Budget Powered Speakers

[Stub Mandrel]

Not all of us can afford or justify expensive PA speakers/monitors, so I thought I'd share my experience of the cheap Thomann 'Fun Generation' powered speakers and invite anyone else to share info on other low-cost options.

 

This is the 15" option, they also do 12" and passive versions of both.

 

https://www.thomann.co.uk/fun_generation_pl_115_a.htm

 

 

With refreshing honesty they rate them 600W peak/140W rms.

 

I bought two 15" powered ones as cheap monitors. I regularly use one as a monitor and aside from not being suitable for putting my foot on, it's always delivered without fuss in many different situations. 

 

Thrre are two 'mic' channels with xlr and jack inputs. Annoyingly, line in uses phono sockets, but I just use the mic channels with the gain down (never had distortion issues). There's basic bass/treble eq, 90% of the time I leave these at 12 o'clock.

 

I discovered the back plates with the amp, inputs and bt functionality are interchangeable between 15 and 12, passive and active. Just rewire the connections to the crossover.

 

I swapped one over to make a 15 active and a 12 passive.

 

That gives me the flexibility to use 2x12, 2x15, or one or two 12+15 pairs.

 

I have used an active/passive 12" pair as PA for lectures with ease, and once or twice as a small pub-size vocal PA when our vocalist's Mackie powered speakers weren't available. 

 

It's not clear what the real world power of a single cab is - do you need the extension cab to achieve 140W or does that deliver a bit more?

 

They are loud enough and the audio quality is good enough to be usable in everyday applications. I think the audio is at least as good as my 8" HH monitor. I would invest more if looking fo a small full-time PA, however. 

 

Despite the 'fun generation' name they are a different league to the cheap but similar looking 'party speakers'. I suspect they are sold with other name badges.

 

Importantly they are robust, reasonably light and easy to use.

 

Two powered 12s or even one powered, one passive would meet the basic monitoring needs of many bands for under £200, and they could save a small gig if your main pa goes down.

 

[Jack]

That's really good to hear, thanks for sharing. The Thomann own brand stuff usually punches well above its price point, just look at the praise that Harley Benton basses get. I've got a suspicion that the dsp and dsx range from 'the box pro' are probably as good as some of the offerings from qsc and rcf but I've never chanced the £250 to find out. 

 

I do love my Thomann Mix Six though! 

[tauzero]

I use Alto TS308s for FOH and TS408s for monitors. I did have them the other way round but the 408s are better shaped for floor monitor use and for some reason it seemed to improve the situation with feedback. When the speaker failed on my bass amp, I put the bass through the PA and it was fine, which was rather impressive - didn't want to make a habit of it though.

[Stub Mandrel]

2 minutes ago, tauzero said:

I use Alto TS308s for FOH and TS408s for monitors. I did have them the other way round but the 408s are better shaped for floor monitor use and for some reason it seemed to improve the situation with feedback. When the speaker failed on my bass amp, I put the bass through the PA and it was fine, which was rather impressive - didn't want to make a habit of it though.

 

The smaller Altos are another 'affordable' brand. Our club uses bigger Alto powered speakers andcthey sound find and have proven vastly more reliable than HH.

 

Last night we had a drum machine and then a guitar through them without backline no problems (except the guitar turned up far too loud).

[tauzero]

2 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

The smaller Altos are another 'affordable' brand. Our club uses bigger Alto powered speakers andcthey sound find and have proven vastly more reliable than HH.

 

Last night we had a drum machine and then a guitar through them without backline no problems (except the guitar turned up far too loud).

 

One of the guitarists goes through the PA sometimes. On one occasion he'd somehow turned up his volume vastly, and the sound from the Altos was both mind-buggeringly loud and very clear. I put a limiter on the mixer after that.

[Phil Starr]

I think it's easy to be too snobby about this. The quality of budget speakers is of course variable between brands but the quality can be surprisingly good. I can remember getting a Maplin Pro Sound 12" monitor to repair and being surprised by the quality of the well braced cab and the decent magnet on the 12" driver along with a nicely made crossover. It sounded OK too, not brilliant but definitely usable. The cheapies are getting better over time too, I auditioned the Alto's before going on to buy my RCF's and back then the gap was very obvious but I've played through more up to date ones and the gap is closing. The other thing is that the speakers are only one link in the chain. The weakest link is always the operator and I'd back a decent sound engineer with budget gear against someone with cloth ears and little experience using  the best gear. I suspect someone singing through an SM58 clone into RCF's might sound no better than someone using a Beta58 into Alto's and possibly worse. If you only have £50 to upgrade your sound swapping mic's rather than speakers might be the better bet. Come to that my singing into top touring gear isn't going to match Freddie Mercury singing into a tin on the end of a string!

 

It's a matter of buying what you can afford and learning to get the best out of it. If I'm listening to a live band how they play and perform is much more interesting than their speakers even to me  and a poor mix is going to ruin an evening far more than losing a few Hz from the bass response or 3db off the volume level.