Meyer Sound News : Queensland Performing Arts Centre Upgrades with Meyer

Queensland Performing Arts Centre Upgrades with Meyer

"Meyer Sound to us is like Steinway to pianists," he comments. "If they know there's a Steinway on stage, they walk in and they are comfortable. It's the same with Meyer — it's pitching at a level of excellence."

- John Kelly
Audio/Visual Manager, QPAC

Situated on the South Bank in Brisbane, Australia, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) has flourished as the cultural hub of this northeastern province. Between the grand opening of the complex in 1985 and the year 1998, the Centre's venues had offered a mixed variety of sound systems from various manufacturers. Over the past four years, however, QPAC has installed more than one hundred and ten Meyer Sound self-powered loudspeakers across all four performance halls in a move to significantly upgrade performance, overcome acoustic problems, and satisfy the rider provisions of major touring productions.

The first room to receive a full self-powered Meyer Sound system — and the only one to have it as original equipment — was the 850-seat Optus Playhouse, completed as part of an ambitious expansion program in 1998. Designed to accommodate everything from dance to drama, the Optus installation comprises ten UPA-1P Compact Wide Coverage loudspeakers, two USW-1P Compact subwoofers and two USM-100P Extended Range Wide Coverage Stage Monitors for foldback.

"That was the beginning of the self-powered love affair," says QPAC audio/visual manager John Kelly. "The new Meyer Sound systems worked beautifully in the room, and the rest is history."

Over the following months, Kelly worked with other QPAC technical and production managers to design and install Meyer Sound self-powered systems in the facility's three original venues: the 2000-seat Lyric Theater, the 1800-seat Concert Hall and the 335-seat Cremorne Theater.

According to Richard Stuart, executive manager of production services, consistent availability of Meyer Sound systems across all venues has underscored the facility's emphasis on quality and also has drastically reduced requests to hire in outside equipment.

In the plush and spacious Lyric Theatre, the Meyer Sound system employs a combination of CQ-1 Wide Coverage Main, CQ-2 Narrow Coverage Main, UPA-2P and UPM-2P Ultra-Compact Narrow Coverage loudspeakers. Five UPA-2Ps form the main cluster, with a total of twenty-four UPM-2Ps deployed as balcony and under-balcony fills. The Lyric caters to major touring productions and, says John Kelly, "if we have delay systems that they are happy with, it saves them an enormous amount of work."

The longer, narrower Concert Hall presents a different set of challenges for the sound system designer. "Intelligibility of the spoken word has always been a problem here," notes Richard Stuart. "Now, with the Meyer Sound systems, we are addressing it from ever conceivable angle to cover every seat." To direct sound into the seats without exciting the room, the QPAC design team devised a system comprising MSL-4 Horn-Loaded Long-Throw Loudspeakers and CQ-2s for long- and mid-throw, with multiple UPM-1Ps deployed in the "near field" to cover the boxes and choir stalls along the side and rear walls.

The Cremorne Theater, though the smallest of the venues, nevertheless was given the full Meyer Sound treatment. To accommodate every conceivable configuration, the Meyer complement includes four UPA-1Ps, four UPA-2Ps, two USW-1Ps and four UPMs for rear of house.

With Meyer Sound systems now deployed throughout the complex, QPAC managers are confident that each venue is now equipped to meet the most stringent technical requirements for audio. Summarizing the outcome of their three year upgrade program, John Kelly states: "International touring people from around the world light up when we say that Meyer Sound is our standard allocation, because they know how Meyer sounds.

October, 2002