Point Source, Constant Curvature Array, or Line Array | Which One Should You Choose?

are line arrays better than any other speakers can constant curvature get close to a line array or point sources just for fills or can you use them for mains we're going to talk about that today we're going to make sure that you're familiar with all three of these speaker types so you know their specific strengths and weaknesses so you can pick the right ones and fit them like a glove to your show my name is michael curtis i love helping you get greater clarity and greater shows because you can be fluid with sound system design and tuning if you want to level up your game here another tool i think you would also love is my audio mask survival spreadsheet i've got that here and it's got over 250 rows of calculations of all the fun nerdy physics stuff that'll help you get great results in the field you're not having to dig through books and get all these together it's just in one spreadsheet for you but one thing we talked about today is how line arrays actually end up steering low frequency energy because they are in a line we go from this blob of low energy to a beam and we can predict that we can predict the coverage shape so if i got an 8 foot line array i could put that in here and say 141 hertz is going to be at 72 degrees so i can know that coverage shape of my low frequencies and see if i have a long enough line to steer the lower frequencies where i want to that's just one of many calculations i think you find helpful you can get that at the link below at produced by mkc.com audio toolkit i think you will enjoy it all right i'm looking forward to today we're going to really dig into each of three speaker types and see how each of them can serve you on your shows and some things to watch out for in situations you might not want to choose them so let's jump in let's do a quick overview of all three speaker types then we'll jump back through each and offer some of the specific pros and cons so we can compare them for the best use cases on our shows so first up is the point source this is a single speaker cabinet this word point source is used a little bit colloquially to kind of rever refer to a generic speaker type which we're going to define so technically a point source the sound comes from one single point then radiating outward equally and a speaker that isn't very big uh does does that for the most part so we just call it a point source so it's a speaker that would live in this category is a qsc k12 it's just your normal everyday run-of-the-mill speaker it can be a monitor you can throw it on sticks you do whatever so it is going to fulfill that role for us so just have that as an anchor in your mind for a point source it's just like it's a single 12 and a tweeter right so you can also take a speaker off the bottom of a line array that's specifically designed for that set it on the deck as a front fill and now it is technically a point source because how things become a line arrays that they're arrayed in a line so if a box is no longer in a line it is now a point source so it's already getting a little bit hazy just want to make that clear it's not this speaker is a point source and this speaker is not is how you're using them together is really what separates them but they are going to have different design goals and qualities about them even if you do take a line or a speaker put on the deck versus a point source so a point source can have multiple woofers tweeters horns but it's not substantially large enough to steer any low end they usually have wider coverage angles so they usually go up to about 100 degrees usually not much narrower than 60 but you can also mix and match you can have a 90 degree wide by 62 degree vertical or vice versa so it makes them flexible to use in those types of situations a single subwoofer is technically a point source as well but we're not going to dive into to to that today with with subs but yeah if someone says give me a point source or give me a trap box this is probably what they're referring to lastly they also have lower sp spl capabilities than constant curvature or line array since they don't have friends that they're working together with but they still can get pretty loud if you need them to all right moving on to constant curvature arrays so that is an array of two to seven speakers with a fixed splay angle so what do i mean by splay angle so a let's look at the jbl vrx 932 lap this is a speaker that's been around the industry for a long time it has this trapezoidal shape and we can put them together we just simply stack stack stack but it's it's a slice of the pizza that has a 15 degree angle and that's its coverage so we have several 15 degree cutouts that we can put together and make into how big of a pizza slice do we want so it is fixed we cannot change the relationship of the boxes and how they're interacting with each other their physical way they butt up against each other makes it a constant curve if we add enough of them we can go all the way in a complete perfect circle but i think you're limited to seven that you can fly with the vrx you can also put just two up on six or even just one so now we're back to a point source but most of the time you're probably gonna end up flying three to five of them depending on your show these will have wide horizontal coverage a vrx is 100 degrees some constant curvature rays out there are 110 over 120 but they have very narrow vertical so that separates them from the point source is that it's not a 60 degree or 90 degree pattern they're going to be the same coverage pattern of their angles to their friends in the arrays so the vrx is 15 some other ones from presonus i think are 20. so anyway so that's that's that's how they're gonna work together is their their splay angle is going to separate the high