- For Metallica, who has conquered the world a million times over, the goal for the new US tour is to provide its fans with something they have never experienced before. In support of the record-breaking Death Magnetic album released earlier this year, the grand masters of metal will be rocking arenas across North America in an in-the-round production with bone-rattling, yet amazingly clear and smooth sound reinforcement. Longtime collaborator Thunder Audio of Taylor, Mich. is once again tapped to provide audio support on this tour, with a system of close to 200 self-powered loudspeakers from Meyer Sound.
- The tour begins on October 21 with a grand kickoff performance at Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Ariz. “This is quite an innovative system,” notes Thunder Audio VP Paul Owen. “The entire design of the system is in-the-round, and we’re using fiber optics all around and no analog equipment anywhere to minimize cable management. We are very excited about the dramatic results the configuration provides.”
- The system design features eight equally spaced arrays, each consisting of 12 MILO line array loudspeakers and four MICA line array loudspeakers. Bass power is delivered by an innovative configuration of 40 self-powered 700-HP subwoofers which effectively provide uniform low-end coverage in the arena. This subwoofer configuration was designed by Thomas Mundorf of Meyer Sound using MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction program, and was deployed at Metallica’s Berlin and London record release events with very impressive results.
- “We’re pretty excited to get this whole system to work,” concludes Owen. “We tried this new subwoofer configuration on a couple of European promotional shows with unbelievable results. We’ve never been able to generate as much low frequency at a high SPL level equally placed throughout the whole arena with any other system we’ve used.”
- Twenty-four MJF-212A stage monitors provide monitoring. Processing is controlled by a Galileo™ loudspeaker management system with five processors networked in concert with the RMS™ remote monitoring system. Tuning of the system is handled using a SIM® 3 audio analyzer.
- Starting October 21 through February 2009, Metallica will perform in arenas in major cities throughout the US and Canada, with the last announced stop at Prudential Center in Newark, NJ.
Meyer Sound...www.meyersound.com
