Digital Console Rental (DCR) took the opportunity presented by American country artist Brantley Gilbert’s Let It Ride spring tour to christen its new Meyer Sound Lyon linear sound reinforcement system.
The Nashville-based company used up to 12 Lyon-M boxes for main array hangs with four Lyon-W wide-coverage boxes for larger arenas with capacities up to 20,000, cutting this back to 12 Lyon loudspeakers in each array for smaller venues.
‘Brantley has been a DCR client for more than six years,’ says DCR owner, Howard Jones. ‘For the bigger arenas this year, we needed a lot of horsepower that would still fit into a tight truck pack. Lyon arrived just in time. The sound quality and the power-to-size ratio are absolutely the right combination for us.’
‘Lyon is extremely smooth and linear, and has power for days,’ says FOH engineer Andy Wacker,. ‘It just keeps on going. It’s also easy to work with—there’s no need to manipulate the sound, to pull tricks from up your sleeve. It’s all straightforward, so I can concentrate on my mix.’
The tour also carries 24 Mica and 12 Mina line array loudspeakers for out fill and front fill, respectively. Six 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements in cardioid or end-fired configuration provide low end, while a Galileo Callisto loudspeaker management system with two Galileo Callisto 616 array processors and a Galileo 616 processor handles drive and optimisation.
With only six 1100-LFC boxes up front, the audio team has been asked if the tour has enough subwoofers: ‘I just say, ‘Wait until you hear them,’ and that settles it,’ says Wacker. ‘The 1100s have an amazingly high output, and supply more than enough low end for the venue sizes we’re playing.’
The tour audio package also includes Avid Venue Profile consoles for FOH and monitor, while the band uses Shure PSM 1000 personal monitoring systems. A Shure UHF-R wireless microphone system with a KSM9H mic capsule is used for Gilbert’s vocal. DCR also supplied the tour’s lighting and video systems, with overall show design by Howard Jones. DCR’s system techs are Chris Wilhelm and Patrick Johnston.
‘Lyon is what I’ve come to expect from a Meyer Sound product,’ Jones adds. ‘It does all they say it will do, and more. For one thing, the new rigging hardware is exceptional – it makes the arrays so much easier to fly. The whole package is a great step forward for Meyer Sound, and for us.’
More: www.meyersound.com