energy because we know that we can steer high frequencies pretty well but we can't low so their low ends are going to couple and form a beam but each box has its own little high frequency zone and it's not overlapping with its friends so the more boxes you add the more vertical coverage you get so i can add a box box box box and so if i have a wa audience i need to cover i can measure that angle and and see well this is a 45 degrees of total coverage from my rigging point to the first row in the back row i'm going to need at least three boxes of jbl vrx to get 45 degrees and probably one more because it always doesn't work out that nicely so you also get more spl with a constant curvature array because we have more boxes that are closely coupled and can work together and couple on the back of these you can adjust level and eq and we'll talk about how we can tweak that a little bit later on the video to make sure we have uniform coverage and these are for low to mid spl capabilities because they can couple they can get louder because they are working together with their friends and they're not just on their own with a single woofer trying to do all the job or woofer and a horn all right moving on to line array a line array is usually three to up to 24 speakers with variable splay angle between their friends so they arrayed together so they're hung in a column that kind of jays out right so an example of this is an rcf hdl-6a i just use this rig all the time in town so we'll use this you could put three of them on a stick you could put one of them on the front of the stage as a front fill so we're back to our point source but usually they're flown together in groups and they have group think so they have the lows are steered a little bit which we'll talk about it's one of their pros because they're together and they can help form a low beam and help instead of this blob that's coming out we get to focus a beam but we get to change the coverage shape of the whole array by the variables between the boxes so if we have all the boxes hung let's say at one degree they're all overlapping each other so they're going to make this tightly focused high frequency beam that it's like more like a sniper rifle right it's going to go far otherwise let's say we put them all at 10 degrees it's all going to make this big you know kind of like half circle thing and fan out and so we're going to spread out the high frequency energy and so there might be a specific use case this might be normal but probably going to be somewhere in between usually our arrays are hung and we need to get the top boxes to go all the way to the back maybe 100 feet away but by the time we get to the bottom of the rate it's not very far maybe they're only throwing 20 feet so that is a 5 to 1 distance ratio that we need to overcome is by tightening up those angles in the boxes and get them to couple together in the high frequencies and throw far and then spreading them out at the bottom is how we can get a different coverage shape throughout the array so we're going to see it slowly unfurl as we go through the bottom with normal audience shapes there are exceptions here but most of the time we're trying to get stuff to the back and make it even all the way to the front you can also use eq on shading on each box to get different tonalities and make a couple differently one thing to make sure is of you need to make sure you have the right preset on your amp or dsp this is also true for a point source or constant curvature i forgot to mention it but a lot of these days are using complementary filters that the manufacturer has given us to make sure you're getting the best results from your box these are from medium to high sp applications you can always turn it down if you know this is a corporate event it's a small room but we have some there can be a hundred fifty db at one meter you know i'm thinking about the the new meyer panther line array speaker it's 150 d 150 db the hdl 6a i just referenced from rcf it's a lot smaller box its peak spl at one meter is 131 db so i'd say 19 db difference which means the panther can get nine times louder so that that's a big difference so uh make sure you have the right size line array speaker for your application if you need to throw an entire football field you need a panther if you're in a smaller to mid-size arena show or i don't have to go crazy loud then you can get away with something like an hdl 6a one is not inherently better than the other you just need to choose the right size rig for the right size show all right so let's jump into the details of the point source and the specific strength and features and then some of its weaknesses and why you might choose it over the other two on a show so point source is great for small to medium size audience so especially clubs with low ceilings because we have a big giant line array and a club we're going to be dragging on the ground before we finish our coverage shape right so these are small they're portable you can throw them up you still want to get them high in most venues but they're not going to be this big eyesore right they come in variable coverage patterns per model so let's say if you have one let's see i know rcf has a specific speaker that escapes me that you can get it in a 90 by 90 a 90 by 60 is 60 by 60 so you can be really customizable of the exact coverage that you need within the same speaker line so that's pretty cool they're pretty small they're light they're portable you can take a qc k12 you can throw it up on a stick by yourself so you don't always have to have a friend for a setup there are low they're lower power requirements so you know they're not designed to get crazy loud so they don't need to draw a lot of voltage so you're not gonna have to worry about putting you know a couple of tops a couple of subs on one circuit and