5 buying tips, a roundup and the almost 80 year history in the making. The steered array loudspeaker technology has caught up with theoretical promise.
By Frederick J. Ampel
August 16, 2012
focused, and their coverage can be pin-point specific. Many of these units are capable of multiple beams. The idea is to carefully aim the beam at the audience and keep sound from hitting walls, floors, ceilings, and other reflective surfaces, providing the listeners with high speech intelligibility and “cutting through” the reverberant filed in the space.
Properly applied, the results attained can be dramatic. In many cases installations in highly reverberant spaces or acoustically difficult spaces have produced the first intelligible speech ever created by a sound system. However, be careful not to consider these products magical or superheroes. The laws of physics and acoustics still apply.
The products in this roundup are largely defined by three major performance criteria.
First, the distance they are capable of reaching with intelligibly speech, which is broken down into small, medium, large, and very large spaces. The definition of those breakdowns for the purpose of this roundup is as follows:
- Small spaces are those with a long dimension not exceed 30 feet.
- Medium spaces have a long dimension not exceeding 50 feet.
- Large spaces have a long dimension greater than 80 feet
- Very large spaces have along dimension greater than 100 feet.
Second, the maximum Sound Pressure Level (dbSPL) the speaker is capable of producing.
Third, the lowest frequency achievable where the speaker can still maintain pattern control and steering capability.
These three criteria will help you decide which products might meet the application you have in mind.
The maximum distance specification is to some degree theoretical, since the actual performance of any product will depend on the acoustics of the space, the amount of reverberation or bounce present, the height and aiming of the array and a number of other factors. The specifications we list (taken from manufacturer supplied data) are for reference and side-by-side comparison purposes, and as they say your mileage may vary.
Maximum Sound Pressure level is a function of two things, the size of the array and the number and size of the loudspeakers contained in the array. The larger the array, the louder it will (theoretically) get. Driver size, while important, is not always vital to the overall performance of the array. Driver size can have some influence on the third criteria, low frequency limits. It is strongly recommended that you do not use driver size as a comparison
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