Opinions of EAW QX326

A L & R array of EAW QX326 has been proposed for a four hundred seat theater. The last row is rough 50' feet from the stage. Seating is wider than deep. The venue hosts all kinds of events from acoustic, jazz, rock and musical theater.
I have not heard this speaker and hoping to hear opinions from those who have heard and used it.
 
Has the consultant who spec'd these modeled the space. Also was this an independent consultant or a "design and sell" consultant.
 
Has the consultant who spec'd these modeled the space. Also was this an independent consultant or a "design and sell" consultant.
The space was modeled by an engineer at EAW. EAW was contacted by the local dealer to supply technical support. The modeling was based on plan and elevations supplied by the venue. As interesting as the modeled results were (adequate coverage, predicted SPL, etc) I am very interested in the subjective opinions of those who have driven a similar system. I have had enough experience with "measured great, took a lot of work to make sound good" systems. A search of the interweb revealed no real world comments about these boxes.
 
I don't have any experience with these boxes outside of the EAW Anna and Otto stuff - which can sound alright with some work, I do know that for the last 10-15 years EAW has been a solid second tier speaker manufacturer and their boxes can sound good, but it takes a lot of work. They used to be some of the best boxes you could get, but they haven't been that way for a while.

The QX326 seems gimmicky to me. Of course if the space was modeled by EAW they would give you their boxes. I would look to an independent integrator to model the space themselves and figure out what boxes would work in their eyes, and then turn you over to several manufacturers for you to make final decisions. You never want a speaker manufacturer modeling your space unless someone else has done it first and suggested that's the direction you go in.

For about the price of those EAW boxes my go-to would be some Meyer UPA-1P's, solid, reliable speakers and if you have a venue that brings in outside acts and needs to be rider friendly, everyone knows how they sound and what their limits are. While a Galileo 616 would break the bank when compared to your EAW UX8800 for processing, the XTA 5 and 4 series (548/544/448/444) may be inside your price range, and are solid processors.

For Sub's I'd get a live demo in the room. I'm super picky about my subs and it's not like you need to buy an entire EAW rig - mixing and matching manufacturers is just fine. You need to find what does the job best, and I'm never a fan of a single-stop-shop for my speakers.
 
How is the QX326 gimmicky? It is a well respected horn-loaded box that holds its pattern to 400 Hz. Because this good pattern control, it is often used in stadiums.

Well, a 400 seat theater isn't exactly equivalent to a stadium...

It seemed gimmicky to me because I couldn't think of an install where a box like that would be my go-to inside of a theater.

I simply listed the UPA because it's a typical workhorse box you see in many theaters, and when complemented with other smaller boxes you can control coverage very well, and it's my go-to box on smaller theaters when my budget doesn't allow for better passive boxes.

If you have outside acts coming in, you'll find many road engineers know how those boxes sound and how you can push them and I don't think you'll find that with the EAW box in question. Also I'm just not a fan of EAW boxes.
 
You know nothing of this model - no prior use, no investigation - and yet you blindly recommend a product that is probably not what his venue needs, presuming pattern control down to 400Hz is a criteria for his performance space. Perhaps you should consider a more lucrative career as a consultant. :rolleyes:
 
You know nothing of this model - no prior use, no investigation - and yet you blindly recommend a product that is probably not what his venue needs, presuming pattern control down to 400Hz is a criteria for his performance space. Perhaps you should consider a more lucrative career as a consultant. :rolleyes:

Tim,

Not sure if you are responding to me, but since the pattern control comment is in my post: I hope I didn't imply that I was recommending the QX for the OP in my post. It could or could not be the answer for the OP, but having never seen the space I couldn't say (and wouldn't say beyond general advice, we charge money for more than that...). I was attempting to point out that the UPA-1P recommended above is a very different speaker than the one the OP is looking at.

I will give this advice to the OP:

I suspect you aren't seeing much online because the QX are installation-specific and expensive. "Hearing" by internet forum comments is a pretty lousy way to evaluate a speaker, anyway. Here are a couple QX installs in Washington:

This first one is close to you: http://eaw.com/qx-series-revitalizes-prominent-houses-of-worship/
This is farther, but may be more applicable as it is a theater: http://www.bingcrosbytheater.com/technical

Finally, as an independent consultant I see every product as a tool to achieve the design goal within the owner's budget. By going to a manufacturer for a design, no matter how competent their designers, you limit the size of your toolbox - sometimes to the point where you no longer have the right tool.
 
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In fairness, the qualities that allow the QX326 to have pattern control down to 400Hz also minimize the LF lobing directly below them that you'd see from a typical trap box. I use the Danley SH series a lot as mains in high schools for this same reason albeit a different cabinet design. Not so much because the rooms are huge and I need pattern control and max SPL to carry 400ft, but because that pattern control reduces feedback potential on-stage -- especially with every architect's favorite stage design: "the poke", which parks 12' of apron smack dab below the clusters where everyone wants to put their boundary mic's.

