Historic Montana Barn: Outside
Graham Nash — of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — has a story about his friend, Neil Young rowing out on the lake of his secluded ranch with him in 1972 to listen to Neil’s new record “Harvest”. Neil waved at someone, and the music started to play in the countryside. Graham realized that Neil had his house wired as the left speaker, and his barn wired as the right speaker. Someone shouted to Neil from the shore, “How is it?” and Neil shouted back “MORE BARN”!
Concert Grade Meyer Sound System
This property is a sonic amusement park that provides several wild auditory thrills. This Historic Montana Barn lives close to our hearts, Poindexter’s has been tinkering and adjusting the sound, video and control systems for 18+ years. The owners are darn passionate about music. A concert grade Meyer line array sound system was engineered to handle the prevailing wind. A set of “stadium grade” subwoofers hidden in the rock work at the base of the deck bolster the low frequency sound.
This barn’s sound system images amazingly really well from about 40 to 80 meters out from the building. The system wobbles knees delivering clean, crisp audiophile sound quality at rock concert sound levels all day and night if called upon. It’s an experience to hear the system in the natural beauty of this property. When turned up to 11 the system is audible from about miles away depending upon the weather conditions. Montana receives extreme weather, the system has withstood the test of hail, wind, rain and snow for 13 years with only two minor fixes. A testament to the design and build quality of Meyer Sound equipment.
Evolving, Revolving Sound
The barn’s first generation sound system installed in 2002 was repurposed to another area on the property, it still functions perfectly. The first system featured a set of “point source” traditional speakers and a pair of subwoofers, all passive. We updated the system in 2005 to the current Meyer Sound self powered MICA line array. We were told that this was the first weatherized MICA system installed anywhere.
This 2nd generation outdoor system was installed before streaming music services came of age. The current system is controlled via an Apple iPad linked to a Crestron Control System, using a Sonos Connect that calls up uncompressed audio files from Deezer and Tidal that are piped through a high quality DtoA converter. Additional audio input provisions were provided on the side of the barn allowing a mixing board to patch into the sound system. Should the clients ask a DJ, live band or plan a last minute outdoor movie night, we’re ready.
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