# Which speaker is loudest... a test.



## BillESC (Apr 28, 2006)

In a side by side test ( non-scientific ) which of these four speakers produced the most SPL without distorting?

The line up is from left to right-
KV2 EX12 - Yorkville NX750 - Mackie SA1521 - Mackie SRM 450


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## AVGuyAndy (Apr 28, 2006)

My guess is the yorkville, without looking up efficency specs and all that. But there's more to good sound than just which is louder.


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## soundman1024 (Apr 28, 2006)

Based on a quick check it looks like 500 watts for the KV2 and the sa1521, 400 watts for the SRM450 and 750 for the T2MP. I have only heard the SRM450 before and it does a pretty good job I say. That was just about two minutes at most of research. You should look into peak and program levels for these.


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## mbandgeek (Apr 28, 2006)

AVGuyAndy said:


> My guess is the yorkville, without looking up efficency specs and all that. But there's more to good sound than just which is louder.



my guess is the Makie on the far right.

It is true that being loud isn't the only benchmark in a good speaker. it all depends on what you are looking for. Whether you want nice crisp sound, or distorted sound. Also if you want a speaker that has great bass or great treble.

Really you can judge based on whatever.


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## MHSTech (Apr 28, 2006)

My guess is the SRM450


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## AVGuyAndy (Apr 28, 2006)

Sure, those are the wattages, but what are the efficency figures?


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## BillESC (Apr 28, 2006)

Hands down the KV2 EX 12 provided more SPL with extreme clarity and even better bass response.

We've had a dozen or more Mackie cabinets in our rental stock over the last ten years and they are wonderful speakers, however they simply don't even come close to the KV2's on any level. It's not surprising though, the two founders of KV2 Audio were the engineers that created the Fussion series for Mackie.

All four of these speakers list their max SPL within 2 dB of each other and yet the EX 12 sounds sweeter with a crispness the others don't attain.

Sound is certainly subjective and this is solely my observation.


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## RelativeMischief (May 1, 2006)

Bet you anything if you put an A weight filter on your instrument the measurements would start to get closer to one another. I realize this doesn't have much to do with a straight comparison, but it's important when measuring which one is louder to human ears.


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## Mayhem (May 2, 2006)

Interesting in that the 12" driver outdid the 15" ones. Wonder what efficiency of cabinet design has to do with it? Any reason for comparing the 12” against the 15”s and not against other 12”s?


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## BillESC (May 2, 2006)

Mayhem said:


> Interesting in that the 12" driver outdid the 15" ones. Wonder what efficiency of cabinet design has to do with it? Any reason for comparing the 12” against the 15”s and not against other 12”s?



The SRM 450 is a 12". The client had brought his Yorkville NX 750 to compare it to the EX 12 and we also had the SA 1521 available so we ran a bunch of comparisons.

IMHO, the EX 12 took each one walking away.


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## tenor_singer (May 2, 2006)

This goes out to all of the sound engineers out there...

For the past two years I have been fortunate enough to have a corporate sponsor for my Thespian Troupe.

During our spring musical, somehow a clipped signal was allowed to run through our set up causing damage to one of our speakers. All of our voices sounded like they were in tin cans. It was the Thursday before the show opened.

The president/owner of the company who happened to be watching our rehearsal (and her child) ran to a local Sam Ash and purchased us two new speakers that night. She got us a pair of JBL Pro-series speakers.

My question...

Our new school has several EV speakers wired into our auditeria. Is it worth it to keep these speakers or should I sell them. They are only 1 year old and in mint condition. Right now I use them for DJing dances in our auditeria.


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## Mayhem (May 2, 2006)

BillESC said:


> The SRM 450 is a 12".



Oops – should have looked online for the specs. From eyeballing the pic it looked to be a 15”.


tenor_singer said:


> ….She got us a pair of JBL Pro-series speakers.
> 
> My question...
> 
> Our new school has several EV speakers wired into our auditeria. Is it worth it to keep these speakers or should I sell them. They are only 1 year old and in mint condition. Right now I use them for DJing dances in our auditeria.



