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[Dave Garoutte]

Love my RCF NX10 SMA and NX12 SMA powered monitors.  Talk to mr Pyle.

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

We had a small accident with our truck last week. a guy in a pickup truck tried to pass us on an icy road, lost control, hit the back of my truck and threw us in quite a bit of a spin back & forth. Got it back under control and discovered the rails inside the box had ripped off the wall and quite a bit of gear flew around.

We lost 9 of the 10 RCF ART500a speakers. The LS9/32 is trashed. Our wireless rack of 10 AT3000 wireless systems is questionable and several road cases are broken....

Now I am working with the insurance co...

I need some suggestions for replacements:

Monitors - 10 - 15 x 2 self powered
Mixer - replace the LS9/32
Wireless - What to replace the AT3000 series.

Throw me a few suggestions if you were doing this what would you get.

Thanks much

Bob Cap

Hey Bob - sorry you had the accident, but glad it was only loss of property.  We still have a bunch of ice leftover from the Dec 27th rain.

RE gear - I like Shure QLX-D wireless and A&H mixers. SQ5, 6, or 7 would be the top of my list.  The X32/M32 series while popular is nearing end of cycle, and is outclassed both in features and sound quality by the A&H gear. 

There are lots of good wedges.  I like and use Yamaha DXR and JBL SRX812p.  RE powered vs passive - powered wedges sound better per $ than passive wedges, are better protected, and if there is a failure, you replace both amp and speaker in one shot with a spare.  If an amp in a rack dies, that may or may not be easier to recover from depending on how your system is setup.  If you're like me, powered speakers get used as wedges on one show, then mains or fills on another show.  Unless something radically changes, I will never use passive utility speakers again.

[Mike Monte]

Can't resist my usual refrain.  Buy the same things you can rent more of quickly and easily.  Unless you're an entirely stand alone operation in an isolated market you will reap benefits from being able to get more wedges / speakers / amps, whatever from your competitors if you have similar inventories.  A bit less so with consoles UNLESS you use digital stage boxes then the same factors come into play.  Your inventory of course becomes much more re-rentable as well.

Other than that why do you want powered wedges?  It means twice as many cables on the stage, it means more weight in the boxes that get moved the most without wheels, it means a hundred plus components to fail in the box rather than five or ten.  I get powered boxes for subs and maybe flown speakers where cable length and low impedance loads start to become an issue but not wedges.

Maybe it's an age thing, but I am a big fan of passive monitors.....why?
- my passive monitors sound excellent - for everything that I do
- less wires on the stage (I do carry liability insurance - but have yet to file a claim - anything I can do to keep it that way, I'll do)
- outdoor performances in inclement weather: I bag them - no heat issues
I do have a couple of QSC K's that I can use in a pinch if an artist asks for one more monitor "over there" (who knows where "over there" can be..)

The only thing that I see with going the passive route is that "active wedges" are in vogue these days....  If you want your inventory to be available for cross-rentals you may be best to go with what your local/regional sound guys use.  Fortunately the local companies in my area still inventory passives along with actives.

[Rob Spence]

+1 on the SQ. I have an LS9-32 and I like all the faders for festivals. An SQ7 would be my go to though with the flexibility of laying out the surface, use of DCAs and matrix, an SQ6 would work. I have an SQ5 and love it.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[Bob Cap]

Better road cases...just sayin lol

Hell yes. I thought R N R Were good enough...

[Geert Friedhof]

I would spend my money on the other, longterm items, and that's why i recommend the M32: cheap, proven, fairly rider friendly, sounds better than the ls9 and will be around for another couple of years. You get a few years to save for a higher end or some new console. The SQ series would not be my choice for several reasons, like interface, remote software and acceptance. I think there will be some competitive new consoles on the horizon. The nx12-sma is a great monitor.

[Bob Cap]

We switched over to the powered RCF boxes many years ago and have not had a problem. We have never had a box die during a performance since we switched over. I started in the game in 1971 for I have gone through many different bi-amped monitor rigs. The self powered boxes came up as the most flexible solution for us.

As far as the mixer goes...I have not looked back since we were able to dump our PM4000-48. Dumped the M7's because we had touchscreen problems. The LS9/32's have worked well. Mostly accepted with the acts we work with. I usually mix the shows we do and I do that with an iPad. But I need to have something for visiting BE's.

The AT3000's have worked well for us. No issues.

Yes, we are very fortunate that someone was looking out for us. I would hate to think what would have happened if I would have hit dry pavement while going sideways down the highway. Or another oncoming vehicle. Or the ditch. But the tie down rails in the box truck came loose and broke. Hence the gear flew around before I was able to stop.

Another day in the life of a soundguy... 

[Craig Hauber]

We had a small accident with our truck last week. a guy in a pickup truck tried to pass us on an icy road, lost control, hit the back of my truck and threw us in quite a bit of a spin back & forth. Got it back under control and discovered the rails inside the box had ripped off the wall and quite a bit of gear flew around.

We lost 9 of the 10 RCF ART500a speakers. The LS9/32 is trashed. Our wireless rack of 10 AT3000 wireless systems is questionable and several road cases are broken....

Now I am working with the insurance co...

I need some suggestions for replacements:

Monitors - 10 - 15 x 2 self powered
Mixer - replace the LS9/32
Wireless - What to replace the AT3000 series.

Throw me a few suggestions if you were doing this what would you get.

Thanks much

Bob Cap

Had some of those plastic RCF's years ago.  Cabinets got dropped and cracked but components were still OK so I moved them to a custom built birch-ply trap cabinet  and they still work to this day.  Extracted the T-S parameters of the driver using a woofer tester and ported them optimally, I personally think they sounded better but it was subtle.  The overall look was far superior though.
So don't dumpster any undamaged parts, they were fairly high quality.

Also as far as "big heavy amp rack to lug around"  Things have changed in that world quite considerably.  4U and less than 75lbs can get you 8 biamped mixes with case and all the DSP and Dante needed.  If you jump to 8U and a bit more weight the price gets much lower. 
Either way it's not a rack of MA3600's anymore.

[Michael Storey]

LS9 > M32
Art500 > NX32, TT25-cxa
AT3000 > QLXD

This pretty much sums it up IMO. There are newer, shinier consoles available (A&H SQ series) but it's hard to beat the ubiquity of the X32/M32 platform. Guest engineers will almost certainly be familiar with it, and likely have a file for it.

As for wedges, if this is a B/C level rig i'd take a look at the Turbosound TFX series of powered coax wedges. They're hard to beat considering the recent price drop. 

[Jonathan Hiemberg]

Love my RCF NX10 SMA and NX12 SMA powered monitors.  Talk to mr Pyle.

Ditto. These are fantastic. They also have PowerCon through/out connectors so you can daisy chain a few together very cleanly.