AVFX Leads the Corporate A/V Pack with Meyer Sound
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Originally founded as Media One, Boston, Mass.'s AVFX is sneaking up on a quarter-century of supplying New England's corporate community with high-quality video and audio for their events. Strategically located in the city's Allston/Brighton district, AVFX is able to get to in- or out-of-town jobs easily. With clients like Medtronic, Philips Medical, IBM Software and TJX (the parent company of retail chain TJ Maxx), AVFX has gained a reputation for having the latest media technology, the know-how to use it, and the experience to understand how to best service corporate needs. AVFX has always stayed on the forefront of new technology and has pioneered emerging technologies, including light valve video projectors, video walls and plasma screens. When the Democratic National Convention was in Boston in 2004, it was AVFX that got the call to supply a 90-foot projection screen for it. Although much of AVFX's emphasis has always been on visual media (multi-image projection was the rage when the company started in the early 1980s), the company has also supplied sound systems for years. One of their long-time audio mainstays has been the classic UPA-1A loudspeaker, which AVFX started using many years before the self-powered UPA-1P became available. The versatility of the UPA-1A insures that those conventionally-powered legacy speakers not only remain in AVFX's inventory, but continue to see constant use. As AVFX continues to grow, the firm's Meyer Sound inventory has grown with it. Around four or five years ago, a dozen UPM-1P ultra-compact wide coverage loudspeakers were added and, early in 2005, AVFX acquired UPJ-1P compact VariO loudspeakers. This gave AVFX a solid arsenal of loudspeakers chosen specifically to meet the needs of the exhibit and meeting industries, but the rise of line array systems presented new possibilities for covering larger events. The market in Boston does not have the very large ballroom venues commonly found in the South and West of the U.S. A large-scale line array product would not have been optimal for AVFX, as most of the venues they work don't require large-scale systems and a big system would present greater storage and trucking demands. Audio Department Manager Jim Wilkens did his due diligence and looked around at all the options, but ended up concluding that, once again, Meyer Sound was the way to go. He approached company founder and owner Murray Lapides and requested not one, but two line arrays. Lapides did his due diligence, too, but his UPA-1As, still working hard day in and day out, presented a convincing argument for the value of Meyer Sound products. The decision wasn't really a hard one, as he explains: "A lot of our design philosophy here is that the technology should be invisible," Lapides points out. "The technology is not what's important at a corporate event; the message is what's important. A line array gives us more flexibility with speaker placement and hiding the technology. "The next point was our relationship with Meyer Sound," he continues. "They make a great product that's still performing for us after 20 years. Meyer builds extremely high-quality products that are designed for this industry." So, AVFX invested in a dozen M2D compact curvilinear array loudspeakers and another dozen M1D ultra-compact curvilinear array loudspeakers, as well as a pair of 700-HP ultrahigh-power subwoofers. "The M2D allows us to do large ballrooms and other things a bit bigger than what we've done before," says Wilkens, "while the M1D gives us the flexibility to have a line array on just about any size gig." In fact, Wilkens sees nothing but upsides: he can use the M2D and M1D arrays on separate gigs, he can combine them in arrays, he can use M2D for main arrays and M1D for fill, and so on. "Actually, I find the M1D useful for utility applications where I'm not even arraying them," Wilkens boasts. "We did a job at the Tremont Street Temple here in Boston where I put two M1Ds on the edge of a 40-foot balcony and they rocked. The balcony fill was one of the best parts of the system!" Wilkens also finds self-powering quite advantageous. "The self-powered aspect is good because if we rent from someone else we don't have to worry about their speakers sounding different from ours or having a different configuration. Conversely, if someone rents from us, they know exactly what they're getting." Self-powering also frees Wilkens and his audio department cohort, Steve Drappi, from the loudspeaker placement constraints imposed by having to deal with amplifier racks and their wiring. AVFX drives their new Meyer Sound arrays with the two LD-3 compensating line drivers in their inventory. Wilkens took the M2D rig to the Rockwell Cage Field House at MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) for its first test: the inaugural dinner for MIT's new president, Susan Hockfield. AVFX's challenge at Rockwell is to make a "supersized" gymnasium (four full basketball courts) look — and sound — like an event venue. "We used left and right M2D arrays of six per side, along with two 700-HP subs and four UPM-1Ps for frontfill," Wilkens details. "An LD-3 was used at front of house to drive the arrays for an audience of 1,500. "The coverage was very even from front to back of the 150-foot audience area," he continues. "Previously, we would have done this show with a distributed sound system with two rows of delays on 10 to 12 rigging points. The M2Ds went up very quickly with just two points. Gain before feedback was never a problem, and the M2Ds sound very good. That is the primary reason why we bought them." Lapides is looking forward to giving the new systems a good workout in the coming months. "We're seeing a much more robust corporate meeting schedule this fall than last. Corporate meetings require larger speakers, so the M2Ds certainly will see work there." Between the new arrays, subwoofers and their large collection of plasma screens, AVFX's shop is getting full, but Lapides is not worried. "It only gets really crowded when everything is here in the shop. And that never happens." August, 2005 |
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