OAKLAND, CA – Another Planet Entertainment opted to upgrade the audio system at Oakland’s historic Fox Theater with a Meyer Sound system that includes Panther and 2100-LFC enclosures. UltraSound designed and installed the new system with support from Meyer Sound and in collaboration with the Fox Theater’s in-house crew. The new system replaces a Meyer Sound Lyon-based rig that had served the venue since 2016.
More details from Meyer Sound (www.meyersound.com):
The upgrade was driven by Another Planet Entertainment (APE), which operates the Fox Theater as part of a portfolio of high-profile venues and festivals across the West Coast. The decision to move to PANTHER was guided by both evolving production requirements and an ongoing commitment to delivering world-class sound in the 2,800-capacity venue.
“We’ve always taken pride in the Fox being a marquee venue in the Bay Area,” says Tony Leong, the Fox Theater’s general manager. “It just made sense that the latest generation of Meyer Sound technology would be right here in Meyer Sound’s own backyard.”
Having already deployed PANTHER at its Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco and experienced the system at The Fillmore and on Ed Sheeran’s tour, the APE team saw the upgrade as a natural progression. “It was a no-brainer for us,” says Fox Production Manager David Kluger. “We love Meyer Sound, and we loved our previous LYON system, and this felt like the natural next step.”
The system was designed and installed by Bay Area integrator UltraSound with support from Meyer Sound and in collaboration with the Fox Theater’s in-house crew. Key goals included optimizing coverage under the balcony and ensuring even SPL throughout the complex space, from the front rows to the back bar.
“The Fox Theater is a beautiful, old theater that naturally presents a few acoustical challenges,” says Josh Osmond, UltraSound’s director of operations. “The balcony is quite deep, and one of our main objectives was to get better coverage toward the under-balcony areas. With a deeper balcony like this, that also means the patrons sitting in the lower loge level of the balcony are quite close to the P.A. We wanted to have very consistent SPL and spectral coverage from the front of the room to the back.”
The new system centers around 16 PANTHER large-format linear array loudspeakers per side in the main arrays, 12 2100-LFC low-frequency control elements, and three ULTRA-X20™ compact point source loudspeakers and two ULTRA-X40™ compact point source loudspeakers for fill coverage, all driven by four Galileo® GALAXY 816 Network Platforms.
Installation was completed in just a few days by UltraSound and the Fox Theater team, including lead audio tech Nate Harlow and A1 Jose Neves. “Having our own crew involved in the process made a huge difference,” says Kluger. “It was tuned and ready to go faster than we expected, and from the first show felt like we’d been running it for months.”
The moment the system went online, it revealed its full potential. “It sounded great out of the box,” says Leong. “The coverage is so evenly distributed throughout the venue, it feels like the sound follows you around the room—even in the back corners, it sounds like you’re in the sweet spot.”
“My first impression of the system was that there was a noticeable improvement with the intelligibility and consistency from front to back of the room,” adds Osmond. “Whether I was down in the pit or up in the back of the balcony, I thought that mixers visiting the venue could feel confident that the mix they hear at FOH would translate to the rest of the venue.”
He notes that theater spaces often pose low-frequency challenges, which the new system handles with ease. “You have a steep and long balcony plus a fairly resonant space,” he explains. “With the 2100-LFCs, the system is able to deliver a very controlled, punchy, and musical low end without over-exciting the room. From the pit all the way up to the back of the balcony, you can feel the 2100-LFCs working in a very natural way.”
Touring engineers have noted the system’s clarity and detail, says Kluger. “One engineer described it as a microscope,” he says. “He was hearing things in the performance he hadn’t even noticed in the studio.”
The Fox’s previous LYON system found a new home at APE’s Channel 24 venue in Sacramento. At the Fox, the PANTHER upgrade continues a legacy of great sound while making day-to-day operation seamless. “Sound is the last thing on our minds—we don’t really have to think about it,” says Leong. “And that means the system is doing exactly what it should be doing.”
The upgrade also reflects a uniquely close collaboration—grounded in the Bay Area roots and long-running partnership between the Fox, Meyer Sound, and UltraSound. “Having the triumvirate of promoter, vendor, and manufacturer all working together—and all in sync—that’s something not every market has,” Leong continues. “We’re really lucky to have that. And it’s part of what makes this place special.”
