111th Convention Photos   Meeting Photos 

Chair Aurika Hays introduced the meeting to approximately 24 attendees. Everyone briefly introduced themselves.

PNW committeeman Dave Tosti-Lane and PNW secretary Gary Louie gave a short presentation on the recent AES 111th convention in NYC. Rather than a hardware report, they emphasized the other aspects of the convention, such as the technical committees, papers, and the organizational work the AES members around the globe gather to discuss at these conventions. Slides were shown of the Javits Center and northwest attendees and exhibitors caught at the convention.

Next, Rick Smargiassi of Integrated Light and Sound of Woodinville, WA (and PNW committeeman) described his work as the installer for this upgraded sound system in the Highland Covenent church. The church is a 1960s classic A-frame style sanctuary whose last sound system was an Altec A-7-style cluster hung in the ceiling above the 4th row of pews. The failure of the power amplifier led to the church's decision to upgrade the sound system with a modern and more effective system that would be less visually obtrusive. A good solution turned out to be one of the unique (although not really new) variable intensity horn products from EV. Rick showed slides of the before and after installations, including the rigging and AutoCAD plans.

Daniel Casado continued with fundamentals of speaker design and technical details of this speaker. Daniel is with First Choice Marketing of Seattle, the regional EV manufacturer's representative. He described the characteristics of traditional horn designs and their dispersion, especially as used in various church floorplans. Church floorplans have changed, with traditional designs generally long rectangles, and many newer designs wider and shallower. Speaker placement and horn combinations have also needed to change. Daniel covered basics of horn and driver construction, and the development of the unique, patented EV flared slot horn that creates directionally varying intensity with one simple horn. This design started as an Altec product in the 1980s, with EV absorbing Altec later. In addition, he covered basics of woofers, passive crossovers, and box design.

After a refreshment break, a door prize drawing for a (xxxx?) EV microphone was won by Lee Silberkleit.

Rick Smargiassi continued with a demonstration of the installed Sabine EQ-limiter-feedback eliminator, showing the settings and controls on the video projector. Many squeals of feedback were heard as the device automatically equalized out acoustic feedback frequencies.

Daniel then spoke about EV's free program for modelling speaker array characteristics, ArraySHOW. Downloadable from EV's website, the program does not model speaker performance in rooms, rather it shows dispersion characteristics created from any combination and placement of multiple drivers. Daniel showed many odd effects that can occur from common speaker placement errors, such as 1/2 and 1/4 wavelength from walls. He recommended the program as a way to understand the interactions of speakers.

Last modified March 14, 2002.