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[CBA Chris Beale]

I saw this on an English stagehands site. It is certainly not an incontrovertible result, but it seems to fly in the face of marketing.

Since it involved manufacturer participation it may be hard for the included parties to dispute.

My personal experience with both systems is that they are heads and shoulders above their predecessors.

LINKY

Mac

I don't generally comment about the activities of my old company but I think it's worth saying on this occasion that any test is only as good as the method, and there are many errors here. Pointing two line arrays down onto at an empty grass field and measuring with sound level meters on tripods isn't going to reveal very much at all.

In my opinion there is really only one way to compare systems in terms of environmental containment and that is over time at multiple events with an audience in position to absorb direct energy. It may then be possible to identify a trend. Perhaps insufficient work has been done in that area and I think we'd all be interested to see a database that contained metrics for a range of festivals over time. That would need to include onsite and offsite levels at fixed locations, coverage distances, audience size etc etc. We might then be able to draw some conclusions but I don't think it's the role of a manufacturer or hire company with a vested interest to do that.

This was obviously a marketing exercise to protect investments after the recent success of the MLA which is perfectly understandable, however the report appears to do no more than validate the opposition, which would not seem to be such a smart move. Reading the conclusion that festival success is about the quality of the company and crew, I would agree with that, but it's hardly the point when the purpose of the exercise is a technical issue.

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

So, I have a fair bit to say on this for a number of reasons

1) I'm based in the UK, and work with the companies that deploy these systems and at the events where there is competition for their use
2) I've used MLA (& compact) in a variety of settings both from a crew perspective and as a mix engineer

So, first off, the point of this series of tests wasn't really anything to do with an in-depth scientific comparison of the 2 systems, so anyone expecting that will be disappointed.

Here in the UK, by far the biggest issue facing major outdoor music events at the moment is noise pollution. We have a lot of festivals very close to built up areas and environmental protection policies that favour (quite rightly, I think) the local residents. Several major events have come under serious threat of cancellation because of complaints by influential residents.

MLA has been heavily marketed as the solution to these problems, even to the extent that a couple of publications have written articles that asserted this.
One specific event in Hyde Park suffered major problems one year, and subsequently MLA was deployed. Significant improvements in offsite noise were achieved and the marketing department gave the win to MLA. I suspect that the company who deployed said system have now secured a gig-for-life, since the council won't approve anything else.
What most articles failed to mention though, was that the stage position was rotated to avoid some of the more serious complaint areas, and that the new PA design featured shorter throws from the main system with many more delay towers. Now, IMO, those 2 factors were responsible for 80-90% of the improvement, and could have been achieved with literally any PA system.

So, SSE have sought to prove to councils that their system is comparable, and so they should. They are the biggest audio provider in the UK (since buying Wigwam) and want to protect their investment in K1, which is obviously ideally suited to large scale outdoor events.

Now, there is absolutely no doubt that MLA/ANYA are very clever. I'm fully aware of how different the technologies are, but lump them together here because they both represent a new breed of PA that use more than acoustic properties of the loudspeaker enclosure for pattern control. They rely on extensive DSP processing of individual elements in the array to deliver the final acoustic output.
Speaking of MLA, it is absolutely true that if you ask it to have a 1dB level difference from the barrier to 100m away, it can achieve that. Although that will be at the expense of tonality and other adverse by-products like the amount of off-pattern noise coming from the array. The real question here though, is how useful is all that cleverness in the real world?

For starters, all of MLAs cleverness exists in the vertical domain. Horizontally it behaves like any other line array. So when faced with a potential noise complaint thats at 90 degrees to the stage projection, MLA can't help you any more than better deployment of any system can.
Secondly, it only models venues in the 2D plane. Thats not particularly helpful for a lot of more complicated spaces. I remember reading an article about how MLA was used to avoid the balconies at the Royal Albert Hall. Now, that again is something that MLA can do wonders with, but since the RAH is a round venue, avoiding a balcony on-axis, means avoiding seats as you move off-axis, so maybe thats not so ideal either.

The list goes on.

So do I think MLA is a good system?: Yes, absolutely. It sounds great and does things that other systems just can't
Would I spec it?: Yes, but only in the right circumstances. In a lot of situations, it just doesn't perform any better than another equally well setup system.

