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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 8:00 pm 
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Hi karaokeniagrafalls ... I somewhat agree with you, but often times the bar or lounge only lease the facility and probably in most of those cases wouldn't be able to acoustically treat the room even if they wanted to. Also there's the economics of it all whereby the entertainment part of the business may not be a significant enough factor to justify the return on investment or rather lack thereof. I do remember back in the day when there were many nightclubs that were competing against each other to be crowned the live entertainment king. Some of those venues either relied entirely on the entertainment revenue or it was a significant part of their revenue stream. A few of these clubs did get their rooms acoustically treated and many of them even installed their own house sound systems. I think those days are long gone for the most part. I'm guessing that most of these venues that feature karaoke nights aren't hauling out their cash from those nights in armored trucks.


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PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2017 1:16 am 
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when it comes to acoustics vs Feedback... I find most KJ's tend to ring out their speakers to avoid feedback.

Acoustics are determined by the amount of people that fill the room for each night.
Although we can not always provide exact sound for each venue we tend to find that happy medium to get started.

I love the way my BOSE system works with many room sizes. I currently use the BOSE MA12 arrays accompanied by a couple of the BOSE MB4 Subs all being powered by a pair of BOSE Packlite amps with built in processing.

I also use the presets on the BOSE Tonematch T1 Digital mixer.

In any size venue the sound is clean and full during the slow hours but as the room fills up with people, I find they blend well with the ever changing room acoustics without the need to adjust anything.


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PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2017 7:45 am 
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What does it mean to "ring out" speakers? I'm not familiar with the term. I also don't understand the context in which you say "acoustics vs Feedback". I'm not getting the connection between the two seeing they're not related.

If you meant to say that acoustics are profoundly affected by the amount of people that fill the room you'd be 100% correct. You can divide room acoustics into two separate categories, fixed and variable. The fixed being the room dimensions i.e. size, shape, wall thickness (thicker walls provides better room isolation but unfortunately creates its own set of problems), ceiling height, etc., as well as surface materials. The variables on the other hand are temperature, relative humidity, the number of people in the room to include the seating arrangements and crowd noise such as clanking glasses, etc. In that sense, the human element does "tune the room" and usually, but not always, in a positive way. That's because more often than not acoustic problems within a room are a result of standing waves, early reflections, and reverb or what we call RT60. Now with regard to standing waves, this is one area where an onboard graphic EQ can have the most effect. As we've already discussed EQ can't "treat" the room for standing waves but in many cases those frequencies are in the 300 Hz range and below so notching them out of the system can have a huge effect. The only problem with using graphic EQs is the relatively wide "Q" of even a 31 band EQ which is a 1/3 octave equalizer. By the same token it's not really practical at all to use a parametric EQ in a mobile system and without a graphic analysis, the offending frequencies would be nearly impossible to isolate. Also due to the fact that those frequencies are in the omni-directional range they don't have much of an effect on system intelligibility.

As you've probably noticed from previous posts that I'm not a big fan of BOSE systems. I had no idea that you used such a system or I would have been a bit gentler in my comments. I have to be honest here by stating that I haven't really looked at their systems in about 20 or so years nor do I have reason to any longer so it wouldn't be fair for me to comment one way or another on their newer systems without at least having heard them. I will say that in my opinion they made the best 5" drivers in the business. The rest of their stuff at that time was junk. I don't have an awful lot of good things to say about a company that puts a $7.00 (wholesale) stamp frame 15" woofer (try getting that sucker reconed) in a $500 sub-woofer cabinet and were able to convince the world that their products are superior to anything else. Give me a break! And who can forget the "Acousti-mass" piece of junk. So knowing the Bose history and culture I'm a bit skeptical of anything that bears the name BOSE on it. I guess it's possible the BOSE culture has changed in the last 20 years. I hope so at least for their sake. After all these are "home boys" in my own back yard and I'd like nothing more than to see them live up to their reputation for quality audio products.


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PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2017 9:22 am 
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Before I explain the differences, I want you and I to be clear that your Forum title says "Sound Reinforcement for KJs"

99% of the members on here have absolutely no clue about "Live Band" or "Recording studio" logic. Because it's Karaoke.

