You need a large number of large boxes for near, mid, and far throw, with very high output (especially in the high frequencies, to make up for air loss) boxes for the latter.

Also needed is a rigging system that allows splay in two dimensions, and is variable enough to allow you to deploy four boxes a side, or 24.

Doing it wrong means you no longer have a much coveted “perfect point source array”.

For many companies it has proven much simpler to deal with the imperfections in the complex summation of a line array than with the complications in the complex deployment of a large trap rig.

If you take one thing away from this article, it should be that high output PA technology is always a compromise.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is important to recognize where the compromises are being made and how they affect your final result.

Without being able to tie the compromises that were made to develop the product you’re using to the compromises you made in deploying it, you have no way to understand why the compromises in your final sound quality exist.

We can’t always do everything exactly right (actually, I think I’ve never been 100% satisfied), but by digging back to the source of our frustration we can better understand how to solve it in the future, instead of dismissing a product or an entire type of product as being unsatisfactory.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of substandard products out there, but understanding the physics behind loudspeaker design will help you weed them out too.

Good loudspeakers are only one small part of the equation, you as a good system engineer can make the biggest difference by understanding how many of which products to use, and by deploying them properly.

May the sound be with you!

Bennett Prescott is a frequent contributor to both Live Sound International magazine and the ProSoundWeb online forums. He represents EONA ADRaudio in
North America.

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