Meyer Sound’s new Leo linear large-scale sound reinforcement system entertained an audience of an estimated 100,000 music fans at the recent Outside Lands festival in San Francisco – with a little help from Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Metallica and the Foo Fighters.

‘Faithfully reproducing music for 65,000 is no easy task, but the Meyer Sound Leo system this year did an incredible job,’ says Gregg Perloff, CEO of Another Planet Entertainment, the production company behind Outside Lands. ‘Legends like Neil Young and Stevie Wonder sounded better than I had ever heard them before.

‘Leo also made it easy for sound crews to do their job. Leo is definitely raising the bar for how live music should be appreciated.’

To cover the main audience area to a distance well past the first delay tower, more than 275 feet from the stage, sound provider Pro Media/UltraSound used two main arrays of 15-each Leo-M line array loudspeakers at one end of Golden Gate Park’s oval Polo Field. Bass was delivered through side arrays of 12-each 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements and a centre grouping of ten 700-HP subwoofers, all in cardioid configurations. Six Mica line array loudspeakers were used as downfills under the Leo-M arrays, along with dual out fills of ten Mica loudspeakers each.

Big Mick Hughes, long-time FOH engineer for Metallica, was mixing his first live show on a Leo system: ‘The Metallica kick drum uses a considerable amount of high frequencies in order to create the attack required,’ he says. ‘There are parts in the show where the volume of the kick can hit a typical system’s high-frequency limiters. To my amazement this was not the case with Leo – Leo is such a unique animal. I think it’s a really exciting time for people to be able to hear things in this manner for the first time. Leo is going to make engineers expect more from all speaker systems.’

Two delay towers (a second at 500 feet) each held 16 Milo line array loudspeakers as dual hangs of eight, while CQ-1, CQ-2, MSL-4, and UPA-1P loudspeakers were used for front fill, VIP stands and a VIP tent. System drive and alignment were supplied by a Galileo Callisto loudspeaker management system with four Callisto 616 and two Galileo 616 processors.

Pro Media/UltraSound also provided a full complement of Meyer Sound MJF-212A stage monitors, dual hangs of five Milo loudspeakers per side as side fill with a pair of 700-HP subs, as well as the Avid D-Show FOH console used by some opening acts. Additional headliner-supplied consoles were by DiGiCo (SD5, SD7, and SD8), Midas (Heritage 3000, XL-8) and Yamaha PM-5D.

Derek Featherstone, Pro Media/UltraSound’s VP of tour and rental division, headed technical planning and coordination. ‘We were all impressed with how quickly the system came together sonically and how much headroom there was,’ he says. ‘With this amount of power, the 1100-LFC had no problem keeping up with the Leo-M cabinets.’