Meet TIGRA: Inside TCU Place’s New Meyer Sound System
Updated: 19 hours ago
For nearly 20 years, the sound system in TCU Place’s Sid Buckwold Theatre had been doing its job.
Concerts. Ballet. Theatre. Graduations. Touring productions. The room had seen a lot over those two decades, and the Meyer Sound M’elodie system had been there for it. But eventually, age catches up with everything. Parts were becoming harder to find, there were areas of the room where the team wanted better coverage, and TCU Place started looking ahead to what the theatre should sound like for the next 20 years.
The answer would eventually become the first permanent Meyer Sound TIGRA installation in Canada.
And it started with a pretty simple question: what could replace a system that had already served the room for two decades?
Starting with the room, not the speaker
TCU Place didn't want to simply pull down the old PA and hang something new in the same spot. The theatre is a 2,074-seat room that needs to work for a huge range of productions, so the system had to be flexible enough for everything from a quiet theatrical performance to a touring rock show.
The team spent roughly six months evaluating manufacturers, system designs, coverage plots and room simulations. Three major brands were brought into the conversation and asked to design for the same room. TCU wanted to see what each system could actually do before making a decision. TIGRA ultimately came out on top, not just because of the product itself, but because of how well the system fit the room and the people who would be installing and supporting it.
There was another interesting factor. TIGRA had only launched in March, making this a very new platform when TCU was making its decision. But the goal wasn't to chase whatever happened to be newest. TCU wanted forward-looking technology that would still make sense years down the road.
That distinction ended up being pretty important.
So what exactly is hanging above the stage?
The main system is made up of 28 TIGRA loudspeakers, split evenly between the two sides of the stage. Each array has 12 TIGRA-L long-throw cabinets and two TIGRA-W wide-coverage cabinets.
The TIGRA-L provides 85° horizontal coverage while the TIGRA-W opens that up to 110°. Both operate from 55 Hz to 16 kHz, with each cabinet weighing roughly 115 pounds. Put 14 cabinets together and you've got a compact system with plenty of output, but the interesting part isn't simply how many speakers are hanging in the air. It's what happens when you use the geometry of that array to control where the sound actually goes.
A theatre isn't a field full of people sitting at the same distance from the stage. You've got orchestra seating, balconies, loges and all sorts of different angles and distances. The job of the system is to make those different seats feel much less different.
The LF is controlled too
Then there are the eight Meyer Sound 2100-LFCs.
These are the low-frequency control elements that give the system its low-end authority. Each 2100-LFC uses a 21-inch driver and operates from 30 Hz to 125 Hz, and the four cabinets per side are flown in a cardioid configuration.
That's a lot of low end for a theatre, but the point isn't simply to make the room shake. Cardioid configuration gives the team much more control over where that low-frequency energy goes. For a room hosting everything from orchestral performances to rock shows, that's a pretty important distinction.
The rest of the room gets its own supporting cast too. Six ULTRA-X20 loudspeakers provide front fill, two ULTRA-X42s handle out fill and six ULTRA-X22XP loudspeakers cover the loges. None of these speakers are supposed to steal the show. They're there to make sure the people sitting outside the main array's sweet spot don't feel like they're sitting outside the experience.
The real test is the back row
This is where the project gets more interesting than a list of equipment.
TCU's Nick Hayes talks about the old system's limitations largely in terms of consistency. There were areas of the room where coverage wasn't where the team wanted it, and the experience could change depending on where you sat. With TIGRA, one of the big goals was to close that gap.
Ian Robertson from GerrAudio describes the result in much simpler terms: you can sit in the very back row of the top balcony and get an experience much closer to what someone is hearing in the middle of the orchestra level.
That's a difficult thing to accomplish in a room this size. You don't want to make the back row louder just for the sake of making it louder. You want the tonal balance, clarity and overall character of the system to stay consistent as you move through the room.
The best compliment might actually be the one Nick gets from people who can't quite explain what they're hearing. They'll come up after a show and say how good everything sounds, but they can't put their finger on exactly why. For a sound engineer, that's a pretty good sign. The technology is doing its job without asking the audience to think about it.
There's a little computer inside every speaker
One of the more interesting pieces of TIGRA is the GEN-1 card built directly into each loudspeaker.
GEN-1 essentially brings a channel of Meyer Sound's GALAXY processing into the box, giving each cabinet its own onboard DSP, EQ and delay. At TCU, that works alongside GALAXY 816 and GALAXY 408 processors, Milan AVB networking and an analog backup.
It sounds like a lot of technical jargon, but the idea is actually pretty simple: more control, closer to the speakers themselves.
That becomes particularly useful when you're trying to keep a large array behaving like one coherent system. Instead of treating 28 boxes as a pile of individual loudspeakers, the engineering team can shape and manage the system with a much higher level of precision.
And once again, the audience doesn't need to know any of this. They just need to hear it.
The part you don't see
Of course, none of this arrives in a theatre by itself.
Sapphire handled the installation and integration, working alongside TCU Place, Meyer Sound and GerrAudio to bring the design to life. Meyer Sound and GerrAudio worked with Sapphire throughout the design process, with Sapphire leading the installation.
The finished system looks relatively simple from the audience: two main arrays, eight LFCs and a collection of fills placed around the room.
Getting there was anything but simple.
The installation had to work within an existing building and existing infrastructure while keeping sightlines clean and getting every component where it needed to be. TCU's Devin Ferguson had some pretty strong words for the Sapphire crew after seeing the finished installation, describing the team as world class and making it clear that good wasn't the target. The expectation was that it needed to be great.
Benny Green had a similar perspective from the GerrAudio side. After working with Sapphire on the installation, he described the team as professional and noted their attention to every detail.
That's the kind of thing that doesn't show up on a spec sheet.
Built for another 20 years
The old system lasted roughly 20 years, so replacing it was never going to be about choosing whatever sounded cool in 2026. TCU wanted a system that could carry the theatre for the next 20 years, with the flexibility, control and consistency to handle whatever comes through the doors. Twenty-eight TIGRA cabinets, eight 2100-LFCs, front fills, loge fills, new processing and networking all come together to make that possible, but ultimately none of that is what the audience is there to think about. The lights go down, the show starts, and the PA should simply disappear into the experience.
That's the real measure of a system like this.
The system at a glance
Component | Quantity |
Meyer Sound TIGRA-L | 24 |
Meyer Sound TIGRA-W | 4 |
Meyer Sound 2100-LFC | 8 |
Meyer Sound ULTRA-X20 | 6 |
Meyer Sound ULTRA-X42 | 2 |
Meyer Sound ULTRA-X22XP | 6 |
GALAXY 816 | 1 |
GALAXY 408 | 1 |
Venue: TCU Place, SaskatoonTheatre: Sid Buckwold TheatreCapacity: 2,074 seatsIntegrator: SapphireAudio manufacturer: Meyer SoundDistributor: GerrAudioInstallation: July 2026
Want to build something like this?
A project like TCU Place is a good reminder that great AV isn't just about buying great equipment. It's about understanding the room, designing around the people using it and then actually getting the installation right.
If you're planning a theatre, performance venue, corporate space or other major AV project, talk to the team that brought this one together.
TCU Place × Sapphire × GerrAudio × Meyer Sound
