Meyer Sound Delivers Landmark Sound to Altanta's Fox Theatre

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"Demo-ing the system for the Fox people was what really drove home the deal. With this larger, more powerful system, they can now avoid renting production equipment for many of their more demanding shows." - Mac Johnson, Owner, NBS Production

Atlanta's "Fabulous Fox" Theatre may be a historic landmark, but it's still very much alive as an important Southeastern venue for both local and touring performances and events. The Fox has kept its classic 4500-seat auditorium appealing to today's audiences with a commitment to providing a first-rate entertainment experience, which it recently underscored with the installation of a new sound reinforcement system from Meyer Sound.

Mac Johnson, owner of NBS Production in Charleston, S. C., designed the new system's configuration and specified the Meyer Sound components. Johnson's assignment was to replace the existing proscenium loudspeakers for improved orchestra coverage, particularly in back under the balcony. To make the installation work, he needed a system with well-defined vertical coverage. At the same time, his design had to facilitate fast, easy re-installation after storage between events or during touring acts that use only their own gear. Additional criteria, Johnson recalls, included "cost-effective sound coverage, high SPL, and high customer confidence." Based on his experience providing sound systems for theatrical and orchestral tours and festivals, Johnson felt that a tight, controllable array was a natural solution. He settled on Meyer Sound's M Series, choosing M2D Compact Curvilinear Array loudspeakers for full-range reinforcement and M3D-Sub Directional subwoofers for the low-end. To calculate the array's components and angles, he used a combination of Meyer Sound's MAPP Online multipurpose acoustical prediction program and Autodesk's AutoCAD.

"I call it an 'inverted ground array,'" Johnson says of his design. "Most line arrays are flown, with the sub on the top. But these are line array stacks, consisting of an M3D-Sub on the bottom with five M2Ds on top." Before the approach was finalized, it was demonstrated on-site for the theater's board of directors and production staff in a show mounted by Muse Productions of Birmingham, Ala., and arranged by Meyer Sound. "Demo-ing the system for the Fox people," Johnson recalls, "was what really drove home the deal. With this larger, more powerful system, they can now avoid renting production equipment for many of their more demanding shows."

For setup, the array on each side is simply rolled into position under the proscenium arch, just downstage from the main curtain. Power distribution and system control are included in the rolling stack, Johnson says, allowing the sound operator to "hook up fast, fast, fast." When a run concludes, the arrays are rolled offstage and transported to the building's third floor. Custom castor plates allow the clearance required to fit through standard doorways and onto the elevators.

The Fox's transition to the Meyer Sound proscenium arrays was accomplished on New Years Eve 2002 with only about six hours of on-site installation work. Another eight hours was spent later tuning the integrated system (including the existing house cluster and delays) with Meyer Sound's SIM System II FFT analyzer. "Once installed, the array went to work immediately," Johnson says. "And the results with the new system are more than satisfactory. The house sound technician is pleased with the ease of set-up and strike. And, of course, everyone's very happy with the sound."

April, 2003

M2D

M3D-Sub

SIM II

MAPP Online