Most Accurate FRFR Powered Cab...?

WERNER1

Inspired
I know there are tons of threads that are similar to what I'm asking, and trust me, I've been reading a BUNCH.. .. BUT...

My Needs fairly Simple - For home Patch building so that things translate well to FOH and IEM systems where I play.

I know a lot of guys talk about the different powered cabs and whether or not they sound like an Amp in the Room or not,.. That is not really my concern here, it is much more important for me to have the sounds that I program at home sound the same when I run direct FOH and use my IEM's (We have stellar systems for this..) - I also understand about programming at gigging levels as well...

So having said that, a couple that keep popping up are the Atomic and the Xitone - Which one is actually the "Best" in terms of accurate sound recreation in a FRFR sense (Or is there another I'm over looking?)

Thanks in advance,
Rick
 
CLR or Xitone are great solutions with the CLR probably being the flattest of the two with respect to the response. Both of those solutions are designed to be used in a live situation first and not so much as a critical listing tool but the CLR would be my first choice for that!

Personally I would be looking at my IEM's and using those to build my presets with if that is what you are monitoring with. I'm not an EMI user so I'm probably not the best guy to be giving advice on the subject but I have used them in the past.

I found myself having to build my presets using them as the monitor and my presets sounded much better, more balanced over all.
 
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Ok thanks,.. you're correct, I need to start doing monitoring and Patch development using my in-ears and head phones.. .. I will still pick up a CLR or XiTone just in case I do some venues where I need live monitoring and I can use as a secondary monitoring/testing at home during development ;)
 
I don't have an answer to your question, beyond this: it probably doesn't matter.

Spending a lot of time trying to get 'flat' stage volume doesn't do much good since 'flat' FOH is pretty much unheard-of.

I can say that products designed for sound reinforcement (which don't include your examples) are definitely not going to be flat. They may well sound good, but not flat. I've used RCF NX12-SMAs for a long time; they're obviously not flat, but they sound good.

I picked up a pair of NX15-SMAs a couple weeks ago, and it's amazing how different they are. So obviously they are EQd to have a specific sound, not a flat sound.
 
I've been using Atomic CLR's at home. I have a CLR MKII neo and CLR MKI non neo running in stereo in an acoustically treated room.
They are flat, sound great at low levels and are absolutely capable of clean, high spl output. I think the key for home use is spending time on treating your room - acoustic panels, etc. The most expensive / flat studio monitors are going to sound like crap in a room with terrible acoustics. I'm sure many negative reviews of the current FRFR offerings are due in part to this. I would think presets dialed in on a high quality FRFR solution in a correctly treated room should translate well to FOH, with typical EQ for the space.
I had the RCF NX12-SMA as well, solid speaker, but I moved on. Would like to try Xitone and Matrix someday - but for now I'm completely happy with the CLRs.
 
WERNER1- i'm looking for the same thing and a few people suggested that i look into a good quality pair of studio reference monitors rather than a FRFR enclosure. this way you can tweak your patches at a reasonable volume and it doesn't really matter if your room is untreated if you go with some smaller monitors (5.5" monitors for example). the neumann KH 120 monitors are highly regarded and recommended since they are fairly flat EQ-wise
 
There is very little in the way of flat IEMs...
Which will make it a challenge. Most are "tuned" for specific use cases, so either the mids are bumped for guitarists/vocalists or the bass is bumped for the low-end brethren.

Kind of frustrating...
 
From everything I've read on the subject, and it's an ocd amount, I would be going with the Xitone if I was in the market. I've got the asm12s and they sound great but are not the flattest and are heavy. CLR's might be flatter but the customer service seems to be better in the xitones.
 
If nothing else, it's good you're thinking about it before buying. I created extensive presets for an entire album based on my CLR in our practice space then in our first rehearsal using Shure SE215 IEMs the guitar sounded terrible - as in they sounded like they had been poorly dialed in on an old Boss GT-8. Sounded killer in the CLRs, and other music sounded great in the SE215s. I suspect the room had a lot to do with it - but the bottom line is, the way tones translate between different systems definitely warrants attention before dropping any reasonable amount of cash.
 
How do you like your 64ears? Looked at those quite a bit (as well as Ultimate, Alclair, etc) but it's a little unnerving buying something for that much money that you can't try out and you can't really resell.
They are very nice... But IEMs are a very different experience than traditional monitoring. But if you can get good sounds from headphones then you'll probably love it.
 
