I want to stress how capable and phenomenal the ULTRA-X20s are for under-balconies. That under-balcony is the best under-balcony I’ve ever been in in my life. If they have a loud show in there, there’s no issue at all. ULTRA‑X20 is a marvel of a modern speaker.”
TC FurlongTC Furlong Inc. Founder
The landmark Genesee Theatre in Waukegan, Illinois, set a new standard for state-of-the-art sound with a Meyer Sound PANTHER system, marking a major upgrade to its nearly century-old tradition of live entertainment.
Originally opened in 1927 as a grand movie palace, the 2,400-seat venue, owned by the city of Waukegan and managed by the nonprofit Friends of the Historic Genesee Theatre, shifted focus in recent years to present concert-heavy programming that called for a more robust sound system.
The theater’s Meyer Sound M2D system, installed in 2004, was designed for musicals, speaking events, and films. But as the venue hosted more concerts, it bolstered the installed system with rental equipment.
Integrator TC Furlong, Inc., in collaboration with Meyer Sound and Genesee’s skilled union crew, designed and installed a powerful new PANTHER sound system that delivers an unrivaled audio experience in every seat while seamlessly blending into the theater’s iconic architecture. With the upgrade, the theater, renowned for its architectural grandeur, now offers a state-of-the-art audio experience for both audiences and artists.
For the historic theater, it was critical to preserve the aesthetics of the ceiling, the centerpiece of the building’s grand historic architecture. This meant the new system needed to be unobtrusive both visually and in installation.
Furlong designed the PANTHER system around a low-profile deck stack with flown arrays for the balcony; hung elements of the system, finished in custom pale yellow paint, virtually disappear into the ceiling.
“It’s an unusual deployment,” explains TC Furlong Inc. founder TC Furlong, who designed the new system and the previous Meyer Sound system installed two decades ago. “The balcony has its own system and the main floor has its own system, because when they did the remodel in 2001, the balcony was cantilevered down really far. So when you’re in the back row at the mix position, you’ve got a tiny window to see the stage. Even though there’s an excellent under-balcony system, if a guest engineer comes in and doesn’t see the speakers that are on the stage, they don’t like that.”
The main system is anchored by ground-stacked left/right arrays of three PANTHER large-format linear line array loudspeakers in narrow, standard, and wide-coverage variants, along with two 2100‑LFC low-frequency control elements per side.
“One challenge that we’ve had with that balcony hanging really low is pushing through underneath the balcony,” explains Genesee Theatre’s Production Manager, Mack Folkert. “We had Meyer Sound MTS-4 speakers on either side of the stage driving as ground stacks before. We wanted to do that again with ground stacks so that we could push underneath. With PANTHER and with the subs that we put on either side of the stage, we’ve been able to really drive underneath that balcony.”
Furlong points out that deck-stacking the PA also minimizes image distortion, since the speakers are on the same plane as performers. “You sacrifice a little bit of uniformity in level, meaning that the people who are closer to the deck stacks are getting a different level than the people who are further from the deck stacks, but PANTHER sounds so smooth that people who are closer don’t mind it. They actually like it.”
Because there was no provision to fly subwoofers, Furlong placed two 1100‑LFC low-frequency control elements under the stage, creating what he likes to call a “two-way subwoofer system”: “The two 1100-LFCs cover everything from 50 Hz down. And then the 2100s go from about 40 Hz-ish up to up to a little over 100 Hz. It’s really effective. You can turn on and off the 1100-LFCs and you can save them for when you want to really pressurize the room.
“It’s a great special effect,” he explains. “There are people sitting maybe 10 feet from the subs. They don’t hear them, directionally, they just hear the room.”
Two ULTRA‑X42 narrow-coverage compact loudspeakers serve as front-row in fills, and four UP‑4slim ultracompact installation loudspeakers serve as box fills. Two ULTRA‑X20XP compact wide-coverage loudspeakers serve as out fills; Front fills are five ULTRA‑X20 compact wide-coverage loudspeakers, and nine ULTRA-X20 loudspeakers cover under-balcony areas. The system is driven by two Galileo GALAXY 816 network platforms.
“I want to stress how capable and phenomenal the ULTRA-X20s are for under-balconies,” says Furlong. “That under-balcony is the best under-balcony I’ve ever been in in my life. If they have a loud show in there, there’s no issue at all. ULTRA‑X20 is a marvel of a modern speaker.”
The new system debuted in late 2023 to unanimous acclaim from fans, visiting artists, and staff. “We’ve had a lot of tours come in, and they’ve been so excited to use the new system,” says Folkert. “I’m also happy to see Meyer Sound more frequently on riders,” he adds. “That’s made me feel good about our purchase.”
“A big goal for us was having the same sound upstairs and downstairs,” he concludes. “Consistency has been great, especially under the balcony. It just sounds so much more full, and the clarity has been a huge improvement. We’ve been really happy with it.”