Daniel Lanois brought his artistic vision to Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square with an all-night multimedia performance and temporary installation entitled “Later That Night at the Drive-In.” Accompanying the layered video images and lighting effects was a Lanois-composed soundtrack of live and recorded music heard through 100 Meyer Sound self-powered loudspeakers mounted on 24 towers.
According to Lanois, “I’ve been dreaming about this for years. At some rock shows, if you’re not in the lucky first 30 rows, you don’t get full-fidelity sound. Here, no one gets a bad seat.”
System design was handled by Lanois’ longtime recording engineer and artistic collaborator, Mark Howard (left), who mixed the sound for the event through a 28.24 system. He devised a distributed, tower-borne layout using 12 CQ-1 loudspeakers and 60 UPA-1P and UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers to create 24 “sound pods” scattered throughout the square. Low end was provided by 20 650-P and eight 700-HP subwoofers, with system drive from a Galileo loudspeaker-management system that includes five Galileo 616 processors. All Meyer Sound equipment was supplied by the Toronto office of PRG.