LawrenceH

Fingers crossed!

I dimly remember - and could be wrong - the specs of that driver favoured using it in such a way that you could get a good amount of upper bass from it, but if tuned this way in a fair-sized box it was particularly vulnerable to unloading below the resonant frequency, so pops and thumps with ultra low frequency content would be dangerous, and accordingly it particularly benefits from a (steep) high pass filter. Xmax was also measured using Klippel analysis which put it around 4mm, because it remained quite well behaved as the coil started to leave the magnetic gap - but really Xmax by measurement the old fashioned way would be just 2.5mm.

It's a decent driver really when kept within it's limits but the xlim doesn't give the safety margin as for other premium drivers from European manufacturers. It was very popular in bass applications a decade or so ago, and works well enough but I think it must fail quite quickly above the point where it stops sounding ok. I have blown one myself and remember plenty of other users did too!

The irony for amplifiers is these numbers matter a lot less now that power is cheap and light. Just makes it even more confusing pairing with appropriate speakers. Having said that, subjectively these micro amps don't quite seem to match up to older class AB amps with nominally similar ratings. Whether that's because their power supplies can't sustain the demand for as long under load, or the older amps have more forgiving distortion characteristics at higher loads, or it's all in my head, I don't know enough to say (it's not all in my head though it's really reeeeeal :p). BUT, with my £150-when-new Bugera Veyron it's all immaterial. Weighs not much, fits comfortably into a laptop bag. Claims 2000 fictional watts, supposedly measures a hair under 800 watts, in reality it doesn't matter if that's not ultimately as loud as 'old watts'. I drive 2x 250w RMS 10" drivers and it's always enough. Played the Fleece in Bristol a few nights ago, it filled the stage easily and it sounds great, and the subs/PA take over for the venue anyway as is required in a place that size whatever you put on stage.

I like that tortoiseshell, where's it from?

Think that would count as 'cruel and unusual punishment' under the UDHR?

What I find really useful is if the timbre varies with playing dynamics, allowing lots of expressive variation, but the actual output volume stays much more fixed.

Personally, I would definitely want the timbre to vary with dynamics similar to how it does with a DX7 - otherwise it's just like playing a fixed sample. Edit to add: any of these voices likely to make it into the 4.5 preset list? They sound great.

I gig either one or two 1x10 cabs. Always enough between them. Often enough just one of them, though I prefer the tonal balance of two together. Generally the bigger the driver the better the weight/volume(size)/volume(loudness) ratio. Suggesting that 1x12" is a great size for a single cab solution. But I went with 2 1x10" because two lighter cabs is an easier carry. Along similar lines, I have recently thought about swapping to 2 2x8" because that slim tall form factor, while less efficient in terms of displacement volume and weight, is even easier to store at home and would make a great small-footprint vertical stack on stage. If only Markbass did a matching 802 passive cab it would be a perfect little modular setup which I'd imagine would cover most use cases. As it is I'd probably look at a pair of the Trace 2*8 cabs which AFAIK use the excellent little 8PR200 driver from Faital. But if you don't mind adding a non-matching box further down the line the Markbass does look good to me.

I have a TB Raxx and it gets pretty messy. I used it for recording an album straight from the pre into the desk once, and it did that just-past-the-edge-of-clean thing with aplomb, got a really satisfyingly thick sound. Very underrated preamp, would command a far higher price if it didn't have the Peavey hair metal styling IMO. Mine's a keeper.

I like reading people's different subjective preferences, makes me question/analyse my own. I don't think it's just a matter of volume per se, rather the EQ balance you want and where there is space in the mix for the bass. 100w is ample in some cases and woefully inadequate in others. Bear in mind that speaker/cab design philosophy changes a lot depending on how much power you have available. The right 15" driver and cab will let you gig a 50w head, but to scale that up even a bit requires a lot of boot space.

Not sure if that was directed at me or not, but I thought the whole point of a forum is to be able to voice opinions and discuss the reasons for our subjective preferences. Personally, I've found that in the gig circumstances where 200w is enough through 2x 10" drivers, then I can instead get away with just 1 driver if I push it using a 500w amp - remembering that at 8 ohms I'd only be getting about 130 Vs 300 watts based on typical amps on the market at those sizes. Plenty of good drivers nowadays will happily take 200 to 300w all day long so it makes sense to me to have amps that match that. For me, whatever solution gets me to gig volume for least size/weight is my preference. As mentioned by DGBass above, the likely reason why there is a plethora of 200w amps is, that's where the current technology is at in terms of cost sweet spot. Rather than it being the wattage the market 'demands'. With the previous generation of slightly larger and more expensive class D modules that spot appeared to be around 450-500 watts.

I understand well enough the relationship between watts, speaker sensitivity and volume. But (for example) wattage doubling tends to be dismissed as 'only' 3 dB difference ignoring the fact that a few dB is usually the difference between keeping up or not in the type of venue where you rely on backline. Super small amps are great but if I have to add more speakers they've made a bigger problem than the one they solve. My very cheap ~800w Bugera Veyron is only a little bigger than a Trace Elf or similar, and only a couple of kg heavier. If I'm using modern long-throw drivers that can handle the wattage, then I can squeeze close to 6dB more out of them than at 200, with barely any extra packing space or weight compared to doing the same by doubling my speaker complement. In practice that means my 2 DIY 1x10" cabs made well over a decade ago have handled any gig I've thrown at them and I've always had that 'punch' you get from having a little headroom at the amp. My 500w F1 used to work ok but was occasionally at its limit, whereas 200w wouldn't reliably be enough. I also agree with @la bam that in practice, for whatever reason, turning volumes down on powerful setups doesn't usually have the same effect as using a smaller rig. But that might be as much a speaker thing. I wish I could find a good lightweight 8" driver (or even 6") optimised for high power handling, low resonant frequency, medium Q and low sensitivity. Something towards the old Acme B1 but even smaller and less sensitive.

It's a tricky thing to get right. I really like simple analogue synth programming and the real-time morphing possibilities, as long as I'm working on a classic-style synth like an Odyssey or Minimoog, where every function has a dedicated knob/slider. Also that approach relies on keyboard as an input method as I can play with one hand and tweak with the other. Much harder to make that work in a pedal format - keyboard naturally has all that space above the keys. Assignable expression pedal is about the limit imo. I've not spent enough time trying to make sense of FM with the benefit of a good instruction manual, but it's certainly not intuitive like analogue. I think most users treated the DX7 as a tweakable preset machine and I expect that's how 99% of the FI4.5 users are going to approach it. Really looking forward to the release of this update! Though it's going to require me to make a new pedalboard, to fit it in.

IMO there's good mileage in playing through a lot of pieces in the early stages and moving on quite quickly. My daughter's sax teacher has been doing this with her, and she has been progressing quickly and, importantly, maintained motivation. If you go back to those pieces in a month after working on something else you might find them a lot easier and fresher.