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Forum Home » Sound Reinforcement » LAB: The Classic Live Audio Board » Review: BOSE personal amplification system ( ) 2 Vote(s)
| Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #53593] |
Sun, 22 May 2005 15:44  |
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 Sebastiaan Meijer
Messages: 266
Registered: April 2004
Location: The Netherlands |
Has No Life |
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Hi all,
As promised a while ago: here a story of some experiences with the BOSE approach to making sound engineers obsolete  Believe me: it won't.....
The setting:
28-show theatre tour of female singer. Style is jazzy / poppy listening songs. Low SPL on stage, but still powerful.
Theatres: everything between 250 and 900 att. For those of you who know this part of Europe: not the largest theatre stages, but the serious level.
We carried all sound stuff, risers, some lights and dimmers and decoration. General quality was top-notch. (Neumann KMS150 mic, Yamaha external pre-amps, quality external pre-amp for star vocal on monitors only, etc.)
Monitoring:
I happened to be ME on this tour. FOH-colleague is long-time SE for this singer and already decided to use the BOSE system (consisting of L1 speaker pole and PS1 power stand (amp + processing) as side-fills. The rest of the monitoring consisted of 8 groups of wedges, a combination of Synco 10" co-axials and X-act powered floors. First of all a big thanks to the previous monitor engineer for helping me in the start-up. (Hajo, if you read this.... Thanks!)
To be able to process the poles a little, a B-word DCX 2496 was in the rack. (What's that HF noise I hear there? Oh, it's the B-word) But this thing was the helping hand in the end.
Poles were standing in the manteaux (downstage left and right, just behind the stage opening). In most theatres our opening was 11 to 12 meters, depending on sightlines. In addition to this I had two of the Synco wedges downstage centre.
First thing we noticed on day one when we turned it on was that the poles projected the vocal amazingly accross the stage. I didn't like the sound, but it worked. Little to none top-highs (we measured this later on. There is a sharp fall of highs above 11K) and it tends to get a little muddy in the low-mids (180 - 300Hz region) The DCX has the nice opportunity to use a dynamic equaliser to do some limiting in this frequency band only. Within 3 shows we had the low-mids squashed to a low-threshold-hard-limit setting. This due to the nature of the poles to project highs in a pretty narrow pattern and the lower frequencies almost omni-directional. By the way: we did not use the subs, as this information was not needed in the sidefills. (Vocals and piano only)
Second thing we notice: time-alignment. Yukes, WTF is going on here....? We really had to time-align the 2 wedges downstage center to the sidefills, otherwise you got crazy onstage. At that moment we discover that aligning he wedges with the poles is not that easy, as the poles have a hefty latency themselves. (At one point I measured it, and I was of by 0.3 ms from tuning by ear  ) It's been some weeks but it was in the size of 6 or 7 ms.
Now we had the wedges aligned it started to come together. The vocal was very even accross the stage. I "pointed" the poles to crossfire 2 to 3 meters behind the downstage wedges. This helped in better localising the wedges when standing on front of the stage. Depending on the vibes of the theatre I could make the wedges virtually a little louder by reducing the time-alignment with some decimeters. This helped in being able to localise them better. After some shows I put the poles on a flightcase of 40 centimeters to get the ear-level of the singer more in the middle of the beam of the poles. This helped reducing the stage level another few dB.
So far, our artist was very happy, as was the FOH colleague, when we controlled the low-mids.
After a show or 6 I started noticing the quality of projection of the sound decreased. This went on and on. At a certain moment a BOSE representative came by to compared ours with a used other one. The difference in character, sheer output and clean sound was astounishing (although the rep. said he couldn't hear the difference) By that time we had measurements of transfer function of the poles. (Using SMAART) We noted a significant changes in the pattern. To replace the second pole we received a completely new one. We labelled both, although this proved non-functional. I was able to pick out each pole by it's character, just by talking into the mic. After a while we again noticed degradation of the sound, although not as drastic as the first time. (The start of the tour was in the snowy season. Everything was ice-cold unloaded from the truck, so condensation could have been an issue)
(One of the musicians commented "At the beginning of the tour it was impressive, now it sounds just like another speaker.")