Quote:
What does it mean to "ring out" speakers

involves placing a mic next to speakers approx 5ft away, and gradually turning up the volume till ringing occurs and simply notching down the appropriate Hz on the EQ. repeating steps notching about 3 or 4 frequencies using your EQ.

Very similar to "Ringing out" stage monitors in a live band setup

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I also don't understand the context in which you say "acoustics vs Feedback"


Just a term I use to make a long story short as to "Acoustically treating a room with Bass Traps and Sound absorption vs. Tuning a room using an EQ to find a happy medium.

BOSE
Keep in mind that Bose makes plenty of products on the consumer level... but I refer more towards PRO Level BOSE systems.


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PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2017 11:51 am 
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Bastiat wrote:
What does it mean to "ring out" speakers? I'm not familiar with the term.
It's not a new term.
That is an industry term for sound engineers (taught in sound engineering courses and I learned it mostly on hands from working with live sound engineers). Takes setting the system up to where it's going to be, placing the mics in the general area they will be. 31 band eq flat, turn up system until you start hearing feedback, turn offending frequencies down. Repeat 4 or 5 times (usually until you get to the highest volume point you'll expect to run at) and high majority of the time you will no longer have any feedback for the rest of the night.

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2017 12:12 pm 
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Okay ... so I get you now. When you say "tune a room" you are speaking in the vernacular as opposed to the literal sense of the term. Gotcha ....

As far as Bose Pro-Line (actually their stuff is really more like Pro-sumer than Professional) the sub-woofer and the Acousti-mass that I was referring to was considered their "Professional" line. At the time I was working in pro-audio and the big joke was "no highs, no lows, it must be Bose". I was and still am very good friends with the New England JBL/Harmon rep who at the time was repping for Cerwin Vega, JBL, EAW, Crown, etc. Bose had contacted him looking for a raw 15" woofer for their sub-woofer that they used with their 5" driver box whose model # escapes me at the moment but I remember that they had to attach an active EQ to the damn thing because they tried to market it as a "full range" speaker box. They did make for a very decent mid-range box if you dumped the active EQ, and used it in a tri-amped array with a low-mid box and some tweets. Anyway, when Paul quoted Bose a price on the raw 15" drivers which were legitimate drivers and not the stamp framed junk that Bose ended up with, they rejected his offer because his speakers cost about $5.00 more! Nobody could believe it.

There was a company back in the 80s and 90s that used to make killer cabinets out of 13-ply Baltic birch that you could load with your favorite speakers which was usually JBLs or EAWs at the time (you might have been able to load them with Meyer speakers but I can't remember if Meyer ever sold their speakers separate from their speaker boxes). Anyway if you combined the Bose speakers (which if my memory serves me correctly were loaded with eight or nine of their 5" drivers), with a 12" low-mid box, and something for the high end, either JBL slots or my favorites which were the EAW tweeter horns (mainly because the JBLs weren't so much better than the EAWs that they justified the price difference in my view) you really had a very nice sounding system for a small band. The 5" Bose boxes really shine with vocals so if you crossed the system at around 150 Hz and 3 kHz you could get just about all of the vocal energy coming from the Bose and EAWs.

In any event, outside of that type of an arrangement I never heard a Bose system that I liked, but again to be fair I haven't evaluated or even heard one in about 20 years so it could definitely be different nowadays. I will tell you however that before I wrote this post I went online looking for the Bose model # that I refer to above with no luck but while i was at it I was looking at their 812 system which seems to me to be the powered equivalent on the what I was looking for. It didn't spec out very well but that's not the same as actually listening to it. Specs can be deceiving.


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PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2017 12:28 pm 
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Hmmm .... you learn something new everyday. I don't ever remember hearing the term used before, but I can see where it gets its name. I never did stick a microphone in front of a main although we did with stage monitors, and mostly for my horn (saxophone - used an EV PL9 which was a dynamic omni before I went wireless) and not my vocal mic


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PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2017 8:48 pm 
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those are "Old" tricks of the trade when we didn't have a Spectrum analyzer handy.

