It's quite possible that most outfits that rent systems also sell systems. GC sells Bose, but to my knowledge they do not rent anything. Bose, obviously, does not rent their equipment out as well. Most of the equipment that I've seen that was rented was really beat up badly. That also may have some bearing on this.

Many years ago, when I was working for a local company and installing sound systems in large halls, churches, factories, hospitals, etc.., the top of the line was Executone. To my knowledge they were among the first to use vertical arrays of speakers. They were called "Sound Columns" and usually measured 6 to 12 feet in length and housed relatively small, tightly-packed, speakers spaced about 2 inches apart throughout the entire colum. The colums were about six inches wide and six inches deep. All were constructed of wood and heavy as hell.

Some of the colums were arched and placed in the corners of ceilings in large cathedrials and churches. Essentially, the speakers were all facing downward and the coverage was pretty much equal throughout the venue. In some of the extremely large cathedrials up to 10 sound colums were used. And, because I was the skinny kid on the installation crew I was sent into the ceilings to drag the wires through to the main amp, which usually ranged from 500 to 1,500 watts.

A few months ago, at my grandson's christening, I noticed there were Bose colums mounted on the church walls. This is a huge church, one that could easily seat 600 people. If I recall correctly, there were two colums on each side of the pulpit, spaced about 40 feet apart. The sound coverage was incredible, very clear, distinct and no matter where you were in the room the volume was the same.

I sincerely believe that you will be seeing more Bose L1 type systems used in the not too distant future, especially for larger house systems. Time will tell.

Gary

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Travlin' Easy