Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s love affair with Meyer

The Concert Hall at Queensland Performing Arts Centre

The prestigious Queensland Performing Arts Centre has just bought 96 more Meyer speakers. Four production staff, with different jobs at QPAC, reveal why Meyer makes their work easier.

With four venues and over 700 acts a year, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre finds that Meyer is the perfect system.

Versatile, dependable, consistent, great reputation. These are some of the words that four top production services managers at the QPAC used to talk about Meyer. Each man has a different job, but Meyer makes his work easier.

Executive manager Richard Stuart is interested in efficiency, logistics and the bottom line. Events manager Keith Borrows needs venues with gear that gives potential clients confidence. Audio/visual operations manager Blair Marks wants to build and operate world class sound systems, and audio/visual manager John Kelly wants happy clients and patrons. As they showed me around the centre, all four seemed genuinely delighted with their Meyer experience, and without any prompting, were keen to talk about their “love affair with Meyer.”

Set in the Southbank Parklands five minutes from the Brisbane city centre, QPAC has the 2000-seat Lyric Theatre, 1800-seat Concert Hall, 850-seat Optus Playhouse and 335-seat Cremorne theatre.

QPAC has bought CQ-2s, CQ-1s, UPAs and UPMs as a basic system for the 2000-seat Lyric Theatre. MSL-4s, PSW-2s, CQ-2s, UPAs, UMs and UPMs are for a standalone system in the 1800-seat Concert Hall. UPAs, UMs, UPMs and USW-1Ps are for the 850-seat Optus Playhouse, UPAs and UMs for the 335-seat Cremorne Theatre. The resourceful audio team at QPAC did their own sound design and installation for each venue.

The Meyer comfort zone

“We deal with a lot of international and national companies,” said events manager Keith Borrows. “As soon as they hear the word Meyer, they’re at ease. You can hear them relax. It’s a comfort zone. When you announce that you are running that standard of equipment to the production managements who are touring those companies, they don’t stress about having to get in extra gear to make the show sound better. There is no need.”

Audio/visual manager John Kelly added, “That tends to annoy local hire companies a bit as our venue equipment allocation is generally more than adequate, so they don’t get any extra equipment hire.”

Quick turnarounds and high quality

“With Meyer, we have the top end industry standard, and standardisation across all venues, so there are great efficiencies from a staff, maintenance, and training point of view. There is similarity and familiarity,” said executive manager Richard Stuart. “Our business is very much about getting shows in as fast as possible and turning them around as fast as possible. That has always been the driving force from our director. It’s money, and because our rental structures work off percentage of tickets sold, it’s very important to us to keep the doors open. Anything we can do to turn the venues over quickly, to get yesterday’s show out and the next show in as efficiently as possible, is advantageous.

“We’ve been working through this process, driven primarily by the cost of servicing equipment, depreciation, that sort of thing. Across all departments, we need to provide workable facilities equipped to satisfy high levels of demand by the state funded companies particularly – the opera, ballet, orchestra, theatre, contemporary dance, so that they can do the best possible work.

“We also recognise that there are so many fads, as well as bells and whistles out there, we can’t keep up with it. Big touring companies will want a certain light, or sound desk. It’s pointless trying to compete there, because we’d just be over equipped and over resourced. With Meyer speakers, Midas desks, and BSS Soundweb drive, we’ve got what’s accepted world wide as high end industry standard equipment, and that’s our base work plan. We’re going forward into the new century with completely new equipment, and that gives us a good edge in a time when the industry is very competitive.”

When QPAC was built in 1985, it had the advantage of being a brand new complex. Now, 16 years later, there is fierce competition from at least six other Brisbane venues. “It’s terribly important that we are up there again with the most flexible and affordable venues,” Stuart said. “And we are certainly getting feedback from our regular hirers that the new equipment and Meyer systems are really working for them.”

In the last few years, sound has become much more important in theatre works. “The theatre and dance companies are commissioning sound designers and sound scape artists to create wrap around sound scapes which enhance drama,” Stuart continued. “Many plays now have live or taped music, and they are pleased with our Meyer venue allocation. It means no extra hire.”

Consistency

For audio/visual manager John Kelly, sound consistency is vital. “Because the Meyer speakers are self-powered and self-processed, you’re guaranteed consistency,” Kelly said. “For example, when someone specifies a UPA-1P, they know it will sound the same in Brisbane as in Stuttgart or LA. With other speaker systems that aren’t self-powered, if someone uses a different sort of amplifier, or different sort of processor, it’s going to sound different.

“International touring people around the world light up when we say Meyer is our standard allocation, because they know what Meyer sounds like.”

For Keith Burrows, having a Meyer system across all four venues means, “peace of mind for the client, but it’s peace of mind for us too. There’s enough turmoil trying to make the venues work as hard as possible when you know you have to deliver that standard.”