if you ever get a chance go to a near by music store and check out the BOSE Tone match T1. I swear they are the absolute best for the working KJ. The tuner works somewhat like a realtime analyzer making it easy to find the frequency to sweep in the Para EQ settings.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 7:25 am 
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So I did an online search looking for the Bose device that you were talking about and came across a description and a small video from a Kip Winger (Bose employee I'm guessing). It seems like a very cool device. Having said that, I didn't quite understand it's purpose. Evidently it has what seems to be a mic modeling feature but I don't understand how you would use it. Kip said that the device has several algorithms that can identify or has identified certain mic characteristics of mics such as the SM58 that he mentions as an example. What I don't understand is why would you need to do that and what does the device do with that information? Here's what I'm speculating .... that there is a preset for an SM58 that can be selected and then modeled after a number of other microphones in its database. So if you wanted your SM58 to sound like the infamous $15,000 Neumann U47 or maybe a Sony SM5 (for the Quincy Jones/Thriller fans out there), or a Gefell 930 (best mics on the planet in my opinion), or an AKG, etc., etc. If that's what it does then I would say it is very cool, although I'm not so sure those kinds of subtleties would be all that recognizable over a PA. Is that how you use the device?


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 10:06 am 
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Kip Winger is a Famous 80's Musician from the band WINGER.

What the T! presets do is not "Emulate" other mics. What it does is optimizes the settings to work best for that brand of mic.



So now that all the guess work is out of the way, It's much easier to understand acoustics in each venue when setting up your sound then store them permanently in the tonematch.

not a bad deal for $300 digital mixer.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 2:22 am 
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Bose L1 Model II with a B2 and a T1 ToneMatch Engine is amazing sonicaly inside a small room.
In a ballroom setting 2 L1 Model IIs and 4 B2s with 2 of the B2s driven by Bose's power amplifier is really something to listen to. The T1TME has a learning curve to it, but a discerning ear has the ability to make a vocalist for instance sound like they are in a studio, or an arena, or like fricking sheaeat regular karaoke with a system that has 16 presets. I choose the 2 former with my setup. I am able to tailor sound to fit the genre and decade of recordings to my wish, but you have to learn the T1TME and be attuned to the type of mix of the time or improvements of mix. I also use 'Breakaway' with it. I learned on my own without any outside help. Other hosts have bought my setup after hearing my system sans the T1TME and stuck with their mixers and their sound just does not match up. In my mind I consider them mullet heads for not springing for the mixer, just like I do trainers in gyms that people threw and still throw good money toward in the 80s up until nowadays. That is entirely another story. Generally speaking people are pretty stupid when it comes to money, value for the dollar, setting yourself apart, maximizing and what have you. Every KJ that has heard my mix and sang on it along with their significant other has commented extremely favorably to my sound. I have several current Professional and past Professionals with gold and platinum albums that sing Karaoke only at my shows and no other.
After they have heard how I can improve a regular karaoke vocalist with the mix change their mind about karaoke and put songs up. They rule because they know how to move crowds and feel free knowing their deliveries will be maximized through mixing. Few karaoke singers are demonstrative like professionals.

I had a best friend with 6 Golds and 2 Plats tell me my sound was like being at Red Rocks. He played there several times.

I do not care what any of you say about Bose. You just do not know what is currently out there nor know how to use it. Simply the BOTTOM LINE to it. And that is that. No more to be said.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 2:57 am 
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dvdgdry wrote:
You just do not know how to use it.

That is the #1 excuse I hear from those that LOVE Bose, every KJ i've heard that use them (and claimed they were better than sliced bread) that I didn't care for the sound simply didn't know how to use it - including myself that used them for a week in my club. Must be only a handful that do know how to use them - still waiting to find that magical kj.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 3:01 am 
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Lonman, Then I am a MAJI.

Really, one whole week!? I guess that makes one an expert concerning The Particular System I mentioned

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You can never argue with a crazy mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mind ----B. Joel
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence ---- E.A. Poe
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity ----E.A. Poe
I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference! ----A. Einstein
Double bubble, toil and trouble ----W. Shakespeare & Walt Disney
I hate it when I get on FaceBook ----Me
Karaoke might be Groundhog Day ----?
Of All the Martial Arts, Karaoke Inflicts the Most Pain ----?


