Shouldn’t we be looking more at PA speakers?

[Schollaudio]

Sure, JBL PRX, Cinema and SRX series are all awesome and can be had in good used condition (with patience) for a few cents on the dollar. This may be man cave gear. DIYers can make nice boxes.

 

[changer]

Professional Audio Speakers are generally designed for a different application, which is to distribute live sound to a given audience in rooms that are normally much larger than where we will listen to at home.

This is actually an issue: PA speakers are for big rooms (like a warehouse), while HiFi are for small rooms (like US midwest living rooms). PA speaker construction does not consider the room acoustics of small rooms.

The focus is more on getting louder and covering further. The lower priced stuff will have much higher levels of distortion as a sacrifice to getting louder volumes.

Even a cheap 12-inch or 15-inch woofer probably distorts way less at home audio levels than an expensive 6.5-inch woofer.

 

[RobL]

I bought an EV Evolve 50m for an upcoming wedding and to use for outdoor parties etc. EV’s data:

From listening to it beside my Genelec’s, it sounds quite balanced and I don’t hear anything that makes me doubt EV’s graph…but these PA manufacturers max spl specs are pure fantasy imo.

 

[kemmler3D]

Agreed. This is why I wonder if the Bose-style array of full-range drivers might work better-than-we-think. Still, the 15" PA speakers aren't too different from someone owning the JBL 4367 or Klipschorn.

Yes, this is true, and I think the full-range array is already a concept that's explored in some home setups (that $1M setup Fritz guy kinda had one?).

I guess a better way to look at it - if you're the kind of person who would put a JBL M2 in your house, can you get close to that with PA gear instead, and then put a nice cabinet around it?

I think the answer is "probably, maybe" - but even if you have a million dB of headroom, the problem with EQing something flat is that often the directivity won't cooperate.

Another reply said that using PA drivers for subwoofers makes sense. I tend to agree, except that they don't often do well below 40hz, as has been mentioned live venues don't always try to go below that.

 

[ta240]

The Bose is very different than a magnapan. The Bose L1 (as I understood it many years ago when I sometimes installed its cousin, the MA12) has several full range 2" drivers. I believe they are turned left and right in the enclosure in order to maximize the horizontal dispersion, which is around 180 degrees. This is much wider than what you want with home speakers. It's also mostly run in mono, which will not sound good at home. The multiple 2" drivers are a line array which couple as you get further away. The point is to try and cover the room evenly (not louder in the front and quieter in the back). When I've heard them, they are quite good at that. The Magnapan speakers are an electrostatic speaker which is completely different. They are not designed to throw far and they would probably not do well with live inputs.

Good point, when I was looking at them I figured I'd want two of the 16s for stereo
Most importantly I almost never listen in the 'sweet spot' I'm usually somewhere else in the room doing things while the music is playing. So the even coverage is a big plus. I realize that likely makes me an outlier in this world.
The high output would be completely unnecessary (unless the neighbors get more annoying)

1. Size is a much more important constraint for home vs. stage use.

The size of the Bose was part of what made them appealing. If I could get used to the black pole sticking up that high, they would stand out less than a lot of regular speakers.

 

[cavedriver]

Make fancy fabric grilles that look like the Beolab 90? We have wood and leather cases for iPhones, aftermarket wraps or faceplates for gaming consoles…

That gives me an idea. Companies like GIK Acoustics make sound absorbing panels where they print your artwork on (mostly) sonically transparent fabric. I could take speaker grill cloth and print artwork on it and turn speakers into decorations. However, I can't think of a single pair of images I would want closely flanking my TV right now at eye level. Perhaps the spines of books like I'm looking at library shelves. I'm sure someone would want their cats on them.

Side note: with so many people using home theater screens, isn't a wall of black fabric or built-in "boxes" to house PA-grade speakers reasonably likely? So appearances wouldn't be the issue. Of course you have to have $ to have a dedicated theater room in your house, but we're talking about $20k+ setups anyway.

 

[Schollaudio]

This is actually an issue: PA speakers are for big rooms (like a warehouse), while HiFi are for small rooms (like US midwest living rooms). PA speaker construction does not consider the room acoustics of small rooms.


Even a cheap 12-inch or 15-inch woofer probably distorts way less at home audio levels than an expensive 6.5-inch woofer.

I use 90 and 110 degree horns with very good results. I like those more than Wavecore and SEAS tweeter which I still like alot too.

 

[Prana Ferox]

Wouldn’t this be a good business idea though? Rehouse cinema speakers in more elegant exterior? Make fancy fabric grilles that look like the Beolab 90? We have wood and leather cases for iPhones, aftermarket wraps or faceplates for gaming consoles…

It would be silly in that people spend ridiculous amounts for cables because they look cool, but maybe spending ridiculous amounts of money for beautifying something makes a lot of sense?

