We are answering questions and offering opinions all the time. I was wondering what would happen if we turned that around a bit.

If you could say just one thing to a new L1® owner, what would it be?

Read the wiki and instructions, esp:

1- Gain staging
2- B1 placement
3- If you have a T1, look through the presets and try them.
4- Be patient. The learning curve on the L1 is small compared to many things, but there still is one.

I can't count how many people here have bought an L1, plugged in an acoustic, and thought it lacked bottom end. I was one myself. But I love it now.

Oops! You said ONE thing, didn't you!

I guess it would be number 4. Or number 1. or...

Congratulations on your wise decision, are you enjoying that sonic bathing as much as I am?

Be Patient with it.

You are entering a new dimension of time, space and sound, you will need to learn what to expect from the system, and yourself when performing through it.

Learn all you can about the system each time you use it, and foremost, continue to come back to this forum.

I keep learning new things almost every time I come back here.

Each time I set up the L1, I enjoy the short setup time, I enjoy the sound when I have it set up, and I get better as a performer.

Just be patient.

It depends:

If the person is used to using, and, particularly, has "run", conventional sound systems, then my advice would be:

"Try to forget most of the 'rules' you've learned about using speakers before; these are very different 'beasties', and you'll need to learn & experiment with how to use them effectively."

Otherwise:

"You can control the sound; don't be afraid to experiment and try different adjustments ... you can't hurt the System by how you adjust and tweak the knobs."

Throw 'in-your-face-loud' out the window and enjoy your music.

quote:

Congratulations on your wise decision, are you enjoying that sonic bathing as much as I am?

Definitely. In the past, I might count one gig where the sound was "good". To date, I have had one gig where the sound wasn't "good". And to be honest, if I was quicker with tweaking, I could have made it good there as well.

Very simple.

This is the best sound investment I have ever made.

Be prepared. Bring a book, maybe something to eat, a laptop to work on your taxes. It will take 3 or 4 times for you to realize you don't have get to a job 3 hours early to set up.

I would say that, "If you play rock that it will take a few practices to get used the amps not having to be blaring to be loud out front. Remember if it's loud enough on stage, it's about the same volume front of house. When you first play with it you will think that it is not loud enough if you are used to a traditional set up, simply because it is so comfortable and clear when you play."

quote:

If you could say just one thing to a new L1® owner, what would it be?

You have just taken your first step to better sound. Now take your second and join the Bose® Musicians Community Message Boards!

Trust your ears!

If your L1 sounds good , your there . If it doesn't , do some tweaking , you'll get there .
This forum is here to help you achieve the best sound out of your investment .

I agree a 100% to everthing said here on this topic. I will add: enjoy the sound and have fun,
the tweaking and experience will come in do time with each venue you play.
Johnny Angel

Congrats! You just performed your biggest step to highend quality sound on stage! Enjoy! Ralph www.blissnblue.com

Turn it down, you don't have to kill people like you did before.

I'm writing this after the SouthEast conference, where ST made a remote presentation in which he raised this question again. We discussed it together and I heard a lot of good ideas. Since then, I've had time to think some more about it. I realized that what makes this question hard for me is that I don't have just one thing to say to a new owner. There just does not seem to be one big pothole that everybody steps in that you need to warn them about. Good thing, I suppose.

Instead, I have a whole procedure to suggest for the first time use. It would go something like this. You should pick a sizeable space (not your tiny basement practice room) and start as simple as possible. Hook up only one simple source, with NO effects or outboard gear, use ToneMatch, do your gain-staging, put the B1 against a wall, and turn up the master 'til it sounds pleasantly loud. Once you are used to how the L1 is for you as a "stage monitor", get someone else to use the source (play, sing, whatever) and go out to the "audience area" and walk all around. If it all turns out well, add another simple source (with ToneMatch and gain-staging) or add in your familiar effects, but only one at a time, getting used to what each one does to the sound, before going on to the next. Accept that you will sound different, but much better. Aim for, "it sounds like me, only louder." If things go poorly and you can't solve it, go straight to the forum for help.

To reduce that to "just one thing" seems impossible, except that there is a sneaky trick that will allow me to do it. Ready? The one thing I would say is: "read and follow the wiki article called 'Using your L1 for the first time'". The trick is, the article hasn't been written yet. And what I wrote above is probably too primitive to be the article itself. But if you, gentle readers, agree with me that this is the one thing you want to say as well, then perhaps we can make a good wiki article together.

Or I could be way off base. Or I'm cheating. Or it's already written up somewhere. Comments?
Chris

Hi Chris,

Your take on this is more comprehensive and positive than what I wrote in How Not To Hear What You've Got. - And yeah, it's in the wiki.


I was hoping that we could pull together a bunch of quick-hits here in this discussion and roll them together into that as-yet-to-be-written article.

The "just one thing" aspect was to tease out those issues that are high value from lots of different perspectives.


In the meantime - it would be great if you would add to the "Do" section of that article - especially the part about "You should pick a sizeable space (not your tiny basement practice room)"

Chris,

You're right on the money. Start the article & let's brainstorm.

Tom

I'd say "Use ToneMatch(TM) Nowwww".

If they say "Yeah, I know"

I'd then say "Use the volume control judiciously"

Based on our own experience, we'd say:

You will hear your vocals much better than with other systems... do not be tempted to back-off from the mic.