That's seven minutes of total ********! What's IN it? How does it measure? What are it features?
Not seeing this discussion going anywhere. As conanski said early in the thread, there is no such thing as "one" dream system. It all depends on application.
An example. For what I mostly do, renting a pair (or two) of QSC KS212C subs is already into the overkill zone. For others here, these subs are pretty much toys (nice ones though).
An example. For what I mostly do, renting a pair (or two) of QSC KS212C subs is already into the overkill zone. For others here, these subs are pretty much toys (nice ones though).
+1000 for the Wall of Sound! Just as long as I don't have to set it up and break it down by myself.
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The dream system has been alluded to a few times in this thread - it is the one that someone else carries, sets up and takes down at the end of the gig
I would include sound checks and mixes too then I can sit back and enjoy the music
Brian
I would include sound checks and mixes too then I can sit back and enjoy the music
Brian
i always wanted Wiley Coyote's magic pills you know the one's where a drop of water makes a huge structure appear....instant PA
There's so much to unpack in your post (it's really more of a workflow wishlist than a PA wishlist) the most interesting part to me is the 8" woofer line.
I'm sure you know, despite what any marketing department says, that physics can not be defeated. So I'll assume that your needs are modest (vox/acoustic guitar reinforcement in tiny rooms for small audiences - and nothing wrong with that!) or you're just being provocative.
Manufacturers do a lot of work and operators spend a lot of money to make/deliver good sounding low end in widely varying spaces from tiny club to outdoor stadium. "Big" bottom end is one of the things that makes concerts fun and to move air requires specific amounts of displacement.
In theory an 8" cone with 4x the excursion of a 15" cone would deliver the same outcome. In practice a few things get in the way of that.
1) despite what speaker manufactures tell you, a small woofer (let's use 8" like your example") making huge excursions is NOT going to sound as good delivering midrange (which probably matters most) as a dedicated driver with a proper woofer doing the bass work, or even the same driver relieved of bass responsibilities. Assuming your 8" driver could physically and electrically handle what your asking, IM, TIM, THD and doppler effect will all combine to make the midrange sound not so great at best.
2) for a give produced SPL, different sized cones "energize" a space differently. An 8" driver making huge excursions, vs one or multiple large drivers barely moving will not sound the same even if you SPL match the volume of a test tone. A vertically stacked 2 x 18" sub or something big and horn loaded will sound quite different 30' away vs the single 8" driver after you SPL match them in the near field with a test tone. The bass will "feel" very different. I've done this experiment and it's enlightening. When building PA systems, you learn quickly that typical manufacturers efficiency specs for subwoofers mean almost nothing. And in practice, multiple subs if set up correctly, are more than the sum of their individual outputs. A useful spec, that no manufacture ever quotes, would be ground plane measured spl at 30 hz, 100 watts, and at rated rms power, 50' outdoors with no boundary reinforcement. For powered subs, the same measurement at the onset of limiting.
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You make good points. A 15" has the best of both world. It can handle the low lows well.
I've been studying up on band pass boxes. I found this explanation clear and excellent.
Bandpass Enclosures - (Explained) - YouTube
My wildest dream PA system would use something that hasn't been invented yet. It would use technology that would compensate for room acoustics and allow tiny speakers to produce thunderous full range sound and perfect mixes automatically. Some of this probably could be done with algorithms. Getting a few tiny speakers to produce big full range sound may be possible one day but I don't have foggiest idea how that might happen. Maybe the laws of physics preclude it.
The laws of Physics do preclude it, and you can trust me on that - I have a degree in the subject.
Chris
Chris
The best PA System I ever heard in my whole live was an ML Audio NOVA system.
It has a hexagon form with 2* 12" and a (if I remember correctly 1" and 2" coax horn for the highs).
However it was so powerful to make loud rock / metal concerts with 1500 people open-air easily. You needed approx. 8* double-18" subwoofers to keep track with 2* NOVA tops.
I can really recommend to everyone to listen one time to this system. It's kind of a german Danley system. But the brand is not known so much.
It has a hexagon form with 2* 12" and a (if I remember correctly 1" and 2" coax horn for the highs).
However it was so powerful to make loud rock / metal concerts with 1500 people open-air easily. You needed approx. 8* double-18" subwoofers to keep track with 2* NOVA tops.
I can really recommend to everyone to listen one time to this system. It's kind of a german Danley system. But the brand is not known so much.
Material science could improve cone performance. Most cones today are made of paper and the spiders are made of fabric. There's a guy on Youtube who places transducers on different surfaces such as foam board, balsa wood, etc... He claims the sound is good but lacks low end. These are mostly for listening rooms. The panels he uses are around 3' X 4'.
You may find this interesting. Sound power - Wikipedia
It's about acoustic watts. The math is way over my head.
Speakers are sound reproduction generators. There probably is a limit to how much sound a conventional driver can reproduce.
Limitation in materials and technology can be overcome and the laws of physics can't. I get that. Speaker send waves on a fluid called air. Currently front facing speakers produce acceptable high and mid range frequencies at lower power levels than low frequencies require. Push a driver too hard and you wear it out or burn it out. High output amps are affordable. On the other hand, the cost of drivers are all over the place. I think a lot of it is BS. I think a null test would confirm that.
Presently a speaker is a paper cone, a magnet and a voice coil. This is 100+ year old technology. Maybe there's a better way? Maybe something else can move the air other than a paper cone? Maybe the efficiency of a woofer can be increased from 100db SPL to 120 db and enhanced with a passive woofer?
