Phil Starr

This is completely the point, watts are not subjective random nebulous things. they can be measured there is proof. So if a manufacturer lies there is an objective way of catching them out. Quite rightly there are laws against deliberate deception for financial gain across Europe, America and most of the world. Unfortunately not all our governments support trading standards enforcement as they should but that is down to the demands we put upon them as consumers and voters. Put your hands up those of you who support fraud. There are minor bickerings of course. An amp may supply 500w but only for a few seconds and another may do so all day, It may supply full power at 1% distortion or 3% distortion and maybe the power is rolled off at 50Hz in one amp and 20Hz in another but all of this is covered in regulations in different countries and only accounts for small variations in rated power. It is also true that few of us use all the power available to us from our amps and 250W is a lot of power which is enough for most of us. It's also true that some people like to play Top Trumps with power ratings. Plenty of people with cars with fourwheel drive and sport settings on their suspension never go near a puddle or racetrack but if they are being charged for something that says it does 0-60 in 5secs or 65mpg it should be able to achieve those claims in verifiable repeatable tests. Why would bass players or musicians exclusively agree to lower standards than the rest of the population. If an amp manufacturer makes a claim about their amp it should be provable and their responsibility to prove it. If they want to sell an amp with the claim 'loud enough' that's fine, a brave marketing strategy but up to them. The big problem is that if we let a few companies get away with it then others are forced to follow their deciepts or lose customers. It isn't just bass amps of course, we currently allow drugs companies to bury research which does not show the effectiveness of their products or identifies possible side effects. We know that it wasn't just VW who were fiddling their emissions data. Bass amps may be small beer in comparison but it is something we are all competent in and major consumers of. It's kind of important to call out this sort of behaviour as it happens. I'm perfectly happy for anyone to say a TC amp is loud enough or that the Bugera is great value for money, I can't for the life of me understand why some people are arguing that fraud is a good thing.

A ported cab works as a resonator. A Helmholtz resonator to be precise. Blow across the mouth of a bottle and it makes a note, half fill it with water and it'll make a higher note, find another bottle the same size with a different size neck and it will make a different note again. The air in the neck is bouncing on the air in the bottle and that is what makes the noise. In a ported cab the air in the port bounces on the air in the cab at the resonant frequency. At that frequency the port will make a sound, above that frequency the air won't move and the port won't do much and below that frequency the port is just a hole letting air in and out. The trick is to tune the cab so that it gives a little boost in output just as the speaker is starting to fade in it's bass so you get a bit of 'free extra bass' just as the speaker needs it. (a little more complex than this of course but this is the basic idea) Another advantage of all that resonance is that it creates a back pressure on the cone and stops it moving much so it won't move into the distortion and damage area as easily. In the case of your speaker it was almost certainly tuned too high, so you got the bass boost in the wrong place, lot's of uncontrolled extra high bass which you heard. Below that the hole meant the air was passing through the hole and that is why it was distorting and the cone was flapping around.

I'm going to defend @Al Krow but then I'm out too, there are a couple of people here who have lost the plot a little and think by constantly repeating the same argument they can somehow 'win'. First of all I don't think Behringer can justify the 2000W claim even as a 'peak' figure. In the days of Class A/B we all knew that amps were absolutely limited by the maximum voltage the power supply could provide. The rms voltage was based on a mathematical calculation of the equivalent continuous power an amp would provide if it were supplying a continuous current. The calculation is called Root Mean Square and involves the square root of 2 which is roughly 1.414. The peak voltage an amp can swing is 1.414 times the 'average' voltage and as power is voltage squared x impedance the peak power is twice the RMS power. In practice the quoted power for amps is usually measured at a certain distortion level over a standard period of time. If you go back to most amplifier ads you'll see that almost all will say something like 500W continuous and 1000W peak and the peak figure is always double the continuous or RMS figure. Behringer are claiming more than double the power their amps make, whether you take the 500W or the unsubstantiated 800w figure. I think this is a deliberate attempt to deceive their customers. Since this is the sort of starter amp sold to less experienced and younger people I think it is dishonest, exploitative and possibly illegal. Just effectively saying 'we don't measure our amps in this way' is disingenuous and probably untrue. Until recently their manuals were refreshingly honest and the handbooks gave accurate continuous figures, they now seem to have abandoned that practice and it is not possible to know what power the Beyron produces from anything Behringer/Music Group publish. I'm not sure what point a couple of our members are trying to make, that it's OK to lie and deceive. That there should be no consumer protection.