“Since buying the Meyer range, we’ve found that the swapability is even better than we thought,” Kelly said. “For example, last night at the [French jazz group] Jacques Lussier trio, all the foldback were UPMs. We bought eight UM-1s and UM-100s for the Concert Hall. We let them all out to the BCC [Brisbane Convention Centre] and they came back late. But it didn’t phase anybody because the little jazz trio were much happier with the tiny little UPMs – they’re discreet, they sound great.

“Every rider that comes into the place usually lists Meyer. You make your life hard if you have something that people are not so willing to use.”

The Concert Hall

For executive manager of production services Richard Stuart, Meyer performance and configuration flexibility means that QPAC is equipped for a range of clients; international shows, Queensland-funded companies, plus national and state touring companies. Then there are local events, such as two university graduation ceremonies, and elaborate school productions.

“We launch a huge amount of product that then goes off to festivals all over the world,” Stuart said. “The Concert Hall has to be a flexible, all purpose venue. We can’t afford to have a concert hall sitting there for orchestras two or three days a month. So the rest of the time, it’s doing everything else.”

The Concert Hall has always been highly regarded as a venue for choral and orchestral works. It has wooden floors, parallel walls and flat concrete surfaces, so turning it into an amplified venue was challenging for the QPAC team. As well as 1060 seats in the stalls, the balcony holds two side boxes with 198 seats, and a choir balcony around the stage with 215 seats.

The audio team wanted to have flexibility of control and speaker positions to cover all the little intricate spots that needed extra coverage for the spoken word.

“The intelligibility of the spoken word has always been a problem in the Concert Hall,” Stuart said. “Now with the new Meyer system, we are addressing it from every conceivable angle to cover every seat. The aim is to have every seat with pure quality sound, when we’re doing amplified sound and particularly spoken word.

“For events like graduations, we have people sitting completely around the stage. We had Bryn Terfel playing in the round. It puts a big demand on the sound guys to have the flexibility to be able to juggle between different types of shows. We do a nightly turnaround and the Concert Hall averages about 20-25 days a month in performance.”

The whole of the QPAC AV dept had input to the design of the sound systems. “The Hall is a difficult room, it can be very tricky to manage with reinforcement,” Kelly said. “To fix it, we needed very accurate dispersion with a long throw. The Meyer line arrays were just too big to hang there. We selected MSL-4s from the range of available speakers.

“Also, you can’t put subs on the floor in there because the pit void acts like a bass trap. So we decided to use the PSW-2, a flyable sub which doesn’t interfere with the room at all. It’s up high, and omni as it is, causes no trouble.”

The new Meyer fitout comprises MSL-4s, PSW-2s, CQ-2s, UPAs and UPMs. Plate speakers for the sides of the stalls have been replaced with UPMs, built in to cover every discrete area along the rear and sides. “Our biggest challenge was to rig the UPMs so that they could cover every seat, and go around the choir stalls,” Kelly continued. “Each discrete bank of about 20 seats now has one little speaker covering it. The narrow beam angle and the narrow dispersion characteristics of the MSL-4 are ideal for the stalls and balcony. With the choir rear and side balconies, we went for near field monitoring effectively by using the UPMs upclose. Instead of firing the sound from a great distance from the centre into three rows of seats [in each box], we just set a UPM just above the audience in each box. The UPMs face down and throw sound directly into the seating below. That minimises the bounce off all the concrete everywhere else. This difficult room required accurate and careful dispersion design of Meyer speakers.

“The CQ-1 in the centre of the ceiling is for the balcony and replaces six EM25s. In a single column of PSW-2s and two MSL-4s, Blair has delayed the box underneath the box on the top by a miniscule amount. The point source in this room is the top centre cluster box, and everything is aligned from there. It’s very coherent.

“QPAC and the Victorian Arts Centre have complete Meyer installations. It really helps when two of the leading concert halls in the country get the same product, particularly for the touring circuit, such as orchestras and musical groups. Both have Soundweb, Midas consoles, and Meyer speakers.”

We walked through some of the sleek carpeted foyers with views overlooking the river and the rainforest. QPAC brings in the UPAs and UPMs for the range of functions in the many foyer spaces.

In the scenery dock, senior sound tech Blair Marks showed us how he rigs the MSL-4s. “It’s just a matter of lifting the top box and hooking it on, it’s very simple and quick,” Blair said. “Two people can do it in the Concert Hall, one drives the motor, and the other person just hooks the boxes, plugs in the cables, and up it goes. It takes less than 20 minutes to hang the entire PA.”

