SPOKANE, WA — The Spokane Opera House (Spokane, Wash) has remained in use since its Expo '74 debut, and through the years, the 2,700-seat venue hosted the Spokane Symphony subscription series, as well as events ranging from pop and country concerts to ballet, civic celebrations and, yes, even the occasional opera, but in the spring of 2006, the publicly owned venue was rechristened INB Performing Arts Center to reflect its corporate sponsorship from Inland Northwest Bank, and along with the name change, the venue was treated to extensive interior renovations, including a new system of 18 self-powered Meyer Sound loudspeakers. Mike Tucker, the venue's technical director, felt the recent audio refit was long overdue. Although the system had been upgraded piecemeal since the 1974 opening, it still fell short of what most touring acts now require — and what discriminating patrons had come to expect. "It was a mostly second-generation, mix-and-match system," Tucker says. "It couldn't supply the clarity and 'oomph' we wanted for most shows, so more often than not we had to bring rental systems in."
A rental system often chosen was a Meyer Sound rig supplied by George Relles Sound of Eugene, Ore. Though Relles's inventory includes a selection of M Series curvilinear arrays, for the Spokane venue he usually selected a system based on the MSL-4 loudspeaker. "The MSL-4 worked very well in there, and it was a good choice for the permanent system as well," Relles says. "The high vertical coverage needed relative to the throw distance would have required a long array. They didn't want a big banana hanging down."
The Spokane Symphony was one of Relles's first clients, and he has been invited back to the hall frequently over the past 30 years, so it was only natural that he be chosen to design and install the venue's new audio system. The two main clusters each use a two-by-two arrangement of MSL-4 cabinets, which provide balcony and rear orchestra coverage. On each side, two DF-4 dedicated downfill loudspeakers hang underneath for the orchestra front section. A single UPA-1P loudspeaker on each side covers the corners, while two M1D curvilinear array loudspeakers serve as frontfill cabinets. Two center-flown 700-HP subwoofers supply the sub-bass support. A Galileo loudspeaker management system.
"I downloaded the Compass control software the week before the Galileo arrived," Relles says. "When the processor arrived, I took a wireless router with me, hooked the Galileo system up, and tuned the room with it using a tablet PC." After installing the Galileo unit, Relles fine-tuned the system with the aid of a SIM 3 audio analyzer.
Tucker says, "Since we don't do extreme hard rock here, we can meet the riders of nearly all the touring shows coming in here. It's a finesse system rather than a horsepower system, though it does get quite loud."
For more information, visit www.meyersound.com.
