Atlantic City's Lavish Revel Resort "Gets Up Close and Personal" with Flexible Meyer Sound Systems

The $2.4 billion Revel casino resort in Atlantic City is an impressive sight, with its gleaming 47-story tower—the tallest in town—and over 1,000 rooms and 130,000 square feet of gaming floor. It’s also an ear-opener at every turn, with Meyer Sound systems installed in Revel’s vast and morphing Ovation Hall, the lively Social theatre and nightclub, and exclusive lounge and gaming areas.

Montreal-based Scéno Plus, responsible for the look and sound of Revel, is the design firm behind The Colosseum theatre at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, also a Meyer Sound installation. While Revel’s 5,500-capacity Ovation Hall is larger than The Colosseum and functions as a reconfigurable multi-purpose venue, their overall goal is the same: to foster a sense of intimacy between the performer and an arena-sized audience.

“We knew Ovation would be a multi-purpose venue, so we looked for solutions that would be easy to manage in various configurations,” says Simon Leonard, who headed the Scéno Plus AV design team. “We also needed a system that was reliable, rider friendly, and with exceptional fidelity to make artists seem ‘up close and personal.’ So it was logical to go with Meyer Sound.”

To cover Ovation Hall’s wide seating arc, the system employs three main arrays of 12-each MICA line array loudspeakers. Two stage-side VIP boxes are covered by four MSL-4 and two DF-4 loudspeakers, while eight UPQ-1P loudspeakers and M1D line array loudspeakers supply out and front fills respectively. Prodigious bass pulses through 20 700-HP subwoofers. The system can be re-matrixed and optimized for five different room configurations via presets in a Galileo loudspeaker management system comprising six Galileo 616 processors (five analog and one AES3 digital).

“The Galileo global snapshots are very easy to set,” says Leonard. “Galileo is a great tool for a hall like this, where it’s all about programmability.”

The AV systems in all Scéno Plus-designed areas in Revel were engineered and installed by Columbia, Md. office of AVI-SPL, with project management by LD Parker and project engineering by Stephanie Bryl and Jeff Vogt.

Revel patrons seeking free entertainment gather at The Social, a 700-capacity theatre and show bar that hosts live music early in the evening and converts to a dance club for late night revelry. The reconfigurable system deploys a total of 37 Meyer Sound UPQ-1P, UPQ-2P, UPM‑1P, and UPJunior VariO loudspeakers, plus four 700-HP subwoofers.

Meyer Sound systems also lend extra musical flair to the ocean-view Ultra Lounge and two other areas on the gaming floor. Loudspeakers installed here are 13 miniature MM-4 loudspeakers and three M1D-Sub subwoofers in the Ultra Lounge; eight UPM-1P and a 500-HP subwoofer in the Immersive Dome; and 12 UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers and four 500-HP subwoofers in the DigiPit.

For AVI-SPL’s LD Parker, the demanding installation project was buttressed by Meyer Sound’s unique combination of product quality and support.

“We know we’ll have a great sounding system,” says Parker. “But we also know we’ll have all the documentation we need for rigging, and we’ll have strong support and service after we’re done. There were no unwelcome surprises here, and that’s what I expect with Meyer Sound.”

Design architect was Arquitectonica; executive architectural firm was BLT Architects, with SOSH as associate executive architect for hospitality and casino spaces.

Founded in 1985, Scéno Plus is an entertainment design firm specializing in cultural infrastructures and highly reconfigurable performance spaces. The company has designed world-class spaces such as The New Joint at Hard Rock Hotel Casino, The Venue at Horseshoe Casino, The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, and the Wynn Las Vegas Showroom.