MEYER SOUND ULTRA-X40 Active Compact Loudspeaker

Meyer Sound Laboratories’ popular UPA speakers are retiring after a long and distinguished career as leaders of the professional mid-sized point-source class. The full-range passive UPA-1 was released in 1980 and was the first live speaker to use a trapezoidal cabinet – a shape that allowed for curved arrays. Output quality was maintained by a dedicated electronic controller containing active crossovers, frequency and phase correction circuits, and feedback circuits to provide driver protection. In the mid-1990s Meyer Sound embraced powered loudspeakers by putting the processing and an amplifier inside the speaker cabinet. The active UPA-1P has been delivering Meyer’s trademark high-fidelity-at-high-volume sound to appreciative audiences ever since. Mention them around sound types and you’ll likely hear an anecdote along the lines of “I heard this big sound and it was all coming from these little speakers”. Meyer UPAs for sure...

The UPA’s replacement would have to be good, and it’s awesome. The new Meyer Sound Ultra-X40 is still a compact, vented two-way speaker but it’s a completely new design with several fundamental differences. Over the past few years of developing their LEO family of large-scale line array systems, Meyer made significant advancements in driver configuration, horn technology, low distortion and phase correction, and wanted to incorporate these in a point-source box. The timing was good to replace the ageing