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advice for an RLA inspired system

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budney View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote budney Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 July 2018 at 11:19am
Originally posted by Racks&Stacks Racks&Stacks wrote:


Well, the goal of sound reinforcement should be for everyone to have the same great experience. One sound one vibe, right? An issue with just about any ground stack design is that there is some room necessary before all the passband's are audible, which is why in any scenario I would prefer to fly or at least angle the tops. to minimize the distance. It is weird to hear the mids and highs from across the room after getting the low mid and bass impact right next to you. That is not how we experience sound in nature.

The bigger issue I has with the gsa lens horns was to the sides. The particular install I heard had more than 4 stacks, which did close the holes along the sides of the dancefloor, but introduced more sound sources. A very capable sound engineer did what he could to align everything, but the sound was still different at every point on the dancefloor. The principle behind the gsa/pioneer lens is the same as yours, but yes, turning off one their lenses would have probably improved the sound.

Horn design has evolved since the rla days, and measurement technology has allowed us to see how crossover design and horn decisions impact how the sound propagates at the edges of dispersion. Better designs seek to minimize the christmas tree effect as the waveform narrows as one reaches the high frequency limits of a given passband.

Depending on your room, center fills might help, is all I am saying. Depends on overall room design, whether the dancefloor is to be perfectly rectangular, if a dj booth and subsequent monitors make some noise, bars placement, etc.

I remember seeing a video of him explaining what was going on in that room. Wasn't it something crazy like 8 stacks, with extra lenses around the room too? It was a shame I couldn't understand what was being said, I was very interested in seeing what his thought processes were.

Once I met a very capable engineer who knew his stuff, but refused to ever do a 4 point system. Comb filtering, laws of physics, blah blah etc etc. He knew an awful lot of theory and could do lots of fancy things with all his software, but unfortunately there is no calculation for vibe! He insisted on running them like delay stacks as you would for a gig, so everyone has to face the same way = bad dancefloor vibes. I think being able to hear everything in the room, albeit maybe not exactly the same everywhere, is much more important than being able to hear it exactly the same in only parts of the room. 

I do agree with you that additional fills may help in certain areas, I will have to figure that out when the time comes. Thats one reason why I bought more 2 inch drivers than I need for just the lenses, in case extra is needed. Perhaps some smaller like the 2390 could work for centre fills
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Racks&Stacks Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 July 2018 at 2:42pm
Originally posted by budney budney wrote:

I remember seeing a video of him explaining what was going on in that room. Wasn't it something crazy like 8 stacks, with extra lenses around the room too? It was a shame I couldn't understand what was being said, I was very interested in seeing what his thought processes were.

Once I met a very capable engineer who knew his stuff, but refused to ever do a 4 point system. Comb filtering, laws of physics, blah blah etc etc. He knew an awful lot of theory and could do lots of fancy things with all his software, but unfortunately there is no calculation for vibe! He insisted on running them like delay stacks as you would for a gig, so everyone has to face the same way = bad dancefloor vibes. I think being able to hear everything in the room, albeit maybe not exactly the same everywhere, is much more important than being able to hear it exactly the same in only parts of the room. 

I do agree with you that additional fills may help in certain areas, I will have to figure that out when the time comes. Thats one reason why I bought more 2 inch drivers than I need for just the lenses, in case extra is needed. Perhaps some smaller like the 2390 could work for centre fills

Yes, the install was insane. Laurin is quite approachable, so shoot him a message, as he is also very passionate about rla style stuff. He is also very busy, so don't be surprised if takes a lil time for a response. That room would have sounded better with half the shit in there. I'm not sure what the original motives of the preceding club and sound engineer were. While Pioneer was keen to produce a nice video about the install, the club went bankrupt and I don't know if pioneer got their money.

Those extra lenses could be the ticket if you toe in the stacks appropriately. As untrue as it is to the original rla approach, delaying the center/side fills just enough can make them "disappear" and create the impression that hte sound is only coming from the stacks, but with fewer or no holes.

While factually correct that 4 point sound does smear the sound a bit with additional arrivals to the same listening spot, sound engineering is a game of compromises. Most setups do not have tops flown high enough to have the same spl from back to front, so in the interest of approaching uniform loudness on the dancefloor, I can live with a couple extra arrivals, especially as these are of course social environments and everyone facing the same direction is a terrible vibe.

For concerts it is another story, but there is zero reason to look towards a dance music dj
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote budney Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 July 2018 at 6:10pm
Originally posted by Racks&Stacks Racks&Stacks wrote:


Yes, the install was insane. Laurin is quite approachable, so shoot him a message, as he is also very passionate about rla style stuff. He is also very busy, so don't be surprised if takes a lil time for a response. That room would have sounded better with half the shit in there. I'm not sure what the original motives of the preceding club and sound engineer were. While Pioneer was keen to produce a nice video about the install, the club went bankrupt and I don't know if pioneer got their money.

