Meyer Sound Laboratories - History

History

In 1979, John and Helen Meyer established Meyer Sound to produce reliable high-fidelity products for sound reinforcement professionals. Meyer Sound’s first product was the ACD/John Meyer studio monitor, based on a design Meyer developed while heading the acoustics laboratory at the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies in Switzerland.

A demonstration of the ACD system led to Meyer Sound creating a subwoofer for film director Francis Ford Coppola’s use with the custom, quadraphonic sound system that toured with the original 70 mm release of “Apocalypse Now.” This was the first loudspeaker to use a dedicated processing unit to provide crossover, amplitude and phase correction, along with driver protection.

Also in 1979, the company developed the UM-1 UltraMonitor, which led to a long association with the band Grateful Dead. As the band was very experimental, this relationship resulted in opportunities for John Meyer to try out new ideas for the then-emerging field of high-powered sound reinforcement in real-world applications.

The UltraMonitor was the first product to employ a new, patented horn loudspeaker design that reduced distortion by a factor of ten compared to previous designs. This patent was the first of more than three dozen issued to the company since its founding.

In 1980, at the behest of Broadway sound designer Abe Jacob, Meyer Sound repackaged the technology of the UltraMonitor into the UPA-1. This loudspeaker had an immediate impact on theatrical sound, but was also notable for its introduction of the trapezoidal cabinet shape, which enabled the construction of curved arrays (flat-front arrays, in common use at the time, result in substantial destructive interference). A patent was issued for this innovation. The UPA-1 was an inaugural inductee into the TECnology Hall of Fame.

Meyer Sound pioneered high-level loudspeaker arrays with the release of the huge MSL-10 in 1981, followed by the MSL-3, a single cabinet (essentially a “slice” of an MSL-10) configurable into arrays of nearly any size.

Expanding on the appearance of real-time, dual FFT analyzers, Meyer Sound introduced source independent measurement (SIM) in 1984. SIM allowed sound system operators to use music itself as a test source for the first time, enabling continuous sound system correction over the course of a performance. SIM System II, the second generation of this technology (and the first version practical for widespread field use), won an R&D 100 Award (awarded for the 100 best engineering feats in any field worldwide) in 1992, in addition to the TEC award the original system received in 1986.

Meyer Sound broke new ground when it introduced the HD-1 studio monitor, a fully integrated self-powered loudspeaker, in 1989. The HD-1 won at the TEC Awards in 1990 in the Transducer Technology category.

The release of the MSL-4 in 1994 marked the beginning of Meyer Sound’s production of self-powered loudspeaker systems for high-level sound reinforcement, and, over the following years, the company converted their entire loudspeaker product line into self-powered systems.

Meyer Sound Laboratories has participated and been featured in several episodes of the Discovery Channel series “MythBusters” involving sound. As a result, Meyer Sound acoustician Roger Schwenke has become an unofficial and irregular member of the MythBusters team.

The first MythBusters episode involving the company was “busting” the myth that a duck's quack will not echo. The second time was the infamous “Brown Note” episode, which explored the myth that a person subjected to high levels of very low-frequency sound could experience “involuntary intestinal motility." In the course of busting this myth, John Meyer became interested in the physical aspect of transmission of very low frequencies.

This, combined with Meyer Sound’s involvement with several revivals of the Sensurround motion picture system, directly influenced the design of the Pearson Theatre (named for sound reinforcement pioneer and longtime Meyer Sound associate Don Pearson) at Meyer Sound’s headquarters. The theatre was designed by Berkeley-based architects Marcy Wong and Donn Logan and has received an Architecture Merit award from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) in 2008 and a citation award from the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2009. The Pearson Theatre is notable for its exceptional low-frequency performance, cutting-edge video and audio technologies, multipurpose design, and experimental capabilities.

Three other MythBusters episodes involving sound tested the myths that a glass could be shattered by sound alone (confirmed), that a candle flame could be extinguished by sound alone, and that an SKS rifle could be made to fire by subjecting it to massive quantities of very low frequencies from a subwoofer.

In 2005, Meyer Sound acquired LCS Audio and launched its LCS Series of digital audio products. The first new development by Meyer Sound of LCS technology was Constellation electroacoustic architecture, launched in 2006. Constellation is based on the VRAS (Variable Room Acoustic System) technology first developed and patented by Dr. Mark Poletti of Industrial Research Limited. D-Mitri, a next-generation engine for the LCS Series, was introduced in 2009.

In 2008, the USITT presented Meyer Sound founders John and Helen Meyer with the Harold Burris-Meyer Distinguished Career in Sound Design Award. Also in that year, the John and Helen Meyer Scholarship was established in conjunction with the Escuela Superior Andaluza de Medios Audiovisuales (Superior School for AudioVisual Media) in Andalusia, Spain, and awarded to five students.

Meyer Sound also began making loudspeakers for cinema applications in 2009.