nobodysprefect

Yes... ESL moment there. Living in Sweden is corroding my English. It's the other super addictive substance. That you don't shoot. Rather, one 'shoots' into it, right? Actually, adding to reasons to quit: bandmates doing any illegal stuff. You know, failing to report the full gig pay as income, drinking and driving, or, indeed, buying or selling illicit substances.

Not to sound judgmental, but please tell me you drive first and take substances later? I used to put down a lot of time with a psychoactive substance -- alcohol, in my case -- so I'm by no means a saint, but cars and substances don't mix Edit: Wait, wait, the word you've masked isn't shooting, it's the other thing, isn't it? Reasons to quit bands: having different aims than the rest, not being able to sack the one with a different aim, mismatch of aims and time investment, personality clashes, market just not being there for the band's oeuvre...

There's a Tannoy mid-field mastering monitor and the abovementioned Genelec 1022a and it's successors, can attest to zero mush at monitoring sound pressures.

The amp maker is db. They make very respectable power amps. I know, I know, corporate accounting practices and antitrust regulations mean that they are not allowed to sell their amp modules to RCF under market prices, but, you know, it's not always straightforward to appraise a custom spec power amp module for active loudspeakers... https://www.prosoundweb.com/company/dbtechnologies/

Am I misremembering that at some point, there was a connection or maybe even identity in the ownership of PowerSoft's and RCF's parent companies? This would explain the pricepoint vs. quality. I would imagine it would take a company like Yamaha with a similar horizontal value chain benefits to compete. From their own timeline:1998 "RCF becomes part of an international group until the end of 2003 when previous shareholders take over the company again " I'm probably wrong, but I seem to remember that this corporate group also had a power amp manufacturer and RCF active cabs got a vastly better power amp section during that time.

Had a reply typed, then misclicked. Don't see a reason to be snarky even if I don't swallow marketing hype. RCF offer a good product, they have for years. They have not made a quantum leap out of the weight, cost, efficiency, fidelity field. They are still subject to the conflicting design goals, but yes, the points one is able to reach in the 4-dimensional space are better now than earlier. That's nothing new, materials and processes evolve over time and this has always been the case. I've used them a lot back when I lived in Finland and the spec was 'sound reinforcement that doesn't break the back or the budget.' And RCF and Yamaha were my first recommendations for small-scale sound reproduction. I'm not an engineer, never claimed to be. I'm just a former gearslut. For my back and money, the Acme were a good pick, and having used them, I can recommend them. They are a passive 3-way speaker that have an 'accurate'* response and wide range. Can't recommend stuff I don't use. For gigging, I'd in general recommend passive speaker setups unless you are very sure you can get a replacement cabinet during a weekend in time. Woofers can and will blow on passive and active setups, but that's something that is hard to prep for, unless you have spare woofers with you. The more electronics you have in a speaker cabinet, the more you're subjecting those electronics to wear and tear. The sound reinforcement company I used to work for went with passive line arrays and subwoofers and separate power amp racks, partially for this reason, partially for scaling. A woofer is a much more robust electrical component than most non-mil spec circuit boards. I'm sure there's an absolutely bullet proof and cheap circuit on a board somewhere, because people make knives out of pasta and chocolate, these days. I still think my summary mostly holds: the most relevant stuff is portability and price, many solutions are high enough fidelity and put out enough 'volume' to hurt yourself. I'll add that reliability, replaceability, ease and cost of repair are important, too, depending on where you live. *if very accurate is your goal, then PA loudspeakers are not the right place to look anyway. You want good mastering monitors.

I'm having a brain freeze. What kind of top end are you looking for? A lost of MTD players like and have a very glassy top end that sounds terrible* on a lot of speakers. I like to imagine having had that tone on my best days. Depending on the sort of distortion used I'd imagine your tone is more, less, or about as susceptible to sounding terrible*. I certainly sounded terrible* on all piezo tweeter setups. *and by terrible, I mean 'not flawless'

Have you tried cabs with domed drivers? I like them better than the piezo tweeters.

