Where it started
My first professional concert systems came as a college student, working for Clearwing Productions in Milwaukee.
I remember dragging EAW KF850 cabinets out of the basement of The Rave, and stacking V-DOSC cabinets in the back of a 110-degree truck. I also remember salivating as Clearwing took delivery of one of the first L-Acoustics K1 systems in the United States.
That sequence, from a heavy, passive, rigged-by-hand rock PA to the first line source and then to a self-contained, software-controlled array, is the story this archive tries to tell with evidence. Every era in Resonant is written the way a crew would experience it: what the equipment was, what it replaced, and what it made possible next.
Career in professional audio
Mercer spent nearly a decade at Threshold Acoustics, contributing to more than 150 projects with significant design responsibility on over fifty, in the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Canada. He now teaches audio technology at Purdue University and consults through Sound Power.
Principal ConsultantSound Power
2024 – present
Clinical Assistant Professor of Practice, Audio TechnologyPurdue University
2024 – present
Senior Audio Video ConsultantThreshold Acoustics
2022 – 2024
Audio Video ConsultantThreshold Acoustics
2015 – 2022
Staff Audio EngineerBaltimore Center Stage
2014 – 2015
Head Audio EngineerTheatre Aspen
2013 – 2014
Graduate Assistant, Audio TechnicianHall of Music Productions, Purdue
2011 – 2014
Production and festival audio, concert touringClearwing Productions, Milwaukee
College years
Education · MFA Theatre Design and Production (Audio Technology), Purdue, 2011–2014 · BFA Theater Design Technology, UW–Stevens Point, 2007–2011
Selected live and immersive work
- Clearwing ProductionsSummer festival series: PA, backline and front-of-house on outdoor festival stages.
- Outdoor amphitheatre concert seriesMonitor engineer for full-band, festival-style productions.
- Medea (Purdue)Sound design and front-of-house mixing for a rock-band production; recipient of the 2014 USITT Robert E. Cohen Sound Achievement Award.
- Starlight Theater, Kansas CityConsulting on the upgrade of an outdoor amphitheatre's main loudspeakers from L-Acoustics Kara to Kara II, with new under-balcony and front-fill coverage.
- Expo 2020, Al Wasl Plaza, DubaiAudio design support for the 360-degree immersive dome: line-source and subwoofer arrays around the trellis perimeter.
Credentials and practice
Certifications
- QSC Q-SYS, Level 1
- Audinate Dante, Levels 1 to 3
Honors
- 2014 USITT Robert E. Cohen Sound Achievement Award, Medea
- Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Excellence in Sound Design (Region III), Never The Sinner, advanced to the national competition
Areas of practice
- Immersive audio: L-Acoustics L-ISA, Meyer Sound Spacemap Go, d&b Soundscape
- Production networks: Dante / AES67, Q-LAN, AVB / Milan, NDI
- Prediction and measurement: Smaart, MAPP 3D, d&b ArrayCalc, L-Acoustics Soundvision
- Playback: QLab
Why Resonant
Live-sound history is scattered across trade magazines, manuals, patents and the memories of the people who built and ran the systems. Resonant gathers it in one place, ties each claim to a source, and credits every image to its author. It is independent and volunteer-run, and it improves when engineers, collectors and historians correct it.