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When it comes to sound, Bose Professional is never satisfied with the status quo. Justin O’Connor, product management director of performance systems at Bose Professional, recently spoke with AV Technology’s Cindy Davis about the groundbreaking EdgeMax in-ceiling loudspeaker system and the immense value it adds to a professional AV market niche that has evolved very little in recent decades.
Watch the full video interview below.
For years, the average in-ceiling loudspeaker has provided conical coverage—that is, sound comes down from the device in a cone shape. This means that if there are multiple in-ceiling speakers in a space, overlapping cones are likely to create disturbances, and a person standing up may get less coverage due to gaps—even if the speakers are performing optimally. Bose Professional EdgeMax, however, takes a different approach.
“EdgeMax still hides the speaker. It gets most or all of it away in the ceiling but overcomes the acoustic drawbacks inherent to a speaker pointing straight down,” O’Connor explained. “What EdgeMax does is shoot horizontally and down from the ceiling, which is really an innovation—an evolution. It's something that nobody else is quite doing. You get more acoustic factors that are closer to a surface-mount speaker, but you're still hiding the loudspeaker away.”
When asked about the opportunities EdgeMax offers consultants and designers taking on a new project, O’Connor said they should think about it more like a surface-mount loudspeaker, which has up to 180 degrees of coverage. But beyond standard installations, he said that while his team can make recommendations about how to use the devices in novel ways, Bose Professional’s customers have truly driven the innovation around how EdgeMax pushes the boundaries of standard applications.
“The possibilities become limitless once we free ourselves from, ‘Oh, it looks like a ceiling speaker,’” O’Connor said. “The thing I like about our industry is that no matter how much we as manufacturers tell our customers what our products can and should do, they come up with amazing solutions that even we didn't think of. Integrators, consultants, and system designers—they see products that are innovative and say, ‘Wait, I've got an idea.’ And they think of things that we didn't even come up with.”
Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in a recent case study at the legendary Gold’s Gym in Venice California. Despite a lack of wall space and extremely high ceilings, the client found a creative solution that gave them the high-impact sound they were looking for.
“One of their main gym rooms is pretty big, and it calls for the EdgeMax covering the edges, but the middle needed a little more attention,” O’Connor explained. “They could have hung regular pendants, but then again, you get those cones. So, they custom fabricated a mount to hang EdgeMax loudspeakers where the ceiling is way too high. With this application, they get that directional, non-conical, forward-projecting response, and that's something we never would've thought of directly on our own.”
Bose Professional brings unforgettable moments alive.
It’s that moment. The one when the featured act brings everyone to their feet during the show’s encore. Or when the worship team rises to its powerful crescendo and moves the entire congregation. And it’s the key moment during a conference call that connects and unites a work team from around the globe.
Pro audio is about building incredible experiences, one piece at a time.
That’s why we’re here.
