 |
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
|
IMAGES
|
Meyer Sound Self-Powered Line Arrays Prove Their Mettle on Hit Musical Tours
Once a Broadway musical hits the road as a "bus and truck" tour with a grueling schedule of split weeks and one-night stands, it imposes extraordinary technical demands, particularly on the sound systems. To meet requirements for exemplary audio quality, reliability, configuration flexibility, compact dimensions, and load-in and -out simplicity, sound designer Shannon Slaton devised a remarkably effective solution based on Meyer Sound M1D and M'elodie line array loudspeakers. Slaton's fundamental Meyer Sound-based approach has proven its mettle on six well-received tours—Hairspray, My Fair Lady, The Producers, Oliver!, Sweeney Todd, and The Wizard of Oz. Four shows are still touring with the systems, and another rig is slated for a Drowsy Chaperone tour starting in early 2009. "Hairspray was the first with this design and it's now out for a third year," notes Slaton. "It did exactly what I expected it to do, and the results on all of the shows since have been great." Meyer Sound line arrays—usually of the ultracompact M1D loudspeakers—are the keystone elements in Slaton's touring rigs. "It's critical to have even coverage across what can be a pretty wide room, and keep it up as close to the stage as possible," he says. "The M1Ds make that possible, but you still can throw back 60 feet or more to reach under some balconies." In the base configuration, Slaton normally specifies left and right arrays of nine M1D loudspeakers each, plus a center array of ten cabinets. Depending on the needs of the show and equipment availability, the low frequencies are anchored by pairs of 650-P, 600-HP or 700-HP subwoofers. Tower-topping pairs of CQ-1 and CQ-2 loudspeakers throw to the mezzanine and balcony seats, while a dozen or more UPM-1P and UPA-1P loudspeakers are assigned to frontfill, stage effects and foldback duties. Adhering to the same basic concept as the other shows, the system touring with Oliver! employs 16 M'elodie line array loudspeakers. "M'elodie is very effective when you need a big sound out of a little box," observes Slaton. "But I also love the transparency of the M1Ds. Voices come through sounding absolutely natural." Sound quality and coverage aside, Slaton praises Meyer Sound products for their reliability and generally road-friendly nature. "Because the loudspeakers are all self-powered, we have only a few small racks," he observes. "We fit everything in only a third of the truck, and we have a small backstage footprint." Typical production requirements stipulate no more than eight hours for load-in and four for load-out, but Slaton notes that these self-powered systems "normally take only four to six hours for load-in and are back in the truck in under two." One key to the quick turnaround is simplifying the signal flow. With Slaton's design, the self-powered loudspeakers are driven directly by the Yamaha PM1D or PM5D digital console, using the board's internal EQ and delay. "I strive for simplicity. I want my mixers to be out there with good sounding shows without constantly troubleshooting," he says. Such streamlined design depends on loudspeakers that don't require extensive signal processing to achieve the desired sonic quality. "If you don't like the way it sounds right out of the box, then you don't want to use it," Slaton says. "With Meyer loudspeakers, all I need is just a bit of gentle carving here and there, and I can do that with the parametric EQ in the desk." Of the current and forthcoming tours using Slaton's Meyer Sound systems, Sweeney Todd, Hairspray, Wizard of Oz and Drowsy Chaperone were produced by Networks; Oliver! was produced by CAMI.
December, 2008 |
FEATURED PRODUCTS |
