The Downtown Las Vegas Events Center is basically a big block square grassy field, so the giant Meyer-rigged stage had little competition for our attention. We stood in the Las Vegas shade-free sun like we were waiting for a Coachella headliner, but this was a different kind of fun. Meyer Sound had put on this weekend gathering to give a specialist audience the first chance to hear the new TIGRA line array alongside its companion sub, the 1800-LFC.
The TIGRA premise was simple: make a smaller PANTHER. Considering that PANTHER was already an advance in efficiency–and a runaway success by any metric–TIGRA would bring those PANTHER advancements to new array and sub footprints.
In the four years since PANTHER’s debut, Meyer had made other advancements too, including the development of GEN-1 onboard processing. So the TIGRA was a convergence of tech and market momentum and a double debut as the first GEN-1 array. TIGRA is a true sibling to the flagship PANTHER, built for integration, physically, sonically, and spiritually, as this latest chapter of an energized Meyer Sound unfolds.
Founders John and Helen Meyer have a soft spot for just the kind of venue that can be elevated by TIGRA—a little smaller, maybe a little more architecturally constrained, places where footprint and weight matter most. Places where quality reinforcement can sometimes do the most good, for artists, audiences, or worshippers.
The event was emceed by Senior Director of Product Management Andy Davies, and Senior Engineering Director of Loudspeaker Development Katie Murphy Khulusi. They had an enviable job as TIGRA took charge of the space in a confident, well-rounded way. We saw it harmonize with the new sub, and with PANTHER’s sub. TIGRA and PANTHER arrays can literally share a chassis; their phase and frequency are perfectly matched.
Under the hood, though this is also a story about where Meyer is going with integration practicalities around MilanAVB, Nebra, and now GEN-1, which is planned for wide deployment, eventually across most of the Meyer range.
Khulusi explains it was a kind of coming together where the loudspeaker development of TIGRA was happening at the same time as processing innovations elsewhere in the company. Processing engineers were bringing Galileo GALAXY DSP inside the loudspeaker itself. So ironically, while PANTHER begat TIGRA, TIGRA innovations will circle back to PANTHER as Meyer rolls GEN-1 across most of their line. The phrase you’ll hear about this is a riff on self-powered; GEN-1 speakers are “self-processed.”
So Davies and Khulusi had a fun story to tell alongside their tech colleagues (Bob of course) and Pablo Espinosa Senior Director of Transducers and Technical Services. And as usual, they brought along some Friends of Meyer to help tell and demonstrate the personal side of the story. Cue Larry Paschall on drums. We heard from Nicholas Hayes: Head of Audio at TCU Place, Adam Wells: Systems Engineer for Ed Sheeran and FOH Engineers: Erik Rogers and Phil Strong. It was a passionate case, poignantly made with that life’s-work energy of a Meyer event. But ultimately TIGRA spoke for itself, as we roamed the big field, looking for the edges of the dispersion and the detail that didn’t break as the dB headed past 100.