Those extra lenses could be the ticket if you toe in the stacks appropriately. As untrue as it is to the original rla approach, delaying the center/side fills just enough can make them "disappear" and create the impression that hte sound is only coming from the stacks, but with fewer or no holes.

While factually correct that 4 point sound does smear the sound a bit with additional arrivals to the same listening spot, sound engineering is a game of compromises. Most setups do not have tops flown high enough to have the same spl from back to front, so in the interest of approaching uniform loudness on the dancefloor, I can live with a couple extra arrivals, especially as these are of course social environments and everyone facing the same direction is a terrible vibe.

For concerts it is another story, but there is zero reason to look towards a dance music dj

It did look more like a Pioneer showroom than an actual club...not surprised that it went bankrupt. Ive spoken to him a few times, but he didn't have much time to spare and only told me that the 4520 and the Waldorf are different, one is not better than the other. Not quite the in depth analysis I was hoping for! I know he has the measurements from a genuine RLA Waldorf, but again no one seems to want to share.

Also a secret seems to be how to have subs in a 4 point system. Most people say and I agree with them that the subs should all really be at one place, technically it's correct but I find that sometimes its completely bass in your face at one end of the room and not that much in the other. Blitz club for instance, from the pictures seems to have subs in each stack around the room, but then how do you account for the cancellations that would occur with that setup. Prized secret apparently. Is it just a case of offsetting and angling them slightly so they aren't all directly firing into one point in the middle?

When you say flown high enough, how high is enough? You mean high enough to have a great enough angle so that the tops aren't firing to the other side of the room? 

Looking on youtube I found that Brian Wilson did some installs in the UK, in Nottingham and London in the late 90s. I was not aware of any other kind of RLA style sound system in the UK other than the Phazon installs in Ministry of Sound, Cream/Nation and Sankeys. I remember seeing an old RLA brochure that had a London club listed but I can't remember what the club was called. I doubt any of them used the Waldorf though, and most of them were tailored to the 90s rave sound rather than the 70s/80s disco sound. I've tried to speak to Brian quite a bit but still can't seem to find any contact details for him.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Daniel S Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 July 2018 at 9:43pm
Originally posted by budney budney wrote:

I remember seeing an old RLA brochure that had a London club listed but I can't remember what the club was called. I doubt any of them used the Waldorf though, and most of them were tailored to the 90s rave sound rather than the 70s/80s disco sound. I've tried to speak to Brian quite a bit but still can't seem to find any contact details for him.


I think the London nightclub with the RLA system would have been Regine's, the London branch of a chain of nightclubs in a handful of major cities around the World in the late 70s. It was more like a Studio 54 kind of Place but I don't think any of their clubs made as much impact as Studio. There's a mentioning of it in an old Billboard issue from 1978: https://books.google.se/books?id=kyQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT62&lpg=PT62#v=onepage&q=richard%20long&f=false

Those old billboard issues have a quite a lot of info on disco and nightclub history in them if you search the google archived issues and Richard Long is mentioned quite a few times.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Racks&Stacks Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 July 2018 at 10:25pm
Originally posted by budney budney wrote:


It did look more like a Pioneer showroom than an actual club...not surprised that it went bankrupt. Ive spoken to him a few times, but he didn't have much time to spare and only told me that the 4520 and the Waldorf are different, one is not better than the other. Not quite the in depth analysis I was hoping for! I know he has the measurements from a genuine RLA Waldorf, but again no one seems to want to share.

Also a secret seems to be how to have subs in a 4 point system. Most people say and I agree with them that the subs should all really be at one place, technically it's correct but I find that sometimes its completely bass in your face at one end of the room and not that much in the other. Blitz club for instance, from the pictures seems to have subs in each stack around the room, but then how do you account for the cancellations that would occur with that setup. Prized secret apparently. Is it just a case of offsetting and angling them slightly so they aren't all directly firing into one point in the middle?

When you say flown high enough, how high is enough? You mean high enough to have a great enough angle so that the tops aren't firing to the other side of the room? 

Looking on youtube I found that Brian Wilson did some installs in the UK, in Nottingham and London in the late 90s. I was not aware of any other kind of RLA style sound system in the UK other than the Phazon installs in Ministry of Sound, Cream/Nation and Sankeys. I remember seeing an old RLA brochure that had a London club listed but I can't remember what the club was called. I doubt any of them used the Waldorf though, and most of them were tailored to the 90s rave sound rather than the 70s/80s disco sound. I've tried to speak to Brian quite a bit but still can't seem to find any contact details for him.

