12 inches to 15 inches - Benefit?

[Megamix]

What's the main benefit of 15" Active over 12" (or even 10" come to that)?

(apart from the obvious physical - weight and size)

Thanks

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Normally a slighter deeper bass, depending on the cabs.

[DAVESOUNDS SERVICES]

15 inch ones break your back
12 inch ones only hurt it!
(applies mainly to active speakers !!)
Check out ANY Loudspeakers that use NEO Magnets!!
cheers

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Sorry Dave, but what complete rubbish.

Have you use any powered cabs recently?

[WWDJ]

Sorry Dave, but what complete rubbish.

Have you use any powered cabs recently?

He's probably been using my W-Audio PSR15A's .... decent actives for the money but you need to be Geoff Capes to get them on stands!

[Megamix]

well I've got the PSR15s currently -so the added weight of an amp must be 'challenging' - so I'm now looking RCF!

[Twinspin]

Passive can be heavier than Active (for example)

A Passive Martin Audio S15 sub vs RCF ART705AS Active sub.


driver size (both have 15" drivers)
Martin (passive) RCF (active)
Martin (38.5kg) RCF (37kg)

the martin audio sub is passive and that weighs more than the active.
my point is passive can be just as heavy and then you need the amplifier to power them.

this doesnt apply to all just two models in comparison to each other.
they both still have their pros and cons.

e.g. Actives... if the amp goes down you lose the speaker but you can still go on using the other speaker (unless you have a spare speaker)

Passives - seperate amp needed to power them which can take up more space and if the amplifier goes down (silence) until you plug another amplifier in.

my RCF active tops only weigh 18kg each which is light.

[CRAZY K]

What's the main benefit of 15" Active over 12" (or even 10" come to that)?

(apart from the obvious physical - weight and size)

Thanks

Generally more bass end and errr LOUDER or perhaps that wasnt the answer you were looking for.;)

[spin mobile disco]

It also comes down to air movement. The smaller cabs can normally provide a higher spl because they do not have to move so much air.
However a 15 will provide a normally more rounded sound especially in the lower frequencies.
These are both generalisations though as some models and makes are able to buck these trends.

[DAVESOUNDS SERVICES]

Sorry Dave, but what complete rubbish.

Have you use any powered cabs recently?

Yeah
DB Mackie RCF, Wharfedale plus a few i cant remember
(theyre all total and utter CraP)
Im sick of getting them to repair with shorted drivers
which in turn destroy the inbuilt amplifiers
Putting an amplifier into a speaker cabinet was never a great idea
even in the days of valves...now we are onto double sided irrepairable
printed circuits sprayed with surface mounted components is an even
worse idea....(just my opinion)
anyway im 52 i retire at 60 so i wont be fixing this rubbish much longer!!!
Cheers

[Corabar Entertainment]

I can't help feeling when reading your posts Dave that you feel that just about everything that everyone else seems to use without problems is utter crap / rubbish, etc.

[yourdj]

well I've got the PSR15s currently -so the added weight of an amp must be 'challenging' - so I'm now looking RCF!

Good move. I was checking the newer RCF 10 inchers at BPM and could not believe the size and weight. 127 spl too. :)


I can't help feeling when reading your posts Dave that you feel that just about everything that everyone else seems to use without problems is utter crap / rubbish, etc.

Yes what do you use then? Probably something that will take 15 gigs to pay back I would imagine.
The 310's i bought for £500 have done me fine for a year now. In fact they are excellent (for my needs).
I could go and spend £3,000 on a Nexo system but i just do not need too for the gigs I do.

I had a bloke email me when selling a karaoke amp last year. He was very rude and was saying the same things.
Quite annoyed me actually. Wasn't you Dave was it?

Exact words were I wouldn't urinate on crown RCF etc. But he was looking at a complete rubbish Karaoke amp which did not make sense?

We are all entitled to our opinions however :)

[Megamix]

So as a PA engineer - in your professional opinion are you saying ALL active speakers are crap - or prone to high maintenance?

