Meyer Sound M'elodie at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Allen Room

The Allen Room, one of three live music venues at New York City's Jazz at Lincoln Center, has installed a Meyer Sound M'elodie line array loudspeaker system to satisfy a variety of events spanning from jazz and blues concerts to the TIME 100 Gala, and, most recently, Anderson Cooper's new syndicated show, Anderson.

The intimate Allen Room, with a capacity just shy of 500, boasts the spectacular backdrop of Central Park South. "We do a lot of jazz concerts," says Doug Hosney, director of production at Jazz at Lincoln Center. "It may be a big band, a solo, a small jazz combo, or a blues concert," he explains. "Many of the instruments sounded great acoustically, but we needed to lift the piano or the bass a little bit. We needed a way to do that as transparently as possible so they blended with the acoustic energy in the room. We also needed something very musical that had the right texture so that it would blend with acoustic instruments; as well as handle a totally amplified performance. Our goal was an accurate representation of what was happening in the room."

"We listened to several systems over the course of almost a year," Hosney continues. "Overall, the Meyer Sound system delivered the highest quality and served all of our needs. The one event that probably clinched it for me was an impromptu appearance by Arlo Guthrie: It was perfectly seated right where it belonged, yet it was clearly amplified and you could hear it everywhere."

The installed system includes two arrays of eight M'elodie line array loudspeakers and two 500-HP subwoofers each, with two more 500-HP subwoofers situated on the floor. Two UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers provide reinforcement to each side of the mezzanine, with two each UPJ-1P loudspeakers serving as front fills and a center reference between the arrays. Six UP-4XP loudspeakers are placed on the front edge of the stage. A Galileo loudspeaker management system with a pair of Galileo 616 processors provides system drive and processing.

All performances produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center are recorded for broadcast on SiriusXM satellite radio and on Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio. Many performances are also broadcast on Newark, N.J.-based radio station WBGO. The Allen Room also houses a Soundcraft Vi6 digital console, and a full complement of microphones including models by AKG, Neumann, DPA, and Earthworks.