LFSYs Monaco - how good?

[Chienmortbb]

14 hours ago, pete.young said:

 

I have been told that it is due to the orientation of the High-Mid driver.  @stevie if you are going to write an explanation for  @Sean it might be worth putting it on the web site.

 

It made me think I was too loud because I could actually hear everything, instead of the sound blasting past me at knee level, and the band told me to turn it up.

I believe I have a decent understanding of the principles involved but the first time I used my LFSys cab in anger, I was asked to turn up for the first ever.

Edited June 28 by Chienmortbb

[Chienmortbb]

I was just looking at another thread showing a bass stack that included cabs I do not like (clue - coloured sound and look). I suddenly realised that since getting an LFSys, I have had three amps. Before that I was changing cabs more than Rab C Nesbitt changed his string vest. 
 

 

[Pirellithecat]

16 hours ago, stevie said:

Yes, that's the experience most people have. Odd, isn't it?

 

The orientation of the horn is one aspect. Another is that the compression driver takes over from below 2kHz, which means you get a controlled dispersion throughout the range of bass guitar frequencies - no matter where you're standing. 

 

I've written a short article for @Sean and will probably post it on the website once I get some explanatory diagrams done. I already have some frequency response curves that show what is going on.

Interesting .... do post a link.   🤞

[stevie]

I'd be happy to post a link once I've tidied it up. It needs a good editing.

[Wolverinebass]

I played the Monaco at the last SE Bash which was now some time ago. It was really good as I used the TE1200 and @Merton ACG.

 

I hope this doesn't constitute a thread derail, but I'm curious about a few things. Are there any bigger cabs in the works? Like a 2x12? Also, as the crossover point seems to be very low and in the 1.5kHz region, how does one mic the cab to record it? All the snap and attack will be from the horn.

 

Just curious really.

[matybigfro]

I'm not what the point would be of micing a cab that's designed not to colour your tone, why not just DI

Edited Friday at 22:12 by matybigfro

[Phil Starr]

8 hours ago, matybigfro said:

I'm not what the point would be if micing a cab that's designed not to colour your tone, why not just DI

This is how I use my Monza. I try to set everything up so I get the same sound from headphones, studio monitors, PA,and the bass rig. You’ll find that it is a little more complex than it sounds because of the room acoustics and because; well our ears are sensitive and speakers aren’t good enough to fool anyone. Functionally it works well enough though. DI is always going to sound better for the audience anyway as all mics just introduce added distortion and added stage noise. It may give you a sense of control in bypassing the sound tech but if they are determined enough to make you sound sampled then you won’t stop them with a mic 😄

 

You may want to mic up for recording of course. @stevie used a measuring mic in developing his designs so hopefully he will come along to help. 

Edited Thursday at 06:21 by Phil Starr

[stevie]

@Wolverinebass has a point. Half of the sound is coming from the bass driver and half from the horn. So, how do you mic up?

 

I made some quick measurements on a Monaco cab with the mic pointed at the horn. The top one (black) is relatively close, maybe about 30cm. The measurement looks quite clean but there's a distinct dip between 600Hz and 2kHz, which will affect the sound - it's two octaves. This is because the mic is well off axis in relation to the bass driver.

 

The red measurement is from about one metre. You can see that the dip caused by the bass driver has more or less filled in. However, at that distance, room effects are going to be noticable. In this measurement, you can see the change between 200 and 600Hz caused by room reflections. So, measuring at 1 metre is more accurate but the sound is likely to be affected by room reflections or other noises (instruments).

 

The logical conclusion would be to position the mic in between both drivers, which should allow the mic to be positioned closer. I'm so used to measuring on the tweeter axis that I didn't consider it at the time, but I can take a measurement in between the drivers is anyone would like to see it.

 

I do agree with @matybigfro, however. The design goal of the Monaco (and other LFSys speakers) is to reproduce the sound from the amp as accurately as possible. It makes a lot more sense to DI. 

[Wolverinebass]

1 hour ago, stevie said:

@Wolverinebass 

 

I do agree with @matybigfro, however. The design goal of the Monaco (and other LFSys speakers) is to reproduce the sound from the amp as accurately as possible. It makes a lot more sense to DI. 

 

Thanks @stevie. This was exactly what I was getting at. This is my goal as well. Have a cab which basically sounds exactly like the DI. I have tried various cabs and the closest I've ever got to this is my Vanderkley 2x12. Even that isn't quite the same to the exact details. 

 

As you say, the graph is of course subject to the mic position and all the other factors such as room reflections. I'm not sure if the idea of having the DI feed being the same as the mic'd cab is practically attainable or even possible, but it's in an ideal world what I want.

 

My question was a roundabout way of asking if one doesn't know how to mic the cab properly, how can anyone say what goes out is what has went in?

