Meyer Sound Review

Oklahoma Musicals Prompt Move to Meyer

What better place to establish a new program in musical theatre than at the University of Oklahoma? Rodgers and Hammerstein would applaud the idea! Sure enough, this popular course of study is earning rave reviews from students while residents of the surrounding town of Norman are flocking to the productions.

The ambitious new program, however, immediately overtaxed the capacities of an aging sound system in the university’s 600-seat Rupel Jones Theater. It was, to be frank, less than acceptable.

“The system was outdated and inadequate,” confesses Jerry Lewis, head of theatre design and technology for the school’s drama department. “It had hot spots and dead spots, and we were plagued by humming and buzzing.”

Sandor Sound Services of Branson, Missouri was engaged to come up with a system appropriate for first-class musical theatre presentations. Company president Ed Sandor quickly recommended a solution based on Meyer Sound’s self-powered systems. After his associate, Michael O’Connell, modeled the room and worked out coverage patterns, Sandor drafted a system proposal comprising a CQ-1 Wide Coverage Main loudspeaker and CQ-2 Narrow Coverage Main loudspeaker for each of the main left and right clusters, a UPA-2P Compact Narrow Coverage loudspeaker for center fill, and a pair of PSW-2 High-Power Flyable subwoofers. The equipment package was supplied by the Whitlock Group after open bidding, while Sandor supervised the installation and commissioning.

As to why he specified Meyer Sound products for the job, Sandor replies pointedly, “I just love the self-powered series loudspeakers. They are neutral and uncolored, and extremely reliable in demanding and stressful applications like this.”

Sandor observes that, with amplifiers and processing locked inside the cabinet, the Meyer Soundloudspeakers are immune to inadvertent damage by students new to the fundamentals of sound system operation. “It’s all locked away and this keeps the students from getting into trouble,” he notes. “I gave them an equalizer to play with, so they could learn what you can do with room EQ. But then they can hit bypass and get right back where they started.”

During the course of the project, Sandor and O’Connell had to do a quick re-thinking of their design when some asbestos problems surfaced in the 1960s-vintage structure.

“We were going to dead hang the speakers,” says Sandor. “But when that didn’t work out, we had to come up with an alternate solution using brackets attached to steel poles that were put in behind the hollow walls. Fortunately, the yokes supplied by Meyer made it very easy to hang and aim the speakers exactly as we needed to.”

To meet other needs of the new music-oriented program, Sandor also devised a flexible, multi-snake system which allowed the front of house position to be located in either the upstairs enclosed booth or a downstairs open-air location. The console and portable racks can be quickly moved upstairs or down, depending on the needs of the current production.

When the system was commissioned early in 2002, both Sandor and O’Connell were present when the Meyer Sound loudspeakers were fired up for the first time. “They came up sounding good right out of the box,” says O’Connell. “That’s important to me as a designer, because usually the guy who hired you is standing right there. He doesn’t want to wait until you’re done with all your tweaking. Those first few minutes can color his judgment for a long time to come.”

So far, the feedback from staff, students and community has been positive. “It does everything we hoped it would do and more,” says the University’s Jerry Lewis. “I know this may not seem much, but the best thing I can say about the Meyer Sound system is that people don’t notice it. It sounds so good that it’s just natural, like it’s not even there. And that’s a big relief after what we were dealing with before.”

Produced by Meyer Sound Laboratories | Copyright © 2002 Meyer Sound Laboratories | All rights reserved