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[alistermorton]

Secondly I find it almost impossible to convince people not accustomed to using 100V lines that it works for music quality.

 

They probably subconsciously equate 100V line with very narrow bandwidth horn speakers, tuned for intelligibility of speech more than anything else.

 

 

 

[Stuart91]

Total agreement, however using powered speakers makes it very easy to control the volume at each location.

 

That'll almost certainly have something to do with it, especially in that particular scenario where the various traders will have quite different ideas of what the volume should be.

[sunray]

Secondly I find it almost impossible to convince people not accustomed to using 100V lines that it works for music quality.

 

They probably subconsciously equate 100V line with very narrow bandwidth horn speakers, tuned for intelligibility of speech more than anything else.

 

 

 

That is exactly the situation, even when they hear decent cabs on 100V they still don't believe it.

 

I once turned down a job where the customer requested columns but insisted on no 100V. Not because I couldn't do it but because I wondered if it was going to be a troublesome customer.

 

I went to the event, they must have paid a fortune for the PA, for a start there were 6x 1KW amps and must have been 1km of 16mm² 3C cables for what amounted to a fete for 5000 people, admittedly it was spread out in 3 long thin arms radiating from the central arena but I'd worked the site for 30 years with only one of the arms, well before the other 2 had been aquired and cleared. I doubt I'd ever put in more than 500W.

 

 

Total agreement, however using powered speakers makes it very easy to control the volume at each location.

 

That'll almost certainly have something to do with it, especially in that particular scenario where the various traders will have quite different ideas of what the volume should be.

My limit of ownership of powered speakers is limited to 3 (2x qtx 8" and a loudmouth) so I've never really used the exact format. Different zones on different amps for individual control for a similar reason, yes.

 

 

When I see people running mains cables AND signal cables side by side I always think 'what a lot of work' but I do have to agree it is a lovely way to set the correct levels.

 

[richardash1981]

Secondly I find it almost impossible to convince people not accustomed to using 100V lines that it works for music quality.

 

They probably subconsciously equate 100V line with very narrow bandwidth horn speakers, tuned for intelligibility of speech more than anything else.

That is exactly the situation, even when they hear decent cabs on 100V they still don't believe it.

There were also a lot of really terrible 100V amplifiers sold as "PA amplifiers", using transistors plus step-up transformers (so the silicon saw very low impedances, but could be run from 12V DC). They tended to be distorted, limited bandwidth, and not as powerful as their buyers thought they would be. They are probably OK for speech feeding efficient horns, but if they ended up feeding second hand low-end ex "HiFi" boxes the results were pretty dire - clipping because not enough power (20W or even 60W doesn't go very far in a big room ...), and the speakers reproduced the distortion rather well.

Of course none of this is inherent to a 100V line system, but it does require good quality 100V line equipment which is up to the job.

[Owain]

That'll almost certainly have something to do with it, especially in that particular scenario where the various traders will have quite different ideas of what the volume should be.

 

 

All the more reason to not give them the opportunity to fiddle.

 

[Stuart91]

All the more reason to not give them the opportunity to fiddle.

 

Arguably. The alternative is they fiddle in more destructive ways, like disconnecting wires. We once had someone put a screwdriver through the cone of a speaker. Nobody saw it happen, but the grumpy stallholder was the prime suspect.

[sunray]

All the more reason to not give them the opportunity to fiddle.

 

Arguably. The alternative is they fiddle in more destructive ways, like disconnecting wires. We once had someone put a screwdriver through the cone of a speaker. Nobody saw it happen, but the grumpy stallholder was the prime suspect.

One event we did, speaker placement had been sorted or years. An additional food vendor crept in and set-up hot dogs right under a pair of horns hanging from a sign on a lamppost. He complained about the sound level, I passed the complaint to the organisers.

 

Half of the speakers stopped working before the organisers got to him and chucked him out and and I never did find that pair of horns.

 

There is no limit to the amount and complexity of fiddling at these events.

 

We once had a 32A cable sliced open and tapped into live, ironically only about a metre from it's end where there was a spare 16A socket they could have used and had been used by a different stall there the day before. I didn't dind it until rip out.

Edited May 15, 2021 by sunray

[xllx]

Arguably. The alternative is they fiddle in more destructive ways, like disconnecting wires. We once had someone put a screwdriver through the cone of a speaker. Nobody saw it happen, but the grumpy stallholder was the prime suspect.

 

"Allegedly" a certain crew I was part of in the 80's took umbrage at the new speakers installed in our local pub. One was aimed at our usual lunchtime table at ear splitting volume. The landlord wouldn't turn it down, so we tended to pop one of the wires out of the spring terminal at the back and usually reinstated when we left. Landlord was not impressed, and threatened to bar us :-) The next day a quick squirt of a water pistol through the grille made the cone disintegrate a few days later when we weren't there to be blamed.