As far as EAW slipping over the last several years, the rumors are true. They used to be a top tier company but their manufacturing quality plummeted when they moved production overseas. They've been on the rebound the last few years but their reputation hasn't yet fully recovered. I can't say I've heard any of their newer products except Anya for 45 minutes of a Weird Al concert because EAW pulled out of doing a demo room at InfoComm a few years ago. There is no better real estate in our industry to demo speakers to contractors, consultants, and potential customers than InfoComm -- and yet EAW has made themselves suspiciously absent. Not to say you couldn't do worse or that you'd even notice anything wrong with the few cabinets that would be involved in this, but it pales in comparison to the consistency, production quality, and support they used to be able to provide.

Without knowing more about the room though, I wouldn't recommend the QX326 or any other speaker model for that reason. But off of having designed a few similar rooms recently that were in the wider area of 50' deep x 100' wide for their seating area, I can say that front fills are probably important in covering the first few rows at center. Also for pulling the sound image down to ground level where it's more natural so the performer 10' in front of you doesn't sound like they're shouting at you from the rafters. I can also say you probably want either distributed delays or double-stacked clusters where you can gain down the front seating areas from the back. Otherwise the people in the front will get flamed out.

Speaker selection aside, in these kinds of the rooms it is particularly important to do the modeling and verify coverage at different frequency bands. Getting the speakers located at the correct height and aimed at exact tilt/pan required to cover effectively to center as well as out to the far left/right and the back rows is critical. It doesn't matter how top-of-the-line your speakers of choice are if they don't get installed at the right spots.

Lastly, re: soliciting feedback from listeners on the internet. It's a crap shoot. There are so many systems out there than sound awful because it's the right product but poorly tuned. Also a lot of listeners who aren't trained in what to listen for and how to focus in on specific, relevant behaviors of a cabinet while also purposefully ignoring spurious information like the effect from the room acoustics or of overly compressed source material. Bose has made an empire on presenting inaccurate sonic information to listeners' ears but listeners feel titillated at hearing something differently than they've ever heard it before and so they drop thousands of dollars on home theaters that accentuate the highs and lows while trashing the mids. When it comes to speakers, you really need to trust the person whose feedback you're soliciting.
 
Hi Robert-

My comment was directed at the post above mine, from The Musicman. I should have quoted it to make that obvious.

The point is that one can find opinions about many things and most of those are opinions based on other opinions, not from actual use or objective investigation and review of the product. Musicman's suggestion of a Meyer product is probably more inappropriate because unlike the EAW folks, he has never seen a floor plan, elevation, or physical measurement of the space. That's the kind of silliness I like to disrupt.

My comment about him becoming a "consultant" is based on working with several who, after hearing/seeing their work, made me question if they'd previous heard or used the products they specified... Apparently you do not fit that model, which is good. :)

Carry on...

Tim Mc

Tim,

Not sure if you are responding to me, but since the pattern control comment is in my post: I hope I didn't imply that I was recommending the QX for the OP in my post. It could or could not be the answer for the OP, but having never seen the space I couldn't say (and wouldn't say beyond general advice, we charge money for more than that...). I was attempting to point out that the UPA-1P recommended above is a very different speaker than the one the OP is looking at.

I will give this advice to the OP:

I suspect you aren't seeing much online because the QX are installation-specific and expensive. "Hearing" by internet forum comments is a pretty lousy way to evaluate a speaker, anyway. Here are a couple QX installs in Washington:

This first one is close to you: http://eaw.com/qx-series-revitalizes-prominent-houses-of-worship/
This is farther, but may be more applicable as it is a theater: http://www.bingcrosbytheater.com/technical

Finally, as an independent consultant I see every product as a tool to achieve the design goal within the owner's budget. By going to a manufacturer for a design, no matter how competent their designers, you limit the size of your toolbox - sometimes to the point where you no longer have the right tool.
 
You know nothing of this model - no prior use, no investigation - and yet you blindly recommend a product that is probably not what his venue needs, presuming pattern control down to 400Hz is a criteria for his performance space. Perhaps you should consider a more lucrative career as a consultant. :rolleyes:

I assumed my post history shows I have at least a little intelligence to what I say, I'm a production engineer and FOH mixer for large-scale musical theater, not a contractor, and say what I know. I only design a few shows a year, but mix a dozen new shows on others designs every year. I fall back on to what I know. I'm also most likely never going to spec speakers by certain manufacturers because of the market I work in (i.e. we really just don't use EAW, Danley, or VUE due to perceptions of a lack of quality or lack of repeat quality box-to-box).

I also have designed and mixed in enough 400 seat theaters for musical theater where the box I recommended, in conjunction with Front-Fill and Delay sub-systems provide me exactly what I want and give me quality results, they are my go-to workhorse - and are the workhorse speaker you see around NYC in the tiny budget theater venues. Everyone knows how they sound, and are one of the few boxes I can use in a rep theater where every single Road Engineer knows how they sound and what they do, if appeasing an RE is important.

As for positive things, MNicolai's last post was 100% the best advice in this entire thread.
 
A L & R array of EAW QX326 has been proposed for a four hundred seat theater. The last row is rough 50' feet from the stage. Seating is wider than deep. The venue hosts all kinds of events from acoustic, jazz, rock and musical theater.
I have not heard this speaker and hoping to hear opinions from those who have heard and used it.
I have not heard the QX326, but I have used the Qx566i and it sounds great - better than Danley SH60.
 

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