What would be your reason for selling them?

If they are working fine I would keep them. I guess I don’t understand the reason for your question. Is it that these speakers are not needed because the JBL’s can cover your requirements sufficiently, or is it that you would prefer to have all the same speakers throughout?


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## AVGuyAndy (May 2, 2006)

Exactly what EV speakers? I can't think of anything in EV's current speaker line that I would want to get rid of.


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## audioslavematt (May 2, 2006)

tenor_singer said:


> Our new school has several EV speakers wired into our auditeria. Is it worth it to keep these speakers or should I sell them. They are only 1 year old and in mint condition. Right now I use them for DJing dances in our auditeria.



What type of speakers?


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## cutlunch (May 3, 2006)

tenor_singer said:


> This goes out to all of the sound engineers out there...
> 
> Our new school has several EV speakers wired into our auditeria. Is it worth it to keep these speakers or should I sell them. They are only 1 year old and in mint condition. Right now I use them for DJing dances in our auditeria.



Donald I agree with the other posts that I wouldn't sell them. I would get the damaged speaker replaced. I would use the EV's for general use such as your DJ'ing and keep the JBL's for live vocal work, if the JBL sound better. That is after listening tests prove which speaker is best for vocal work.

As you have already proven one set of speakers got damaged in less than a year so you need a second set as spares. Also you may not be lucky enough to have such a kind person next time to buy new speakers. Also the school may not be to happy if you sell the EV's then the JBL's fail and you need more speakers.

Did you find the source of the clipping? I thought you had a processor unit in your system, you may wan't the installation company to check the settings on it in case there is someway of preventing further clipping.


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## tenor_singer (May 5, 2006)

Mayhem said:


> Oops – should have looked online for the specs. From eyeballing the pic it looked to be a 15”.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It is more of an issue of storage. That is the only reason why. I'll be honest... our school is keeping half of its old middle school building for storage. I am hoping that they will give me an old classroom in there for storage. AS it is, I only have one 600 square foot room for storing tech, set pieces, costumes, props, etc....


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## tenor_singer (May 5, 2006)

I think that my original question was misunderstood. I am looking at selling the JBL speakers that are not part of our new auditeria. The EV's came with the auditeria and are great. The JBL's, which are only a year older than the new facility, are very large and take up a lot of our storage that is, unfortunately, at a permium right now.

All of the polls that I read in here have mentioned nothing about that brand and I was wondering whether or not it was worth using up what little space I currently have storing them or if I should try to sell them and use that money for other tech equipment that didn't necessarily come with the new building.

I guess, in a round about way, I was looking for opinions on the JBL brand name.


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## AVGuyAndy (May 5, 2006)

JBL is a great brand...what are the models of the speakers?


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## tenor_singer (May 5, 2006)

cutlunch said:


> Donald I agree with the other posts that I wouldn't sell them. I would get the damaged speaker replaced. I would use the EV's for general use such as your DJ'ing and keep the JBL's for live vocal work, if the JBL sound better. That is after listening tests prove which speaker is best for vocal work.
> 
> As you have already proven one set of speakers got damaged in less than a year so you need a second set as spares. Also you may not be lucky enough to have such a kind person next time to buy new speakers. Also the school may not be to happy if you sell the EV's then the JBL's fail and you need more speakers.
> 
> Did you find the source of the clipping? I thought you had a processor unit in your system, you may wan't the installation company to check the settings on it in case there is someway of preventing further clipping.



In our new facility we do have a processor. We haven't clipped since moving in (unless we got careless with our monitor mixes and weren't paying attention... which is extremely rare with our current TD).

In our old facility we didn't have a processor... we relied on a feedback destroyer and what little savy we had. Unfortunately we also had to set up sound, FOH lighting, etc. in an hour and a half to two hours prior to any tech rehearsal and show... as well as tear down everything after each tech rehearsal and show. Because of the rush, sometimes gain structures were a tad high. This was the source of our clipping. 

