PARIS — French actor and humorist Jamel Debbouze decided to open Jamel Comedy Club in Paris to create opportunities for up-and-coming comics and to host a range of musical performances. When choosing a sound system for the new venue, the criteria included intelligibility for the jokes and full-range fidelity to accommodate musical acts, while using a system with a small profile to preserve the sightlines. Marc de Fouquières of Paris’s Best Audio implemented a Meyer Sound system based on the compact UPJunior VariO loudspeakers.
“UPJunior sounds like a studio monitor,” declares de Fouquières. “It’s small, but powerful enough, very accurate and efficient, with virtually no distortion. It’s incredible.”
The room is modest in size, only 10 meters wide and 30 meters deep, with a ceiling height of six meters. Using Meyer Sound’s MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction program, de Fouquières settled on four Meyer Sound UPJunior loudspeakers as the primary elements. Two are suspended left and right above the stage, with a second pair four meters farther into the room, one meter away from the sidewalls.
Low frequency is provided by a pair of M1D-Sub subwoofers, flown above the front of the stage in a directional array. “The M1D is a small cabinet, and we needed the maximum additive output,” explains de Fouquières. “The directional configuration maximizes the energy on axis, giving us 6 dB more output.”
Four UPM-1P loudspeakers complete the system. One pair resides on the stage, aimed at the performer in a 60-degree crossfire configuration with tweeters on the bottom to minimize the risk of feedback. This provides both monitoring for the comics and frontfill for the audience. The other two UPM-1P loudspeakers are hung in the bar area in the rear of the hall.
A Galileo loudspeaker management system provides three-zone time alignment to maximize intelligibility in Jamel Comedy Club’s small, reverberant space. This affords the engineer individual control of each zone, which is critical when working with comics who range from very loud to very quiet.
Laurent Ballin, the resident sound engineer of the Comedy Club, feels that the system is perfectly calibrated for the job. “Often, an invited soundman comes in and spends a long time searching for the subs. They wonder how such a small PA can produce this distortion-free, loud and impressive sound,” says Ballin. “But what they like the most is the even coverage and excellent sound quality that it gets out front, without fail.”
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