors (TTA) system, Volex Power Products’ V-Lock connectors and Wybron for the InfoTrace system.

As an illustration of the advances in technology recognised by the PLASA awards, TiMax Outboard’s award winning product comprises a TiMax Audio Imaging delay matrix driven by a Track The Actors (TTA) system. A Cordis Radio Eye is mounted above the stage and this receives signals from radio tags worn by each actor which are then fed via Ethernet to the TTA software. MIDI messages are sent to the TiMax software which sends level/delay instructions in the TiMax matrix to place the actors’ audio images in the appropriate position on stage.

Commendations were also given to the Adam Hall company for its adjustable top-hat and Sennheiser for both its A5000 Antenna and its Tourguide 2020D. No Environmental Award was presented this year, leaving the field open for suitably ‘green’ new products in 2007.