[DAVESOUNDS SERVICES]

So as a PA engineer - in your professional opinion are you saying ALL active speakers are crap - or prone to high maintenance?

Hiya Megamix,
as im a yorkshireman and Hate wasting money in my opinion
For Disco/ Small PA USE (not concert / touring rigs)
Active speakers are VERY high maintenance.
Look at peoples experience on here with them
Probably because they are prone to abuse.
Thats why im not a user or a lover of them.
(plus the weight factor)
As an aside my present system (well the one i use most)
is RCF ITALIAN ART300 Loudspeakers (a Very loud box)
Amplifiers (under review since discovering Peavey IPR1600s)
are all Chevin
Most of my mixers are either
1 unit Mcgregors /Or 1 Unit Studiomaster c3Xs
With these components reliebility has been excellent
(yes i do alllways take a back up rack)
for bigger jobs i take 2 or 3 pairs of ART 300 tops /Monitors
and use Art bass bins (unpowered) but i do have 1 Hz powered sub)
which has proved utterly reliable.
cheers

Hello Toby
quote
I had a bloke email me when selling a karaoke amp last year. He was very rude and was saying the same things.
Quite annoyed me actually. Wasn't you Dave was it?
No it wasnt me
Im never rude ,its just that people "might" not like my personal opinion.
Cheers Dave

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Well I have been using Mackie, EV and RCF as well as other makes of powered cabinets and don't find them to be heavy or high maintenance.

If 18Kg is heavy for you Dave, I think it's time for to retire.

Apart from servicing, I have never had a single problem with any of my tops.

Funny that you say RCF active are crap and then are saying that you have a passive pair....

[dj keevers]

With any type of speaker, the 3 main weight components are the cabinet material, the speaker frame material, and the magnet material. Obviously, these weights rise proportionately in general as the main speaker size rises. So the trend towards smaller speaker cabinets to decrease weight has been seen.
However, if you have the money and/or technology on your side you bend the rules quite severely away from this bring true.
The quickest and easiest weigh saving, without changing the way a speaker sounds and looks is by changing the type of magnet on the speaker. If you haven't heard of NEO magnets then you must have been hiding in your 45 singles collection. Normally magnets are based on a iron or ferrous type material to provide the deflecting magnetic field for the voice coils in your speakers. The NEO magnets, or Neodymium rare earth magnets, to give them there proper name, allow the creation of speaker magnets to be 10 times or even fifty times smaller than the ferrous equivalent, and still give the same strength of magnetic field. This obviously, if your have ever separated the magnet from a speaker, ( i often did as a kid), gives a huge weight saving. However the "rare earth" portion of the material name, should give the game away, that these materals are hugely more expensive than even gold and platinum since they are ultra rare to find and very hard to refine. So, while and easy upgrade to visualise, only the cost and availability of such materials is the overall limiting factor.

Next the speaker frame weight can be reduced by the use of more space age materials, ultimately maybethe adoption of a carbon fibre type construction, however a cost versus percentage weight saving often wins this way before a design consideration is even made. If cost no object then good luck.

Finally and often the most talked about weight saving component of speaker construction, cabinet material. Traditionally speakers cabinets were made from wood. The type of wood, often beech, defined not only the weight but also the "type" or "feel" of the overall sound produced, often described as a "sound warmth" by sound engineers. This is due to how different types of woods deflect the sound back from the sound source and which part of the sound spectrum the material might absorb or effectively filter, creating that "feel or warmth effect". Cheaper manufacturers use the modern equivalent of wood, namely the much maligned, MDF, and whilst this can create a weight and cost saving, as well as a maybe justified environmental saving, many feel the sound produced is not the same. However that's why many times on the forum people say you should listen to a speaker before you take someone's opinion on them. The purists / traditionalists will never agree that an MDF sourced sound is as good as a real wood sound, but that is an area for another discussion.
The final speaker cabinet material is the modern alternative, the man made plastics, whether its a clear perspex or the more common moulded black polyurethane type. These materials are often lighter than the traditional materials, but due to the modern manufacturing can be pre-ordered as a constructed component, and just assembled at the final construction, providing huge savings in man power requirements, skills required, and cost of time required to build, while still providing the rigid structure needed for speaker cabinets. It also allows the creation of a more durable finished product and allow the use of more complex design to the internals to the speaker cabinets, thus allowing the use of sound modify fixtures to be included at a fixed lower cost.

