Evan Kirkendall wrote on Mon, 16 March 2009 22:28 |
Then why buy it? I want a box that I can set up, plug in the factory DSP settings and sound nice right out of the box.
I want a rig that I know will sound consistently good, and not have to rely on home brew settings that vary from rig to rig.
d&b and Meyer have perfected this concept. L'Acoustics is finally there, and JBL is coming up from behind. Sound Bridge? No way...
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Simple reason Evan: because it costs less than an equivalent Meyer rig.
It's not easy to build a line array and every step of the process, from the initial design, testing, developing an array calculator, designing and building the rigging, to developing quality DSP settings for the entire array take lots and lots of money and smarts (which also usually cost money). All that money spent will influence the final price of the cabinets.
Outside of the 'A' level boxes out there, which seem to have their acts together regarding consistent DSP settings, I regularly hear people referring to line arrays that 'take some work' to sound good. This usually means that the DSP settings aren't dialed in to 100% of the potential capacity.
It seems like small sound companies and regional providers are faced with two options: A) buy the best you can and hope you are able to pay for it, or B) buy something with potential and polish it as best you can.
Now obviously as a BE you are always going to prefer to deal with option A. But as a system provider I might be able to make a go of it in my market by purchasing option B, where going with option A would be cost-prohibitive.
All that being said I'd expect that the Soundbridge stuff will continue to improve as their DSP settings are revised. Look how long it took JBL to get it right...