L1® Traditional Music System: Difference between revisions

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Hi Folks,<br><br>Yesterday, as planned, we did another round of testing of our Traditional Music System.<br><br>We had 4/5 members of the wonderful bluegrass group Bow Junction (<a href="http://www.bowjunction.com" target="_blank">http://www.bowjunction.com</a>) here at our Live Music Listening Room at the Bose Reservoir Building. This is a nightclub/small-auditorium sized performance space we use as our live music laboratory.<br><br>Bow Junction purchased three Cylindrical Radiator&reg; speakers more than a year ago now and use them in a variety of situations. Bow Junction (minus upright bass player who was ill):<br><br>Russ Aufertin - Guitar<br>Kathy Barnes - Fiddle<br>Lina Magoon - Mandolin<br>Pete Ocom - Banjo<br><br>We were also joined by banjo player extrordinaire Rich Stillman, and guitar great Geoff Bartley. Rich has been helping us learn about the needs of traditional music players. Geoff, who runs a famous traditional music weekly jam here in the Boston area, is also Tom Paxton's playing mate, and designed the new <a href="http://www.martinguitar.com/artists/display_artist.php?d=279" target="_blank">Tom Paxton Signature Model Guitar</a>. (Tom Paxton will receive the highest honor from The Folk Alliance in January -- The Lifetime Achievement Award -- HOORAY TOM.)<br><br>Our goal was to explore microphone spacing, player comfort, and microphone type in our work over the course of about three hours. Steve, Brendan, and I, all of the Bose Live Music Technology Group were there to help and listen.<br><br>In the course of the next several posts, I'll describe in pictures and words what we found from my perspective. I'm sure that some of the other participants will add their voices to <a  href="http://bose.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8146026354/m/6801040252?r=6801040252#6801040252">this discussion on the message boards</a>, and as always, we welcome yours.<br><br>Here's the Traditional Music System setup with the notes added.<br><br>Here's a link to <a href="http://toonz.ca/sketcher/showband.aspx?SketchID=568" target="_blank">the Sketch</a> in case you want to  review it, edit it, print it, or share it with others.<br><br><a href="http://toonz.ca/sketcher/showBand.aspx?SketchID=568" target="_blank"><img src="http://bose.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/ga/ul/7491027252/inlineimg/Y/snap025.gif" >  </a><br>-- click image to make changes to the live version --  

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If you try to set up one of these large "group condensers" with the Cylindrical Radiator&reg; speaker placed behind the performers, you can't get much gain because the players just can't get close enough to the mic and if even if they could the difference in volume from their normal position when not soloing would be musically far to great and would sound severe and unnatural.<br><br>The brain wave for a different application of the Cylindrical Radiator speaker came on April 2nd of this year in an earlier test. You can read all about this discovery in a very interesting thread on this Message Board by clicking <a href="http://bose.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8146026354/m/7501028281" target="_blank">here</a>,<br><br>The idea was to push the Cylindrical Radiator speaker downstage to the lip, where the extraordinarily wide pattern of the speaker would both cover the whole audience and wrap some sound back to the performers on stage.<br><br>Moreover, if TWO large diaphram mics were used instead of one, spaced a few feet apart, a left one feeding a speaker on the left (only) and the right one feeding only a speaker on the right, then the audience would enjoy a glorious spatiality not present in typical bluegrass amplification setups. This basic approach was tried in April and produced unbelievably satisfying results. The audience heard the band at very good levels. But with the extraordinary pattern of the Cylindrical Radiator speaker, even on the extreme right of the audience they clearly heard the speaker on the left, and vice versa, something no conventional speaker could do.<br><br>Here's a picture of the setup in the test yestereday, showing the two speakers left and right and the two Shure KSM44 mics on stage. Note that the mics were switched to their cardioid pattern, with the main lobe pointed towards the players and the null of the pattern pointed toward the audience.<br>