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HT/1510 Line Arrays

How They Also Benefit Home Theater Systems, Not Just 2 Channel

The below text is a transcription of the video.

Hey, thanks for coming back. John Hunter with REL here. So, we have the new 1510 Predator here. And as you can see, we’re looking at it in the context of what’s sort of casually referred to as a six pack, but a line array. Why a line array for theater? It’s been explained a number of times in different videos and blogs of mine and things.

Why we do it for two channel music systems. And in that instance, what that gives you is low sort of structural foundational bass on the floor. Right? You’ve got a big, huge surface for the longest wave to couple with it carries that into the room. Then you’ve got a mid-bass coupler, right. You’ve got the one that’s in the middle.

Really isn’t capable at that point of producing more, extremely low bass because of its decoupling from the floor, but gives you tremendous attack. And up here, you get all these beautiful spatial effects. The stuff that in a concert hall you can never reproduce when you get home, unless you’ve got a line array, this is a little different, this is theater.

So why are we doing it for here? Well, because a lot of the same physics attaches. If you’re talking about putting together a state of the art theater system, one of the things that’s really interesting and we just got back from a big trade show down in Florida. And demonstrated this, and you should have seen the slack jaws in the audience. When you don’t get this right

what you wind up with is images that are up on the, we were using about a 14 foot. Screen that are up on screen. It doesn’t track you actually aren’t lofting up onto the screen. We did demonstrations where we literally took the top layer out and watched people’s jaws drop as the full screen, which is about a, what, five foot by 13 foot screen.

It dropped down to the middle of the screen. As soon as we took the top layer out. When we took out the middle level, it literally dropped voices down to below the bottom edge of the screen and that’s how we’re used to hearing things, but it’s not right. So right off the bat, just the height elevation, the ability to actually loft things up onto the screen is clutch.

Second thing. When you have 6,000 watt units driving six, 15 inch drivers, believe me, they’re effortlessly idling along.

So, one of the neatest things about the 1510 is this is believe it or not, even though it’s a beast, it’s the least expensive offering we have for six packs for line arrays. In the United States, these will sell for something just under $2,000 a piece. And that makes an entire six pack of these slightly less than $12,000.

And it is don’t take it this wrong. It is a huge stonking bargain at $12,000 for what these do. They’re so composed. It isn’t that they’re huge and dynamic. They do that in their sleep. One expects that out of a big theater sub. What’s really remarkable about this piece is how composed, how quiet it can be, how devastating the differences, the dynamic range, right?

People think dynamics is just a synonym for playing really, really loud. It’s not, it’s the difference between quiet and loud. That is defined by dynamics and the 1510 the predator gets so quiet when it gets quiet, that when the inevitable huge transient happens, it’s really shocking. It hits you, it, it hits your sinuses.

It’s big, it’s vivacious, it’s dynamic. And yet it’s pretty. And so, you’ve got this combination of sort of the beauty and beast, right? You’ve got these beautiful surfaces, gorgeous detailing. These are designed physically in the way that we worked out their ratios to harmonize with things like our T/x or Serie S line.

So, all of a sudden, we’ve got a system where everything within the REL world, that’s in your room begins to harmonize. T/xs have a very similar kind of aspect ratio, even our references, which is where we derive these proportions from. All of these things work really beautifully in harmony with each other now.

So, for example, in a system like this, you probably have something like an S/812 as your center channel sub. And if we were to loft an 812 in here, you’d see the same thing, this nice narrow height aspect ratio, quite deep, wider than it is tall. All of these proportions start to mimic the beautiful finishes on these pick up and get repeated in things like the black S S/812.

Every part of this world that we’re building comes together. Everything harmonizes.


July 1, 2022 - Posted in: Sound Insights