Marks who has mixed bands like Moving Pictures and The Delltones, is inventive when it comes to using sound systems. He configures the MSL-4 stack with the sub riding on the top, and the mid high boxes below with the horns together. “It gives us an even coverage through the stalls and balcony,” Marks said. “Meyer MSL-4s point downwards within the box itself a little bit. So if you put the horns together, it gives you more vertical dispersion, and it helps with the definition of the horizontal dispersion. It defines the outside edges of the sound focus a little bit if you like. It works really well because the box is defined and focused.”

One of QPAC AV department’s little helpers is a home grown invention, the hybrid cable. “We wired power and two audios in one cable, configured so that they cancel any hum out. It increases the efficiency of the setup time, because we are running only one cable. The boxes fly together, it clips all together, the cables go on, and it goes up into the roof, all in 20 minutes,” Marks said.

Lyric Theatre

QPAC has bought CQ-2s, CQ-1s, UPAs and UPMs as a basic system 2000-seat for the plush Lyric Theatre.  Twenty UPM-2Ps are rigged along the balcony front on four levels permanently on brackets, and another four UPM-2Ps are placed above the front arms of each balcony. Masked by the double proscenium, the balconies need their own fills.

John Kelly explained how the Meyer system works here. “The UPMs are so versatile. We bought them for front fill and under balcony delays, but they’re finding their way into more and more foldback applications, because they are so compact and really nice.

“Our rear auditorium inbuilt UPMs and under balcony delays are a great asset. Even for the major touring productions, if we have under balcony delay systems that they are happy with, it saves them an enormous amount of work.”

“It’s a great selling point,” Stuart said. ‘It helps keep a production time to an absolute minimum. A touring company just brings in the other special equipment that they need.”

John Kelly then elaborated on the appeal of the built in Meyer speakers. “System Sound is a production house from Victoria that handles a lot of the major touring musicals. We spoke to owner John Scandrett when we were in the throes of buying the new gear to make sure that it would suit him, and it did. It leads to savings every time he comes here.

“He can use a percentage of our standard allocation. That benefits us from the depreciation and asset management point of view. If we don’t show utilisation, we can’t hang onto gear.

“I’m happy that even in the Lyric Theatre, where most of the touring shows bring their own gear, they still use at least half of the standard allocation, because it’s compatible with what they install themselves. Our standard cluster is 5 UPAs and the balcony delay is 20 UPMs. That is something that John Scandrett would rig, if we didn’t have it. So it’s a win win situation.”

“The Lyric is a 2000-seat theatre, all with excellent sight lines,” Stuart said. “But when we have these add ons like Meyer speakers that are part of the deal, it makes the venue very desirable. We get great bonuses back in terms of additional revenue across the box office.”

Kelly added, “The universal acceptance of Meyer was one of the major considerations that led to the purchase. If Meyer is already under the balconies, that’s one less hassle for the production manager.”

“Meyer to us is like Steinway is to pianists,” Stuart said. “If they know that there’s a Steinway on the stage, they walk in and they’re comfortable. And it’s the same with Meyer – it’s pitching at an excellent level. We’ve held that level since we opened in 85, and we aim to stay there.”

Cremorne Theatre

“When we specified the speakers for this room, we wanted to cover every conceivable configuration, so we bought four UPA-1Ps, four UPA-2Ps, which double as foldback, 2 USWs, and four UPMs for rear of house,” John Kelly said.

“When I started in June 2000, the Playhouse was the only venue here fitted with self-powered Meyer. For the Brisbane festival, Todd McKinney did a cabaret act in here. So we brought forward the asset review purchase and fitted out the Cremorne theatre late last year. We had Bose in here, and when I heard that Todd McKinney cabaret act was coming in, I said ‘You’ll have to hire a PA because the Bose here can’t cope with it.’ They said they didn’t have the budget. I suggested bringing the asset review forward, because it was earmarked to have a speaker replacement. That was the first job lot that we bought – the UPA-1Ps for FOH, USWs for subs, and the UPA-2Ps for foldback for Todd McKinney. In the last round of upgrades, we bought the UPMs for rear of house. It was very timely for us to get eight UPAs and 2 USWs into the building at that time.”

Optus Playhouse

Acoustically the Playhouse, used for dance shows and drama, is a beautiful room, nice and “dead”. Three years ago QPAC built “stage five”, which includes the Playhouse studios 1 and 2, and a function room. Bruce Gentner (Projects Manager) and Blair Marks had a major input into the sound design of the space, and even had arguments with the acoustic consultant about live audio design and speaker placement.

The original Meyer fitout was two UPAs on the centre cluster, with UPAs one on top of the other for main left and right. They used UPMs for front fill and rear of house, and USWs. “We saw that everybody loved the system,” Kelly said. “It was the first time that self-powered Meyers were brought in, they worked beautifully in this room, and and the rest is history. In the original fitout, they bought 10 UPA-1Ps, two USW-1Ps, and two UMP-100s for foldback. That was the beginning of the self powered love affair.” 

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