Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

I hate to throw a damper on things, because I do love the Danley stuff. But "80 degree box" and "gymnatorium" put together might result in a nasty reverberant mess, unless you're in places with some acoustic treatment. Something with a tighter vertical pattern would probably be a better fit for the application.

Not necessarily. It depends on the actual design. By using narrower pattern horns-you will have to use a lot more of them-driving the N factor up. Also the narrower the pattern-the LARGER the horn has to be to maintain the same low freq control. If the horn isn't larger-it will splatter more sound.

If you move the 80° horns closer to the audience-then you will drive them less hard and the sound will be more on the audience-instead of the general "air" of the room.

We have done a large number of high school gyms that use the Danley SM100 (even wider than Sm80). We generally put them over the sidelines-close to the audience-and it works great. We generally have a couple of SM100's facing straight down for court fills that can be turned on or off as needed.

In a "gymatorium" the design depends on the location of the stage. Are there separate systems for the "game" and for the "stage"? Are you trying to localize to the stage?

It is not so much "wide or narrow patterns-but more the actual design and the size of the horn that make it successful or not.

I am a firm believer in using a few devices as possible to do the job. No matter the brand/type-fewer devices are going to have less interference and therefore better sound quality. Assuming you don't spray to much.

There is a case in Europe (I don't want to go into more details yet) that has A LOT of devices that are well thought of over here in the states- (160 I think) and the system is no where near meeting the minimum STI (clarity) requirements. This is a 18,000 hockey arena.

2 90° wide J1's cover half the room and easily exceed the minimum STI requirements. 2 were used in the demo-while half of the existing system was used in the other half. The manufacturer of the original system says that by adding ANOTHER SIXTY boxes they can just get to the minimum-AS LONG AS acoustic treatment is ALSO added. But the 2 J1's were exceeding the minimum WITHOUT acoustic treatment. Figure the cost for yourself.

The "claim" is that the narrower pattern works better-but they are small horns-and it has been DEMONSTRATED IN THE ROOM with both STI measurements AND listening that a small number of wider horns works much better.

General statements very often result in wrong answers.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

Sounds like fun. How many people and rigs can you accomommodate Ivan?

We could do some inside and some outside. We have a couple of different places we could do this in the shop. Of course weather is the big unknown.

I am going to target the middle part of Jan. I need to get some more details and work some things out before confirming anything.

Having some additional subs would also be fun.

 

[Tim McCulloch]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

Ivan, Eric... keep me in the loop and give a couple week's notice. I'd love to come to ATL for a listen.

 

[Mike Pyle]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

I am going to target the middle part of Jan.

Don't do it Jan. 24 - 27 or they may have to cancel the NAMM show.

 

[Marlon Daniel]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

In a "gymatorium" the design depends on the location of the stage. Are there separate systems for the "game" and for the "stage"? Are you trying to localize to the stage?

In my situation, the stage is on one of the narrow sides of the "gymatorium" with the seating going down the long side. Seats can sometimes be quite close to the stage with as many as 900 individuals in some instances. For a typical production there can be 4 or 5 vocalists, full drumset, electric bass, 1 or 2 guitar amps, percussion, 2 or 3 keyboards and a hammond with leslie.

 

[Eric Cagle]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

OK the shootout in on for Monday January 14th around 10:00-11:00am with lunch provided. I started the thread in varsity. Bennett please move it if you think one of the other forums is more appropriate. I will see all of you who can make it there. Eric

 

[Scott Helmke]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

Not necessarily. It depends on the actual design. By using narrower pattern horns-you will have to use a lot more of them-driving the N factor up. Also the narrower the pattern-the LARGER the horn has to be to maintain the same low freq control. If the horn isn't larger-it will splatter more sound.

Ivan, note that I said "narrower vertical dispersion". You can still have a nice wide pattern in the horizontal direction, and narrow the vertical to avoid spraying the ceiling.

General statements very often result in wrong answers.

Not sure how to respond to that one. Maybe by saying "conventional wisdom often isn't"? But general practices happen because they do often work, though sometimes a generational change will invalidate that.

Still, you're not a French company so you can't claim to bypass the laws of physics. Sound pointed where the audience ain't usually results in worse results, not better.

 

[Rob Timmerman]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

In my situation, the stage is on one of the narrow sides of the "gymatorium" with the seating going down the long side. Seats can sometimes be quite close to the stage with as many as 900 individuals in some instances. For a typical production there can be 4 or 5 vocalists, full drumset, electric bass, 1 or 2 guitar amps, percussion, 2 or 3 keyboards and a hammond with leslie.

