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[Brad Weber]

That being said, there is more to a speaker than SPL..... like the obvious ..... how does it sound   .... and the not so obvious .... how does it sound at different output levels.

Sound quality is subjective and thus not a practical basis for a standardized test, however it has been suggested by several people to base maximum power, or actually maximum voltage, ratings for passive speakers and maximum output for powered speakers on a speaker exhibiting any readily audible variation, say maybe a 3dB variation, in response at any frequency.  Run a speaker at a level for a period of time while continually looking at the response, then step up the level do that again, repeat until you see any significant variation in response.  The highest level obtained without exceeding the allowed frequency response deviation or any failure is then reported as the maximum rating.


A practical challenge in getting such an approach adopted is that the numbers obtained this way may be considerably lower for many speakers and thus they could appear to compare poorly to speakers tested using other approaches.  Similarly, it would be difficult to compare ratings from this test approach to that of others.

[Scott Bolt]

I agree that it is difficult to determine what a "good" sounding box sounds like.  It has been my experience that the current batch of MI powered speakers from the various OEM's are in the "good enough" league..... that is to say that if you play for small to medium venues, the audience would not be able to tell the difference between the QSC KW122's over subs and Meyer UPA1's over subs...... even if most of us here could.

The MI speakers I am speaking of all fall in the range of 1K to 2K for a pair (of tops).

In contrast, placing a pair of Behringer EUROLIVE's on top would almost guarantee that the audience would think that the band didn't really sound that good .... even if they were very talented.

IMHO, there is diminishing returns in FOH speakers beyond the JBL PRX class of tops.  Most bands would be better off getting better vocal equipment (or a better singer ) than doubling their budget on FOH speakers.  An investment in IEM's for instance would make a huge improvement.

[ProSoundWeb Community]