Maybe coaxial speakers can be developed for sound reinforcement application. I have an Ibanez Trubador acoustic guitar amp that uses an 8" coaxial speaker. It's plenty loud enough and it sounds good. The amp is 30 or 40 watts.
Maybe a lot of coaxial small woofers could create the small footprint and big sound I'd like.
physics is a b**** ain't it....what's that old saying there's no replacement for displacement!
i love bass arrays....
and isn't air a gas, not a fluid?
and isn't air a gas, not a fluid?
You need to look around more.
Check out the offerings from 18Sound, B&C, Faital Pro (the 12HX500 looks very interesting), Beyma, etc.
Chris
Turbosound flashlight arrays, BSS EPC780s and a Midas XL4, as long as it comes with a (free!) crew to transport it and a full-time technician to keep it working.
Air is a Newtonian fluid. Water, air, alcohol, glycerol, and thin motor oil are all examples of Newtonian fluids over the range of shear stresses and shear rates encountered in everyday life. Single-phase fluids made up of small molecules are generally (although not exclusively) Newtonian.
In engines the replacement for displacement is super charging. It may be possible to get more displacement out of a speaker by driving the hell out of it. There may be a way using different materials and super conductivity and hyper powerful amps to get more bass out of a 8" speaker than an 18" one. At one time if was thought that the 4 stroke spark gasoline piston engine could only reach a thermal efficiency of 25%. That changed.
I don't know what speaker currently has the highest efficient ratio but I would guess it would be low power in vs power out put. What I found was this... “ Efficiency is the percentage of acoustic energy radiated in all directions from a speaker, compared to the input of a given amount of power (3% to 4% efficiency is typical for a woofer). Given two speakers with identical sensitivity and the input of an identical amount of power, the speaker with wider dispersion is more efficient.”
Perhaps electromagnets could be used increase speaker efficiency?
Faital Pro 12HX500 looks great on paper. It looks like a lot of R&D went into it. The low end is 95 db SPL. I think my Black Widows are 101 db SPL.
18Sound has some interesting products.
dynamic loudspeakers started life with electromagnets in early radios...weight and wasted power caused the pioneers to move on to permanent magnets.
would driving the hell out of a small speaker sound better....my misunderstanding of physics, especially the Newtonian view of things makes me think that IMD and THD skyrocket at high excursion but hey who know maybe we can cheat physics ....
would driving the hell out of a small speaker sound better....my misunderstanding of physics, especially the Newtonian view of things makes me think that IMD and THD skyrocket at high excursion but hey who know maybe we can cheat physics ....
Sadly you can´t.
Out of all earlier ramblings without a practical solution, only open ended questions, the only one with merit (respecting Physics instead of imagining "what if" it doesn´t apply) is that of increasing Air density.
Painting with a very broad brush; IF we keep everything the same (cone, voice coil, magnet, etc.) but double air density, speaker will be twice as efficient.
Practical numbers:
Say a 12" speaker moving mass is 32 grams which is being pushed back and forth by a linear electric motor: voice coil + magnet.
It will typically move (useful load) about 2 grams of air.
Now IF we keep everything the same, but double air density , useful load will double (4 grams) while total moving mass will go from 34 to 36 grams, almost the same, so we are almost doubling efficiency.
Of course, it requires working inside a chamber pressurized at 2 Atmospheres.
, not exactly a practical solution, but it violates no Physics rules.
Imagining Technological advances beating Physics Law is just an exercise for the idle mind, at best, we can *approach* the "ideal case", but never "surpass" it.
So far and for the last 100 years the electromagnetic speaker has beaten all others, with only Piezos showing a limited usefulness in some jobs.
Electrostatic panels, Magneplanars, Ionic tweeters, etc. have shown usefulness, and brilliantly addressed some problems of electromagnetic transducers, but at least on the PA field, where high power output is paramount (or it wouldn´t be PA) , they can´t touch it, by a wide margin.
Out of all earlier ramblings without a practical solution, only open ended questions, the only one with merit (respecting Physics instead of imagining "what if" it doesn´t apply) is that of increasing Air density.
Painting with a very broad brush; IF we keep everything the same (cone, voice coil, magnet, etc.) but double air density, speaker will be twice as efficient.
Practical numbers:
Say a 12" speaker moving mass is 32 grams which is being pushed back and forth by a linear electric motor: voice coil + magnet.
It will typically move (useful load) about 2 grams of air.
Now IF we keep everything the same, but double air density , useful load will double (4 grams) while total moving mass will go from 34 to 36 grams, almost the same, so we are almost doubling efficiency.
Of course, it requires working inside a chamber pressurized at 2 Atmospheres.
, not exactly a practical solution, but it violates no Physics rules.
Imagining Technological advances beating Physics Law is just an exercise for the idle mind, at best, we can *approach* the "ideal case", but never "surpass" it.
So far and for the last 100 years the electromagnetic speaker has beaten all others, with only Piezos showing a limited usefulness in some jobs.
Electrostatic panels, Magneplanars, Ionic tweeters, etc. have shown usefulness, and brilliantly addressed some problems of electromagnetic transducers, but at least on the PA field, where high power output is paramount (or it wouldn´t be PA) , they can´t touch it, by a wide margin.
I know several people who have heard this system. The overwhelming response was 'Style over Substance' or 'Underwhelming'...
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