[stevie]

Evaluating (or designing) a speaker cab by measuring it is infinitely more complex than micing up a cab for recording or sound reinforcement. You need a calibrated mic for a start. There's a whole battery of measurements you need to carry out using specialist software. Done properly, however, you can form a reasonably accurate idea of how a speaker will perform (although your ears will always be the final arbiter). 

 

To measure a loudspeaker, you need to place the mic in what is termed the "far field" - or between 4 and 6 feet for the Monaco or similar cab. Any closer than this and the two drivers are not fully integrated. I've found measuring on the tweeter axis to be the most useful position.

 

To remove the impact of the room in the absence of an anechoic chamber, the test tones from the speaker have to be "gated" in software. Unfortunately, this useful technique doesn't allow measurement at low frequencies. So, the low frequency response has to be checked separately using either near-field or ground plane measurements. The two measurements are then adjusted for level and spliced together to create a full-range response. If you're a stickler, you also measure and splice the response of the port.

 

This gives you the frequency response on axis, and you've only just started.😀

[Phil Starr]

On 27/06/2025 at 10:22, Sean said:

I've been looking at LFSys lately as there's one thing on the website that really resonated with me and I need to understand more. 

 

It says on the About LFSys page, and I quote, "The lightweight amps were great but the cabs proved a disappointment. First, my (highly regarded) compact cab regularly ran out of steam when I needed to play really loud and second, more importantly, I struggled to hear what I was playing when I was standing close to the cab. Which was more often than not."

 

Is a Monaco going to meet my need to hear myself better on stage and if so, how does it do that and why doesn't the TWO10 do it? Also would it still need to go a platform? The guys in that band are "a bit wary" of me having the cab raised as they've never really seen that before.

 

 

 

 

On 27/06/2025 at 12:51, stevie said:

I can explain why this is happening and why LFSys cabs have been designed specifically to fix this problem. But I'm sure someone else who's not as heavily invested in LFSys will explain.

 

I'm not sure About being totally disinterested in LFSys as Stevie is a friend but it would be a shame if there wasn't a clear answer here, as well as being available elsewhere. 'Hearing' yourself on stage isn't a simple thing. Everything you play is made up of a wide range of frequencies and you won't hear all those frequencies equally well. In addition there are lots of other sounds reaching your ears: the rest of the band, reflections of your own sound reflected off every hard surface in the room, the PA sound and the audience sound just to mention the loudest sources. Your ears pick up this jumble of noise and your brain interprets this the best it can so you hear what you want. Your hearing isn't an accurate map of whet gets to your ears it's the best your brain can do with the information it has. It's probably quite useful to think of signal and noise. Signal is what you want and noise is all the distracting stuff from elsewhere. If the signal falls below the noise you are still picking it up but the brain can't turn it into anything useful. It can be as loud as you like but the information isn't useful to you.

 

Now to fully understand you'd have to look at each frequency seperately but it's more useful to look at three bands bass, middle and treble. I'm going to look at bass and middle as there isn't a lot of top end coming from your bass.

 

So now we come to the physics of speakers, the crucial bit is that the way sound is radiated depends upon the relationship between the diameter of the speaker and the wavelength of the sound it is trying to reproduce. If the wavelength is longer than the diameter of the speaker it is radiated evenly in every direction. As the wavelength becomes shorter and shorter the sound is increasingly radiated into a narrow beam of sound and a big speaker is radiating the mid-rnage and treble more like a searchlight or torchbeam than the bulbs that illuminate the room. 10" speakers means searchlight for most of the midrange 2x10 doubly so and the midrange is where all the signal is that you need to hear what you are playing. With no tweeter your Two10 stands very little chance of getting the signal to your ears unless you raise it right up to ear level and point it straight at your head. Even raised  on an 18" platform the mid range is going past your waist not your ears.

 

So adding a tweeter and crossing over at lower frequencies mean they won't beam and using a horn directs and controls the radiation pattern to an extent. LFSys crossover slightly lower than any other specifiacally bass speaker so you'll get more mids going to your ears and they have one extra trick; the horn is rotated 90deg so that the widest radiation is in the vertical plane and not horizontally as you would get with a PA speaker.

 

 

Hearing bass isn't an issue, on most stages you are swamped with bass. Firstly you will hear the bass from the PA and at the same volume as the audience as it is radiated 360deg, In fact since you are closer to the PA in most venues than the majority of the audience the bass can be even louder than the reat of the on-stage sound, secondly you'll hear all the reflected bass off the walls, ceiling and floors all with a slight time delay smearing the sound so you'll get loads of complaints about the bass being so loud whilst being unable to hear enough mid-range to really hear the details of what your bass is doing. The Monza and Monaco in particular have a really tightly controlled bass and this also helps.

[BassmanPaul]

On 02/07/2025 at 17:56, matybigfro said:

I'm not what the point would be of micing a cab that's designed not to colour your tone, why not just DI

Good point IF the venue actually HAS a PA system and a competent sound man to run it. Over here such luxurties are few and far between!