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L1® Users Forum Musicians General Forums What Do You Think of This New Approach? What about my horn band?|
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I have a 9 piece horn band. That's 1)Male Vocal 2)Female Vocal 3)Guit&Bg vocal 4)Keys&Bg vocal 5)Bass&Bg vocal 6)Drums (Fully miked) 7)Trpt 8)Alto Sax 9)Tenor Sax. We do Big Band, Blues Brothers etc. I'm hoping that one of the guys at bose will comment on how this set up should be handled. In a perfect world I would think you guys would recommend 9 systems maybe half with the extra bass boxs. My questions are: Has anyone ever tried this configuration? What would be the recomended set up?
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Ah, thank you for asking. I happen to play in a very similar band (10-piece band including 4 horns and 4 vocals, repertoire from Blues Brothers to Tower of Power) and we’ve been playing for about a year with various generations of prototypes (equally curse & perks of working on a project like this
 ). Our “preferred” version at this point consists of 5 systems1) keys & lead vocals (keyboarder sings lead) 2) guitar & lead vocals (guitar player sings lead) 3) background singers (inseparable friends anyway) 4) bass & drum (with an extra bass booster package) 5) Horns If it would be really large stage I would consider taking out two systems for the horns but cramped quarters seem to be the rule today for us  .For your setup I would recommend 5 systems like this 1) lead vocals: male & female share, assuming they usually alternate on lead and are reasonably close on stage. 2) guitar and background vocals 3) keys and background vocals 4) bass & drums and background vocals 5) Horns Here is what we have learned: This system has made life for the band enormously simpler. We used to have at least 3 monitor mixes (horns, background vocals, lead vocals) and it never really worked. There were constant complaints about who is hearing what. The horns seemed never be able to agree on what a good monitor mix was and monitor vocals never seemed loud enough. Our lead singer actually had a sizeable speaker (Bose 402) lying on his keyboard blasting directly in his face just to get enough of his own voice. Feedback was a constant companion, it was ungodly loud on stage and I (and most others) was never able to hear the band as a whole. Usually you were happy when you just got enough sound to get you through the song without missing any vital cues. The new system has really changed all that. No more complaints from the horns. They manage their own sound just fine and they like a lot what they are hearing (and the rest of the band likes it too  ). Vocal harmonies have greatly improved because all of the sudden the singers are not only able to hear themselves, they also hear what everybody else is singing and, even better, they hear it at about the same mix that the audience (and yours truly) gets. I finally started to notice our guitar player can actually play very tasty rhythm guitar and I can play stuff that works with that.These are all good things in themselves but the main thing that has happened to us is that we’ve actually started to play better music. I honestly do believe, that this system has helped me to become a better musician because I don’t live in my own private bubble on stage anymore but have a feeling of really playing music together and we finally get to hear & appreciate the full result of our work as it is heard by everybody else. I’m aware of my limitations as a musician and I know that I’ll never be rich & famous or a particularly popular showcase player. However, this system has shown me a new dimension to improve my musicianship and it has profoundly increased my enjoyment in playing. The facts that setup, teardown, sound-check and gear lugging has gotten simpler and that the audience seems to be genuinely happier too, don’t harm either  .Sorry for the long outburst. This is just my own very personal experience, which may very well be tainted by the fact that I work for Bose and that I’m a senior engineer for this product. But it also my honest opinion after 25 years and a few hundred gigs of playing music. |
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Thank you for your response, it's great to hear from someone who not only designs the stuff but plays in a similar band. A few more questions. In your suggested set up, here it is:
1) lead vocals: male & female share, assuming they usually alternate on lead and are reasonably close on stage. 2) guitar and background vocals 3) keys and background vocals 4) bass & drums and background vocals 5) Horns In a perfect world, (Big Stage, lot's of dough), I would think the Keyboard rig would have one system & one bass box (maybe 2), the Bass player would have one system & two one bass box's. The Drums would have his own system with 2 bass boxs. The Lead singers probably could share (Although seperate systems would be nice) and the horns would probably use two one with a bass box. Q) Does that sound about right? Q) When you guys play in clubs, do you feel that you are filling the room? Q) On the breaks, do you play CDs through just one of the systems? Thanks for any response and please feel free to go ahead and outburst to the max. It's very informative. Brad |
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We are a 10 piece horn band too and are very lucky to be one of the bands chosen to use this system So far it has been great even though we have only been able to use it a few times with the whole band set up. We have four horns - 2 trps/Tenor Sax/Bari Sax, Male & Female lead vocals, Keyboards, guitar, bass & drums. We have five systems and are set up very similar to Hilmar's.
