To Bose or not to Bose

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