TL;DR: MLA is great, but marketing would have you believe its a magic bullet and it isnt. Thats what SSE wanted to show. In many (most?) scenarios its as good as competing large format systems, for the same or more money

[Roland Clarke 1964]

So, I have a fair bit to say on this for a number of reasons

1) I'm based in the UK, and work with the companies that deploy these systems and at the events where there is competition for their use
2) I've used MLA (& compact) in a variety of settings both from a crew perspective and as a mix engineer

So, first off, the point of this series of tests wasn't really anything to do with an in-depth scientific comparison of the 2 systems, so anyone expecting that will be disappointed.

Here in the UK, by far the biggest issue facing major outdoor music events at the moment is noise pollution. We have a lot of festivals very close to built up areas and environmental protection policies that favour (quite rightly, I think) the local residents. Several major events have come under serious threat of cancellation because of complaints by influential residents.

MLA has been heavily marketed as the solution to these problems, even to the extent that a couple of publications have written articles that asserted this.
One specific event in Hyde Park suffered major problems one year, and subsequently MLA was deployed. Significant improvements in offsite noise were achieved and the marketing department gave the win to MLA. I suspect that the company who deployed said system have now secured a gig-for-life, since the council won't approve anything else.
What most articles failed to mention though, was that the stage position was rotated to avoid some of the more serious complaint areas, and that the new PA design featured shorter throws from the main system with many more delay towers. Now, IMO, those 2 factors were responsible for 80-90% of the improvement, and could have been achieved with literally any PA system.

So, SSE have sought to prove to councils that their system is comparable, and so they should. They are the biggest audio provider in the UK (since buying Wigwam) and want to protect their investment in K1, which is obviously ideally suited to large scale outdoor events.

Now, there is absolutely no doubt that MLA/ANYA are very clever. I'm fully aware of how different the technologies are, but lump them together here because they both represent a new breed of PA that use more than acoustic properties of the loudspeaker enclosure for pattern control. They rely on extensive DSP processing of individual elements in the array to deliver the final acoustic output.
Speaking of MLA, it is absolutely true that if you ask it to have a 1dB level difference from the barrier to 100m away, it can achieve that. Although that will be at the expense of tonality and other adverse by-products like the amount of off-pattern noise coming from the array. The real question here though, is how useful is all that cleverness in the real world?

For starters, all of MLAs cleverness exists in the vertical domain. Horizontally it behaves like any other line array. So when faced with a potential noise complaint thats at 90 degrees to the stage projection, MLA can't help you any more than better deployment of any system can.
Secondly, it only models venues in the 2D plane. Thats not particularly helpful for a lot of more complicated spaces. I remember reading an article about how MLA was used to avoid the balconies at the Royal Albert Hall. Now, that again is something that MLA can do wonders with, but since the RAH is a round venue, avoiding a balcony on-axis, means avoiding seats as you move off-axis, so maybe thats not so ideal either.

The list goes on.

So do I think MLA is a good system?: Yes, absolutely. It sounds great and does things that other systems just can't
Would I spec it?: Yes, but only in the right circumstances. In a lot of situations, it just doesn't perform any better than another equally well setup system.

TL;DR: MLA is great, but marketing would have you believe its a magic bullet and it isnt. Thats what SSE wanted to show. In many (most?) scenarios its as good as competing large format systems, for the same or more money

And I think your above comments are a perfect summation of the "state of play" in real world sound systems. 

I think that a lot of the real benefit that has come from both DSP control and the  numerous measuring systems alla Smaart etc, is a better understanding of what we can't control electronically.  The fact that more people now talk about site specific solutions, whether that be acoustics or just plain sensible deployment and aiming of systems.  Ultimately it should be to the benefit of all in our industry.

[CBA Chris Beale]

So, I have a fair bit to say on this for a number of reasons

1) I'm based in the UK, and work with the companies that deploy these systems and at the events where there is competition for their use
2) I've used MLA (& compact) in a variety of settings both from a crew perspective and as a mix engineer

So, first off, the point of this series of tests wasn't really anything to do with an in-depth scientific comparison of the 2 systems, so anyone expecting that will be disappointed.

Here in the UK, by far the biggest issue facing major outdoor music events at the moment is noise pollution. We have a lot of festivals very close to built up areas and environmental protection policies that favour (quite rightly, I think) the local residents. Several major events have come under serious threat of cancellation because of complaints by influential residents.

MLA has been heavily marketed as the solution to these problems, even to the extent that a couple of publications have written articles that asserted this.
One specific event in Hyde Park suffered major problems one year, and subsequently MLA was deployed. Significant improvements in offsite noise were achieved and the marketing department gave the win to MLA. I suspect that the company who deployed said system have now secured a gig-for-life, since the council won't approve anything else.
What most articles failed to mention though, was that the stage position was rotated to avoid some of the more serious complaint areas, and that the new PA design featured shorter throws from the main system with many more delay towers. Now, IMO, those 2 factors were responsible for 80-90% of the improvement, and could have been achieved with literally any PA system.

