Quick FRFR Shootout - JBL PRX612M vs RCF ART 312-A

Lution

Lution

Inspired
I've owned the RCF for a little over a month. I really like it. It seems very accurate to me and is very loud. It also has a nice hi-fi character to it. Clean and smooth sounding. I really do like this cab, but I'm looking at some of the other wood cabs just to make sure I'm not missing out on something.

I received my JBL yesterday and have put both through their paces last night and through the day today.

~NOTE~ I noticed last night that the JBL was slightly damaged either in shipping or somewhere else. One of the corners on the bottom of the speaker cab took a blow or a drop and cracked the line-x finish and went all the way into the wood cab. So this one was going back to where I bought it regardless of the outcome. The box and cushioning that the JBL comes in is VERY minimal. I think due to their Greenedge label on these speakers. The only cushioning on both the top and the bottom inside the box is a 3-ply sheet of cardboard. So, if you guys are looking at buying one of these, inspect your speaker all-around and perhaps try to buy locally.

Right off the bat, I noticed that the JBL sounded warmer than the RCF. I also noticed that the JBL speaker broke up earlier than the RCF so the RCF could actually handle more SPL than the JBL. The JBL was a bit harsher on the high-end. The RCF was smoother on the high end. As I switched to one of my Uberschall patches and turned them both up, the JBL sound broke apart sooner and flubbed out and the RCF stayed together further up on the volume. Other folks have commented on the monitor angle of the JBL. It is about at 30 degrees or so. Not sure what JBL was thinking when they designed it that way. I guess my knees aren't complaining. . . they can hear it just fine. My ears, however had to be about 6-8 feet away from the monitor before they were hearing the whole sound.

JBL PRX612M

Pros:
Warm sounding and pretty well balanced sound - nice wood cab
Quiet
Good pricepoint for a wood cab
Light and easy to carry

Cons:
A bit harsh on the top end - nothing that a little EQing couldn't fix
Breaks up/flubs out fairly soon on the SPL level - it is loud at that point
Flimsy shipping carton - be careful to inspect your speaker if you buy these.
Monitor angle is about 30 degrees.

RCF ART 312-A

Pros:
Well balanced and fairly accurate
Hi-fi sounding - can be a good and a bad thing
Able to handle a very high SPL before speaker break-up and/or Flubbing out
Very affordably priced
Fairly easy to carry. Heavier than the JBL, but still reasonably weighted

Cons:
Not as warm as the JBL - Plastic Cab
Hi-fi sounding - can be a good or a bad thing
Had a just a touch more hiss than the JBL. Not really a bad thing, that JBL was very quiet


The winner, in my opinion, the RCF.

But I'll be ordering the Mackie HD1221 next. Something about the warmth I experienced with the JBL tells me that a wood cab might be the sound I'm personally after. I wish I could put the guts of my RCF into a wood cab. ;) Others' mileages may vary, of course. We're all are on this trip together and getting our own sounds as we go.

Thanks

-Robbie
 
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I will be looking forward to hearing about your experience with the Mackie HD1221. I'd love to hear your personal experience with it! Thanks for the shootout with these two, it really helps!
 
Mackie is ordered. Hopefully will be here Thur or Friday. I must admit, I was a bit apprehensive about ordering this due to the talk out there on the dj forums about high failure rates.

Then I found this comment on the Sweetwater forum:

Originally Posted by Jeff Barnett
Wow, the internet is a scary place. So much misinformation...

The truth is that the actual 12-month failure rate of Mackie speakers is pretty low - around 2%, which is slightly below the average of 3% we see across all powered speaker manufacturers. When we used to be a Behringer dealer, their average failure rate was roughly 5 times that, but failure rates were not the only reason we chose to part ways with them. The HD line is still pretty new, so we don't have a ton of history with it yet, but there's no reason to think failure rates will be any higher on those than previous generations of Mackie speakers. There is only one category of Mackie products I can think of (and it's not speakers) that had higher-than-average failure rates, and they don't manufacturer any products in that category any more.

It is true that Mackie, Tapco, and EAW are all just brand names for the same company (along with Crate, Alvarez, Ampeg, and a few others). It is true that everything with the Mackie brand name is built in Asia, but that's true of almost every product in the pro audio world. I can't think of any of Mackie's direct competitors that manufacture a majority of their products in the USA. In comparison to most manufacturers, Mackie / Loud has been a great partner and I never hesitate to sell their products. I know that in the relatively rare event that something goes wrong, we can take care of it, and Mackie never fails to honor their warranty. Compared to my experience with Behringer, they have been exceptional beyond words.

It's sad to me to see a company that actually builds good products compared a company like Behringer. They are in completely different leagues. That's not to say I've never had issues with Mackie products, just that of the thousands I have sold, I've never seen anything get as out of hand as the poster on the forum described. There's no way we would allow a speaker to be repaired three times here. If we repair it once and it fails again, we would replace it, not repair it.

And how did a single shop manage to receive an entire shipment of defective speakers? Even if the failure rate was twenty times what we've measured it to be, the chance of getting an entire shipment of bad subwoofers is still astronomically small. And after they got a report of one bad sub, why would they continue to sell them to customers without testing them first? There's got to be more to that story, and at the very least it sounds to me as if the reseller dropped the ball.

My advice to the poster would be whatever you end up buying, be it Mackie, Behringer, or something else, don't buy it from a reseller that allows things like that to happen. They should be your advocate, and want your gear to work as badly as you want it to. A third warranty repair on a speaker is absolutely unforgivable in my book.

Jeff Barnett
Sweetwater Senior Sales Engineer/ Group Leader
Avid Venue, Icon DCommand, DControl Specialist

800.222.4700, x 1283 - Office M-F
260.255.5505 - Cell or text 24/7
jeff_barnett@sweetwater.com

• Exclusive 2-year parts and labor warranty
• Technical support on everything you buy
• Voted best customer service and best sales staff

So, we'll see how it goes. :)
 
Awesome! Yeah, I've heard a lot of not so great things about the HD series, but really, all I heard about was the HD1531, so given that the HD1221 is newer (I believe), I'm hoping it'll be awesome. I'm pretty much between that and the EV ELX112P, right now!
 
Lution said:
Originally Posted by Jeff Barnett
Wow, the internet is a scary place. So much misinformation...
Click to expand...

I tend to agree with this for the most part. I would even question the validity of all these "shoot-outs" everyone posts about. I guess they are somewhat helpful but personally I feel most of these fr systems in this price range are probably pretty decent. I think you could probably take any one of them and eq it to sound good. I've decided just to pick one and go with it. I have a pair of 312a's coming fedex tomorrow actually. Can't wait! :)
 
Just a quick update. I had to return the Mackie. It lost out to the RCF. I found the Mackie to be lacking in midrange clarity. It was warm sounding and pretty darn loud, but the RCF kicked its butt in the clarity and flat response catagory.

This RCF is a really good bang for the buck speaker. The Italians sure know that they're doing.

I think I'm going to also give power amp/guitar cab a try.
 
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