Meyer Sound returned as an active partner for the 49th edition of the Telluride Film Festival, held this past Labor Day weekend in Colorado, with the company’s cinema loudspeakers and supporting components installed at four of the event’s theaters. Meyer Sound has supported the festival for more than a decade.
“The continuing partnership between Meyer Sound and the Telluride Film Festival is a great example of how audio technology and the cinema arts can come together for the best possible audience experience,” says Julie Huntsinger, executive director of the Telluride Film Festival. “The creative possibilities of film sound have expanded enormously in recent years, and it is critical that we have systems here at Telluride that will faithfully reproduce what the filmmakers intended. The fact that Meyer Sound is a leading provider of monitoring systems to major film production studios gives us confidence that we are not compromising the aural experience for our audiences, even in temporary theater environments.”
The festival has ascended as a global cinema event in recent years and has presented eight eventual Academy Award Best Picture winners over the past dozen years. This year’s screenings carried on the tradition, presenting the global or Western Hemisphere debuts (a few appearing only days earlier at the concurrent Venice International Film Festival) of films such as Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All” and Todd Field’s “TÁR” with a special tribute to its star, Cate Blanchett.
Meyer Sound-led cinema systems were employed at three temporary venues: Warner Herzog Theatre, a transformed community skating rink seating 650; the Galaxy seating 500, otherwise a middle school gym; and the Palm (650 capacity), an auditorium on the town’s high school campus. The intimate Nugget Theatre, accommodating 165 and the town’s only permanent venue for film, also is equipped with the company’s loudspeakers. Models deployed across the venues include Acheron 100 and Acheron 80 screen loudspeakers, Acheron LF low frequency loudspeakers, HMS Series surround loudspeakers, and X-800 cinema subwoofers.
In addition, the Nugget Theatre was equipped with UPJ-1P loudspeakers, Amie-Sub subwoofers while the Galaxy utilized more UPJ-1P loudspeakers joined by 750-LFC subwoofers to accommodate special presentations and panel discussions in conjunction with the film showings.
“At Meyer Sound, we are proud to carry forward our partnership with the Telluride Film Festival,” says program manager, cinema & residential, Jay Wyatt. “We admire the way the festival continues to be bold, innovative, somewhat unconventional, and relentlessly focused on quality. Essentially, Telluride shares these same core values with Meyer Sound.”
Meyer Sound cinema loudspeakers are permanently installed at other venues for film screenings, including the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, operated by the Director’s Guild of America, and the Rose Theatre of Jazz at Lincoln Center, a preferred location for many New York film premieres. Also, Meyer Sound monitoring systems are employed at post-production studios that include Skywalker Sound and the Newman Scoring Stage at Fox Studio Lot in California; Warner Bros. De Lane Lea in London; Rotor Film in Potsdam, Germany; Semillero Estudios in Guadalajara, Mexico; Toei Studios in Kyoto, Japan; and Soundfirm in Melbourne, Australia.
Meyer Sound co-founder, president, and CEO John Meyer was recently recognized by SMPTE, the international society for media professionals, technologists, and engineers, named a recipient of the 2022 Samuel L. Warner Memorial Medal. According to a SMPTE statement, the honor was bestowed “in recognition of his contributions to the design, measurement, and analysis of cinema speaker electronics for cinema mixing, review, and exhibition facilities.”
