I remember once being invited to a manufacturer's demonstration of a digital microphone in Nashville. I had been truly looking forward to it–the notion that one of the last two pieces of the pro audio puzzle that had evaded digitization was about to be brought into the fold was exciting.
When I arrived, the microphone was set up on a stand for the throngs to marvel at. But cynic that I am, I began to sense that the Emperor's New Clothes might be hanging on this rack as well. Chatting up the sales rep, I kept asking how the "digital microphone" worked, and kept getting elusive answers. However, each question brought us closer to the core of the matter, which was that this was a perfectly normal powered transducer that, like all microphones, turned the energy of moving air into a variable pulse palpated by the diaphragm and turned that into (very analog) electrical impulses. The digital part had to do with an A/D converter that was mounted in the rear of the microphone casing. This was a digital microphone in the same way I'm a pilot because I sit in the first row behind the cockpit on an MD-80. The sales rep wasn't particularly happy about being outed, though I admired his stalwart ability to maintain the fiction that this was indeed a digital microphone. I wasn't annoyed, either, since the event was decently catered and I was able to take some comfort in the idea that the extreme ends of the signal chain–the microphone and the speaker–were still firmly in the analog dominion, even if everything else in the world was now predicated on a chip.
However, a walk through some recent trade shows tells us that the speaker end of the equation, while still analog, was feeling the other effects of the digital revolution, the parts of the mantra that go "smaller" and "cheaper." The era of the mini line array is upon us, and it's worth considering.
There have always been small portable P.A. systems on the market, starting with the venerable Shure Vocal Master that helped the Beatles get across at Shea Stadium in 1966, through to JBL's clever little EON system. But the requirement of portability always injected the necessity of compromise into any small P.A., be it in terms of throw, power, dispersion or processing possibilities. You could always cobble together your own system from various components, but you could fail the portability test pretty quickly. Like the digital microphone, a high-end small, portable and affordable P.A. system seemed to be out of reach based on sheer physics–at the end of the day, you gotta move air.
The line array changed the live sound business radically when it was introduced more than a decade ago. Power, directionality and ease of rigging brought vastly improved audio to a lot of venues and added a new dimension to concert sound. A lot of people heard what a line array could do for a live music performance, and as one pro audio dealer told me, it was just a matter of time before those concert attendees would want to take one home with them. Now they can.
The mini line array will certainly bring improved sound to even smaller venues. But any number of people at the companies that manufacture and sell live sound equipment have voiced a few concerns to me. The line array, unlike the portable P.A.s of yore, requires a certain minimum amount of expertise to fly and run. One also needs to know what sorts of venue configurations the array isn't suitable for. For those of you who live in New York, we know that a miniature line array would work nicely in a long narrow room like Kenny's Castaways, but would be out of place in a club like the Bitter End, with its shallow depth and extended wings.
Availability and affordability have significantly changed the fabric of music recording. Wider access to digital recording equipment has arguably lowered the bar for music in general. As you increase the base of people making music by adding people who previously had only listened to music, the talent and knowledge baseline naturally decrease. (A case could be made for drawing a direct evolutionary line from Milli Vanilli to Ashlee Simpson.)
Those same forces, an outgrowth of the digital juggernaut, could be poised to have a similar effect on live sound. I'm not suggesting a huge jump in hidden backing tracks at concerts, but as more sophisticated P.A.s move further down the distribution food chain, the same dynamics as digital recording will be present. "There's something of a feeding frenzy with P.A systems right now," Mikel Paul, pro audio manager and director of the systems engineering group at Skip's Music in Sacramento, told me. "As the systems become more sophisticated, more people will be buying before they know what they're buying."
Paul notes that most musicians want plug-and-play characteristics in much of their gear, including P.A.s. "The trouble is, a line array needs to be flown," he explains. "It requires some level of a truss and rigging. It requires more knowledge than you can get in a music store."
In a separate interview, Larry the O, communications guru for Meyer Sound, commented, "My concern is that there will be a lot of misinformation out there as to which systems are appropriate for which applications." Perhaps Brian English at QSC puts it more succinctly: "The term 'line array' is going to become a buzzword, a generic, like 'Kleenex' is for tissues. A bunch of speakers in a line is not a line array. But for someone looking for a fast sale, it is."
This is not to say that there will suddenly be a mass dumbing down of the live sound business. It still takes a lot of sweat and sinew to put together and run a good sound system for a live show, and you can't buy that at Sam Ash. But it's interesting to realize how pervasive the DIY effects of the digital revolution really are. However, you don't have to panic until you see Mattel getting into the game.