This time we had measurements of the poles from the day they came to the last day of the tour. Again we saw degradation of the tranfer function. When stepping thourgh ISO-frequencies with the Bink test CD both FOH-guy, light guy and I heard strange distortions added to 630Hz, 1K25, 2K5 and 5K mostly. Other frequencies had less distortion. We unfortunately have not been able to measure this, except for one measurement with MacFOH (my laptop) that showed little coherency on 4K5 when feeding the pole pink noise.
Few other comments:
- We never clipped the input of the PS1
- We used the "neutral" preset of the input.
- Build quality was very good!
Overall conclusions:
Having a line-array in the purest sense of the word works in this setting. The even-ness of the vocal accross the stage was incredibly good. Unfortunately this didn't last long. Our experience is that the system degrades in sound quality quickly, and we have been able to track this down to the speaker poles itself. It must be the small speakers that decrease in quality. It might be stiffness of the cones or other artifacts. It's up to BOSE to concentrate on that.
Sebas
BTW: the story goes that our first pair was used at the Frankfurter Messe as demo pair after we sent them back. Mmmmmmmm...
Disclaimer: I've yet to receive my first euro from BOSE, as I'm in no way affiliated.
[Updated on: Sun, 22 May 2005 16:38]
Psycho-acoustic care-taker, but you may call me monitor dude.
EQ is like fast-food: quick, predictable and available everywhere, but it never tastes good if you need it.
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #53611 is a reply to message #53593 ] |
Sun, 22 May 2005 18:27  |
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Dave Walker
Messages: 58
Registered: April 2004
Location: Okla. City |
Should Get Out More |
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I ran into one of these things for the first time last nite. We were doing an all-day outdoor festival in Texas, with all Texas-based rock and "alt-country" type acts. The headliner was Joe Ely. Shortly after he arrived onsite, one of our contacts with the festival came up to me and said that Joe was not going to need wedges, cause he was using the Bose system. I found it a little hard to believe, but a little while later his production/FOH guy came up onstage and said yes, Joe uses the Bose stick for his monitor, but the other three band members would use wedges. Ok.
We had all of 15 minutes to do the set change, and his guy spent probably 10 of those minutes seting up the Bose and tweaking it out. Several times I walked across the stage and listened, and while the coverage seemed ok (he had a single stick, about 6' tall, directly behind him and in front of the drum riser, along with a little sub that sat on the floor next to it), it seemed very mid range heavy to me. Joe used it for both his vocal mic and his acoustic guitar, and while he did tweak the controls a few times during the show, he seemed happy with it. I don't think I'll have to worry about ditching my wedges and going with the Bose things anytime soon.... 
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #53680 is a reply to message #53593 ] |
Mon, 23 May 2005 10:35 |
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"Little to none top-highs (we measured this later on. There is a sharp fall of highs above 11K) and it tends to get a little muddy in the low-mids (180 - 300Hz region)"
"it seemed very mid range heavy to me"
That reminds me of a little rhyme someone once told me:
no high and no low, it must be bose 
Anywho an intersting review, wondered what these things were like since I first saw them advertised, but I dont think the Turbosound Q-Light wedges that we have will be going any where either
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #53726 is a reply to message #53593 ] |
Mon, 23 May 2005 15:01 |
Tom Manchester
Messages: 2414
Registered: December 2004 |
Has No Life |
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| Quote: |
Style is jazzy / poppy listening songs.
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Just an observation but it seems like this is all that BOSE caters to. When you go in the showroom it's like all of the advertisements are "listen to this upright bass and female vocal pop jazz and notice the bass (insert music with boomy one note bass here)" OTOH, I can't think of many more applications for Bose than that.
[Updated on: Mon, 23 May 2005 15:04]
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #53728 is a reply to message #53593 ] |
Mon, 23 May 2005 15:03 |
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| Sebas wrote on Sun, 22 May 2005 22:44 |
Having a line-array in the purest sense of the word works in this setting. The even-ness of the vocal accross the stage was incredibly good. Unfortunately this didn't last long.
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Hi Sebas,
Good rewiev of the Bose poles.
What about trying out some SLS 8695's for that particular application. If you can get ahold of a pair to try out, I'd really like it if you could make a comparision and posted here.
Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups.
