Line Array Speakers?

by Ben Fowler

Aperion is designing a custom line array PA speaker system for our local jazz club, Jimmy Mak's, here in Portland, Oregon.

Our chief acoustic engineer, Ken Humphries, has long been a fan of line array speaker technology. The premise of the technology is to create, literally, a wall of sound. So line array speakers have to be tall. Very tall. Tall enough so that no matter where you are, seated or standing, you are within the shelf of sound being projected by the speaker.

The benefit of line arrays is that they maintain a more consistent volume, whether you're close or far from them. The other benefit is that the listener will hear less reflected sound from the room, and more sound direct from the speaker. Which means they sound really really good! You may have seen them in auditoriums or large concert halls - they work really well in very large spaces. We're really excited about this project, which should be finished in a few weeks. We'll keep you posted, and I will try to get Ken to write up a easily-digestable white paper on this technology.