Merry Christmas and Happy New year to all of our
clients and readers. As the New Year makes its way around “The Wedding DJ” has
been doing some research on speakers so that we can include Speaker upgrades in
our 2013 year budget. As you may or may not know there are many different
brands, makes and models out there. Some of the leaders are Bose, JBL, and QSC.
There seems to be a trend amongst Mobile DJ’s to buy Bose (I was considering the
Bose L1 Model 2 w/ B2) and get you the client to use their company’s service
because they have “Bose”. Personally I am a fan of Bose for home audio and own
several of their products and must give their marketing team excellent marks
because I had all but made up my mind to give them $7,000. The particular Bose
product I am referring to is the L1 series and I must also add that is was originally
designed for one musicians to plug into one Bose set and then the same process
was to be copied by all of the other musicians in a group until everyone had their
own individual sound. I do not believe it was originally intended to be used by
DJ’s.
One of the
reasons for the trend (other than marketing) is Bose is using a technology
called line array speaker, which has been around for many years. I will
give them credit for making it work and portable. Without going into the boring
details, these speakers project sound in many different directions using wizardry
and engineering, so much so that the volume standing next to the speaker is
close to the same volume when you are standing across the room. I will admit it
is amazing. However when you consider the technical specifications submitted by
Bose and my favorite QSC, the QSC speaker model KW 153 along with a KW 181 has
a larger frequency range and in my opinion outperform Bose all day long for a
mobile DJ setting (That means it will sound better).
Here it is
my main point. I recently went to a reception where a DJ was using Bose. I
drooled at first because that is what you supposed to do when you see the name “Bose”
up close. However, they were loud (too loud) in all the wrong places. I
discovered that line array is awesome if you are in a concert listening to your
favorite band. You can use half the amplifier power or less and be heard everywhere
in the room and the big concert halls are already using this technology. For “The Wedding DJ” we are a mobile DJ
company and just about every event we do there are people scattered around the
edges of your reception and or party who are talking and not dancing. These
people are your guests and if they don’t want to dance or are taking a break
from dancing then they should be able to leave the dance floor and go to their
table and talk at a comfortable level.
I offered to
test run several different speakers from several different companies and they
all declined. Probably scared of what I might say. Anyway, this article all
comes down to one point and that is “not to Bose” for my application. I hope
this article helps other professionals trying to make the same choices I was
between Bose’ Line Array or Traditional system’s (QSC for me). I also hope that my customers recognize that
I have made this choice with them in mind. I actually want the song to drop off
at the dance floor and to be significantly quieter elsewhere in the room so
that their guests are not uncomfortable.
Corey Brown
http://www.TheWeddingDJ.net