Line speakers (Was: Re: [sdiy] solid geometry)

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Ingo Debus <debus at cityweb.de>
Subject: Re: [sdiy] solid geometry
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 15:50:24 +0100
Message-ID: <53BD6952-3EC5-11D8-8B67-000A9571C136 at cityweb.de>

> 
> Am Sonntag, 04.01.04 um 04:42 Uhr schrieb Magnus Danielson:
> 
> > I would mount them in a single line (being somewhat "to blame" for the
> > spreading of line speakers in the PA-part of the world).
> >
> 
> Have you seen or even heard the Bose speakers?
> www.bose.com/musicians
> What do you think of them?

No, I didn't know that Bose made line-speakers, but it is logical and I do
understand why. Line-speakers is IMHO many times the most sensible things.
I also like the large-membrane speakers like electrostats, but they have a
drawback in soundpressure and this stops them from being more widely deployed
IMHO. Line speakers is half-way and through Christian Heils invention it became
a quite feasable solution. Yes, line speakers existed prior to Christian Heil
did his stuff, but then it was more an obscurity of the HiFi-world than
anything else. You can't say anything else then that Christian helped changing
the PA-speaker industry so that many speaker firms now must have a line-speaker
system in their program or they are gone from mid and large scale PA buissness.
Now, looking at the Bose L1 speaker, I just see it as a natural extention,
you change the whole calculation of how sound behave. All of a sudden we know
how to handle things.

I recall when L'Acoustics (http://www.l-acoustics.com/) where
an obscure little French firm and they had only played the French market.
A good friend of mine found out about them and asked me if thier concept would
hold, and after reading one or a few of Christian Heils papers I would not only
say that it did hold, but was able to explain it to him. This caused him to
ask Christian to come up to Stockholm with a set of speakers for a trial, the
first time the V-DOSC left France, and that was the beginning of that
partnership. That trial was quite extraordinary and included the borrowing of
a downtown club AND the band of a rather known artist who where doing shows at
the club at the time. Christian Heil proved to be a nice person and I had good
interactions with him and helped him remove the dust-covers (they moved the
hidden screwholes so it was as difficult for him as it was for me) and openly
discussed aspects of the speaker and wavefront-shaper.

My part in this might have been small, but when I was presented for the
L'Acoustics sales manager at a fair a few month back I was presented as THE
reference for picking up the then Heil (now L'Acoustics) V-DOSC system. I think
he was as supprised as I was... ;O)
At the same fair I showed the new dV-DOSCs for a friend and one of the sales
guys (who didn't know me) came up in a full sales-rage, and I was mentally
preparing to kindly wipe him off, and all of a sudden I saw my good old friend
sitting there laugthing at the sales-guys futile attempt of selling this
speaker to me... I just looked at him and the sales-guy figured something was
odd and looked at the my friend (essentially his boss) and when he understood
the relation he just walked off with a big sigh, understanding that he was
"HAD", while I had only uttered "uh.." and the guy I was trying to explain it
to got impressed by the speed I got rid of the sale-guy... the sales-guy later
got a propper presentation of who I was and got a better understanding of the
big laugth...

A little anecdote. I think this happend on the Frankfurth messe and Heil music
had their first fair-stand. As it happend they had a stand in the terminating
end of an isle and naturally they put their company name over their stand.
However, being french they had not realized the inappropriatness of writing
"Heil Heil Heil" over their stand in a german fair, so they changed the company
name. ;O)

Well, well... I've seen classical PA-speakers, the Adamson horn-speakers system
(which we really mastered and changed during these fruitfull years) and then
the Heil line-speakers. During those few years I saw a drastic improvement and
the line-speakers is probably where it will get stuck for quite some time now.
Stuff like the Bose L1 system makes it feasable in a smaller size. Bose have
been looking at the line-speaker concept for some time, so it was inevideable
that a product would come out of it eventually.

Not many can say this, but I actually think I honestly can say that I have
played a role in reshaping the PA-buissness. I only realized this the other
month when I revisited my very good friend who made a point to point this out.
Yes, almost nobody has heard of me in that context. It was a small role indeed.

Cheers,
Magnus