So, SSE have sought to prove to councils that their system is comparable, and so they should. They are the biggest audio provider in the UK (since buying Wigwam) and want to protect their investment in K1, which is obviously ideally suited to large scale outdoor events.

Now, there is absolutely no doubt that MLA/ANYA are very clever. I'm fully aware of how different the technologies are, but lump them together here because they both represent a new breed of PA that use more than acoustic properties of the loudspeaker enclosure for pattern control. They rely on extensive DSP processing of individual elements in the array to deliver the final acoustic output.
Speaking of MLA, it is absolutely true that if you ask it to have a 1dB level difference from the barrier to 100m away, it can achieve that. Although that will be at the expense of tonality and other adverse by-products like the amount of off-pattern noise coming from the array. The real question here though, is how useful is all that cleverness in the real world?

For starters, all of MLAs cleverness exists in the vertical domain. Horizontally it behaves like any other line array. So when faced with a potential noise complaint thats at 90 degrees to the stage projection, MLA can't help you any more than better deployment of any system can.
Secondly, it only models venues in the 2D plane. Thats not particularly helpful for a lot of more complicated spaces. I remember reading an article about how MLA was used to avoid the balconies at the Royal Albert Hall. Now, that again is something that MLA can do wonders with, but since the RAH is a round venue, avoiding a balcony on-axis, means avoiding seats as you move off-axis, so maybe thats not so ideal either.

The list goes on.

So do I think MLA is a good system?: Yes, absolutely. It sounds great and does things that other systems just can't
Would I spec it?: Yes, but only in the right circumstances. In a lot of situations, it just doesn't perform any better than another equally well setup system.

TL;DR: MLA is great, but marketing would have you believe its a magic bullet and it isnt. Thats what SSE wanted to show. In many (most?) scenarios its as good as competing large format systems, for the same or more money

That's all very well, but the subject in hand is supposedly a rigorous comparison of two PA systems after thousands of measurements. If the reader should not expect an in-depth comparison, what should they be expecting? At least they ought to be confident that the method was robust.

I get the philosophy, the marketing, the need to demonstrate equality and the rest, but that isn't enough to justify the conclusion unless you pass over the data and enjoy the pictures.

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

That's all very well, but the subject in hand is supposedly a rigorous comparison of two PA systems after thousands of measurements. If the reader should not expect an in-depth comparison, what should they be expecting? At least they ought to be confident that the method was robust.

I totally accept your argument, however, I'm not sure that this was really ever meant to be as rigorous a comparison as you were expecting. It seems to me that they had a pretty clear objective, and conceived the test with that in mind.

As they state in their own synopsis, the audio quality of either system is pretty much a subjective matter, and so the test was really only interested in directivity.

I personally applaud SSE for taking the time to do this. The hype around MLA was getting silly, and I would venture that almost no PA company anywhere would conduct such a large scale and relatively objective test when making a large scale purchasing decision.

The report seems pretty conclusive to me: MLA does not outperform K1 in terms of controlling offsite noise in large scale outdoor deployment.

[Lee Buckalew]

The report seems pretty conclusive to me: MLA does not outperform K1 in terms of controlling offsite noise in large scale outdoor deployment.

The report is not the least bit conclusive in this regard.  There is no indication of how MLA was configured, what was set for SPL targets, what was set for exclusion zones and how closely any of these were achieved, etc.

As has been indicated by others previously in this thread there is not enough data provided in the report to draw any conclusion whatsoever because the details of configuration, gain shading, frequency response, etc. were not provided.  To me this was a complete waste of the time and effort taken to conduct this marketing excersise (it certainly was not a study).

MLA is only one possible tool and it certainly does not answer all audio questions but it has performed as advertised each time that I have used any of the versions that I have had a chance to play with.  MLA has consistently provided true stereo imaging capability where no other line arrays that I have used (have not used Anya) have provided this ability.  While stereo imaging may not be an important factor in many deployments it goes to showing the phase coherence claims are realized.  I have not seen any of the marketing information being hyped any more (and in some cases quite a bit less) than other reputable manufacturers.

Lee

[CBA Chris Beale]

I totally accept your argument, however, I'm not sure that this was really ever meant to be as rigorous a comparison as you were expecting. It seems to me that they had a pretty clear objective, and conceived the test with that in mind.

As they state in their own synopsis, the audio quality of either system is pretty much a subjective matter, and so the test was really only interested in directivity.