Oh, dang, missed this aspect entirely. In that case, if you're going to be using the cabs a lot, you'll want to have a decent trial session. I don't believe the tweeter in the RCFs has a settling-in period. (AFAIK all woofers have this to some degree: the suspension needs to be 'softened up' gently before going full bore) I would not believe anyone telling me the RCFs have what we gearslutz call 'listening fatigue' because you don't get that from most setups. But there are different characters within even very accurate monitors. I've had 3 different Genelec near field monitor setups and one midfield (the reference class 1022a Darth Vader things) and while they are very accurate... Quoting a poster talking about mastering on 1022s at gearslutz because he put it better than I could: "When I played my first demo on 1022a, I was shocked. It sounded brutally harsh, ugly and flat. Then I switched to O300, and it sounded pretty ok. I started to listen to some reference records I know, and many of them were horrible on 1022. As an APS Klasik user, I thought they were quite honest and revealing, but 1022 is just another level. Only really good quality records sounded well on them."

Only checked the spot you recommended. I saw nothing in the way of explanation. They made no claims to have solved the engineering tradeoff between cost, weight, efficiency, and fidelity. Also, it's marketing material Disregard marketing material, go for the tech spec. From what I can see, it's an active 2-way speaker, and they've baked in equalisation to counteract the response curve the drivers and the cabinet create, resulting in a flat frequency response curve in the advertised spectrum. Expecting any passive speaker enclosure to match such a setup is unrealistic. Afaik, only a theoretical model speaker can have a flat response. This does not mean they are being dishonest or doing something underhanded. Genelec and other studio monitor makers have done this for decades, and it's the only way to get a very flat response curve: use equalisation to counteract the unevenness all existing drivers and enclosures by necessity have. The curve I saw in their own materials does not put Genelec to shame, so we know it's probably a good compromise between fidelity and roadworthiness. I'll amend what I wrote and say, instead: Regarding fidelity, the higher price of the RCF includes a power amp and built-in equalisation, resulting in a fairly flat response curve between 45 and 20k Hz, while the Acme Low-B2 goes deeper, but does require a power amp to drive it, and probably requires equalisation to match the flatness of the RCF. In practice, I imagine few will benefit from either the extra flatness of the RCF or the deeper low end of the Acme. NB the video does show the RCF responce falling off a cliff under the advertised response spectrum, not that every driver / enclosure known to man doesn't do that.

Well, in engineering, you mostly have tradeoffs. You can't make a car with an internal combustion engine with the performance and mileage of a Tesla Model S, or make a car with the performance of a Ferrari, capacity of a lorry, and the mileage of a Honda Civic. Let's see: the RCF 745A is, compared to the Acme Low-B2: *more expensive *considerably bigger *louder. Much louder. It's impossible to say one way or another regarding the fidelity. Acme docs state the freq response to be "Frequency response: +/-3 dB 41Hz to 22 kHz -6 dB at 31 Hz" While RCF says: 45-20000 Hz and the curve shown in the specsheet makes me speculate the RCF -6dB frequency is likely the 45Hz stated. The customer is left with assigning value on the different engineering goals and choosing the product where those goals are pursued at the expense of others.

I stopped reading there. I've been very satisfied with my Acme cabs since I got my first Low-B2 pair back in 2005. Since power now costs nothing, the downside of the Acmes is more or less negated. Even the Peavey IPR I used was very good (and light) so you don't have to go for the big bucks Crests, Powersofts, Demeters etc. http://www.acmebass.com/mobile/index.html#page3 On the other hand, I know other companies have also produced very high-fi, very portable cabs in the 13 years ( ) since, but back then, the alternative was Eden, SWR, or Euphonic Audio. I liked the electrical engineering approach that Andy has. I have engineers in the family and I learned to go for the tech specs, never mind the marketing.

Dean Markley SR2000, don't know if the gooch still uses them, but he used to. The only strings I ever used when I played MTDs. Fodera strings are very good, but I did NOT have success with the Anthony Jackson strings on an Anthony Jackson contrabass guitar. But the regular Fodera stainless steel strings are wonderful.