Back in the 1950s, you would buy drivers from JBL and run them full range or buy crossovers and put them into your own box. You could buy a L88 and which was a 2-way L100 and then later upgrade to the L100.

Alternately if you wanted a prettied up PA speaker you'd just buy a Klipsch

PA or PA-style speakers in the home are extremely popular for the AV / Home Theater crowd as they tend to have tightly controlled directivity (for effective multichannel SFX) and high efficiency / peak output. Bass output is a common tradeoff but for HT you have one / many subs anyway.

 

[Dougey_Jones]

My own home theater system mixes Meyer Sound Amie for the center and Bose 901’s heavily EQ’d for Dirac for the left and right and I genuinely enjoy it more than the JBL 708P for left and right.

I've wondered often about Bose 901's EQ'd with Dirac rather than the Bose made EQ component. How does that work in practice?

 

[Matt_Holland]

I work for the UK distributor for K-array who make everything from ultra miniature speakers for discrete BGM systems to large venue concert arrays.

We sell into the residential channel and this includes some of the powerful line arrays (not the concert types).

In particular, the 50cm or 100cm Python and Kayman line array models when used with appropriate subwoofers and amps deliver a very high fidelity sound. Amp noise is the only issue really if you used them in a dedicated hifi type listening room, as they are so efficient.

 

[changer]

Yes, amp noise definitely becomes an issue, especially at the woofer channel. I had first used a 97 dB rated Faital Pro 12PR320 and later switched to the 94 dB rated PHL 3411, while I kept the same compression driver Celestion CDX1-1747. Surprisingly, while I would clearly notice the amp noise from the Hypex FA123 from my listening position with the Faital, the slightly lower sensitivity PHL does not transmit the noise so that I hear it anymore.

 

[changer]

In general, I think that PA speakers should not be used for home listening. Mostly because the radiation pattern is so narrow, a critique that I would also direct at using studio monitors. If people find these to sound 'too clinical,' a notion that often arises when dissatisfied users talk about their experience, I think what they actually perceive as problematic is not the neutral frequency response but the rather restricted image in a stereo presentation. It's just so tiny, the stage. Beautiful, but small, like a little diamond. You cannot be engulfed by sound when two 90 degree horizontal dispersion speakers create the stereo illusion for you from a stereo base of 3 meters or so. Those speakers are meant to illuminate a much bigger space, from a much wider base at each side of stage in a big room.

 

[GXAlan]

I bought an EV Evolve 50m for an upcoming wedding and to use for outdoor parties etc. EV’s data:
View attachment 343119
From listening to it beside my Genelec’s, it sounds quite balanced and I don’t hear anything that makes me doubt EV’s graph…but these PA manufacturers max spl specs are pure fantasy imo.
View attachment 343121

Thanks for sharing. What’s interesting is that it’s just “eight 3.5-inch neodymium high-frequency drivers and a proprietary waveguide that provides an impressive 120° of horizontal coverage and 40° of vertical coverage”.

We used to laugh at soundbars and their small woofers, but maybe the tech is getting to the point where we can do a lot more interesting things.

Do you just have one? Most people think that the ultra wide horizontal dispersion is bad for home listening but maybe with them in stereo works fine.

I've wondered often about Bose 901's EQ'd with Dirac rather than the Bose made EQ component. How does that work in practice?

I have tried doing a nearfield measurement and running standard Dirac versus just doing normal 9 point measurement at the listening point and doing a full bandwidth correction. I like the latter.

In my particular room which just happens to be “perfect” for the 901’s, an *electrical* measurement of the factory equalizer versus Dirac with a 10 dB style Harman boost gave me this:

The Bose 901 Series VI sounds better than it has any right to, especially when size and appearance is a concern. I think that the 901’s sounded poor because
A) the equalizer was seen as optional and not understood as a requirement by many. A lot were sold on looks not performance.
B) the older equalizers could overload with high input voltage and work best with low input voltage and high gain amplifiers.
C) there is a lot of sighted bias. Think about the most famous speaker designers you know of the late 20th century. How many of them were people of color? The 901’s came out in the late 1960s and Boston public schools would still fight over desegregation years later in the early 70’s!
D) Because Bose didn’t publish measurements and they sued Consumer Reports (which was justified since the author had a conflict of interest in that he was trying to commercialize his own speaker at the time, instructed the review panel to pick the speaker that matched the reference sound as opposed to the speaker they preferred), people assumed that the 6 generations were largely cosmetic other than the sealed vs. ported, and magazines weren’t enthusiastic about reviewing them.

I will be sending the “901 VI ver 2” To Amir. I am trying to convince him to break his tradition of only testing in mono.