I was largely sticking to one point for clarity. I don't know exactly where this drummer puts his 'back line' but if it's behind the kick mic it's just daft, but the solution as you pointed out is to let peace reign and to talk things through. At the very least the drums should go through the PA. I personally like the sound of a good kit way better than any miked through the PA drum sound. I also like to keep it simple and would rarely mic up a kit unless I really had to, but my current drummer who is also a pro sound engineer likes his processed kick sound, and there have been drummers on this forum who have said they just use their kick as just a trigger and put a sampled kick sound through the PA. No accounting for taste but it can sound good done well and isn't wrong as such, just different. So yes I'd do it your way but working with a drummer who likes to always be miked up I'm learning to adjust, accept that it's his way and listen to the overall sound we achieve. I'm also asking if it's possible that if the OP is using a Fiver and has a particularly bassy eq set up to sound good at home and used unmodified at the gig. If so it seems likely that he has boosted bass in the kick drums lower resonance which is causing the problem and making the drummer think his kick can't be heard. Sort of volume war at 40-60Hz

I'm going to play devil's advocate here. You can do things like apply compression and eq to a miked kick and a drummer may be fond of that sort of tone. By and large kick is the drum you can't hear out in the audience without some sort of boost and not all drummers are shed builders. Equally anything below about 60Hz is usually an embarrassment of riches for most bass. It may be that by using a five you are encroaching upon his frequencies a little. As a band you'll sound best if you can lock in with the kick sonically as well in your timing. I suppose I'm saying be constructive. This is a sound engineers view. "A common trick to getting a unified sound between kick and bass while retaining clarity is to boost the lows on the kick (60-80Hz) cut the low mids anywhere from 150Hz to 400Hz (sometimes called the mudrange) and boost the highs at around 3000Hz. This will provide a solid low end, remove some of the mud in the midrange and accentuate the attack of the kick pedal on the drum. For the bass, we do pretty much the opposite; cut the lows where you boosted them on the kick (60-80Hz) boost the bass at around 120 – 150Hz which will provide a full bass sound (while occupying the frequency space we made by cutting the kick drum in this range), and boost the highs at around 900Hz since bass also provides information in that range as well. In short, we are emphasizing the frequencies that are important to the sound of each, while cutting the frequencies where they can conflict. Try this technique. You’ll get a full bottom with a clear thump with a defined attack in the kick and a clear, full bass."

Bill's advice is good. All usable frequency (-10dB) means Is that there is some sound you can still hear at that frequency, which is conveniently the fundamental of bottom E. Below that the sound will have fallen off enough for you to no longer really be able to detect it. In any case as Bill has said most of your sound is 2nd and third harmonic so you'll still hear the notes with a five string, just not the fundamental. There is a very tiny possibility of damage below this frequency especially with ported cabs. Subsonics which you can't hear can cause huge cone excursions which can cause speakers problems so do listen out for signs of stress. It's good practice to filter out subsonics as it reduces cone excusion without noticeably affecting the sound. Your's is a loud cab so will probably do every thing you ask of it without distress.