Last edited by dvdgdry on Tue Nov 28, 2017 4:24 am, edited 3 times in total.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 3:27 am 
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Bastiat, I ignore the presets which are only geared toward EQ and I've found them to be strictly a selling point directed towards mulletheads. As far as vocalists (karaoke) your ears have to be engaged. Every singer has different timbre and that can change with mic placement. In my estimation Bose hurts themselves with some certain grandiose statements. Nonetheless, if and when you learn the T1TME it changes the whole spectrum of sound with their L1 Model IIs with the B2 sub. I am attentive to each singer and the song they are singing and the period they are performing from. Differing Delays, Mods, Revs, everything except Autotune which does not exist with it, thank heaven. Each EFX can be tailored and then combined or eliminated. It can make mixing fun. I just wish it was not adjusted with pots and used sliders, or better yet , be manipulated wirelessly by tapping and with virtual sliders instead.

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You can never argue with a crazy mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mind ----B. Joel
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence ---- E.A. Poe
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity ----E.A. Poe
I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference! ----A. Einstein
Double bubble, toil and trouble ----W. Shakespeare & Walt Disney
I hate it when I get on FaceBook ----Me
Karaoke might be Groundhog Day ----?
Of All the Martial Arts, Karaoke Inflicts the Most Pain ----?


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 12:42 pm 
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Do the math..
BOSE = SIMPLE + Affordable + Portable + Professional


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 1:04 pm 
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dvdgdry wrote:
Lonman, Then I am a MAJI.

Really, one whole week!? I guess that makes one an expert concerning The Particular System I mentioned
Yep, one week with a Bose rep with me as well. We got them to sound ok, but nowhere even close to my installed system that was there - and we were using two sticks and two subs with the processor at the time (probably the Tone Match?). When I put the Bose onstage as singer monitors 2 sticks no sub (using my regular system for mains), they did shine - as that was their original intent and did quite well at that, but I have YET to hear a Bose as a main system that was all that.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 3:04 pm 
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8) You are in a fixed location Lonnie and not moving around all the time at different clubs. Do you still do mobile KJ/DJ gigs anymore? It would be hard to match your permanent setup since you have developed it over years of playing the same venue. If you were having to move around and setup at a new venue every night then I would wonder how the Bose would stack up under that situation. I think for a mobile host Bose could be a viable alternative, especially in a hard to setup cramped location. So given those realities isn't it a bit like comparing apples to oranges? You and Brian have a great advantage in not having to move your equipment around and being able to sit it up to take maximum advantage of your particular venues.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 3:27 pm 
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My mobile system is pretty much identical for the most part to my stationary. I doubt running the Bose system in other locations would make me change my mind. They are ok, but WAY overpriced and have never once heard one that was as good or better than anything i've used in the past and currently.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 7:08 pm 
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This is what I do know and my singers verify to a person. Everyone else's system sounds 'Karaoke' to them while mine sounds professional studio quality. Even those who have bought the L1 Model II with a B2 sub and kept their mixers not springing for the T1TME sounds 'Karaoke'.

My singers do not like to sing on anyone else's rig and I hear that all the time from them. Even the people that are there just for pool, foosball, other games, and drinking comment favorably to my sound. I get tips from them for a great sounding show and they don't sing. They leave with a different view of karaoke telling me so. Most of my singers sound great or can be made to sound pretty credible with that mixer. Couples who happen to just come in for a drink or food stick around because the entertainment does not have that 'karaoke' sound of mix. Band members are always curious and will slow me during my tear down asking questions about the rig.

I am talking about the L1 Model II with B2s. Use that with a T1TME.

Lonman, you previously stated you ran the Model I with a B1. That was a toy comparatively.

I do not like going to other shows and rarely will sing at them because of inferior sound mixing. It just pisses me off and I'm easy. Before I ran karaoke I went to karaoke shows to satisfy my desire to sing never paying that much attention to sound, instead, paying more attention to version of song. Now that I have my own show running my own rig I have different perspectives. Consequently, I now loathe the 'karaoke' sound of other rigs and mixers used for karaoke shows. And that is why so many people hate karaoke. It is that 'karaoke' sound coming out of those mixers.'Of all the martial arts karaoke inflicts the most pain' fits their shows. Plus,
too many frequencies coming out of too few speakers and subs that are muddy by comparison.
I've expressed this before on this forum and everyone seems to attack it. You guys never want to acknowledge that maybe you were ignorant of how to use it.

Makes me want to refer to this forum as a bunch of mulletheads.