So the difference between 8 inch to 15 inch, is just not a size issue. Its what is the actual speaker construction can be just as important. Ill try and do an active and a DSP sound construction info later. Both these items create issues which should be considered in speaker choice and sound creation

[DazzyD]

My speakers of choice are my Prolight Concepts E-115s although I have a number of 12" speakers of various makes (including EV and Mackie). Yes, the Prolights are bigger and heavier (much heavier than the EVs!) but I like the more rounded sound they provide and they seem to give a better bass sound.

But, in general, and this is evident on this very thread, sound is a very personal choice. The best advice is to find a set of speakers you like, regardless of the size, and go with them.

[Twinspin]

I like my RCF Actives they have never let me down. The amplifiers in them run extremely cool during a gig.

The other decent sound system i had was a HK Audio Lucas 1000 and that was a good system as well.

neither of them are high maintainence. As Darren mentioned 18kg isn't heavy thats how much my active RCF ART Tops weigh and they are more than managable. I carry both my tops in one in each hand.

My friend Martin has a pair of Peavey UL-15s and they are a lot heavier than mine.

The only active tops that i have had bother with was the Mackie SRM450 V1
possibly a dodgy batch. But i dont use Mackie now.

[Daryll]

DJ Keevers.

That was an excellent answer , un-baised and descriptive , and all very true :D

Daryll

[Tom]

What's the main benefit of 15" Active over 12" (or even 10" come to that)?

(apart from the obvious physical - weight and size)

Thanks

Cab depending, a 15" driver will play lower down in the frequency range.

[abracadabradisco]

I have once again tried my RCF 725A actives in my garage. I will gig them 1st time tomorrow night.
RCF 725A are 750w active switch mode amps, plenty of mid and top with a reasonable bass for an ABS cab. They have 500w to the 15" and 250w to the 2" horn. 19.5kgs
I have in the past used a Yorkville amp 20kgs which is 750w @ 8ohm per ch and with a decent toroidial transformer. his was driving a pair of Tannoy V15 15" 400w dual concentric birch ply cabinets 32kgs. Excellent mid and top with a great bass as well.
Comparison is that although the RCF 725A's are ABS and very light they cannot compare with the quality of the separate amp and Tannoy V15's birch ply cabs.
I have only bought the RCF actives because they are lighter, not for quality.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

I have once again tried my RCF 725A actives in my garage. I will gig them 1st time tomorrow night.
RCF 725A are 750w active switch mode amps, plenty of mid and top with a reasonable bass for an ABS cab. They have 500w to the 15" and 250w to the 2" horn. 19.5kgs
I have in the past used a Yorkville amp 20kgs which is 750w @ 8ohm per ch and with a decent toroidial transformer. his was driving a pair of Tannoy V15 15" 400w dual concentric birch ply cabinets 32kgs. Excellent mid and top with a great bass as well.
Comparison is that although the RCF 725A's are ABS and very light they cannot compare with the quality of the separate amp and Tannoy V15's birch ply cabs.
I have only bought the RCF actives because they are lighter, not for quality.

You bought a pair of cabs that cost over £2000 because they are light and not for the quality?

If you weren't worried about the quality, you could have spent a lot less money than that to get a lighter pair of speakers.