I'll also admit... the other big cause of our clipping over the past several years was my lack of knowledge about sound (which, thanks to all of the brilliant people here, is growing). Since I didn't really know what to look for we clipped a lot until I read a couple of books, paid for a lot of speaker repair and joined this forum. My students, coincidently, also did not know what to look for :S.

Now any clipping that happens is my fault because I haven't properly trained the TD to look for it and set things up to keep it from happening. It is only happening now in our monitor mix as we're still a tad inexperienced with mixing monitors with FOH (we couldn't afford monitors at our old school).

My new facility is wired mono. Our main FOH speaker is a very large EV wedge (I wish I had the specs memorized... I'll look it up and post later). The rest of the space is filled with six (3 per side) small EV speakers (again... don't really know the specs). They are set up, though, to fill in any space that the FOH doesn't reach. They also gave me two new monitor speakers (EV) which I use in conjunction with a pair of older EV SX-100's (the ones that originally were damaged leading to the purchase of the JBL's). I run one mix in parallel as wing fill. and the other mix as the pit/instrument mix. I bust out the JBL's whenever I do a DJ gig for the school.


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## bryanr74 (May 6, 2006)

Being a huge Meyer fan. (That is all I use and allow on my show sites.) I really like the KV2 audio stuff. I believe it is by far the best sounding box on the market next to Meyer and Nexo.

I have even heard of a few places tearing down Meyer Milo lines for some KV2 ES 1.0. I don't know that I would go that far - since Meyer is a much better product - but for the price - KV2 blows the competion in it's price range away - HANDS Down.

I don't particularly like the power pack for the KV2 gear - but I have gotten use to it - over the past couple years.


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## bryanr74 (May 6, 2006)

I personally don't like JBL. In fact I actually hate them - but I also run Meyer sound and prefer them by far. Of course Meyer is extremely pricey for most people.

I would personally highly recommend your looking into buying KV2 audio instead of anything else in that price range. 

Take care


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## Chris15 (May 6, 2006)

It is my understanding that the opinion being sought on the JBL was whether or not to sell a set that are currently taking up storage space, but without looking to replace them. Most people on here are in school environments and thus are generally very limited, so you need to bear this in mind when giving advice.


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## bryanr74 (May 6, 2006)

Chris15 said:


> It is my understanding that the opinion being sought on the JBL was whether or not to sell a set that are currently taking up storage space, but without looking to replace them. Most people on here are in school environments and thus are generally very limited, so you need to bear this in mind when giving advice.




I did bear that in mind - that is why I recommended looking at the KV2 audio. I never recommended Meyer.

Secondly - I also gave my opinion about JBL - therefore leaving it to be understood that I would sell them. So - since I didn't really make it all that clear. I WOULD SELL the JBL speakers...unless they are going to be soley in storage for an emergency situation. If you are using them off and on for a DJ environment - as was stated - I would replace them with KV2 gear.


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## Foxinabox10 (May 6, 2006)

bryanr74 said:


> I did bear that in mind - that is why I recommended looking at the KV2 audio. I never recommended Meyer.
> 
> Secondly - I also gave my opinion about JBL - therefore leaving it to be understood that I would sell them. So - since I didn't really make it all that clear. I WOULD SELL the JBL speakers...unless they are going to be soley in storage for an emergency situation. If you are using them off and on for a DJ environment - as was stated - I would replace them with KV2 gear.



Replacing rarely used gear for new gear is not very cost-effective. I would hold on to them, because even if you do sell them, I don't think the price will out weigh having them as a back up.


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## cutlunch (May 7, 2006)

Donald one question about selling the JBL's ? Have you asked the sponsor who brought them for you? They may be happy for them to be sold or may not. If you don't have the room to store them maybe the sponsor can. Just a thought.


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## tenor_singer (May 8, 2006)

cutlunch said:


> Donald one question about selling the JBL's ? Have you asked the sponsor who brought them for you? They may be happy for them to be sold or may not. If you don't have the room to store them maybe the sponsor can. Just a thought.



I thought of that as well as her daughter is going to college next year for tech theater. I have been impressed with the speakers thus far.


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