Interview with Steve Thorneycroft
Monitor Engineer, Stravinsky Auditorium

Since the early '80s Steve Thorneycroft, monitor engineer at the Stravinsky Auditorium, has played an integral part in productions at the world-renowned Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland.

"When I started 14 years ago the Festival was using an awful EV system," Thorneycroft said. "There were performers like Marvin Gaye using Yamaha Desks and engineers were doing their monitor mix at the front-of-house. When Meyer stepped in, it made an enormous change. Since then, the quality of the Festival's sound system drastically improved. Since John [Meyer] is coming at the Festival from the technical end, rather than the marketing side, he knows what it's like... The help we've gotten from Meyer has been great."

"With the Meyer self-powered system I've been able to monitor at a lower level on the boards as well as on stage," he said. "With the UM-1Ps I typically use a flat EQ on the board and graphics. It's an amazing system. The headroom is massive. It's an absolute dream as a singer."

So far, Thorneycroft said he hasn't heard a band a Meyer Sound system couldn't reinforce."

"And 99 times out a 100 we get good input from performers about the sound," he said.

"James Taylor's sound engineer was really taken with Meyer," Thorneycroft said. "The subs [PSW-6 ]were unshelfed and open-ended. He couldn't believe that he was hearing the actual subs!"

"The amazing thing I've come to learn over the years about using a Meyer system is that you don't have to add a thing," he said.