From james_eaton@btopenworld.com Wed Sep 04 00:49:25 2002
Subject:JBL EON 15 G2 vs Mackie SRM450

Has anyone else done an A-B on these two speakers?

I heard them yesterday using some funk that had female vocals,
strings, piano, synth and 5 string bass which stretched the two of
them.

What I heard was two very different speakers.

Mackie - very clean top end, mid range and low-mids. Seems like
this phase compensation stuff they do works really well. However,
no real impact in the bass department below about 60Hz.

JBL - struggled with top end above 10kHz (some sibilence on the
vocals), an apparent dip in the LF response around 100Hz when
compared to the Mackie, but big bass response, handling the 5 string
really well from all angles.

My cynical view would be that it appears as though Mackie has
boosted the 100Hz area to cover for the lack of bottom. Turning up
the mixer at 50Hz showed up the Mackie with the cone flapping about
quite badly whilst the JBL handled this with no problems.

Mackie doesn't publish a frequency response on their website whilst
JBL do, which makes it difficult to make a real comparison, or
establish whether there is some funny stuff going on around 100Hz.

Even more confusing was how different the speakers sounded on
different CD tracks.

My guess would be that for organ tone which doesn't have a lot going
on above 6kHz, the EON wins. For piano and strings there is no
clear winner, but I would go for the EON since I wouldn't have to
bother with a sub-woofer.

The archives suggest that the SRM450 is the more popular choice, but
then a lot of the advocators do not play bass so wouldn't need the
bottom end below 50Hz.

Would very much appreciate peoples thoughts here? In particular how
the EON copes with piano/strings as well as organ.

James

PS: In terms of doing a survey of all the best PA/keyboard amps gear
around I don't think the Barbetta is available in the UK so I can't
make a comparison, also, when I heard the Roland KC-500, it sounded
pretty harsh, which is supported by reviews on Harmony Central so
that leaves me with these two speakers...