System 1 - Keyboards and his backup vocal mic. System 2 - Male & Female vocal System 3 - Bass & Drums (Drums submixed through small board.) System 4 - Guitar & Backup Vocals System 5 - Horns mixed through small board - Trumpets in one channel/saxes through the other. Our first live gig was in less then desirable conditions - outside in a parking lot next to a busy street. We basically plugged in and played and had the sound dialed in within a few tunes. The horns came through clearer then with the traditional type systems and we could actually play with dynamics and in tune! We could also hear the keyboard parts from the opposite end of the stage and even the harmony vocals. Their were comments from the crowd that it was also plenty loud for an outside performance. If you are looking to upgrade your sound and eliminate a bunch of sound equipment, this will do the job. It will also give you a lot more room on stage and best of all, everyone in the band can have control over their own sound. |
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Dean, thanks for chipping in. There's nothing like real-world testimonials
Back to the questions: quote: Yes. Keyboard doesn’t really need 2 bass modules. One is plenty. Horns might also get away without one if you don’t have a trombone or a baritone sax player. That depends mainly on the preferences of the tenor player. Alto sax and trumpet certainly don’t need one. quote: Yes. No trouble at all getting the place filled. We’ve also played 2 outdoor gigs (one really open, one in a tent) so far and had absolutely no problems getting to a level that grooved nicely and packed the dance floor. quote: We usually play CD through two systems. |
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I'm pretty happy with the Bari and tenor sounds with just one bass module. We have an edgier TOP type sound but even so there is enough bottom end on the Bari & Tenor. If you were doing more of a jazz thing I could see maybe playing with an additional bass module to get a bigger or darker jazz sound on Bari or Tenor but that's the beauty of this system - you can work with it to make it sound like whatever you want or fit whatever situation you want.
Re: playing CD's for break music, we did it through just one system for an outdoor gig and it was fine. Two would probably be better if you could split it stereo to opposite sides of the stage. We actually experimented with ours using two systems including the bass modules for a junior high sock hop. We played CD's for two hours and the sound filled a good sized cafeteria to the point you could almost not talk to each other and we weren't even pushing the system. I hope that helps! |
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Thank you guys for your response. Very informative. I think you guys believe in your product and a lot of guys including myself want to check it out. Thank God for the 90 day return policy. At this point, I'd like to share with you an email my brother sent to me when I told him about this system (My brother the head of a fortune 500 company sound team). Please feel free to question his calculations.
"Just for a ballpark idea, consider that a speaker is a piston, and the amount of sound is related to the size of the piston, and the distance that it goes back and forth - the excursion. The size of the pistons This new Bose system has 24 2.5" speakers. Subtract about 1/4" to 1/2" for the surround, and you have piston with a diameter of about 2.2" The area is pi times the radius squared. The radius is half the diameter, so half of 2.3" is 1.15" PI is 3.14, so the area is 3.14 times 1.15 times 1.15 = 4.15 square inches for each speaker. 24 speakers gives you about 100 square inches for the system. A single 12 inch speaker gives about 104 square inches piston area. You can imagine that the excursion of the 12" speaker is greater than the excursion of the 2.5" speakers, so we can expect the 12" speaker to go louder than twenty four 2.5" speakers. The Bose 901 system with eight 4" speakers comes out to about 81 square inches, but the 4" drivers may have more excursion than the 2.5" drivers, I would expect the new Bose system to go be about as loud as one of the 901 boxes. On the other hand, the new Bose system is only doing from about 300 Hz up with a Bass unit handling the lows, so it probably will be louder. The bass unit is fairly small, though, so I would not get my hopes too high for anything but small gigs with this system." |
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This line of reasoning it not fully applicable here, since the Cylindrical Radiator™ speaker is not a circular piston and we gain a lot of efficiency by the coupling between speaker and the fact the wave form is mainly cylindrical. If you make a spherical source (like a single 12” inch speaker) and a Cylindrical Radiator™ loudspeaker equally loud at 1 meter (3 feet) you will find that at 10 meter (30 feet) the Cylindrical Radiator™ loudspeaker will be at least twice as loud (10dB more).
Another example where the “cone-area” calculation doesn’t really work: Most conventional PA systems these days use a compression driver with horn for the mid/high frequencies. The actual diaphragm is really small (usually 1.5” or so) and they still get plenty loud. It’s just a different way of coupling the sound into the air. In the end as musician you care about whether the sound system gets the music to you and your audience in the way you want to and in my experience it does that just fine. There is actually a different thread that discusses sound pressure level in more detail http://bose.infopop.cc/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=8206048934&f=3776055944&m=3046017464 |
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L1® Users Forum Musicians General Forums What Do You Think of This New Approach? What about my horn band?|
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