PANTHER Line Array Lifts USA and Europe to New Sales Records.
Boosted by strong demand for the new flagship PANTHER™ large-format linear line array loudspeaker, Meyer Sound has set an all-time record for domestic sales in 2022 while Meyer Sound Europe also posted record numbers for the year. According to Senior Vice President John McMahon, 2022 was a year of a strong resurgence across the board with nearly all company metrics returning to or exceeding pre-pandemic levels.
“At this point, we have posted sales figures that far outstrip our most optimistic projections when we introduced PANTHER last January,” says McMahon. “As live entertainment rebounds from the pandemic downturn, PANTHER is proving to be a perfect match for the promises and the challenges of a changing live sound industry.”
The number of PANTHER units already delivered to customers is now well into the thousands, reports McMahon, despite sales far exceeding production forecasts and some manufacturing pauses earlier in the year due to the nagging supply chain glitches that have plagued the entire industry.
“The efforts by our procurement and engineering times to secure needed components have been monumental,” he continues, “and we are steadily working our way through a backlog of orders. It hasn’t been easy, because more and more new orders keep pouring in. That’s due in large part to the fact that thanks to PANTHER, we added more new dealers and production partners in 2022 than in any year in recent memory.”
The first deliveries of PANTHER went to Major Tom Ltd. in the UK for Ed Sheeran’s awe-inspiring + – = ÷ x (“Mathematics”) Tour, with other high-profile tours including Michael Bublé (supplied by Solotech), Dead & Company, and Ghost (both by UltraSound). Festivals in Europe and the United States deploying PANTHER systems included the Montreux Jazz Festival (provided by Skynight), Parookaville (POOLgroup), The Peach Music Festival (DBS Audio), Outside Lands (UltraSound), and Life is Beautiful (Solotech).
Summer-long seasonal installations of PANTHER graced the Levitt Pavilion Denver (supplied by Production Services International) and the Britt Pavilion (Relles Sound) in Oregon. The first permanent installation of PANTHER debuted in November at the Xcel Energy Center (Sound Associates) in St. Paul, MN, home of the National Hockey League’s Minnesota Wild.
“Major installation projects develop over a longer time frame when compared to rental company sales, so we expect that part of the business to really start taking off in 2023,” says McMahon. “We have dozens of project bids underway, some revised from a prior LYON® specification and therefore accompanied by substantial cost savings.”
Cinema post-production and high-end residential, two related market sectors sharing essentially the same product lines, also experienced significant growth. “Most of these projects fly under the radar and don’t get publicized because they are tagged with non-disclosure agreements,” McMahon explains. “But sales growth has been extraordinary. New opportunities have opened up to show customers why Meyer Sound systems are such a reference standard for so many major studios, independent post houses, and freelance content creators.”
Meyer Sound’s Galileo® GALAXY Network Platform also posted record orders in 2022, driven in large part by the widespread adoption of the Spacemap® Go spatial sound design and mixing tool. Further software innovation has come with the recent introduction of the Nebra software environment for connection and monitoring of AVB networked systems using the Milan protocol. Nebra is boosting the adoption of Meyer Sound loudspeakers that now incorporate Milan AVB endpoints in the cabinets. In 2022 Meyer Sound introduced five loudspeaker products featuring Milan connectivity — most notably the PANTHER line array loudspeaker but also including all three variants of the ULTRA-X20™ family and the USW-112P™ subwoofer.
“Milan networking and Nebra software define the direction Meyer Sound will be taking into 2023,” says McMahon. “Yes, we will continue to maintain backward compatibility with our analog systems, but Milan AVB has clear advantages and you can expect to see more of our products available with this technology in the near future.”
New products won’t be long in coming, as Meyer Sound has announced that a major new product will be introduced at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) in Barcelona on January 31, 2023.
Photo: © Ralph Larmann, Robin Böttcher