Oh look, the Danley love-fest has returned yet again to a non-Danley thread.
I attended the Meyer LINA demo in NYC, and unlike Justice and those at the event in the midwest, walked away pleasantly surprised. Rig was hung upstage in the Rose Theater, which is about a 1200 seat room that is tall and shallow - about 50' rise from first row orch to last row balc, and maybe 90' deep.
Content was a keynote presentation with talks from Meyer folks, a live jazz quartet performed on deck in front of the PA, and playback. It was 3x 750-LFC + 8x LINA per side flown, 3x 750-LFC on deck. They did various configurations with playback, but the majority of the event was just what was in the air. There was a short comparison at the end with the house rig, which is 11x LEOPARD per side and 5x 900-LFC center block cardioid, all flown. For the front end: SD10, and Sennheiser/DPA on the quartet (from what I could see). The quartet sounded natural - effortless, is probably the better description. You could easily hear the pedal changes on the piano, or when the bassist dug in a little more to the upright, or the dynamics of the drums from brushes to sticks. The vocalist, if you closed your eyes, sounded as if she was standing 3 feet in front of you.
I likely heard similar tracks from other demos, but the difference is I know the tracks - I know what they sound like, how they should sound through a PA, and most importantly, how they
shouldn't sound. The bottom line is this: LINA gives back what you put into it.
For anyone that's ever done a show in it, Rose Hall has a midrange "thing" - if you get too heavy into it with level, the room will come back at you. Did the demo get to that volume? A couple of times, and yes, with one of the Infected Mushroom tracks (with both LINA and the house rig). Did I expect it? Yes. Did it sound exactly like I expected? Yes.
As a comparison to MINA, the physical size of the box is where it ends. It's a different box - headroom, output, frequency response. For those that know Meyer products, MINA was the transition product between the M-series (MILO/MICA/M'elodie) into the LEO family. LINA completes the size range of the LEO family, and if I had a crystal ball I'd expect the MINA to become a legacy product next year.
The 750, for its size and weight, is very impressive. I'd like to hear it a bit more in other applications, but its a good compact sub.