At the recent Toys “R” Us holiday parade, two compact 7-foot-highMeyer Sound MILO arrays—each with only three MILO high-powercurvilinear array loudspeakers—were used to provide sound up anddown a mile of New York City streets.
“MILO proved to be the perfect tool for the job,” said the event’ssound designer Jim van Bergen of Audio Art Sound says. “I was askedonly to cover about a quarter mile on either side of Times Square, butwe easily doubled that distance. My clients were surprised at the smallfootprint of the rig, yet the sound was superb. I received numerouscompliments on the quality of the sound.”
The two ground-stacked arrays were rolled out into their positionsin New York’s Times Square only minutes before the parade started. Onestack pointed north, projecting up Broadway as far as 52nd Street,while the other fired south and was heard clearly about 10 blocks inthe other direction, below 35th Street. Each array comprised three MILOcabinets stacked on top of an M3D-Sub directional subwoofer, with theentire assemblage rolling on the stock M3D transport dolly. At theconclusion of the parade, the MILO-based system provided primaryreinforcement for an hour-long entertainment program featuring numerouscartoon character puppets, musical excerpts from hit Broadway shows anda performance by the Radio City Rockettes. Supplementary sound for theimmediate performance area (bleachers, in-fill) and monitoring wassupplied by 22 UPA-1P compact wide-coverage loudspeakers.
Van Bergen’s sound design also encompassed the parade itself, with14 self-powered Meyer Sound loudspeakers incorporated into variousfloats and vintage vehicles. The event’s producers stipulated that allaudio systems must be completely independent of the vehicles and usingonly their own power sources. On most vehicles, the Meyer systems werepowered by special Gaia Power Cube battery packs. However, for onevehicle with particularly tight space restrictions, van Bergenspecified a pair of UPM-1P ultracompact wide-coverage loudspeakerspowered by a rechargeable power that measured 4×6 inches and weighsjust over two pounds.
“I contacted Meyer about this particular problem, and Meyer’sengineering delivered a spectacular prototype, two custom UPM-Ps eachwith a rechargeable battery power supply,” said van Bergen. “They arecompact, robust units built with to the high standards of John Meyerand they performed flawlessly. The children’s TV character Clifford theBig Red Dog rode on the back of a tiny, cherry-red MG convertible withtwo bucket seats. I barely had room to get the two UPMs in the vehicle,but still the battery packs were small enough to squeeze in on theside. They fired up and out to the sides of the vehicle at near fullvolume, putting about 94 dB into the crowds on the sidewalk.” VanBergen said that he wasn’t concerned about the UPM loudspeakers runningout of juice, as his earlier shop tests had them working constantly formore than eight hours.
All of the Meyer Sound system components were provided by One DreamSound of New York, with general supervision and coordination by ownerDave Ferdinand and COO John Petrafesa. Company president Tim Coylecontributed to development of the Gaia Power Cubes, and “A2” systemsengineer David Chessman managed on-site support. “One Dream was myprimary vendor and both their equipment and support were first rate,”said van Bergen.
For more information, visit Meyer Sound online at www.meyersound.com