you're still going to sleep well at night always check your power requirements than the specific speakers you have but i know that the the k12s with their complimentary subs the ks 118s i can run those in one circuit and not blink an eye and lastly you have a variety of mounting options with a point source box traditionally you can use m10 bolts they're very popular to screw into the box then mount them you can put them horizontally vertically you can put them on a stick you could put a pole in your sub and mount them on that for even less hardware and a smaller footprint so they're very flexible so now let's talk about their weaknesses you cannot overcome high range ratios with a point source so the center of a point source throws its lattice point as you move towards its coverage edge both horizontally and vertically you're going to lose energy and so a 90 degree box means that it's 45 degree edge we're going to be 6 db down which works in our favor because we do want it to let's say we're pointing it at the back of our audience we do want to get softer so the loud part can throw towards the back because it's going farther and it's gradually getting softer and it can meet at the front of our audience but the range ratio that's only designed to overcome since we're losing half is two to one once we get beyond that we're going to start to get a bigger discrepancy between the back row and the front row as far as tonal tonal uniformity and level uniformity so we can't use them with a very super deep audience without adding delay speakers which is something we can easily do with point sources number two they have lower spl capabilities even with larger boxes so line arrays are by far going to be able to get louder because they work together with their friends and can couple so it's really hard to go it alone number three you have no low frequency directivity how you get low frequencies to start forming a beam and go where you want them to is to erase speakers together because their arrival times are going to be similar at the front i'm not at the sides so we're going to have the the low end energy focus there so with the single point source that's physically impossible to steer low frequencies so it's a fixed pattern once you start getting below 1k and it gets more spherical the lower you go in frequency so a single point source there's no low end directivity so that's something like a your front fills or your floor wedges you have a bunch of those on your stage you can get a lot of low end build up because it's all just spilling everywhere so don't be afraid to use a low shelf or something on those speakers to help dial in some of that low mid to low bleed and number four they're designed mostly for install rigging not touring rigging so smaller shows we just throw them on a stick yeah that that cup is always there but if you want to fly them you have to screw in the m10 bolts you have to like customize some aircraft cable so they're not made to throw in the air quickly for touring situations all right so the details and strengths and weaknesses of constant curvature the number one it's a quick setup you get the rigging frame ready you put one on two you're not even thinking about splay angles since they're fixed so you just pin the boxes and you send them up number two it can be a really tightly focused front film so a vrx is 100 degrees wide so having a wide box as a front fill is usually good because you have to cover a lot of people quickly since it's a short throw distance but if it's 15 degrees that means you're not getting all this a high frequency energy shot up into the ceiling or bouncing off the floor so it can be tightly focused if you aim it correctly right at the audience's heads so they may not work in your favor if you have a really low stage or a very high stage but it's really cool if you do have a workout where you get a five foot tall stage put a front fill on there and that's right at most people's heads number three you can technically get uh more level uh than a single box because of coupling so they they're more efficient because they're right next to the friends they can get louder we've talked about that and number four strength it has some low frequency directivity the more boxes you add so let's see if you got four together we're going to start to get some of that beam and focus energy in a constant curvature array it's not this blob of low mids just coming off the rate so that's definitely a plus because we don't we want to steer all frequencies at the audience and keep them all off the stage or the sidewalls right so any directivity at all frequencies is really helpful number five is you can use high frequency shading to help overcome the range ratios kind of this is you know if you got four in an array and one's going to the back row and one's going to the front row and it's a four to one rain ratio a lot of boxes are specifically in the 932s you can press a button or two buttons on the back to get it to have a high end boost and then the bottom box you can have a high end cut so you can help even out some of the energy front to back again we have a fixed tonality because of the beam with the lows and low mids so we can have it unmatched it's too bright and too dark and the mids are somewhere in the middle so this is up to your tuning preferences and your show scope to really figure out but no you do have some of that flexibility to have some of the high end be shaped throughout the array all right here's our three weaknesses for constant curvatures no splay angle change because it has it means it has inflexible coverage shapes so you're basically stuck with i want 15 30 45 or if you have a 20 degree box 20 40 60 80 and you have to work in those increments so if you need to be in between that's kind of hard so you have to work in increments of like how many boxes