It's still a two-way street, though, with the influence of Western music continuing to grow in India and an increasing number of international artists including stops on the Indian subcontinent in their itineraries. One of the country's major concert production suppliers is Reynold Sound and Lighting Services, a company founded in Bangalore by Felix Remedios in 1981 as a branch of Calcutta-based musical instrument manufacturer J Reynold and Company. Reynold's pro audio division, headed by sound engineer Michael Furtado, has provided sound for an ever-growing series of shows featuring world-renowned performers, including three major shows over a single week in the early spring of this year.
In addition to being a rental company, Reynold is also an authorized Meyer Sound dealer, a relationship dating back to November 2000 when the company purchased their first Meyer Sound equipment in response to the country's lack of high-quality concert systems. As Remedios explains, he first discovered Meyer Sound at a Singapore pro audio trade show and was impressed with how well the company's products fit with Reynold's needs. "The self-powered aspect of the Meyer Sound systems is tremendous in itself," he remarks, "but some of the other features - universal voltage, plug and play - are just made for India. What with the country's poor voltage conditions and the shortage of trained live sound engineers, it's ideal for us."
The most recent shows included a Jethro Tull date at the Indian Institute of Management Campus in Bangalore, and back-to-back shows by Bryan Adams and Uriah Heep at Bangalore's Palace Grounds. The Tull gig utilized 24 MSL-4 horn-loaded long-throw loudspeakers and 12 DS-4P horn-loaded mid-bass loudspeakers. Low frequencies were handled by 18 of Meyer Sound's 750-P subs, a variant of their 650-P high-power subwoofer developed primarily for cinema applications. Four CQ-2 narrow coverage main loudspeakers covered front-fill needs.
Acting as systems engineer, Furtado assisted Tull's FOH engineer James Anderson, who mixed the band on a 56-channel Allen & Heath ML-5000 console. A Meyer Sound CP-10 complementary phase parametric equalizer and a selection of Yamaha and Lexicon effects processors populate the rack, along with Aphex and BSS dynamics processing. The system's performance is supervised using a Meyer Sound SIM audio analyzer.
Engineer Michael Satyadas oversees "Monitor Beach" from behind a 48-channel Allen and Heath ML-5000 console, feeding four Meyer Sound PSM-2 high-power low-profile stage monitors, four UM-1P narrow coverage stage monitors and a pair of USM-100P extended range wide coverage stage monitors.
The following week, Uriah Heep's Palace Grounds date used 32 MILO high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers and 12 M3D line array loudspeakers, with low end covered by 18 700-HP ultrahigh-power subwoofers and four CQ-2 narrow coverage main loudspeakers providing front-fill. Furtado and Satyadas mixed FOH and monitors, respectively, on the same Allen & Heath consoles used for the Tull show. Monitors included 10 UM-1P wedges and four CQ-2 cabinets. An identical house system covered the Bryan Adams date that same week, though the band brought its own in-ear monitoring system.
Remedios believes that Reynold's work with Meyer Sound gear has improved the quality of sound reinforcement in the region. The presence of better sound equipment in the country is also attractive to artists with global reach. "The Meyer gear has really helped us raise the bar for live sound quality in India," Remedios says. "Previously, the only acts that played the subcontinent struggled to get