Looking at the Engl it's a proper bass amp, if you are running off a pre you re doubling up on controls you don't need. The Engl looks to be about £600 compare that with the Crown XLS 1002 at £250 less than half the price and just a smidgin more powerful at 700W into 8ohms bridged. that's only one example of course but you can see what you'd save by cutting out the duplication of controls. https://www.thomann.de/gb/crown_xls_1002.htm?sid=6b46c732568192769a8afadf8b00da20

The main thing is to be sure you know what you are looking for, that applies to any audition and pretty much any job interview. A new singer is probably the most disruptive thing that can happen to most bands. If they sound good the whole band sounds good and if they aren't it won't matter how well the rest of you play audiences won't enjoy what you do. On top of that voices are far less flexible than most instruments. Capo-ing a singers neck is probably illegal Is it important to you to keep your current set? If so then you really ought to put them through their paces with the whole vocal range of your songs. We've had singers who have struggled with fast articulation (lots of words in the line) some where the lower range is weaker other where top notes are the problem, you need to think about what is important to you as a band and pick out some songs which will explore this at the audition. Then you need to find out if these people will be good to have in the band, that isn't just about how charming and friendly they are, most of us can do that for an hour or so if pushed. Are they going to practice before rehearsals? That'd be one of my criteria so I'd want at least one song they are unlikely to have sung before, you'll soon see who is blagging and who is prepared. Again what is important to you? You also want to be fair to them and see them at their best. It'd be a shame to pass up on the next Freddie Mercury because you didn't let them show what they can do! Let them choose at least one song, maybe it will have to be from your set list or sung with just a simple accompaniment so the whole band don't have to learn a new song for each singer. So go through a list of things that are essential to you and things you think are desirable and make sure your audition songs will give you the chance to explore that. Also make sure the band are ready, I've gone to auditions with agreed songs to find out half the band members don't really know the songs or haven't played them for years and have done zero preparation. Good Luck

This is a fairly mainstream approach now. Class D PA amps are really relatively cheap compared with dedicated bass amps simply because they are mass produced. You can get quality amps like Crown for relatively affordable prices. Unfortunately they tend to be in 2U format but you should be able to buy something that will produce well in excess of 1000W in bridge mode for less than £300. Just check what the minimum impedance is though, they will want to see twice the impedance in bridge mode to the minimum impedance in stereo.

just at a technical level probably not, it may be the least important aspect in terms of the sound the amp makes. Any shaping of the sound will be done in the pre amp stage and the ultimate way the amp deals with power demands will depend largely upon the design of the power supply. Most modern amps can give plenty of power and at minimal distortion and the power amp stage will be designed to be flat response within the audible hearing range.

That's a good point, though it is interesting that all DSP actives don't sound the same. The other side of DSP is that there is usually a lot of other management going on. Active crossovers with bi amplified speakers are a real positive but you'll also be getting a fair amount of compression in many designs optimised to favour PA use rather than bass. My guess is that many of these things wouldn't be noticeable in a live band but I'd be interested in people's experiences.

Don't give up quite yet John. It's pretty obvious you want to discuss bass speakers not hi-fi (so called or not) Given that it is the speakers part of Bass Chat that doesn't seem too unreasonable I think all you are saying is that the other very long FRFR thread is for those who are going down the route of using PA speakers and you want to share your experience of a passive FRFR cab designed for bass only and maybe started a debate with other people going down the same route. I'll declare an interest in that I've seen your speaker being developed from my original single driver flat but not very extended frequency response design. I'd start off by asking how it has worked out, you started out pretty much just adding a simple horn and crossover but ended up with a really high quality horn and much more sophisticated crossover with a measured response which is as near as can be flat. How does it sound and does it achieve what you hoped? Will you be going back to a typical coloured bass cab any time soon?

