All about Loudspeakers & Amplification
So what were you guys expecting to hear from me? Digital Consoles & Plug-Ins, you got to be kidding. I managed to put my paws on a digital desk after 12 years of kicking the dust and they still do not fascinate me. But what really fascinates me is Loudspeakers and what a misunderstood thing it is.
Loudspeakers :The maximum amount of lies told to us about specifications is from loudspeaker manufacturers and we just believe in them for the entire image we have created in our mind about a particular brand. This is also the case with box shops that have been driven by personalities and whatever they say is like gospel truth to their fans who by the way are their own end users. Some manufacturers have done well with clever marketing and tour profiling of their sound systems in the field with top tier acts, so everyone thinks what’s good for the “Rolling Stones” is good for us. But the Stones are a honky tonk band and so is their sound. I would never want to go to listen to a thundering low end or sizzling top-end Stones show. And when we are looking at purchasing speakers, our main capital goods along with the processed amplification package, instead of looking at Technical aspects like Frequency range, Directivity, Coverage, Linearity, Phase and Practical aspects like Size, Weight & Price we, always end up buying for the two most dangerous reasons, Blind Dedication to a certain manufacturer or Peer Pressure.
Amplication: Coming to the Amplification packages that most speaker manufacturers put a gun to your head and tell you that this is gods gift to your speaker, little do you know that many a time they could be both incapable of a common goal towards great sound from one source. So many times these box packed OEM products for your speakers could be well manufactured by a 3rd party (under the so called guidelines of the speaker guru) leaving the end-user to have make a paradigm shift in his entire amplifier inventory because ‘hey we are not friends with these amplifier guys anymore’ now you got to buy this “New Model” with its bells & whistles that the other guy does not have in order to have the ultimate sound and here is the punch line. Your newer presets version X.X will only work on our new amplifiers and your latest press release then says your speakers XXXX running version X.X.
Someone once asked me so then what’s your take on self powered line array systems and my answer is simple ‘ It can never sound drastically better than the first day you heard it out of the box’. So selling us new processors to line drive the same systems is not the same as migration from Tiger to Leopard & Snow Leopard to Lion.
Ultimately it is unto you end users to be the adjudicators of what is right for you in our market scenarios. People always build their companies fawning around their consoles while I only first think about turnkey loudspeaker systems & loudspeaker engineering driven by the right people and not line drivers to drive them. My fascination for them boxed up in packaged systems only leaves me with one dilemma. I could never own all I loved and respected, the few that they are.
I am the founder of SOUND.COM and although I spend my time running this company and work in the field with my Jedi Knights of SOUND.COM on our top tier productions, what I really am is a true lover of Electro-Acoustics. Leading to the point that, off course my next topic will be microphones and I will also dish in the DI boxes too. Till then stay in the loop or be isolated.