I’m not a techno guy. Although I’m a bit more far removed from the musician who just plugs the stuff in and turns it on I don’t memorize specs and spend hours talking gear. However, i learn a lot from people who do so I would never put down this fascination with electronics.
If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would even think of owning powered speakers I would have laughed. Powered speakers were for the banquet circuit or for guys who played accordion in the mall (not that there’s anything wrong with this! it’s a gig!). Then a guy traded me a set of Peavey powered speakers with a 12 and a horn. These were useful as monitors because there was no amplifier need to power them. However, there was no good EQ on them.
Usually a sound system has a mixing board which takes the instrument and voice signals and sends them to an amplifier (via an equalizer to mold the sound). This powered signal is then fed to a speaker. Depending how long the lines are there is power lost along the way. A powered speaker has the amplifiers built into the speakers which saves the power loss because the length of the cord is inches.
A friend of mine brought my attention to the Mackie powered speakers several years ago and although I never bought a set I was intrigued by them. Using the same (active) type of crossover as the Peaveys, the Mackies had improved this. Also the signal lines were balanced which mean that the noise is reduced. Another plus is that there is an amplifier for both the horn and the speaker and this power is balanced for each.
I still don’t have Mackies. I bought a set of Groove Factory speakers, 15″ and horn, from a friend. They are heavy but have a warm sound and a 4 band EQ so that you7 can plug a mike directly in if you need it for a PA or just an insturment.
The buzz out now is that another brand of speaker, DB technologies, is adding a wireless set-up to each of their speakers so that the only lead going in will be the power plug.
Hey Kim,
Just stopped by the site to see what was going on, and I figured I would give my two cents on this one.
Active is the way to go. It doesn’t matter how big you need to go because they make systems smaller then the Mackie SRM450’s (Now discontinued and have been replaced by the V2’s) and as big as line array for touring.
I recently did an outdoor talent show at North Woodside Community Centre which is a decent size venue and they were expecting upwards of 1200 so I needed to bring out a pretty decent PA so I used a 10,000W Yorkville System and it was KILLER! I own the LS800P subs but have used the EF500P tops in the past and knew this was what I needed for this show. The sound is crisp, clear and we only ended up running the system at about 30% capacity because the sound carried so well.
A good friend of mine has replaced almost his whole show with powered which is the direction I’m moving in. It’s a million times easier then amps.
If anybody has an questions you can email me at
andrew@andrewsykes[dot]ca
Andrew
The Mackie SRM’s were the breakthrough speaker. Before that few serious acts were using powered speakers.