I personally applaud SSE for taking the time to do this. The hype around MLA was getting silly, and I would venture that almost no PA company anywhere would conduct such a large scale and relatively objective test when making a large scale purchasing decision.

The report seems pretty conclusive to me: MLA does not outperform K1 in terms of controlling offsite noise in large scale outdoor deployment.

I wasn't expecting anything, in fact I wasn't even aware that the tests had taken place. The report was referred to me because I happen to be consulting on a job where I have to guide the choice of system, and the choice was not in fact between K1 and MLA. The implication was that older L'Acoustics products were equally comparable to MLA and I therefore looked to assess whether that might have been the finding.
After reading the report I see that the method was flawed and that the data that was collected could not provide a complete assessment of any two PA systems, let alone K1 and MLA.

Much of the dialogue in this post seems to focus on matters other than the test itself. Interesting as that may be, the danger is that the conclusion propagates to include matters that are far from proven and even systems that were not involved in the test. I don't really care which system is better or if they are exactly similar, but I do care if I am being given an authenticated report that does not stack up.

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

The report is not the least bit conclusive in this regard.  There is no indication of how MLA was configured, what was set for SPL targets, what was set for exclusion zones and how closely any of these were achieved, etc.

First of all, this is a private report compiled for a private company. SSE have a lot more details than they have released. All the data you speak of is available, just not to the public. Whether thats a good decision or not is subjective, but it doesn't speak to the validity of any testing carried out.

But most importantly, Martin and L'Acoustics staffers configured the systems and were fully informed on the objective of the test.

The chaps from Martin and L'Acoustics were aware that the goal (as stated) was to achieve 6dB from front to back within the listening area, and were able to configure the PA however they saw fit, with the exception that the line length was fixed. So while I agree it would be nice to know more, the fact that MLAs architects configured the system and knew the scope of the test seems to suggest that the MLA configuration was what they believed to be optimal.

[Lee Buckalew]

First of all, this is a private report compiled for a private company. SSE have a lot more details than they have released. All the data you speak of is available, just not to the public. Whether thats a good decision or not is subjective, but it doesn't speak to the validity of any testing carried out.

But most importantly, Martin and L'Acoustics staffers configured the systems and were fully informed on the objective of the test.

The chaps from Martin and L'Acoustics were aware that the goal (as stated) was to achieve 6dB from front to back within the listening area, and were able to configure the PA however they saw fit, with the exception that the line length was fixed. So while I agree it would be nice to know more, the fact that MLAs architects configured the system and knew the scope of the test seems to suggest that the MLA configuration was what they believed to be optimal.

Nothing of the sort is suggested by the report that was issued publicly.  While there may well be many more details than were released that does not make the publicly released report more useful.  It is still lacking in any data required to make any effective and meaningful comparison between the two systems.  It is very often the case that a manufacturer is given only a portion of the information that they require in situations like this or in shoot outs.  Often one test is stated and then others are added on the fly during the actual event.  I am not suggesting that this was done in this case but we have no way to know the details of testing criteria, meaningful measurements of SPL, phase, and coherence, or any other hard data.

The report, as publicly presented, is worthless which is unfortunate as this could have resulted in some very interesting and informative data sets.

Lee

[Ivan Beaver]

Nothing of the sort is suggested by the report that was issued publicly.  While there may well be many more details than were released that does not make the publicly released report more useful.  It is still lacking in any data required to make any effective and meaningful comparison between the two systems.  It is very often the case that a manufacturer is given only a portion of the information that they require in situations like this or in shoot outs.  Often one test is stated and then others are added on the fly during the actual event.  I am not suggesting that this was done in this case but we have no way to know the details of testing criteria, meaningful measurements of SPL, phase, and coherence, or any other hard data.

The report, as publicly presented, is worthless which is unfortunate as this could have resulted in some very interesting and informative data sets.

Lee

Agreed

Simple SPL numbers  are only good for people with a simple meter.

i would love to see some actual freq responses at just a couple of distances on axis.

But it the whole exercise was about what would be read on an SPL meter-then I guess that is all that is important.

But WHILE they were making more real measurements-it would be nice to see some of them.

Yes the "SPL" may be the within a certain range-but that says almost nothing about the balance of the system.  The LF may be close to the same-but how well does the HF stand up? 

There is NO way to know from a simple SPL number.

I have seen installs that are well within a spcificed range at every seat in the house-on an SPL meter, but the freq response was FAR from being acceptable.

A simple number gives a simple wrong meaningless answer.

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