I did a gig last night, a very small one - ~20-22 people or so, in a room not much bigger than my living room. I'd say the room was ~20' x 30' or so. Low ceiling.

I thought I could get by with just 1 Bose S1, which I set up using the "L+R" output (mono) as Yamaha suggests. The one S1 did fine as far as volume, amount of bass, clarity overall, etc., for this room. However, many sounds seemed "flat" (not musically flat, but tonally flat) ... things like the piano (C7 and CTX), the strings, vibes, etc. Sometimes my Left sound, which I had set at a decent volume for playing countermelodies etc., didn't seem to "cut through" as I'm used to. The pianos in particular just didn't sound that great to me. Organs with "Leslie" sounded "OK" but not as I'm used to.

I'm going to play the exact same place next week; will try it with two S1's evenly spread out in the room. Maybe the audience won't notice it much - but it'll be interesting if it's a big difference, or a small difference, for me as the player.

I didn't "feel" as good about the sound, and it sort of was less "inspiring" than I'm used to (I usually go Stereo, either with 2 Bose S1s, or my Lucas Nano 600 in stereo setup, two FBT Maxx40a's) ... so even if it's mostly for me, if I do indeed hear a noticeable difference, I'll probably stick with Stereo even for smaller gigs. It's only an extra minute or two to set up a 2nd speaker ...

Thoughts?
Jim