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You can never argue with a crazy mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mind ----B. Joel
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence ---- E.A. Poe
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity ----E.A. Poe
I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference! ----A. Einstein
Double bubble, toil and trouble ----W. Shakespeare & Walt Disney
I hate it when I get on FaceBook ----Me
Karaoke might be Groundhog Day ----?
Of All the Martial Arts, Karaoke Inflicts the Most Pain ----?


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 11:09 pm 
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This sort of reminds me of all of the back and forth from many years ago on PC v Mac. If you feel as though YOU (not someone who claims to have impeccable credentials) are getting great sound, and your customers like your sound, then not much else really matters. "Good sound" is a subjective term, however "bad sound" not so much. So I tend to shy away from using the term "good sound" because you can argue that till your blue in the face and never agree because it is a matter of opinion. Now a more objective discussion however would be to discussing "accurate" sound. If your system is capable of a flat and accurate frequency response, then you can shape that sound any way you like to make you perceive as "good sound" Accuracy is something that you can measure, "good sound" you can't. For example we can all agree that microphone feedback is "bad sound", but can you say that the Bose L1 with sub and T1 is "good sound"? Obviously not, Lonman didn't think so and quite frankly I listened to the system and thought it was horrible. More Bose hype, but it seems to be working.

Now before the name calling starts, bear in mind that this is still just my opinion. So rather than getting into another pissing contest about what sounds good and what sounds bad, let's discuss what's accurate. Any decent engineer worth his salt (I consider myself to be one of them, although I don't have any gold or platinums under my belt, I do have enough credentials to have earned me a vote at the grammys), who has listened to the 12 minute Bose "pat myself on the back bullshit plug" knows that some of the things they claim are simply just not true. So I already have my eyebrows raised. Then I listened to a guitarist playing an acoustic guitar through the system and applauding how great it sounded. I was asking myself if this dude had cement in his ears or what? Here again this is a matter of opinion, but there's little doubt in my mind as to just how totally inaccurate this system is. And once I learned that the main "sticks" were loaded with 3" drivers, it all started to make sense to me because what I was hearing was a lack of low-mids so the guitar sounded like "boom - hiss".

No mystery here. As much as Bose would like to have you think it has defied the laws of physics once again (like they seem to have a habit of doing), they can't escape the fact that a) the job of all speakers is to move air and b) you can't have a 3" driver reproduce all of the frequencies from whatever the crossover point is of the sub-woofer (100 Hz or so?) to the top range of the high end (which incidentally is not so great in the L1 system at 14 kHz) without some serious IM (intermodulation) distortion. This is what accounts for the lack of low-mids in the system but hey if the sound of missing low-mids is pleasing to you then who am I to judge?

Here's another thing to consider about the T!. It's a $500 digital mixer with 3 mono ADCs and one stereo ADC. Call me crazy but I've been looking for a single channel ADC to connect to my hot-rodded Bellari tube pre-amp so that I can go direct to Sound Forge on my laptop without going through my Apogee card on my desktop and the only things that I could find that I would consider was in the $1,500 to $2,500 range, but Bose can sell a unit with 3 single channel ADCs and 1 dual channel ADC with an effects processor, and microphone algorithms for $500? Oh yeah, and I love the bit in the video where some dude who probably doesn't know a db from a doughnut is telling us how they have an algorithm for a Neumann mic. Yeah right! Like someone with a %15,000 microphone is going to stick it into a $500 digital mixer. Paleeze Dr. Bose! How about spending less time on the hype and more time on making quality products instead of overpriced mediocre stuff.

In their 12 minute plug they did an interview with Pat Metheny and he was praising the L1s. Of course they edited the crap out of the interview (if I was Pat I'd be pretty pissed) so you got the impression that he was using this as his main sound system as if these 12 sticks with a few hundred watts would fill the entire concert arena, but of course Bose does its distortion dance again. In any event, the way in which Pat uses the L1s is in 12 separate channels and he drives different sounds through each stick so for example he has a marimba coming out of one, and some other synth sound coming out of another, etc., etc., and while I'm not a betting man, I'd bet you a month of Sundays that they aren't using the T1s. If you've ever had the opportunity to see Pat live in concert you'd immediately understand what he's all about, and can easily see how In this case the way he uses them is a perfect application of the L1s, but as a standalone portable PA system, personally I wouldn't even give it a second thought.


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