 

[rynberg]

If this kind of sound is what you are looking for, you can just buy slightly more domestically acceptable speakers from JTR. Most PA speakers at any remotely reasonable price point are going to have poor in-room performance in an actual domestic space.

As a side note, users of this forum should know much better than to rely on an on-axis frequency response graph to judge speaker performance, especially when they are obviously heavily smoothed with poor resolution.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

1.) If this kind of sound is what you are looking for, you can just buy slightly more domestically acceptable speakers from JTR.

What sound is that?

Most PA speakers at any remotely reasonable price point are going to have poor in-room performance in an actual domestic space.

How so? Last time I checked PA speakers could be had as 2 and 3 way with or without horn in various sizes and shapes. Just like residential speakers. And what is reasonable price point? Do you suggest that you get much better speakers for your domestic home the more you spend?

That seems like the old audiophile trick of more money = more better. I think every user of this forum should have seen by demonstration that is indeed not the case at all.

 

[Head_Unit]

I've wondered often about Bose 901's EQ'd with Dirac rather than the Bose made EQ component. How does that work in practice?

Apples and oranges I should think. The Bose EQ is really a frequency response thing. Dirac/Audyssey are supposed to be more time-based, but a 901 is not designed to have good time response at all, it will have a very mixed time response. Now could you run the Dirac just for the lows? Probably since you can in Audyssey and ARC. That should get more even bass response than the Bose EQ.

 

[restorer-john]

No we shouldn't. Leave PA speakers where they belong.

 

[changer]

We used to laugh at soundbars and their small woofers, but maybe the tech is getting to the point where we can do a lot more interesting things.

One of the best (also: looking) systems that was conceived at diyaudio.com is a line array plus subwoofer speaker.

 

[gnarly]

I think the home audio community is missing out big time, by not considering proaudio speakers.

The thread title say PA speakers..so I'll go there first..
Mainstream brands like Yamaha and RCF, offer a variety of economic live sound speakers using 8"-12" low drivers and a compression driver with waveguide.
Imo/ime, they usually smoke any equivalently priced home audio speaker.
Step up to premium priced brands like Meyer, D&B, L-Acoustic, Danley...and compare them to high price of sonically competitive home audio speakers...and the home audio prices get very hard to justify.

But I think the real opportunity, and missed boat, lies with proaudio install speakers.
Add companies like Fulcrum Acoustic and Renkus Heinz to the above mentioned names.

A relative new outfit "TheoryProfessional", founded by Paul Hales of Hales Design Group fame, is catching al lot of intention...https://www.theoryprofessional.com/products
His comments starting at about 1:20 in this video, reflect what turned my head to proaudio after 30-40 years of being near rabidly into home audio.

 

[GXAlan]

As a side note, users of this forum should know much better than to rely on an on-axis frequency response graph to judge speaker performance, especially when they are obviously heavily smoothed with poor resolution.

Agree. But you get spins on the JBL professional PA stuff so you know off axis performance and many of the other speakers show you details.

My question is that
1) if you have irregular frequency response, good off axis performance, and hit 70 dB SPLs, you really cannot EQ the response since you cannot boost your dips, and once you reduce your peaks, it’s too quiet.

2) with a PA speaker that hits silly high SPLs like 128 dB, if you have irregular frequency response, good off axis performance, why not make your “dip” of 15 dB that reaches 113 dB actually your target. So your EQ is pulling everything down to be flat.

Apples and oranges I should think. The Bose EQ is really a frequency response thing. Dirac/Audyssey are supposed to be more time-based, but a 901 is not designed to have good time response at all, it will have a very mixed time response. Now could you run the Dirac just for the lows? Probably since you can in Audyssey and ARC. That should get more even bass response than the Bose EQ.

Yes, but what I did was to say: “My room is SO weird that it made my good speaker act like this, can you fix it?”

So I took the unequalized 901 and fed it to Dirac. Then when it was done, I did a REW frequency sweep of the preouts on
A) the Bose EQ
vs.
B) the Dirac-enabled AVP/AVR

And you can see that even though Dirac had no knowledge of the Bose EQ curve, it ended up with a very similar curve!

No we shouldn't. Leave PA speakers where they belong.

But aren’t PA speakers of 2024 different than ones from yesteryear? We love McIntosh for their history on stage and there was a great period where JBL was running beryllium diaphragms on their flagship PA speakers. Looking at the specs of today’s mid and premium level PA speakers, it looks like it could work well

Again, my thought is to build a BeoLab 90 style grill to hide the PA speaker behind an artistic sculpture of acoustically transparent fabric with the hopes that having an uglier speaker behind the “curtain” means that more of the budget was spent on the transducers…