M'elodie was the spotlight attraction for three demo sessions staged on 9 June in one of the Orange County Convention Center's exhibit halls. Total attendance for the afternoon topped 450, with corporate AV and installation professionals finding time in their hectic schedules to hear what the "show buzz" was all about.
"Even with such a small footprint the M'elodie arrays sounded big and smooth, and had the same quality of sound as the Milos," remarked Will Lewis of Conceptual Engineering (Scottsdale, Ariz.). "The demo really showed off all of M'elodie's attributes."
"Before the demo we were trying to decide what to buy, but now we just want tons of M'elodies," announced Troy Jensen of Altel Systems (Brewster, NY).
Meyer Sound's Jim Sides served as emcee, with the technical presentation entrusted to the company's senior seminar instructor, the internationally renowned Mauricio "Magu" Ramirez. Veteran FOH engineer (and company tour sound liaison) Buford Jones mixed the program, which concluded with an energizing set by The Flock, a Latin band based in the Miami area.
To power the event, Meyer Sound technical support director John Monitto and tour manager Mark Frink, acting as systems engineer and production manager, respectively, for the occasion, flew twin hangs of 10 M'elodie cabinets each, with ample bottom end boost from a complement of eight 600-HP compact high-power subwoofers configured in two end-fired arrays. Frontfill was provided by M1D ultracompact curvilinear array loudspeakers; a Galileo loudspeaker management system drove all of the loudspeakers.
Jones mixed the festivities on a DiGiCo D1 Live digital console that fed the Galileo system. System performance was monitored continuously by a SIM 3 audio analyzer, while the RMS remote monitoring system kept an eye on the status of every loudspeaker. The RMS display was also projected on a screen for the audience to see.
All agreed that M'elodie's performance was astonishingly flat from 70 Hz on up. But some listeners were also attentive to the "bottom line". "The 600-HP subs were simply amazing," said Josh Weisberg of Scharff Weisberg in New York City.
Before and after the M'elodie demo sessions, Meyer Sound's booth on the exhibition floor hosted a steady stream of both the curious and the committed. A top draw at the booth was the interactive demo of the LCS Series Matrix3 audio show control system (including SpaceMap surround panning and Wild Tracks hard disk playback), with the Galileo system also pulling its share of attention. The surrounding loudspeaker complement reflected Meyer Sound's growing commitment to the AV market, with the spacious exhibit space showcasing (among others) the UPJ-1P compact VariO loudspeaker, the MM-4 miniature wide-range loudspeaker, and the UPA-1P compact wide-coverage loudspeaker decked out in its fresh new grille frame.
The InfoComm demos were part of a string of events Meyer Sound has been staging in the U.S. and Europe to introduce the new loudspeaker. Other M'elodie events have been held in Hannover and Wiesbaden, Germany; Amsterdam; Sevilla, Spain; and Paris.
(Chris Henry)
