As Commercial Integrator’s #AVLivingLegends series rolls on, we are proud to induct John and Helen Meyer, co-founders of Meyer Sound. Meyer Sound is, of course, a specialist in creating excellent sonic experiences.
John and Helen Meyer founded Meyer Sound in 1979, bringing a research-driven approach to the professional audio sector. They have meaningfully advanced self-powered loudspeaker technology while, at the same time, fostering a culture of sustainability, diversity and inclusion.
Meyer Sound products are routinely deployed for live events and in theaters — including Broadway venues — and in a range of other applications.
Through Meyer Sound, their namesake company, John and Helen Meyer have contributed to the advancement of sound system performance and reliability in the industry. From the company’s inception through to today, they’ve emphasized engineering and quality across A-class projects worldwide.
Interview with John and Helen Meyer of Meyer Sound
In this interview, John and Helen Meyer reflect on their milestones in the AV industry, including working with Francis Ford Coppola and partnering with a truly iconic event, the Montreux Jazz Festival. They also touch on the importance of innovation and trust for creating the best sound in every scenario.
Read on to learn more about John and Helen Meyer of Meyer Sound as our newest inductees in the #AVLivingLegends list!
You can also check out our hub page to see all of our past #AVLivingLegends honorees.
Commercial Integrator: What motivated you to join the commercial AV industry?
Helen Meyer: From the beginning, we wanted to make sure that products going into commercial installations matched the quality of the very best sound systems anywhere. At the time, a lot of permanent installations simply weren’t as good as they could be, and we saw an opportunity to raise that standard. We didn’t want to be limited to concert tours — we wanted to bring better sound to audiences in every type of venue.
John Meyer: Back then, electronics technology was way ahead of loudspeaker technology. I wanted to close that gap to catch speaker technology up to the level of the electronics driving them. And now, we’ve reached a point where our loudspeakers are considered a gold standard for intelligibility, and it’s often the electronics that have to catch up.
Commercial Integrator: What has kept you motivated and engaged in the decades that followed?
John Meyer: When you’re doing research, you never really know if it’s going to benefit anyone, or if anyone even cares about what you’re trying to achieve. The real motivation comes when people who buy and use the systems tell us they’re happy, that things met or exceeded their expectations. That’s really gratifying because that means we’re not just guessing; we’re on the right track, and customers recognize it.
Everything keeps evolving. If you stay static, pretty soon you’re behind. So you have to keep innovating to keep up with that evolution. For us, that means finding ways to make intelligibility better so people hear more and understand more.
Helen Meyer: And you’re always looking for ways to improve things. John, that’s been your trademark from day one. If you look at the history of what we’ve done, it’s a straight line of “better, better, better.” You’re never satisfied to just say, “This is ok, we can now leave it like this forever.” You want to make sure it keeps getting better.
Commercial Integrator: Reflect on your role as both a mentee early in your career and as a mentor later in your career. Who helped shape the trajectory of your professional life? How have you tried to help shape others’ careers?
John Meyer: Different people give you different pieces of the puzzle. Working with Francis Ford Coppola was inspiring; he kept pushing for his vision, and you could see the amount of work it took to get there. It’s easy to think other people have it easier, but in reality, any time you try to change something, it’s hard. People don’t like taking risks. You have to convince them it’s worth the effort, and when they see it works, they’re happy.
David Wessel was another real visionary. He asked questions like, “Could we create everything out of tones?” He wanted to go beyond static sound and make a loudspeaker behave more like a musician on stage, where movement changes the sound. His ideas pushed me to think about complexity and realism in sound reproduction.
How Mentoring Shaped Meyer Sound
As a mentor, one of the things I try to pass on is the importance of truth in what you say and do. It’s easy to claim something will work when it won’t, but that just creates problems. We put in the effort to prove our ideas in practice, not just in theory. That’s how we’ve approached everything from our Constellation acoustic system to new measurement experiments.
Helen Meyer: On the mentoring side, there’s a whole group of people who started at Meyer Sound and have gone on to do incredible things — working for Disney, running engineering teams, designing sound for major productions. They’ve taken with them that same spirit of honesty and doing the work right.
If you want an internal example, Bob McCarthy, Meyer Sound’s director of system optimization, is perfect. He came here at age 19 with little knowledge of our approach, learned everything from John, went on to write books and set industry standards, worked independently, and then came back to us. That’s what mentoring can do when both sides are committed.
Commercial Integrator: What’s the most memorable story or anecdote of your career in commercial AV?
Helen Meyer: One that stands out is our long partnership with the Montreux Jazz Festival. We’ve been part of it for decades, and every year is different — new venues, new artists and new challenges. It’s one of those projects where we can bring everything we’ve learned to the table and still come away having learned something new. It’s been exciting to watch that relationship grow and see how much impact great sound can have on such an iconic event.
John Meyer: Zellerbach Hall at the University of California, Berkeley is another. It was one of the first major installations of Constellation, which was a new technology we were developing, and we had the chance to test it in a real-world commercial venue right here in our own backyard. Zellerbach wasn’t even among the top concert halls at the time, so having the opportunity to experiment in that space and prove what was possible really made an impact.
Commercial Integrator: What has been your greatest professional accomplishment to date?
John Meyer: I’d say solving the timing issue in loudspeakers. If you hit a drum, not all the frequencies come out at once — some arrive earlier, some later — and that’s part of what makes it sound like a drum. Loudspeakers do the same thing as they push air: high frequencies come on instantly, low frequencies take time to develop. For years, people thought that was just physics and there was nothing you could do about it.
We spent decades figuring out how to make all the sound come out at the same time so what you hear reproduces exactly what was recorded. Early experiments, like the HD-1, corrected timing down to about 100 cycles. Later systems, like the ASTRYA-140, did it full range, all the way down to the low notes of drums and bass. That makes it easier for the brain to move the focus away from the location of the speakers themselves and focus on the sonic image instead. It’s been recognized in the movie industry and in live sound, and it’s still one of the hardest problems to solve.
We’ve also worked on creating industry standards so people can measure and verify performance the same way. The AES75 standard, for example, can be used to test not just loudspeakers but electronics, networks or even satellite links, and it helps uncover problems you couldn’t see before. That’s a big step forward for the industry.
Helen Meyer: And it’s not just the products, but the approach behind them — making sure we’re delivering what we promise and proving it in the field. That combination of innovation and trust has probably been our biggest accomplishment.
Commercial Integrator: What has been your biggest professional regret to date?
Helen Meyer: I can’t think of a regret. Sure, we’ve made mistakes over the years, but we’ve learned from them and moved on. Every experience, good or bad, has helped shape where we are now.
John Meyer: Yeah, I don’t really see it as regret. There may have been times I wished something could have gone differently, but even then, you always take something away from it. Everything we’ve done, even the hard parts, has been part of the process, and we learned from it all.
Commercial Integrator: What’s the best advice or pearl of wisdom?
Helen Meyer: It’s like what people say in the movie business: This industry is feast or famine. You have to be ready for the ups and downs and able to adapt when things change.
John Meyer: There are going to be good times and hard times. If you can learn from both, you’ll come out ahead in the long run.
Would you like to nominate a peer or colleague — or perhaps yourself! — to be part of this #AVLivingLegends series? If so, just email Dan Ferrisi, group editor, commercial and security, Emerald, at [email protected].