While distributed bass does suffer from cancellations, putting walls around a room also creates issues for monoblocks. At one club I worked at, we tried putting all the subs (8) along a wall and it was actually distributing them (4, 2, 2) which made for the most even response in the room. I've almost always distributed subs where I could. Perhaps I've jsut been lucky with placements, but any holes were tolerable and the sweet spot seemed larger. Sound reinforcement is full of compromises. Subwoofers, even horns, arent directional enough that slight angular offsetting is going to do much, and delaying would only shift where cancellations take place. I have gotten better bass delaying one side so that the largest null zone was off the dancefloor. Probably screwed up other alignments, but that was a long time ago. I've worked in a number of old school nyc stack rooms, and I dont think any stack subs were delayed, but that might not have been the case with additional subs

Sound loses 6 dB per doubling of distance, so the higher you can get the tops, the closer the volume will be from near the speaker to far away. 4pt setups complicate this, as do the typically relatively lower ceilings where dance clubs tend to be built. Further complicating the issue is the reverberant field, but acoustic treatment and speakers with better directionality help simplify.

I worked with Brian from 00-02. Great console builder. Phazon also did Home in London, but I don't know what was in that room. Try reaching Brian with https://www.facebook.com/B.W.Productions
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote toastyghost Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 July 2018 at 12:24pm
Home was JBL HLA 14” lows, and mids to highs with Bertha and Levan horns in four point. It’s the exact same system that ended up in Sankeys Soap despite their oft repeated claims that it was fully custom built for them. Mostly run from JBL MPX and some Crown VLZ.

God knows where it ended up, the original subs rotted to nothing over the years and the tops got flogged off to clear long overdue debts after Sankeys closed in it’s most recent incarnation. After sitting in a container for bloody ages.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Bams Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 February 2020 at 12:46pm
Stumbled on this post while procrastinating..... any progress on it? still bummed i had to sell the rig i mention earlier but slowly getting back in the game. can use some motivation. :) 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote cravings Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 February 2020 at 3:54pm
good to see you back man.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Bams Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 February 2020 at 5:53pm
Oh my... i must have accidentally divided by Zero..
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote concept-10 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 February 2020 at 6:57pm
What has this got to do with an RLA inspired sound system?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Elliot Thompson Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 February 2020 at 8:22pm

The dbx 100/500 was very popular in a lot of clubs in NYC in the mid 1970's - early 1980's.


The main difference in sound between the older dbx sub harmonic synthesizers and the newer versions is how the processor interacted with the bass notes. The older versions offered more sustainability in the notes whereas, as the newer versions (post 100/500 models) react more on the impulse. One could look at it as comparing an A-2 to an A-2 Sharp. The change in character may have been due to the hatred many had for Disco Music in which, dbx had to adapt their sub harmonic synthesizer processor to more mainstream music (Rock) to keep up with times.


There is really no need to build a sub harmonic synthesizer unless you are going all analogue (no digital processing whatsoever) for there are many VST plug-ins that can give you a close enough behavioural pattern of the old dbx 100/500.


Bear in mind all dbx hardware sub harmonic synthesizers offered a high pass filter (some steeper than others) below 20 Hz with a lot of distortion (added purposely) to give one the perception of sub-low bass.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Elliot Thompson Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 February 2020 at 4:39pm
Originally posted by efinque efinque wrote:


Does this mean there's a good chance of finding a 2nd hand unit? I saw one on Reverb for $150, albeit a very reputable site it raises suspicion.

You may have had luck on your side when you seen it for that price. Rare Vintage dbx equipment as with any other type of vintage audio equipment increases in value as time moves on. 


Originally posted by efinque efinque wrote:

The 120A/120XP processors which were in production some time ago are both discontinued. One thing is a bass guitar has the low E string tuned to ~41Hz in a standard EADG tuning so the lower notes from C to D# in the processor are left unused. Electronic disco tends to use synth bass lines though.

The 120A/120XP alters all frequencies ranging from 110 Hz - 26 Hz. dbx claims the other frequencies are untouched but, that is not the case.


Originally posted by efinque efinque wrote:

Implementing VST requires a computer. Setting up a digital FPGA/MCU with converters requires highly advanced electronics skills and I hate to admit I'm not very competent at engineering, it's more like getting a grasp of the desired outcome and then designing something that makes sense.

All you need is a live VST Host. It is not as complicated as you make it to be. VST Hosts have been around for nearly 20 years. Unless you must use analogue processing from start to finish, you can use a live VST host. The majority of the Professional Audio Industry uses computers for some means of audio implementation.


Originally posted by efinque efinque wrote:

Semantics imo, the basic functionality needs to be there, otherwise the device is useless. You could ape a guitar synthesizer pedal that works on the same principle, I'm sure there are kits that do exactly the same and add all the nuances later like saturation for warmth, HPF so as not to hog headroom from the amps etc (pure sine waves can be very pleasing to the ear and usually many drivers are spec'd with and designed to reproduce them, unfortunately many oscillator ICs produce only square/triangle waves which need to be filtered)



The majority of people I've read perusing RLA System never heard a RLA System. The dbx sub harmonic synthesizer like the Bertha was used solely as a special effect. So you heard the processor/box once in blue moon. The bulk of the sound came from the boxes sitting above the Bertha. I can assure you the Waldorf never had the dbx sub harmonic synthesizer running through it.

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