I took delivery of my L1 Compact about a month ago...I have basically been using it in my home and have taken it to various locations to test it out. I even took it to work (I am a paramedic full time) and amazed my co-workers with the sound quality. They found it unbelievable that a unit that size could produce such amazingly clear and crisp sound. Our ambulance station is fairly large and I had the gain control turned less than a quarter of the way up...the sound filled the room, in fact was a bit overwhelming so I had to make adjustments using the volume control on my laptop.
Now for the real test. I did my first gig with the L1 Compact this past weekend. I was a bit apprehensive and was almost tempted to bring a back up system along just in case the L1 didn't put out enough power to handle the room. The gig was an open house event at a local fire station. The room was a very large "barn type structure" used to house fire trucks. The fire apparatus had been pulled out and the room was outfitted with picnic tables, kids games, small carnival rides etc. My DJ rig was set up in the corner of the room..I positioned the L1 Compact in front of my table. I got to the event an hour early and after set-up there were only about 15 - 20 people there. I was a bit nervous when I did my sound check, afterall this wasn't a room with optimum acoustics. My system utilizes a single space rack mounted Rolls mic/source mixer which allows me to mix in 3 mics and several audio sources. I powered everything up and turned the volume on the L1 Compact up to half volume. I cued up a song, started the player on Traktor software and began raising the volume on the mixer. To my surprise, I filled the room with awesome "Bose quality" music and barely turned the mixer knob up to 1/4 volume. I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew then that my L1 was going to be more than enough PA for this event. As guests started to arrive, the ambient noise with all of the kids games, rides, etc was pretty high. I just kept tweaking the music volume to stay above the noise. There were no less than 200 people in the room throughout most of the event I did a walk around the room and was very pleased to find that the music coverage was very consistent. I had many positive comments about the sound and when I pointed to the L1 unit people generally took a double-take and say, "you mean all of that sound is coming from that?". I would just laugh and say, "Yeah, amazing isn't it".
The L1 Compact completely exceeded my expectations. The Bose company rates this product for venues of up to 100 people...I am here to tell you it will do way beyond that. I plan to purchase a second unit in a couple of months. This should be all of the shound reinforcment that I should ever need. I am just waiting to see how it will perform at an outdoor show. I am a very happy Bose customer.


- musicman7261, October 7, 2009 -

full thread here