Bose L1 Portable Sound system...

[NewBirthBass]

Thanks for the input guys. I printed out the responses and show it to them so we'll see what happens. I also convinced them to let me use my smaller cab up on stage and they're talking about miking the drums so they'll be getting a sub up there for that too.

 

[Keithwah]

My experiences with an L1 were about the same as what Keith and spigmu will tell you. I, too, did a Bose sponsored demo in Dallas once a few years back. It was OK, but they gave me 4 subs for bass and that wasn't enough IMHO. Plus they didn't have monitors and expected us to rely on our own individual towers for mixing ourselves to the crowd. Well that's all well and good, except the idea of monitors is to hear your own voice louder than the music without being heard in the FOH. So the singers would come up onstage, not hear themselves, demand to be turned way up, then screw up the mix.

It was at that point I decided they would be way better suited for an acoustic act or a single/duo that rocks karaoke tracks, maybe a quiet lounge band. Anything beyond that, forget it. I did, however, like the thing most are complaining about...the wide dispersion. I consider that a plus for it to sound the same as you walk the room.

Jimmy, in a tamer acoustical environment, they don't sound bad at all. The dispersion is the calling card of the "stick" type speakers whether they are the Bose or the community entasis, or the jbl cbt series. They have their place.....but that place is not in a gymnasium as you can imagine.


A good buddy of mine is a solo artist using one of these and he sounds great in his small club dates and in little beer gardens. I won't argue that they can sound good, but as we all have discussed,not every speaker fits the space. Their is a reason that all the major speaker players make boxes with varying horn patterns. The main idea is to not splash sound off reflective surfaces in a reflective room and in a gym the more energy you feed into it, particularly at frequencies that are problematic to a space and you are driving the mud bus.

I further wish that a skinny little 10 pound stick and a tubby little bass module would work everywhere! The reality is they don't. Which is too bad.

 

[Keithwah]

We have one, and one thing it works very well for is filling a rehearsal space. We used to use a cluster of floor wedges in the center of the room that sounded marginal and took up way too much space. Now we set up the L1 in the corner and everyone can hear. Well, except the drummer, but he's nearly deaf.

We also take it to gigs sometimes and use it for a monitor system. And we do the occasional coffeehouse gig, for which it works well, as others have said.

Here is a great application of this product. Not asking it to do too much. I would guess your rehearsal crib has a lower ceiling which again helps contain the Bose and let it work well for you. And if you can get the gain before feedback why not? Coffee house work is perfect. Also must be nice to not need to trip over wedges! I've been IEM for gigs and rehearsals for awhile and probably would never go back to stage monitoring again. In my group every one is responsible for their own IEM mix, which makes my life much easier as well.


But Bose in Gyms.......not so much.

 

[NewBirthBass]

Man they still won't listen. LOL. I guess the Bose Salesman mind trick works very well. SMH

 

[WayneP]

Well if you’re stuck with the Bose rig you might try what I did with my band. They already had three of the Bose systems when I joined, so obviously we (more specifically “I” ) was stuck with them.

Originally they were being used as Bose advertises, with different musicians / singers plugged into different units, typically the one closest to them. We typically play in churches, and a lot of churches these days are arranged “backwards” from what they were in decades past – set up on the long side of the building for a wide stage and seating. I convinced the band members that using our Bose systems in places like this the people sitting say, on the far right side of the stage would not be able to hear the musicians on the far left side of the stage. And vice versa.

The solution I offered was to add a 16-channel Mackie mixer and use the Bose towers like a traditional PA system. This solved quite a few problems. For one, everyone plugs into the mixer, and each Bose tower gets all instruments and singers, so the audience hears everyone. This isn’t hard to accomplish with the Bose, as the channels with the balanced mic inputs also have balanced outputs, so it’s easy to daisy-chain between the towers, if needed.

For another, this makes it easy to accommodate separate monitors for those who need them. We added a small amp and Galaxy Hot Spots for a couple of our singers.

And, it helps the bass guitar as well. The signal is spread across all the towers, so no need to use multiple bass modules for the one tower the bass would plug directly into. The main complaint I had was that the midbass was really weak. This is a traditional Bose failing (even with their home systems): The tiny main-speaker drivers don’t transition well to the larger woofers, so you have a big “hole “ in the frequency response. I found that dialing in the parametric midrange control on my channel of the mixer for 75-80 Hz and boosting a few dB fattened up things nicely and took care of that.

The only caveats to keep in mind is that all towers should have their EQ-settings dial set for flat response, and each tower has to be individually level-matched.

Granted, this arrangement sacrifices much of the Bose’s “easy portability and set up” feature and does nothing to help the gymnasium / dispersion issue others have mentioned. But it’s a big improvement over using multiple towers as "separate entities,” as Bose suggests.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt


Administrator, Tobias Club
Pedulla Club #45
Big Cabs Club #23
Tobias Club

 

[NewBirthBass]

Thanks Wayne. They're doing something like that and I got the same problem you mentioned. So I just brought in my amp. The drummer has a monitor and the Keys guys have monitors. The singers even have monitors. The original selling point for them "I guess" was it's cheaper and more portable and the sound is better. NOT, NOT & NOT. lol