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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => LAB: The Classic Live Audio Board => Topic started by: Al Rettich on November 07, 2017, 02:48:39 PM
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Was talking to someone just now who told me that his church spent quite a bit of money installing a product from Meyer Sound. He says it’s a wall dampening system that can make a room live, dead or a portion there of. I just spent the past hour searching Meyer’s website, google and now coming here. Anyone else know of this? He said it’s controlled by the CueStation which I found, but nothing on this. I want to learn.
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The description is not correct. It's not a wall dampening system. You change the acoustics with lots of small speakers:
https://meyersound.com/product/constellation/
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I assume it is the Constellation system, which Meyer acquired when they bought LCS.
It was basically their VRAS system (Variable Room Acoustic System)
It cannot make a room dead. It can only liven it up.
So the minimum "deadness" is your current room.
The goal of this system (and others in the same realm) is to make the room as dead as possible, so that you can add reverb/reflections as needed.
There are differences between the various systems, Some (like Constellation), can make the room as "wet" (probably 20 seconds if you wanted) as you want, while others can only take the room out to around 2x the natural reverb time.
The system consists of lots of microphones, speakers, amplifier channels, DSP etc.
It is quite amazing what these systems can do (and fool you into thinking you are in a particular room), But only when they are not trying to fight the natural room acoustics.
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I think he's referring to the Libra Acoustic Image System.
http://www.av-iq.com/avcat/ctl1642/index.cfm?manufacturer=meyer-sound-laboratories&product=libra
I looked at that for one of our restaurants. Of course they informed me that there was no money for it after I researched.
It looks lovely.
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I think he's referring to the Libra Acoustic Image System.
http://www.av-iq.com/avcat/ctl1642/index.cfm?manufacturer=meyer-sound-laboratories&product=libra
I looked at that for one of our restaurants. Of course they informed me that there was no money for it after I researched.
It looks lovely.
Is Libra controllable. What I have read is that it is custom designed for the room and acoustic result desired, no word about variable acoustics. The variable acoustics product is Constellation.
Mac
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He says it’s a wall dampening system that can make a room live, dead or a portion there of.
No mention of any kind of "control"
Libra is a passive acoustic treatment designed to allow for graphics or some other visually pleasing design.
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Is Libra controllable. What I have read is that it is custom designed for the room and acoustic result desired, no word about variable acoustics. The variable acoustics product is Constellation.
Mac
The wall dampening description made me think of Libra. That's the only Meyer product I can think of that would do that part. Constellation would handle the variable part. Maybe a combination of the two. That would certainly take care of the "quite a bit of money" part.
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Completely off topic but I don't see how there isn't something better that a church could spend money on(not sound related).
I'm fine with a church buying a Meyer system, but a constellation system seems a bit over the top, however I would never turn it down if it was approved for install, I mean anything that improves the service and it's a really nice toy although I haven't had the opportunity to hear it in action.
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Completely off topic but I don't see how there isn't something better that a church could spend money on(not sound related).
I'm fine with a church buying a Meyer system, but a constellation system seems a bit over the top, however I would never turn it down if it was approved for install, I mean anything that improves the service and it's a really nice toy although I haven't had the opportunity to hear it in action.
Being able to tune the reverb time of the room is a big thing in churches. You want to be able to hear the pastor during his sermon, but then you want a more lively sound for the worship band or the choir. And some churches do theatrical shows several times a year. So something like a Constellation or LARES type system makes a lot of sense for churches since they fulfill multiple roles depending on what they are doing.
Church A/V/L systems are big business.
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Being able to tune the reverb time of the room is a big thing in churches. You want to be able to hear the pastor during his sermon, but then you want a more lively sound for the worship band or the choir. And some churches do theatrical shows several times a year. So something like a Constellation or LARES type system makes a lot of sense for churches since they fulfill multiple roles depending on what they are doing.
Church A/V/L systems are big business.
Or in performance halls.
You could have it dry for a corporate meeting in the day, then really wet for an organ performance that night, or medium wet for some jazz.
You could also set it with different RTs for different orchestral pieces.
Beethoven likes it drier than Brahms.
Touch a button and a second or so later you are transformed into another space.
I have done several of these systems, and they can be quite stunning and believable.
One of the simpler-and most interesting (to me) was in a Choir rehearsal room.
The choir loft was setup just like in the large auditorium (2500 seats or so).
But it was very dry (small) in the Choir room, but when they sang in the auditorium, it was quite different.
I started by doing a bunch of polar ETCs (TEF) to determine where the main reflections were coming from in the auditorium, and RT measurements.
I then designed a system to "mimic" the large room, by placing speakers where the reflections were mainly coming from.
I spent a good bit of time going back and forth between the different rooms (on either side of a hallway) listening and doing little adjustments.
I was quite pleased at how well I was able to "copy" the sound of the large room into the smaller rehearsal space.
I also gave them a couple of "fun" presets, REALLY wet for example.
The system used in this case was my own "concoction" . it was magnitudes less expensive than the "professional" systems. My boss called the "BVERB" For Beaver Reverb
I was not trying to fool European Acousticians, but rather just fool some "Southern Baptists" ;) ;)
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Trust me I work for a church so I understand.
My rationale is: a $100000 spent on community outreach is money better spent for a non-profit then $100000 on a system that makes the room sound different depending on the style of music.
I would seriously ask questions about my membership at a church that will spend that kind of money unless the money was specifically donated for that purpose of course.
Sent from my 2014817 using Tapatalk
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Trust me I work for a church so I understand.
My rationale is: a $100000 spent on community outreach is money better spent for a non-profit then $100000 on a system that makes the room sound different depending on the style of music.
I would seriously ask questions about my membership at a church that will spend that kind of money unless the money was specifically donated for that purpose of course.
Sent from my 2014817 using Tapatalk
Just for reference, $100,000 would be a pretty small "enhancement" system.
They are not cheap.
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Just for reference, $100,000 would be a pretty small "enhancement" system.
They are not cheap.
Truth. The one we are looking at is over $1.2 million, for just the enhancement system.
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My rationale is: a $100000 spent on community outreach is money better spent for a non-profit then $100000 on a system that makes the room sound different depending on the style of music.
That's a philosophical question that doesn't really relate to the question of how to improve room acoustics.
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Truth. The one we are looking at is over $1.2 million, for just the enhancement system.
I have heard of one in a LARGE space that would probably add at least another "0" to that figure.
No details yet. I'm not sure if it will happen. It would be interesting, on MANY levels.
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Trust me I work for a church so I understand.
My rationale is: a $100000 spent on community outreach is money better spent for a non-profit then $100000 on a system that makes the room sound different depending on the style of music.
I would seriously ask questions about my membership at a church that will spend that kind of money unless the money was specifically donated for that purpose of course.
Sent from my 2014817 using Tapatalk
My previously unposted response was that any church that can rationalize paying for an artificial acoustics system can also pay property and income taxes, but that's another can o' worms.