They are very nice... But IEMs are a very different experience than traditional monitoring. But if you can get good sounds from headphones then you'll probably love it.
Yeah, I have loved everything about IEMs with the exception of the guitar tone. I know good guitar tone through IEMs is perfectly attainable, I just haven't found a way to attain it yet without it being at the expense of my tone through the CLRs. A little reluctant to redial all my patches to the SE215s to see if they magically work on the CLRs, especially when the same approach but backwards already didn't work. The artist rep with 64ears has been telling me it's a limitation of the SE215s, but that's hard to accept as reference mixes have sounded great through the SE215s. I'm in quite a quandary.
 
Yeah, I have loved everything about IEMs with the exception of the guitar tone. I know good guitar tone through IEMs is perfectly attainable, I just haven't found a way to attain it yet without it being at the expense of my tone through the CLRs. A little reluctant to redial all my patches to the SE215s to see if they magically work on the CLRs, especially when the same approach but backwards already didn't work. The artist rep with 64ears has been telling me it's a limitation of the SE215s, but that's hard to accept as reference mixes have sounded great through the SE215s. I'm in quite a quandary.
That's where I am even with the high quality IEMs... I think it is exacerbated by the wireless. I'm close to happy if I run the IEMs directly (wired) from the Axe Fx but there is a loss of sound quality with the Audio Technica M3L wireless in the chain.

I did a lot of testing and comparing with gain staging, etc, and determined it's just the wireless as the sound is very close coming out the wired headphone jack on the transmitter.
 
That's where I am even with the high quality IEMs... I think it is exacerbated by the wireless. I'm close to happy if I run the IEMs directly (wired) from the Axe Fx but there is a loss of sound quality with the Audio Technica M3L wireless in the chain.

I did a lot of testing and comparing with gain staging, etc, and determined it's just the wireless as the sound is very close coming out the wired headphone jack on the transmitter.
I like to think I didn't have such a glaring omission as to not test the IEMs directly wired, but after being so put off by the situation I haven't touched them in a few months now, and I think it's entirely possible I didn't rule out the wireless (Shure PSM900). I'm sure it plays a significant role - I'm now curious to go back and see if it's the main culprit or not.
 
I like to think I didn't have such a glaring omission as to not test the IEMs directly wired, but after being so put off by the situation I haven't touched them in a few months now, and I think it's entirely possible I didn't rule out the wireless (Shure PSM900). I'm sure it plays a significant role - I'm now curious to go back and see if it's the main culprit or not.
Yeah, don't be surprised :)

I tested in this sequence:

  1. Wired from AxeFx headphone out - sounds fine
  2. Wired from DL32R (mixer) headphone out - sounds almost identical to AxeFx
  3. Wired from AT M3L headphone out - still sounds pretty much the same
  4. Wireless from AT M3L - sounds quality ok but not the same
I also tried things such as increasing/decreasing the pad selection for input into the wireless transmitter, as well as adjusting pad and the limiter in the wireless receiver because others had given me clues that those things might help.

If I remember right, the pad on the transmitter only seemed to affect the headphone output on the transmitter not the wireless. Choices are 0db, -10db and -20db.

The biggest benefit I got on the wireless signal was by disabling the limiter, which I did only for a short controlled test as this is a recipe for hearing loss disaster. I think I did end up reducing the setting on the limiter by 1 - choices in limiting are 3,2,1,0 (off). Note that the manual says literally "you should never change these settings"... which seems kind of dumb, but I am sure are CYA for Audio Technica.

I'm a bit interested in a fully digital wireless such as the MiPro 909... but since it seems they can only be ordered direct and I am not thrilled with my current $600 solution, I am not sure I want to drop another $600 on a "maybe" :(
 
I still haven't came to a decision on this all though I was leaning towards the CLR for the most part... I think I like the options of dialing it in for however it's sitting (On the floor as a wedge, on a stand... that sort of thing..)

But currently I'm using my IEM's to dial in presets at home and I find that they translate pretty well into our FOH and IEM monitoring system. It seems that I'm still losing a little bit of warmth and bottom end when I get to the Church,.. I frequently find myself dialing in a bit more Bass and Depth and maybe backing off some of the Treble and Presence (Which I typically don't have very high any way..)

But back the FRFR thing... I still need one for those rare opportunities where I'll play live and need it as my on stage amp / monitor.

I haven't seen much new info out there in regards to these two options, so I'm wondering if anything has changed on this?
 
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