I had a learning experience this past Saturday evening with a L1 “type” system. First let me clarify that I don’t use a L1 but a MA12/502BP system which is similar in function and appearance to the L1.
I was hired to provide sound for a concert that featured a Tony Award winning composer/pianist/vocalist. This concert was in the San Francisco North Bay area and there were people flying in from as far away as Texas to attend.
I have worked in the past at the venue where the concert was held although I had always just run the house system. The venue holds 300 and is very challenging as it has a reverb time of a little under 3 seconds. The stage is linoleum tile, the first 15 feet of floor in front of the stage is exposed concrete, the walls are cinder block and parallel, and the ceiling is sheet rock.
The theater group that was producing the concert did not like the sound of the house system so I was hired to bring in my system. I thought this would be a perfect situation for a L1 type system.
A Yamaha C7 was rented for the event and I started loading in as the piano tuner was finishing. I set up a 3 high MA12 along with a 502BP sub. I first played a CD and the sound was clear and even throughout the venue. Next I set up a mic on the piano with a technique using a single AKG C414BULS. This technique requires that the piano be on high stick.
There was a pianist present so I had him play. The piano was loud enough to fill the venue acoustically. I raised the piano volume in the system and you could hear more presence and detail, probably because I was hearing more direct sound. It had a very natural sound.

Next the artist and the show producers arrived.

Problem number one - They did not like the appearance of the tall pole.
Problem number two - The artist wanted to play with the lid closed but said he’d play on the short stick if I needed to mic the piano - there goes my preferred mic technique.
Problem number three - As we did a sound check the sound was different as you moved around the venue. You could hear the piano well throughout but the vocal was lost in various spots. We moved the speaker system around to different stage locations but we were unable to solve the problem. This one caused me to sweat.
Solution - I broke down the system and reconfigured it as a 2 high MA12 and 502BP.
Two systems, one on each side of the stage as a traditional PA setup, dual mono.
Everyone was happy. The poles were not center stage and the sound was very even and balanced throughout the venue.
We have discussed on this forum the problem of phase cancellation if you feed the same signal to two L1 systems but I did not experience this. The sound in this case was much more balanced and even throughout the hall using a left / right mono feed than a single point source system.
As I said in the beginning I have worked in this venue with the house system and I must say that the Bose system easily outperformed the house system. There is no way I could have had the spl and clarity using the house system that I got using with the Bose line arrays. Whew!

Robert L

~Robert L, October 24, 2006~

full thread here