Re: SH-50 array eq.
A common setup around here for these sizes of gigs are three D&B Q1 over three Q-subs. It's a line array. It gets loud. It sounds like s**t compared to sh-50s, but it will probably be louder. And it will scale better for larger gigs. If I move into bigger gigs I'll have to consider some SH-46 
That said, I suspect a bit of perceived loudness is lost in the SH-50s due to their SQ. They sound good even after I hit the RMS-limiter in my PLM14k. In a visiting engineers words: "You can hear anything you do on the mixer". But that lack of distortion is sometimes troublesome, visiting engineers complain about a lack of loudness because it doesn't fell like it's loud. 100 dBA doesn't feel like 100dBA on other speakers. I like it, but I'll probably need to bring a dB-meter to prove my point.
And having done a lot of shows on a LS9 around the world, I think it's funny using it on my speakers. It's probably the most disliked desk around here, but you can make really good sounding shows on it when you have a good speaker system. I'm guessing that's because you're not fighting the speakers, they just translate your modified electrical signals to music.
I wonder how many times people have put the blame on the mixing desk rather than at the speakers.
