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Re: Are new pro speakers suitable for home audio?

Theater is very different from live sound reinforcement, you don't often have a stage volume level of 110 dB you need to get above with the FOH system. You also normally use a more distributed speaker system (more, smaller speakers sprinkled about the room) rather than a few large clusters of bigger speakers, like concerts use. The greater distance between speakers, and reduced distance between the audiance and the speakers makes it much easier to get decent sound out pretty much any speaker in a theater setting.

Real sound reinforcement speakers (as apposed to the stuff sold in your local Music Store) is designed to permit you to control how the sound is dispersed in a room to let you do one or more of the following things:

- Avoid spraying sound on the walls and ceilings. This cuts down on reverberation and makes vocals easier to understand.
- Array multiple speakers without causing lobing problems. This lets you get those huge stupid loud speaker clusters that modern rock concerts demand and still get even coverage. It takes more than a trap shaped box to make an arrayable speaker
- Project sound farther (long throw) reducing the need for delay speakers in larger venues. Gives better, more even coverage for the audiance.

There must be an application for uncontrolled sound dispersion in live sound work, otherwise how is Bose able to keep selling systems? But for the life of me I can't imagine any live sound reinforcement situation that is made better by less directional control of the sound.

Just to open you eyes to what I am talking about here is an easy experiment for you to try. Put two of those speakers with the 90x40 horns side by side, right next to each other, and play some music through them. Then walk around the room while listening carefully to them. If you have an SPL meter use it. You will very quickly understand why directional control in an SR speaker is such a good idea. It is almost impossible to closely array 90x40 horns without very uneven volume levels in the covered area. About the best you can do with speakers like that is put one on each side of the stage (like bar bands do) and hope for the best.

Didn't mean to step on any toes here, but I call it like I see it. 90x40 horns spell "Bar Band" and "DJ" when it comes to live sound.

Phil


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