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #53777 is a reply to message #53728 ] |
Mon, 23 May 2005 19:32 |
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Mike Pyle
Messages: 1858
Registered: April 2004
Location: Napa, CA |
Has No Life |
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| Hasse Q wrote on Mon, 23 May 2005 13:03 |
| Sebas wrote on Sun, 22 May 2005 22:44 |
Having a line-array in the purest sense of the word works in this setting. The even-ness of the vocal accross the stage was incredibly good. Unfortunately this didn't last long.
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What about trying out some SLS 8695's for that particular application. If you can get ahold of a pair to try out, I'd really like it if you could make a comparision and posted here.
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Me Too
Mike Pyle
Audiopyle Sound
707-315-6204
Dealer: Yorkville, EV, QSC, RCF, KV2, FBT, JTR, Danley, SLS, Dynacord, Midas, APB,
K-T,Audix,Shure,Genie,RoadReady,K&M,Ultimate,Global Truss,DENON,Chauvet,Elation...
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #318921 is a reply to message #53593 ] |
Fri, 02 May 2008 18:58 |
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I've Got two of these L1 system and for what they are I am pleased. They have great coverage that's for sure.
They ARE a bit middy (which I suspect is why they are so clear). the line array that bose makes (the MA-12) doesn't go much above 12000k and I suspect that these are the same way. As far as the low end, I've never noticed a lack of it. It just isn't IN YOUR FACE low end. In fact, these speakers aren't IN YOUR FACE speakers. The sound surrounds you.
I've used them in Gyms where normal horn speakers are just muddy (even EQed for the room. Because of their dispersion pattern, we can stay out of the roof.
They are simple to setup and take down... another plus.
as far as the bose approach to sound... It will only work in smaller crowds, these babies don't have enough juice to give a rock concert at all. I'm afraid they would explode. But for Musicians/ Sound Operators like myself, they have multiple uses in multiple places, perfect for the high-mid Market.
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #319056 is a reply to message #319052 ] |
Sat, 03 May 2008 11:07 |
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haha I used to be like that.
Then I actually heard what bose could do for churches. and the design that they can put into each product. Very impressive and very smooth coverage.
I've also seen some bose installs NOT installed right and they sounded like garbage.
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #319097 is a reply to message #319056 ] |
Sat, 03 May 2008 13:05 |
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Peter Etheredge
Messages: 375
Registered: December 2006
Location: Chicago Suburbs |
Has No Life |
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| Tyler Riddle wrote on Sat, 03 May 2008 11:07 |
haha I used to be like that.
Then I actually heard what bose could do for churches. and the design that they can put into each product. Very impressive and very smooth coverage.
I've also seen some bose installs NOT installed right and they sounded like garbage.
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No, No, NO!
This is exactly why I despise Bose so much. They make an inferior product and then sell it at a huge markup to people that don't know any better. Notice that the pros out there with $2000+ to spend per speaker are not buying Bose but rather offerings from Meyer, EAW, Nexo, ADR, and others. A church, and I have seen this first hand, will just see the marketing and decide to drop a ton more money than they normally would have on a system just because it has that name on it - even when it does not meet their current or anticipated needs. They just don't know any better.
We had a church group come and play in the gym at the church I work at for a fundraiser auction; they insisted that they use their Bose t-ball thingy and talked all snobby at me when I suggested that I use our Yamaha Club V system with Yorkie subs. They sounded muddy and no one could hear the vocals all night. BUT, when the auctioneer who had a wireless hooked up to the Yami's talked, everyone could hear loud and clear. Even the band, who acted all snobby, would look around as if a light-switch had just been turned out. They were sitting in front of the stage and when they were done and I turned on some filler music and cranked the bass on the subs under the stage right next to them I could see a look of embarrassment on their faces. And that's not even an isolated incident - I know of many other sound guys who have run into the same thing.
-pete
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| Re: Review: BOSE personal amplification system [message #319098 is a reply to message #319097 ] |
Sat, 03 May 2008 13:11 |
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ok, bad installs and bad tunings equal bad sound.
I just recently got turned onto bose and clarity is of number one importance.
And just so you know, we consistently undercut the competition. Our markup is only 20% Yes there are jerks out there, but our company isn't one of them.
If you are in the area sometime you should check out some of our installs, or go to
http://www.buzstarrett.com to see some pictures.
We haven't had an install top 30 grand for everything yet (including a yamaha digital board).
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