In Seoul, South Korea, an enthusiastic group of 105 audio professionals absorbed lessons from Meyer Sound senior education consultant Bob McCarthy as he presented a seminar entitled, “The Optimized Design.” The three-day class, extracted for the occasion from the five-day SIM® 3 Training and System Design seminar, gives a concentrated overview of the theory and principles required to design complex sound systems in a way that facilitates optimal alignment in any acoustical environment.
McCarthy’s presentation featured new material developed while writing his forthcoming book, Sound Systems: Design and Optimization, scheduled for publication in October by Focal Press.
The seminar, one of a series of high-level professional training classes staged by Meyer Sound on an ongoing basis at locations all around the globe, was organized by Meyer Sound’s Korean distributor, Avix Tech, and personally facilitated by the company’s managing director, Steve Kim. The seminar sessions were held in a meeting room at Seoul’s Sejong Cultural Center.
“This was one of the largest groups ever to attend a seminar of mine,” notes McCarthy, who has given scores of educational seminars since launching Meyer Sound’s SIM School (the precursor of today’s Meyer Sound seminar series) in the 1980s, “and they were certainly one of the most attentive and enthusiastic audiences I’ve seen. Obviously they were hungry for this material.”
Kim concurs, though he was not surprised by the large turnout. “Bob McCarthy has done a series of lectures over the past three years and has become very popular here in Korea. This was a unique opportunity for the participants to design systems, line arrays in particular, and understand how their design affects final tuning.”
Seminar participants represented a broad range of professional roles, including FOH engineers, acoustical consultants, installation contractors, and staff audio technicians from performing arts halls and theme parks. Most hailed from the Seoul metropolitan area, though many had traveled from other parts of the Korean peninsula.
Since the subject matter dealt primarily with theory and principles, an extensive sound system was not required, and, with the seminar’s focus being design, the SIM 3 audio analyzer on hand was used only to provide examples. “It was not the SIM training course,” notes McCarthy. Four UPJ-1P compact VariO™ loudspeakers and two USW-1P compact subwoofers covered all of the seminar’s needs handily.
“The reaction was very encouraging,” McCarthy says. “I wanted to develop new seminar materials that look to a universal set of design principles, a set of procedures to create sound systems that are ultimately tunable. We know what the endgame is, where it is we want to end up. So now the question is: how do we maneuver the ship so it docks properly?”
McCarthy says his only regret during the visit was that his new book wouldn’t be published until months later. “At the end of the seminar, a crowd came to the podium and wanted to know if they could get copies right on the spot.” Further information on the Sound Systems: Design and Optimization book can be found here.