Hi Al, it's genuinely complex isn't it? One of the complexities is that a lot of the 'information' is also advertising. For example your 'well known manufacturer' who is quoting a 15" cab running from 25-2k is probably stretching things a little. If the 15 is flat down to 25 Hz and can handle any power it will have to have a very heavy cone and a long throw, both of which would make it very inefficient. More likely it is 10-20dB down at 25 Hz so it is making some sort of sound but just not loud enough for you to hear significantly. The 1x12 may sound good with their 2x10 but if one part of their claim is improbable can you believe anything they say? A speaker that only goes to 2k wouldn't be suitable for bass on it's own. All this means is that you couldn't tell anything about how the cab would sound just from a bald 45-16k frequency response. Is that at -3dB, -10dB or some other figure. Is the response flat between those two extremes or biased towards some frequencies more than others. Add in one more factor, how we perceive sound. It is just like everything else to do with our senses, an entirely subjective experience. What we think of as bass is often about what is going on elsewhere. If I'm trying to pick out a bass line from a recording I usually cut the mids and tops rather than boost the bass. That'll make the bass line stand out much better than boosting bass 95% of the time. If your cab 2 had a bit of a mid/top end boost it would sound brighter even if the bass end was exactly the same. It might not be the 5Hz quoted difference in 'cut off' that creates the difference but what both cabs are doing in the 100-200Hz range that you are hearing. The best way of judging any cab, particularly an instrument cab is by ear. Test gear will help anyone designing a cab but you can't really drag it along to a music shop. Published figures without any indication of how they are measured aren't always a lot of use. I'm not completely cynical about manufacturers but it's a tough world for them too. If they use 'honest' rms watts and +/- 3dB frequency figures and so on then they are likely to lose sales to people who use peak figures. I'll get back to you on what in principle might be the difference you'd hear if the figures were independently measured and so could be compared, that's another long story.

Behringer themselves claim to use Midas pre's in their XR18, they could be different designs of course or built with higher spec components or even offering different after sales service standards, a 10 year guarantee would be worth the difference in price especially for fully pro use. Behringer themselves produce an amazing variety of boards for gear with basically similar specs but it would make sense for them to use technical expertise from the companies they are acquiring. I was under the impression that the BV amps came out before Music Group took over TC but maybe I have that wrong. Maybe they'll take over Gibson, now bringing that sort of management to Gibson would be interesting

15+6 is a classic combination, the idea of using a small speaker is quite a good one. It isn't necessarily to shape the mids, though it does allow that possibility but there are two good other reasons to use a small speaker. Large speakers cause cancellation problems when their size becomes close to a wavelength long. Straight on is good but when you stand to one side (or more probably above your speaker as a bassist) the sound from one edge of the cone arrives at your ears fractionally after the sound from the other edge and you get cancellation. What that all means is that mid frequencies are harder for you to hear and everything is a bit woolly and muddled, not good for your playing. Using a smaller speaker raises the frequency at which that happens and you will hear yourself better. The other advantage is that a lighter cone will move more quickly and will track your sound better at higher frequencies reducing distortion and making it easier to engineer something with a flat response. The advantage over a horn is that this small speaker will handle a lot more power and will allow a lower crossover frequency. One of the designs whose concept I really like is the Genzler 12-3 https://www.genzleramplification.com/shop/bass-array12-3/ The 3" drivers will go higher than a 5" driver (and higher than anything that comes out of a bass pickup) and having an array of four will shape mid/treble dispersion nicely. More GAS

Hi Al, this is right as you have noted. Beyond this it get's more complex where a number of factors come into play all at once, I'm more than happy to bore the pants off everyone but it's not likely to solve your practical problem of what to buy The practical observation is that two 10's have roughly the same cone area as a 15, everything else being equal it means they might well be equally capable of making loud bass, that will depend on which 2x10 or 15 you choose. The problem with mixing speakers is that you'll end up with something that isn't the sound of the 15 or the 10, and what you get isn't easy to predict. That becomes even more so if the speakers are different ohms and one is taking twice the power of the other. you've probably got a 50/50 chance of getting a sound which is 'more bassy' and even less of a chance of getting something you like. It's like throwing two dice when the one you've already thrown is a six. It isn't wrong but it could be an expensive gamble unless you can try out the combination you crave.

Watts do matter and so does sensitivity. Let's imagine your 2x10 has a sensitivity of 96dB for 1W and your old 15 is 98dB/W. If you ran 100W into your old 15" Trace, that gives you 20dB of amplification (20dB louder than if you only give it 1W) It's max volume will be 118dB. Now replace that with your 2x10. Because it's 8ohms and you aren't running it flat out the power will be almost exactly halved. 50W gives you 3dB less gain so 17dB of amplification. That means you will get 96+17dB or 113dB. That's 5dB you've lost probably the difference in turning down from 10 to about 8 on the dial and that you will notice. Both the amp and the speaker will have contributed. I'll make another guess too. I reckon that Trace has a nice lively 'smiley face' frequency response which punches out bass boom and a nice middy punch, a lot of old fashioned shouty sound. The Laney is probably better balanced but expects plenty of power to do it's thing. The trace speaker only ever had to handle 150W so it could be made shorter throw with a nice light cone and hence more efficient. I'd put the Trace amp back with the speaker it was made for and look for an amp to get the best out of the Laney.

