Mark Payne's Comments so far 6 shows in

I am widening my comments for critique and peer argument.
My view is just a view.
This was my email to Scott summing up where I am so far after UK, Paris, Frankfurt, Holland, Sweden and Berlin.

I remain a servant of the process and there are bigger brains in Bose than me but I will offer this:

My advice would be to not use more boxes than your room needs. Of course I appreciate that you will want to hang 6 box minimum otherwise you don’t look like you are hanging an array.

We have had venues from 15M depth (yes) to 35M depth.

We see so far the best results if we don’t try too hard with the back of the venue.
By this I mean don’t get too over-excited in modeler and show how you can make the back of the room the same level as the front.

You need to get the 5deg boxes into the room. IMHO … don’t use the 5’s to nail the back wall (we have 4 in our arrays, 5,5,5,5,10,10).

Make sure you are looking at 5 deg modules on axis (vert) from 1/3 to ½ way back. Get them into the room.
Open up the 5’s “fast as you can” (within reason)

I personally don’t like the transition from the 570 to the 10100. I want more intensity from the 10’s.
I (100%) would not bother with 20’s in the array. Use them as front fill only. Thomas worked an EQ for them at the Berlin gig and we took measurements also.

There will be a V2 of this EQ (for the 20’s) from Thomas. I would use that and I hope this is what we have at the next gig.

The strength (one strength) of this system is headroom. Make sure you show limiter view while driving live mix at sat 97-98 dBA at the console.

You can see 20(MF)-30(HF) dB of system headroom here. Y series and Kara cannot do this.

If I could… I would be exchanging the 570 for 5100 … we have looked at it but our boxes have lock-tighted grille bolts and I don’t think I can get them out without damaging grilles.

The system is drier in the room than I perceive French and German systems to be.

I have a high degree of expectational processing that relates the RT of the room in which I walk to what I expect the array to sound like.

Showmatch plays the room less that I would expect.
I think this is partly the 5’s. This is a good thing.

I am not a fan of the 70 wave guide right now. I am frustrated by it. Our demo/launch rooms are not big enough for it.I keep walking off axis (horizontal) and I feel we need more width.

Thomas did some really fine work on me with the proper single box true anechoic measures of the 20100 from Bose R&D.
That looked cool in principle… But this is not what I hear from the 5
70.
I hear horizontal beaming HF.

Thomas again has taught me a lot more about more complex “total array” structural diffraction issues.
More work is needed here IMHO.

We did some measures of this in Berlin as the width of the venue lent itself to reasonable off axis measures without a side wall in play.

It “is what it is”. Mostly good. While we control the news cycle, it’s fine.
I would worry about what comes later.

I hope I am not being too candid.

M

Good stuff here Mark. Never too candid. Thanks for the report.