Europe (June 9, 2023)—Metallica’s in-the-round production for its global, two-year M72 World Tour, which recently kicked off in Europe, incorporates a record 288 Meyer Sound Panther line array loudspeakers.
Two concerts are being presented at every tour stop, with completely separate music sets for each show. The celebrated “snake pit” has been relocated inside a ring-shaped stage, requiring four drum kits for Lars Ulrich to rise up with as needed. Also, the sonic field has been expanded to ensure a wide stereo spread of guitars and drums at every seat and standing point in the stadium.
“I’m always concerned about making all these new ideas work at scale,” admits the band’s long-time creative director Dan Braun, “but we have great partners to rely on, not the least of which is Meyer Sound, so, I never let things like practicality and logistics inhibit the creative process.”
Braun took his idea for the tour sound directly to company founders John and Helen Meyer, who captured his vision and assigned director of system optimization Bob McCarthy to design audio for the tour. “I told Bob that my goal was to have full stereo sound at every point with no overlap, from the center pit to the nosebleed seats,” Braun says. “We wanted everybody to hear the band as if with nearfield monitors, and I think we’ve come closer to that than ever before in a concert setting.”
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Braun credits the new Panther line array loudspeakers as a key component in realizing the ambitious concept: “The clarity of the system is breathtaking, and that combined with Bob McCarthy’s brilliant design is giving us a show that sounds spectacular.”
The system is deployed in three concentric rings and is connected, controlled and monitored over three Milan AVB networks via Galileo Galaxy network platforms. The outer ring arrays are suspended from eight towers, with two Panther arrays on each tower: 16 cabinets per array on the four long-side towers and 13 cabinets on the four short-side towers. Each tower also carries dual hangs of six-each 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements and one set of six VLFC very low-frequency control elements.
The inner system, suspended from a web over the stage, has eight hangs of seven-each Panther loudspeakers, providing stereo coverage out to 42 meters from center. The “doughnut hole” in the stage center is covered by eight inward-firing UPQ-D2 narrow coverage loudspeakers, while the outer side of the ring employs 20 Ultra-X40 compact loudspeakers as front fill. Ground sub-bass is powered by eight sets of 2x 1100-LFC elements around the stage.
Metallica’s veteran FOH mixer Greg Price describes the massive Panther arrays as “a PA system that acts like a reference monitor, like an Amie or a Bluehorn in the studio. I’m hearing things in my mixing that I always knew were there but lacked definition. Now they are right in my face, and I can work with them.”