do i have so if there's only eight on the truck you can only do four and four or i need two of those to be front fills great you're stuck with three and three that means you're stuck with a 45 degree hf coverage shape which may or may not be desirable for your show number two you have limited dsp tool sets so you have to use an external processor most of this time since you don't have traditional line array shading and tools and display angles so you you either have what's physically on the box or have to drag in something external to control all that and number three you have to watch your sight lines so if we have these boxes at a low venue and you have four of them that can start to get pretty low compared to a single point source that you can tuck up high so just make sure you have that in mind when you're designing the array now let's dive into line arrays and discuss their strength and weaknesses so number one their strength is the hf coverage shape is highly malleable as low as well as the low end but because we have the ability to change display angles between our boxes and feather that down the array we can really start to get really cool coverage shapes and overcome range ratios as high as maybe six or seven to one which is hard to have you know a single array throwing seven times farther to the back row than the front row but still have a uniform tonality and level throughout the audience and line arrays are the only speaker sets capable of achieving that because you can have tight split angles at the top and start to unfurl it as you move towards the bottom number two is if you have a long line you can really start to shape the low mid shape of the array and so you can look and see that 72 degrees of coverage in the ray is going to be equal to the wavelength that is equal to the array length so an eight foot line array uh the frequency that corresponds with that wavelength is 120 per 225 hertz so 125 hertz is going to be 72 degrees at that point and we're going to be able to get a tighter one if we move up an octave and then we're going to have a doubling of that move down an octave so that's just a really good pivot point to memorize and know is that the frequency does equal wavelength with the array i'm at 72 degrees so the longer the line the more we're able to tightly focus and beam that low mid energy to have that same kind of pointed coverage shape at the top and then it kind of skate over the top of our audience so we have even front to back number three you have higher possible spl with large format boxes like i mentioned earlier the meyer panther is 150 db capable box which is insano and so you can really have that coupled together and throw very long distances and last thing i think is a strengthened feature is they just look cool line arrays you know having this big giant thing hanging down there look great so that's just i think a cool feature about them all right we got five weaknesses and then we will land this plane number one is more boxes is more money so for line arrays to work best you need to have a lot of boxes especially if a high range ratio or you really care about stirring your low mid energy that requires more amps more dsp and more boxes so that cost can add up quickly number two you need a high trim height with long arrays they may not always have that so if you're in arena with really high steel not a big deal but you have to talk with other departments maybe video is hanging their projector somewhere or they have to have some sight line to the stage and so you need to make sure that this big giant black thing you're going to be hanging isn't in anyone's way from a sight line or just overall production perspective so you can't use line arrays in venues with low ceilings or at least you can't use very many boxes number four is they are heavy most of the time it's so that you're definitely going to need a friend and multiple people to to get them arrayed together and all put together and send up in an array so you cannot do them by yourself and number five um our recovery need to watch your your sight lines in there right so it's related to high trim height you got long arrays long arrays could drop into sight lines so make sure you have that covered and accounted for in your race so let's recap we have point sources you're just generic run-of-the-mill speaker they're very flexible you can throw them anywhere if i was showing up to especially if like a political gig in a smaller venue i would just say like give me an army of like k-8s and k-10s so i can just have them small and mighty and throw them anywhere and cover where i need to so they are a great box just to have the utility for fill speakers or for smaller venues as your mains you just throw them up on a stick get them high and you can go constant curvature you cannot change the splay angle between the boxes but so that makes them fast to throw up and go you have minimal dsp settings but they are great if you need a little bit higher spl and you can fly and your range ratio is higher than two to one and you can do some hf shading in those boxes to help overcome that number three line arrays are big most of the time they can get they can get louder than their other cousins and you can change the splay angles between the boxes to create the perfect coverage shape to match the audience that you need again my name is michael curtis thank you so much for hanging out with me today i hope you learned something and a little bit more about those three buckets of tools we can select for on our show don't forget to get a link below check out my audio mask survival spreadsheet i think it'll be real helpful to you and i will catch you next time

Channel: Michael Curtis

Views: 75,818

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Id: PTwg61OUvPE

Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022