History
Some of the first powered loudspeakers were JBL monitor speakers. With the addition of the SE401 Stereo Energizer, introduced in 1964, any pair of monitor speakers could be converted to self-powered operation with the second speaker powered by the first. The first studio monitor with an active crossover was the OY invented 1967 by Klein-Hummel.It was a hybrid three-way design with two internal amplfier channels.
An early example of a bi-amplified powered studio monitor is the Altec 9846B, introduced in 1971, which combined the passive 9846-8A speaker with the new 771B Bi-amplifier with 60 watts for the woofer and 30 watts for the high frequency compression driver.
In the late 1970s, Paramount Pictures contracted with AB Systems to design a powered speaker system.
In 1980, Meyer Sound Laboratories produced an integrated active 2-way system, the passive UPA-1, which incorporated lessons John Meyer learned on the McCune JM-3. It used active electronics mounted outside of the loudspeaker enclosure, including Meyer's integrated active crossover with feedback comparator circuits determining the level of limiting, often connected to third-party customer-specified amplifiers. In 1990, Meyer produced its first powered speaker: the HD-1, a 2-way studio monitor with all internal electronics. In the early '90s, after years of dealing with the disadvantages of passive systems, especially varying gain settings on third-party amplifiers, John Meyer decided to stop making passive speakers and devote his company to active designs. Meyer said he "hired an ad agency to research how people felt about powered speakers for sound reinforcement, and they came back after a survey and said that nobody wanted them." Sound reinforcement system operators said they did not want loudspeakers in which they could not see the amplifier meters to determine whether the loudspeakers were working properly during a concert. Nevertheless, Meyer kept to his decision and produced the MSL-4 in 1994, the first powered loudspeaker intended for concert touring. The UPA-1 was converted to a self-powered configuration in 1996 and the rest of Meyer's product line followed suit.
Read more about this topic: Powered Speakers
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)