They are great people and it's a very personal service, however they are limited in what Behringer make available for repairs and their after sales are what they really need to work on IMO It's complex for a techy like myself. It's hard to recommend a 500W amp advertised as 2000W without letting people know and I know from experience how hard it is to get spares and support so it is only fair to let people know that too. Equally I buy Behringer stuff because of the value and because it's the only way I can afford some items. I've had Behringer stuff that has gone on working for years and some that has broken down fairly quickly, there's little wrong with the designs given the price points. I'm sure there are people who look down on gear as you say but equally we have to challenge some of the advertising puff that is becoming common again. To be fair they've upped their game over the years and the quality of manufacture has improved,. It is still budget gear but it's a while since I've seen some of the really poor quality control.

Behringer are routinely quoting 4x the actual power across the range of their amps, so this is a 500W into 4ohms and probably around 300W into 8ohms amp. Behringer, or Music Group have fairly recently acquired TC along with Tannoy, Midas and a couple of other well known brands. It's too early for them to have incorporated TC's technology into this older design. They've owned Bugera for a while and increasingly seem to be using Bugera for the badging of their instrument amps. They seem to market everything on the three is better than one and 2000 is better than 500 principle and a lot of their stuff has a lot of features for the price. The other issue with Behringr is their quality, which has been improving and their after sales which is still poor in the UK. Parts and support for anything out of guarantee is almost non existent. Having said that a 500/300 amp at that price is a remarkable bargain. Reliability is better and with an extended guarantee it has to be tempting as a backup.

You've not been getting good advice from your shop. There seems to be something about shop assistants that stops them from being able to say "sorry I don't know" The only problem with bridge mode is that it doubles the minimum impedance you can use, That's just down to a simple current handling issue. Even then it's hard to think of an amp that won't have adequate protection circuitry built in to prevent long term damage. There's no halving of the life of the amp so long as you don't go below the manufacturers minimum impedance and even then you'd probably only suffer from reduced power availability or a temporary shut down.

I don't think you need to worry too much about brand when it comes to a power amp, the whole point of them is to have no tone of their own and just to make things loud and nowadays they all pretty much do that. I'd be looking for things like brand reliability. You are looking at weight already so you are looking for switched mode power supplies and mostly class D amps. The weight alone will tell you that and you won't hear a difference in practice so that's not an issue. It makes sense to match your amp to your speakers. If you are going for a couple of 12's, presumably 8ohms ea. then looking for something that gives roughly 300W RMS into 8 ohms makes sense. It'll get everything you can out of your speaker without risk of blowing it. Most of these amps will also give you 500W+ into 4 ohms so you'll have flexibility in how you set up your system if you swap speakers around. Look for something that will operate in 'bridge' mode. this is a way of operating both amps together in mono so it gives you more power. Look at the minimum impedance (the ohms) the amp will operate at though most bridge mode operations give full power into twice the impedance of the lowest the individual channels work at. So if you take the example above of something that gives 500W per channel into 4 ohms in bridge mode it gives 1000W into 8 ohms and wont work well into 4 ohms in bridge mode. If it operates into 2 ohms then it will be happy into see 4ohms in bridge. That Crown amp looks good for the money.