[dj keevers]

Additional to earlier

The frequency response of any speaker is determined mainly by 3 aspects or components of the speaker and its cabinets construction. The effect of the cabinet material and the way the air generated by the moving speaker is affected by the internal air ways and shaped is beyond the scope of this discussion, however as discussed earlier, this "sound shaping" can be very cost effectively achieved using Plastic Cabinets. The other 2 aspects which we can consider are the cone material and the size of the voice coil. Ideally we want a lighweight cone material which flexes consistently in all directions with no distortion and offers a minimal resistance to movement especially when you change the direction of movement. This will allow a purer sound reproduction with no distortion or added or filter sound due to movement restrictions in the cone material. So the better the cone material, the lower the frequency response, and hence more bass effect from the speaker. Paper or paper composite cones are often the cheapest form of cone material but are hardly durable and flexibility at the lowest frequencies and the highest powers are restricted. A more desirable is a synthetic material which negates these restrictions and can be manufactured to add a more linear response across the whole flexing range.
The main aspect for getting low frequencies from a speaker is the size of the speaker coil and its respective magnet. The larger the speaker size generally has the larger coils and magnets. To achieve lower bass frequencies it requires the speaker cone and therefore the coils to move a greater distance both in and out.

[yourdj]

With any type of speaker, the 3 main weight components are the cabinet material, the speaker frame material, and the magnet material.

and Amp/components weight if it's digital or not with actives.

Good summary though - nice for people shopping around :approve:

[cosmicdiscos]

i know 3 DJs with active mackies. person 1 had his HF driver blow 3 times although the warranty covered the repair, person 2's amp went in one side and person 3 has got plastic white fans strapped to the stands pointing at the heatsinks to stop them overheating and tripping!
i've not used active gear myself though

[dj keevers]

and Amp/components weight if it's digital or not with actives.

Good summary though - nice for people shopping around :approve:

thanks, however, i suppose i should have stated that the previous posts were for passives speakers in general. Ill try and do an active forum post next

[CRAZY K]

Yeah
DB Mackie RCF, Wharfedale plus a few i cant remember
(theyre all total and utter CraP)
Im sick of getting them to repair with shorted drivers
which in turn destroy the inbuilt amplifiers
Putting an amplifier into a speaker cabinet was never a great idea
even in the days of valves...now we are onto double sided irrepairable
printed circuits sprayed with surface mounted components is an even
worse idea....(just my opinion)
anyway im 52 i retire at 60 so i wont be fixing this rubbish much longer!!!
Cheers

Ah well good for business eh Dave--keep thinking of the money;)

No Peavey repairs mentioned:confused:

[Twinspin]

i know 3 DJs with active mackies. person 1 had his HF driver blow 3 times although the warranty covered the repair, person 2's amp went in one side and person 3 has got plastic white fans strapped to the stands pointing at the heatsinks to stop them overheating and tripping!
i've not used active gear myself though

The active Mackies i thought were unreliable definetely the worst active speaker ive used.

[yourdj]

thanks, however, i suppose i should have stated that the previous posts were for passives speakers in general. Ill try and do an active forum post next

Great I have actually skim read some block text for once and for once got something right :p

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

The active Mackies i thought were unreliable definetely the worst active speaker ive used.

Putting this into perspective....

You had them for a couple of months and you complained about the heatsinks getting hot and I seem to recall you having problems with the HF on one.

How many active speakers have you used?

[Twinspin]

Putting this into perspective....

You had them for a couple of months and you complained about the heatsinks getting hot and I seem to recall you having problems with the HF on one.

How many active speakers have you used?


Correct i did have a problem with one of the HF units on one them.

Owned

Mackie SRM450s - Didnt like at all them for the reasons above including the thermal lights coming on after so long.

RCF ART 322A & ART705AS subs - Current speakers as you know a lot more reliable than my previous Mackies
HK Audio Lucas 1000 - Had one of these for 3 years and again no problems.

Used

EV SXA360 active tops - hired them in once and again no problems.
DB Technologies Opera 402 - same as the EV and RCF

none of these are like the Mackie SRM450s in terms of reliability in my experience with those and the Mackies.