• Young, good-looking and highly talented – Berlin-based Saint Lu is on the verge of a major breakthrough
• Her powerful mixture of rock and blues evokes at once memories of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin
• The producer of her debut album is multiple ECHO winner Patrik Majer (Wir sind Helden)
• Saint Lu and her backing group use Electro-Voice microphones

The annual BRIT Awards are as well renowned for their celebrity escapades – this year Liam Gallagher lobbed his microphone into the audience after accepting his award for BRITs Album of 30 Years for (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – as they are for honouring the very best in music. The antics do not, however, eclipse the performances and great audio is high on the list of production priorities.

The NAB Show, the annual conference and expo for professionals who create, manage and distribute entertainment across all platforms, has announced that Ray Kurzweil, one of the 21st century's most revolutionary thinkers, will headline a session entitled "The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Media, Communications, and Society." A discussion with Donald Marinelli, Executive Producer of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, will follow. The 2010 NAB Show takes place April 10-15, in Las Vegas.

About a dozen of private radio stations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland broadcasted the concert of Robbie Williams in Cologne live on 5th March 2010. Frankfurt-based Hit Radio FFH was in charge of the signal distribution and decided to use the fast and cost-effective solution with audio codecs over the available ISDN lines. Ten C1161 units have been supplied by MAYAH additionally to the station's own codecs for this event and were used to transmit the live audio with APT-X, MPEG-4 AAC, MPEG Layer 2 and Layer 3 (mp3) formats.

NewTek will host “Stream or Die: How to Capitalize on Portable Live Production,” an event bringing together top broadcast minds as they reveal the art and science of next-generation live production. The event will be held Tuesday, April 13 beginning with a cocktail reception at 5:30 p.m. PT, followed by the presentation from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. PT at the Renaissance Hotel (adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center).

The NAB Show offers an unparalleled line-up of sessions, exhibits and on-floor attractions to provide you with an in-depth look at the innovative trends in broadband-enabled distribution, content production, consumption and monetization of entertainment across all platforms, devices and applications.

Softel today announced that Showtime Networks Inc. is using the industry-leading Softel MediaSphere interactive television (iTV) playout platform to become the first television network in the United States to offer an ETV (EBIF) experience in HD with the integration and commissioning of MediaSphere TX at its network operation center. On Feb. 26, Showtime Networks first delivered an interactive EBIF application to Verizon FiOS subscribers on its flagship SHOWTIME HD channel. The application enhanced its live coverage of the Strikeforce Challengers Mixed Martial Arts fight card with rich, engaging content.

Once again, the Skywards Dubai International Jazz Festival took place in Dubai's Media City Amphitheatre. It was the 8th edition of the festival which featured artists like The Brand New Heavies, David Gray and James Morrison.

An MA Lighting grandMA2 light console and three MA NPUs (Network Processing Units) are being used to control 18 universes of DMX running all the lighting and a Catalyst media server for the 2010 "Strictly Come Dancing Live" UK arena tour. The tour's lighting has been designed by Mark Kenyon, who also lights the high profile BBC TV series which has constantly topped the ratings and is one of the most popular programmes in recent history.

The final grade for Lady Gaga’s controversial new pop video for her latest track Telephone was completed using Digital Vision’s Nucoda Film Master. The Chimney Pot post house in Sweden handled the visual effects, beauty work and sound de­sign. This is not the first time that the facility has created Gaga-wonders; last year it won an MTV Music Video Award for best visual effects for Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi video.

BBC Cambridge, a regional studio of the world-renowned broadcaster, has recently taken delivery of a Shotoku Broadcast 3-channel robotically controlled camera system. James Eddershaw, sales director for the camera support manufacturer made the announcement from Shotoku’s European headquarters located in Staines, UK.

Glen Johnson of i-Lite Ltd, Set and Lighting Designer for the current Will Young's “Greatest Hits” UK and Irish tour, is using 2 x grandMA2 light consoles to run the show's lighting. The two are networked together, with the first used as the main console, and the second running in full tracking backup.

Miss World 2009 saw another spectacular lighting design by Tim Dunn, who used a grandMA full-size console to control nearly 300 intelligent light fixtures, plus LED and generic lighting, altogether totalling 12,600 DMX channels across 24 active universes. He also triggered video content stored on an MA VPU (Video Processing Unit) from the desk, which fed an upstage LED screen, 12 x digital moving lights and 114 LED lights embedded in the set.

The Pandemonium Tour by much-loved British electro-pop duo The Pet Shop Boys is the first touring show to use Britannia Row’s “new” X-Line system, which has recently been turbocharged by the implementation of EV’s ground-breaking FIR-Drive (Finite Impulse Response Filters) technology.

The Challenge: For an internationally broadcast live event, provide a stadium-size lighting system that assembles and powers up in less than eight minutes.