line array projects

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 _djk_ wrote:

It measures better, and it sounds better, especially when you walk the auditorium.
What else matters?

I have used some proper pony stuff in my life-time, but with a bit of inventiveness, and doing some crazy, at first glance plain stooopid, arrangements, got a good, enjoyable sound to the audience.

With a half decent monitor mix, and a happy audience, the band lift themselves up, and play better, and things carry on getting better. Everyone goes home happy.

Now, from a science point of view, I would love to design or use a system, that was "perfect" from a Physicists POV, but that isn't going to be possible.

The physics of how we convert electricity to sound, state so pretty quickly, from even the most rudimentary of literary review, it is impossible to get rid of every artifact of distortion or summation issues from our current use of transducers. Some, expensive, techniques offer some benefits, some being DSP, ply or fibre glass, as much as transducer choice. Every current box has a compromise somewhere.

However, given how even our current best products get fooked up by not hanging the damn things right, how much is down to the guy flying/rigging it? One joy of MLA, is it tells you exactly how to hang it, and at what angles, for what you want to achieve. Same with other products with EASE type data. However, it, again, comes down to having the knowledge of what to type into the computer, and then the skills to transfer the computer output to real life.

Oft used case in point - F1 at Glastonbury. I am sure most would accept F1 cabs are perfectly competent, and there compromise is price, and perhaps, size. However, correct rigging is critical, be that the hang, or the DSP set-up. That year it was slated on Pyramid stage duties (1997 IIRC), you had 100000 60W lightbulbs listening to it, warming the air directly above them. Glasto being Glasto, it was cold and wet, so the layer of air above the "warmed by lightbulbs" air, was very cold. Cue sound being bent from refraction due to travelling faster in warm air, relative to cold air. Error of the cabinet, probably not. Rigging error, maybe, a few more degrees pitching the array down may of helped, but it had already been aimed with a dollop more "down" to already try and keep things in the valley. Ultimately, mother nature threw a curve ball that no one had allowed for, and bit them on the arse.

That sounds like an element of Human Error to me. Or, a freak weather event that couldn't have been reasonably allowed for, more accurately?