Historic Montana Barn: Inside

For this adventure, we needed to fill a 55′ tall Montana barn with clean sound. We began pulling wires up down and all around this amazing 130+ year old structure in the fall of 2000, making it our first big Montana project. The contractor informed us that these busy clients loved music and liked their music loud. Thus began a technical and sonic collaboration that’s continued for 19 exciting years.

First Steps

Our first task was to deliver a set of floor standing speakers for the great room. A custom fireplace took center stage giving us our focal point for sound, seating and dancing. Underwhelmed with anything we could purchase from a manufacture that would fit the look and sound envisioned, we opted to have a pair of speakers built specifically for this space. It took us three tries to get it right, but patience eventually paid off.

The room was wired as a “surround music” 6.11 room (two front speakers, two side speakers, two rear speakers, and 11 subwoofers). The original speakers were passive models with the amplifiers located in a climate controlled equipment room. We received one of Lexicon’s first MC-1 digital surround processors to run the show, although we’ve since up-dated the room to a DataSat AP-20 processor. The side and rear speakers have also been updated to Meyer Sound UPM–XP self powered models for reliability and performance reasons.

A Few Updates

iPads now control the equipment in conjunction with a Crestron control system. A Sonos Connect device streams un-compressed music from Deezer and Tidal. We ripped the clients extensive CD collection, and stocked a network hard drive with digitized music in the event the Internet service to the ranch goes down. This can happen fairly frequently in remote locations of Montana as the weather can be quite extreme. In addition, we recently added a Turntable by Music Hall.

Applicable Links

Learn more about how we can help with your Audio and Video projects!