It´s not a question of number of elements per se but Geometry:
Column height will allow it to approach a line source with desirable horizontal dispersion, vertical focusing, low attenuation-per-distance and if well made (as it should) freedom from comb filtering, above a certain frequency .and will approach a point source below it, with spherical front wave much higher attenuation per distance.
Some characteristic looking cabinets were designed to build a Line Source, but all estacks shown here are "too short"
Of course, most unsavvy end users will be happy with "the look" and pay.
FWIW I have seen cheesy DJs or small band PAs use just one such cabinet per side (or two stacked) and call it "Line array"
Oh well.
Column height will allow it to approach a line source with desirable horizontal dispersion, vertical focusing, low attenuation-per-distance and if well made (as it should) freedom from comb filtering, above a certain frequency .and will approach a point source below it, with spherical front wave much higher attenuation per distance.
Some characteristic looking cabinets were designed to build a Line Source, but all estacks shown here are "too short"
Of course, most unsavvy end users will be happy with "the look" and pay.
FWIW I have seen cheesy DJs or small band PAs use just one such cabinet per side (or two stacked) and call it "Line array"
Oh well.
However many it takes to maintain line source behaviour all the way down to the sub crossover frequency. (Or, as near as you can practically get at least.)
Otherwise you'll create a mongrel array that has some line source behaviour in the mid frequencies but transitions to effectively being point source in the lows.
That in turn means that you end up with a different frequency response everywhere in the venue, especially as you move further away from the arrays. The further away from the arrays you are the more the balance will tilt to being mid/HF heavy as the lows are decreasing at -6dB/oct, whereas the mids/highs are only decreasing at -3dB/oct.
Given that the point of line arrays is to get more consistent response over distance without resorting to using delay stacks, this is clearly counter productive.
To behave like a line array the column of speakers has to be large relative to the lowest wavelengths it is producing. 100hz has a wavelength of 11.3ft so the column of speakers would have to be 20ft tall of more.
Yeah that is total misuse of the terminology, but a small numbers of line source boxes do a better job of summing to produce more point source output than the same number of non line source boxes so there is a valid use for this deployment.
True, but in my view the main advantage is minimizing comb filtering compared to regular cabinets stacked together, where you move your head around a few inches and hear the "Phaser Pedal" effect.
Specially easy to notice if you feed some pink noise in the system.
That alone makes it worth using even a small (say 4 per side) "line array"
Specially easy to notice if you feed some pink noise in the system.
That alone makes it worth using even a small (say 4 per side) "line array"
Hi chris, we rehearsed with our own gear the other evening instead of using rehersal room gear. All went great no peaking and sounded good. We are getting a lend of 2 active subs for a gig, my question is i will be running a jack to xlr from the mono port on the desk as shown in the manual, now can i just link the bins together as its only 1 output on the desk and mono fader. Any tips. Appriciate your time before to reply.
The easiest way to utilize powered subs is to connect them inline with the powered tops, so the main outputs from the desk go to the sub and then you link out from each sub to one of the tops. The subs will have a built-in crossover to filter out the highs for itself and in this case there is an adjustable crossover built into the tops which you can activate, but sometimes the subs also contain a high passed output. What are the subs? I have 4 of the ZXL12ps that are most often deployed with at least 1 sub so I'm quite familiar with them and thier performance.