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." I had to look that up It's all in the fingers? Well that's metaphorical fingers surely, it's fingers plus everything between the ears and the fingers including the years of practice. It's going to be pretty obvious that someone playing a poorly set up cheap bass with a warped neck and twenty year old strings through an underpowered 1x15 combo is going to sound different to someone playing a nicely set up £2,000 bass played through top equipment. At some point the shortcomings might be enough to make me sound better than someone who actually knows their way around the fretboard. Most of us work somewhere in the middle though where the differences aren't so obvious, I doubt that anyone other than the bassist is going to notice the difference between a top range Squier P bass and a mid range Fender, or if we go for a 2x10 over a couple of 12's. As to whether it matters, well of course it does, it may not be obvious to everyone in the room but would my band sound better if Flea, James Jamerson or Victor Wooten replaced me, of course they would. Everything we do affects what the rest of the band play so the accumulated effects are far greater than just how good is our timing or was that an interesting fill. Just you and the drummer working well together will get most people in the audience talking about how tight the band sounds, and probably get more of them up dancing. The audience though is made up of individuals, often in different stages of inebriation. I've rarely played a pub and not had at least one person come up and say they are a musician, There are people there who love music and appreciate it well done and others who are just out to have fun in a busy pub and their levels of appreciation are going to vary. The psychology of groups is interesting and my guess is that the difference between a great gig and an ordinary one is quite slight. Carrying an extra four or five people with your performance will create an atmosphere the rest of the room will pick up on, so it pays us to care about the details. I know nothing about acting but when a moment or a delivered line stands out in a play or a film I suspect it's because all the people in the room at the time from lighting engineer to actor got their bits of detail right. We have to care about the bits we can control and I suspect it's the human condition in all walks of life, we all have an inner nerd and we should be proud of it.

This is kind of interesting, Music Group (Behringer) are gradually accumulating a lot of other companies. Bugera, Turbosound, TC, Tannoy, Klark Technic, Midas and so on. A lot of these companies have good reputations for quality products and Behringer basically don't. In practice the reliability of Behringer has been improving and was always patchy, some of their stuff has always been reliable. For me the big downfall has been in after sales, I recently had to repair a Behringer stage monitor which failed just out of warranty, it was the devil's own job to track down spares. It isn't a 1000W amp. The 2000W Bugera Veyron https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/331141-nad-bugera-veyron-bv1001m/ turns out to be a 500W amp so expect this to be a 250W amp. The Turbosound speaker may be a Turbosound but as this is also owned by Behringer it is their right to call any speaker a 'Turbosound' though they may be using the Turbosound technology. In any case 12" speakers are limited by their nature to around 300W maximum so you know the amp won't be more powerful than that. The controls look like the Veyron BV100 so they've used the front end of that amp. Maybe they've just used the same board but tweaked the DSP to make sure the power doesn't blow the speaker. So this is probably a 250W 1x12, music group have no technical details on the Bugera website other than the bonkers advertising claims. This is an incredibly cheap combo, you've effectively got the speaker thrown in for nothing. The Behringer I repaired was really well put together for the price though the cab was a bit heavy, made of MDF. I'd hazard a guess that this is the same. Reliability for Behringer is getting better. I've no idea if they use the same after sales for Bugera as for Behringer if so you'd better hope it's one of the good ones. It's going to be interesting which way Music Group go in the next couple of years. According to Wikipedia they are retaining the European staff at most of the companies they are taking over and they may give them some independence in design and development, but I've noticed the Midas 18 digital mixer comes in an identical case to the Behringer XR18 with the same specifications at a roughly £100 premium. It may have detailed improvements but nothing in their literature details any. It's great value for money, it'd be really interesting to get it next to the Fender Rumble 100 or one of the other 12" combos like the Hartke KB12 both of which are more expensive. If it is basically the Veyron with a Turbosound speaker it could be a real bargain but if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

The capacitors shouldn't cost much https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Qty-10-Bipolar-Non-Polar-Electrolytic-Capacitors-Reversible-NP-Cap-Various-/120859793251

You shouldn't have a problem as a load with the cab in parallel with another presumably 8ohm cab at all. The only situation I can think of where I'd worry would be using the cab on it's own with a valve amp and your cab presenting a high impedance within the amps pass band. Even then I wouldn't expect a problem but I'd want to investigate, it's early 50 years since I've used valve amps so it's beyond my pay grade to offer advice about that.