If this is your typical arrangement, you may be better served by a second set of speakers working as delays, instead of more firepower up front. Perhaps with some frontfill as needed.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

Ivan, note that I said "narrower vertical dispersion". You can still have a nice wide pattern in the horizontal direction, and narrow the vertical to avoid spraying the ceiling.


Not sure how to respond to that one. Maybe by saying "conventional wisdom often isn't"? But general practices happen because they do often work, though sometimes a generational change will invalidate that.

Still, you're not a French company so you can't claim to bypass the laws of physics. Sound pointed where the audience ain't usually results in worse results, not better.

The vertical pattern needed for a particular application is going to depend on the mounting height and the amount of SPL variation that can be tolerated.

It is true that if you use a narrow vertical pattern there will be less energy going to the ceiling-a good thing. This is the "general statement".

HOWEVER there is not way to get even SPL from front to back. This is the overlooked part. If you put the loudspeaker down low-then it is going to be louder in the front than the back. If you put it up high, then you have to choose which section of seats are going to be covered-front-middle or rear. Yes you can add additional loudspeakers for more fill-but now you have increased the "effective" vertical coverage (although it doesn't work that way). And now you are talking about a SYSTEM-not a single loudspeaker.

I never said anything about bypassing the laws of physics. I said that we move the wider coverage loudspeakers closer to the audience-so they are putting the coverage on the audience-NOT spraying it all around.

A riddle. How do you take a single speaker and have nice smooth coverage everywhere? That is what people want-right?

Build a room out of glass and point it in the upper corner. The coverage will be pretty much the same everywhere-that makes for a really nice looking coverage map.

HOWEVER-it is going to be totally useless in terms of clarity. So now it is time to look a little bit deeper.

By "general" statements-I meant things that need more clarification. Just like with cars. Go to a local autocross event. The cars with the larger horsepower go aroudn the track faster-right? But just wait till the little go carts go round. They are faster-handle the corners better and so forth. But they have very small engines.

Yes there are big differences between the cars-but in THAT event-the idea is to carry a single person around the track as fast as possible. And they do it with the smallest engines.

Just sayin' that often a bit more definition is needed to a "general" statement.

 

[Helge A. Bentsen]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

I'm not going to argue about what's the best solution for a given application, but I'd like to chime in with my $0.02.

For a number of shows I've deployed one SH-50 a side covering the main part of the audience instead of deploying two, despite it's "low" horizontal coverage compared to the requirements at these shows.
I found that I gained clarity and could bring the general level down using frontfills and outfills to cover the first rows where the mains didn't cover compared to using two Sh-50s a side. There will of course be transitions between the various boxes, but they tend to be more local than other issues in acoustically challenging spaces.

I believe this is because I put out less energy into the room and as a bonus move parts of the audience closer to the source with this approach, but I could be mistaken.

 

[kristianjohnsen]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

Can't I just ride in the car?

WHAT! Drag the speakers instead???:O

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

WHAT! Drag the speakers instead???:O

EXACTLY!!!! You have to know what is most important

 

[Scott Helmke]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

HOWEVER there is not way to get even SPL from front to back. This is the overlooked part. If you put the loudspeaker down low-then it is going to be louder in the front than the back. If you put it up high, then you have to choose which section of seats are going to be covered-front-middle or rear. Yes you can add additional loudspeakers for more fill-but now you have increased the "effective" vertical coverage (although it doesn't work that way). And now you are talking about a SYSTEM-not a single loudspeaker.

Well yeah!

But you described a system in your earlier post, with the extra speakers overhead along with the wide guys up front. So we're not breaking any new ground here at all.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: Thoughts on old EAW KF gear

Well yeah!

But you described a system in your earlier post, with the extra speakers overhead along with the wide guys up front. So we're not breaking any new ground here at all.

The overhead speakers (the same ones as on the side lines) were facing straight down-to cover people directly under them-so no "spraying" with those. THey have a decent sized horn to help maintain the control on the back side.

If trying to cover the floor with narrow pattern speakers (and VERY FEW manufacturers actually manufacture narrow pattern speakers (these days) that have any decent pattern control), it would take quite a few. And then the extra interference that would come out of all those extra devices (not to mention costs) would generally result in lower STI-which is NOT the goal.

With loudspeakers-more is NOT better. The fewer the better.