Bill Fitzmaurice

I don't see the need for a sub plus line array top for electric bass. Standard cabs work just fine, so long as if you do have more than one driver or more than one cab that the drivers are vertically stacked, which, from a technical standpoint, is a line array.

That's an example of a system that IMO makes no sense. Three inch drivers are too small to reach down to 100Hz to cross over to the sub, and if you're going to have a line array of midranges there should also be a line array of tweeters. As for 'Powerful bass reproduction with 2 x 8" Woofers', in a living room that would be marginal. In a club? No way.

I don't know if any of them are worthwhile, but then I'm not shopping for speakers myself. Mine are, however. 😉 From what I've seen most of them use tiny midbass drivers with no tweeters. For pro applications I wouldn't use smaller than six inch midbasses other than for a coffee house acoustic gig, and tweeters are not optional, unless you're sure your audience can't hear above 8kHz.

With the size of the arrays used in club situations that's not a concern. But even relatively short arrays do have higher intelligibility than point sources, because high frequency early reflections off the floor and ceiling are reduced. Those early reflections result in poor sound quality. With large arrays the inverse square law no longer applies to frequencies where the array is at least three wavelengths high. Instead of losing output at a rate of 6dB per doubling of distance from the source they lose output at a rate of 3dB per doubling of distance. This greatly improves intelligibility at longer distances, as higher frequencies don't carry as far as lower frequencies due to their absorption by the air molecules that they pass through. This brings up an important point. Bose for one, and I'm sure others as well, touts this effect, which is known as the near field condition. The Bose array is high enough for upper frequencies to be in the near field. However, distance that the near field extends from the array is also dependent on the array height. These club size arrays are far too short for the near field to extend more than a few meters out, where it then transitions back to far field and the inverse square law again applies.

+1. If there is a problem with column arrays it's that most of them are very overpriced for what you get. The length of the array only affects dispersion on the vertical plane. It has no effect on the dispersion on the horizontal plane. A major benefit of a line array that uses multiple smaller woofers rather than one or two larger woofers is that having smaller cones midrange dispersion is wider. That being the case tweeters can be crossed over to at a higher frequency, reducing the cost of both the tweeters and the crossover. From an engineering standpoint there are no downsides to column arrays when they're properly designed and constructed. Their issue, besides price, is that not many are. A secondary problem with respect to using them for PA is when the array is mounted above a sub. Good placement of mains and good placement of subs usually requires that they don't share the same footprint.

I've seen that claim made, but in order for it to be true the speakers must have nearly identical phase response and displacement limited power handling. That's rare even when they're the same size, let alone different sizes. Besides, if you asked a speaker manufacturer to provide you with that data the only response would be a different sound entirely, that being crickets. 🙄

First, ohmage is what you pay to The Ox. Speakers have impedance. Not only should you not use cabs with different impedance, you shouldn't mix cabs at all, with one exception, that being when they are loaded with identical drivers wired so that each driver receives the same power. For instance, that could be an 8 ohm 110 along with a 210, the 210 drivers wired parallel for 4 ohms. You'd have to be sure that your amp would handle the resulting 2.7 ohm load. Still, the best route is to use two identical speakers.

It was always very noticeable for me when I last had a valve amp, a Fender Bassman. That would have been around 1970.

Yes, because the added cone displacement of a second cab gives a sensitivity boost.

Plug them in, play through them. We can't tell you what you'll think of them, only you can do that.

I've never used larger than 14 gauge. 16 gauge is sufficient with the short length of an amp to cab lead, but since I always have 14 gauge on hand for use with PA that's what I use.

A mic is better anyway, as it captures the same thing that you hear. But all is for naught if the guy behind the console doesn't know what he's doing. IME, which includes just about every top touring act of the last 20 years. most don't.

Not on Sky News. 🙄

Voltage sensitivity would be a wash. You'd gain 3dB from mutual coupling, but lose 3dB from the doubled impedance. You would still realize as mush as 6dB additional maximum output, but it would all be power derived, if the amp had the power available to give. True. Even in parallel the results would be unpredictable.

Google 'sarcasm'. In France it's Macron's fault, in Germany it's Scholz's fault, in Australia it's Albanese's fault. They don't blame Putin in Russia, on penalty of death or being conscripted (the same thing, actually), but the reality is that it is his fault everywhere. 😉

There's a fine line between raising prices enough to maintain a profit margin and raising them just enough to stay in business. Small entities like BB are more able to walk that line, not having either shareholders to placate nor a top heavy management to feed. As for profit, here also small entities tend to not have any. If times are good whatever may be left over after covering salaries and costs don't go to shareholder dividends or executive bonuses, they get reinvested into the business.

It's all Biden's fault. 😫 Oh, right, you're in the UK. It's all Johnson's fault. 🙄

+1. I alternately chuckle and roll my eyes when I see blokes saying how when they try an amp for the first time, be it on stage, at home or in a store, that they automatically put the EQ knobs at 12:00, because they want flat response, when the reality is that they've probably never heard truly flat response in their life. 🙄 Sir Paul, or is it Lord Paul now, still doesn't read music, and yet somehow he gets by. Neither did over 90% of the top musicians going back to the 1950s. I've worked with school trained musicians who could sight read, and their chops were as lifeless as ten year old flatwounds. IME you've either got music in your blood from birth or you don't.

I use a Jack Lite 12. I have a Jack Lite 15, it's only been used once at an outdoor gig. Indoors I don't need more than the 12. When I designed them I was after a similar tone to my favorite rig when I was touring in the '70s, the JBL 4560A, in a much smaller and lighter package. The 4560A was a monster, but in the days before PA support that's what you needed.

Coming up with a true FRFR cab isn't a problem for me, irrespective of budget. I don't use one because I don't want one.

True, larger drivers don't necessarily go lower, nor do smaller drivers necessarily go higher, as is all too commonly assumed. In a properly engineered multi-driver speaker that's not why larger and smaller drivers, each operating within their own frequency range, are used. Larger drivers are used to provide the necessary cone displacement to deliver the desired output levels in the lower frequencies, while smaller drivers are used in the mids and even smaller drivers in the highs to provide wide dispersion in those frequencies.

Yes, it does. The larger the cone the narrower the dispersion angle as you go higher in frequency. The cone size being too large is the reason for midrange and high frequency beaming. We don't notice it as much as do guitar speakers, because we have less high frequency content, but it's still there. If you're only listening to the cab on-axis the driver size doesn't make much difference, but most of your audience isn't on-axis. With fifteens they'll hear the tone change as they go across the sound field. The same applies when multiple drivers are placed side by side.

A tight fifteen could get you twenty. 😲

You'd think, but they persist. 🙄

The only way that happens is with PA gear. Bass amps and bass speakers have coloration. That's not the result of poor mechanical or electronic engineering, it's intentional. Truly flat response from a bass rig would be as appealing as truly flat beer.