Meyer Sound

Although Meyer Sound wasn’t officially founded until much later, the roots of this esteemed innovator can be traced back to 1967 when a chance encounter changed history. Steve Miller, the leader of the famous band that shares his namesake, walked into Berkely Custom Audio, where John Meyer was manning the store. Miller was looking to beef up the sound of the bass in his band for the Monterey Pop Festival and Meyer ingeniously built a horn-loaded system from Klipsch La Scala loudspeakers.

After experiencing the power and clarity his experiment created at Monterey Pop, Meyer’s interest in loudspeaker design only grew. He was particularly passionate about addressing the issues that were becoming commonplace amongst the high-power demands of bands in the late 1960s. Meyer created a new speaker in 1969, the “Glyph,” that apart from being known for its odd appearance, became the talk of the bay area for exhibiting lower distortion than other systems from the era.

These revolutionary speakers reproduced bass frequencies with either a 4-foot by 4-foot horn and a 14-inch diaphragm driver (the MN50 with M driver) or an 8-foot-by-8-foot fiberglass horn with a 28-inch diaphragm driver. The Glyph speakers were featured in a system designed for Pepperland, a night club in San Rafael that hosted the best bands from the period, many of which praised the sound there for being both surprisingly clean and shockingly loud. This led to inspiring collaborations as well as time spent at the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies in Montreux, Switzerland. Soon, John Meyer was an established, groundbreaking loudspeaker designer which led to designing the Meyer/ACD studio monitor for a Swiss company.

The ACD was able to accomplish two important things by raising the bar for distortion and flat response in studio monitors and by attracting the attention Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was looking to tour his film Apocalypse Now with a game-changing sound system. To meet his demanding expectations, Meyer used the ACD along with the custom built 650 subwoofer, containing a single 18-inch driver in a sixth-order cabinet with low-distortion response down to 30 Hz.

The ACD was able to accomplish two important things by raising the bar for distortion and flat response in studio monitors and by attracting the attention Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was looking to tour his film Apocalypse Now with a game-changing sound system. To meet his demanding expectations, Meyer used the ACD along with the custom built 650 subwoofer, containing a single 18-inch driver in a sixth-order cabinet with low-distortion response down to 30 Hz.

In order to be the exclusive U.S. distributor for the Meyer/ACD system, John and Helen Meyer founded Meyer Sound in San Leandro, California in 1979. The stated goal of the company was to create the best sonic experiences possible, built on scientific innovation and quality engineering. The central philosophy of this new brand was a passion for quality and its many experts were driven to ensure that every paper cone, circuit board, and driver was handcrafted to meet extremely demanding standards.

Today, Meyer Sound is known within the industry for continuously analyzing production methods and material selection in addition to exercising exhaustive quality control behind the legendary unit-to-unit consistency, reliability, and longevity of its products. Our Solotech Sales Reps are standing by to field any and all questions you may have about the incomparable loudspeakers being manufactured by this respected family brand. Thinking about adding the Meyer Sound 900-LFC Low-Frequency Array Loudspeaker to your venue’s system? Don’t forget to include one of their dependable speaker poles with your order.