.. with some sixty years of public speaking behind him, this fellow has some interesting questions about the Cylindrical Radiator®. We get through the details of the physics and acoustics quickly as these ideas are not new to him. A multi-disciplined life-long learner, he has encountered many of these concepts in different contexts before. We then hit a brief impasse as he asks,

"But will this Cylindrical Radiator deliver enough power to overcome a noisy audience?" (the context is a large hall, banquet seating 500+ people)

I have to fight back my impulse to react with "If you have to pummel them into submission with volume, perhaps your content has not earned their attention".

So we take a different path. We talk about the whether or not the audience would be able to understand if they were actually listening. We have both spent a lot of time in these kinds of venues and share the observation that most of public address / sound reinforcement systems we have encountered in these places just don't work regardless of what the audience is doing.

So it's not necessarily inadequate content but the futility of listening that leads to a restless, frustrated, and inattentive audience.

So having moved to a different starting point
- sound reinforcement system renders talker unintelligible

We reach a different conclusion
- louder, unintelligible talker is not a solution

We direct our attention to the goal and recast it as 'to be understood' rather than 'to be heard'.

We went on to revisit other assumptions, fallacious reasoning, the facile approach of making noises where answers should go, and the adequacy of inadequate solutions

It was a wonderful conversation.


edit: grammar

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ST,

I think hearing is believing for this person. Set up a playback device (iPod with spoken word ... mabye a book on tape or Podcast) and walk the room comparing the L1 to the conventional speaker system.

This one reminds me of the small duo who will ask me,

Them: "Well we do this gig where the crowd gets really loud. Can the L1 overcome people shouting to talk so we can be heard in the back?"

Me: "No. But what do you do now when this happens?"

Them: "We turn up."

Me: "And what do they do?"

Them: ... pause ...

Me: "They turn up, right? They speak louder and get closer. They move their mouths closer to their guest's ears."

Them: "right ..."

Me: "You're never going to compete with that ... they will just get closer and louder. Clearly, some of your audience will be louder than you no matter what speaker you use. Now, let's focus in on the crowd that DOES want to hear you."

And we talk about the L1's benefits over a triple system setup.

Very similar conversations IMO,

Steve

Interesting

I had the same conversation Saturday...

We played at a Legion Hall that had 400 or more guest.

Someone asked if the system could get loud enough and get over the talking?

I said why, if we turn up, they just talk louder.

Sometimes you have to know when you are background.

I also said, just wait until they drink alittle and then the floor will be full (we are a duet).

Anyway, the organizers were very happy, in the past everyone left by 11:00 and we still had aleast 200 guest

remaining at the end. We were supposed to play intil 12:00 and played until 1:00 (to many request and fun).

The biggest comment, "You guys weren't so loud that we could listen or talk."

What is amazing is that when I would call someone's name at a table, they would be talking to another guest

but immediately turn and looked at me and responded to my comment.

The hall we played in is known for terrible acoustics (echo, reverb, etc..),

I think the L1's are very audible and especially in speech.

My wife complains alot about my band and when we talk between songs she says she can't understand us??

Anyway, got the booking again for next year and I left happy and satified.

Hi Steve,

This is such an important point that you make. It's so darned hard to market though!

Ken

Yeh,

My drummer in the band still can't seem to get this point, no matter how much people complain we are blowing their heads off.

I have never had anyone complain to me that we were to quiet.

What I have really noticed with the Bose is the comment from the audience..

"If we want to talk, we can, if we want to dance, we can..the music isn't forced upon us."

Someday I will convert the rest of my band to a full Bose band.

Of course there are times when the music is the main focus and it needs to be loud.
(my band played at an Oktoberfest acouple of weeks ago and the soundman said the noise level was 108 db's from just the crowd noise, crowd of 1000 + ....when we started playing the db's went to 112)

A conventional pa may be the way to go.

Later