EBS_freak

Get rid of them then, get some in ears and put your money into foh speakers.

Has he got his own mic?

Indeed - carrying a dumb bell is easier than carrying a similar weight javelin.

No - you DI out from your amp modeller into the PA. The PA speakers should be transparent, exactly the same as your on stage FRFR speaker that you are using for a monitor. The whole point of PA and FRFR speakers (effectively the same thing) is that all the colouration is done by the modeller and not the speakers.

I remember you posting your thread... but even back then I still thought you had got it all wrong. This is what you should be running - 1x Helix LT = 12.5 lbs 1x inears = circa 0.07lbs 1x inear amp = circa 1lbs 2x735a (front of house) = 96lbs. Your ears will thank you for it for starters. Less spill on stage, your band will sound better for it. Less space taken up transporting kit. What's not to like? - and if you dep with another band, you take the Helix and a single 735 for a traditional rig.

Bass cabs... and especially guitar cabs colour the sound considerably. You have to consider the sound coming out of the modeller to be a recording of your instrument as it would appear on the CD. You wouldn't plug your CD player into guitar amp and expect it to sound as good as a hifi. This is the same... the FRFR takes away any further colouring. If you do want the colouring of the cab, you run a model of the amp without any speaker emulation or IR and let the non FRFR cab add that colouring back in.

Al Krow - I don't think that it would be any surprise to state that modelling with FRFR is still a minority portion of the market - I, along with many others, believe that the flexibility in a modelling solution, complete with a FRFR cab (that on the whole are far superior in at least a component view to a bass specific equivalent), should be at least on a consideration list when down to people choosing gear. If offers great flexibility - Your valve tone at any volume. Many amp tones and fx available in one package. The ability to run silent stages without compromising tone out front (or in ears if you use them)... the list goes on. For me, I think it would be foolish for anybody not to at least test drive one. As to how many bass players are running FRFR cabs - well, in all honesty, I wouldn't know... I don't really care. Even if that number is insignificant, whats wrong with being one of those people in the know - and making your life easier? I just know that it works well... and has worked out for everybody else that I know that has done the switch. What you cannot argue though, is that pound coin for pound coin, the technology and performance of a modern PA cab far outstrips those "bass" specific marketed cabs. Call this a thread of education and enlightenment that you can do things differently. At the end of the day, we are musicians that use tools to create our music. Does it matter if we use a cab or a specifically marketed "bass cab" in our rig? No. We shouldn't be confined to the marketing blurb. Anthony Jackson and Mike Gordon have been doing the powered PA thing for years with Meyer cabs - they certainly don't care that they aren't "bass cabs" and I don't believe they have suffered because of it (although their roadies may have some bad backs now). There's those people that will swear blind that analogue desks are better than digital desks too. But as soon as you have guys on digital desks, it won't surprise you, that these same guys are very reluctant to go back to analogue. There may be the odd dinosaur that doesn't get on with digital - but the advantages that digital offers far, far, far outweighs analogue. You can do with a shoeboxed sized mixer that just over ten years ago, would have taken a transit or two full of gear to achieve. Similarly, PA cabs have come on so much now... a single 12 or 15 - they don't do just do just vocals... they can do the whole band now... and at considerable volume. Why would you not want to embrace that technology?

That's insignificant. You queried how many FRFR cabs are being sold. "Oh please. LOTS of sales of FRFR gear. Really? Let's not get carried away. " The answer is to that original question is a lot. A lot of modeller users are using FRFR cabs as guitar solutions, some for bass and some for both as a guitar and bass solution.

Make sure that you try changing your £1000 bass for your £50 Sue Ryder too... and ask the audience again.

FRFR gear - why don't you go into a PA shop and try telling them that they are not selling any PA tops. Do tell us how they laugh at you. FRFR is a term that has been coined by the modelling community - but it's another word for PA speakers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/line6helixusergroup/ - 14k+ users. The vast majority of those users have paired them with PA speakers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/363954780291903/ - 10k+ users. The vast majority of those users have paired them with PA speakers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/23174569478/about/ - 10k+ users. The vast majority of those users have paired them with PA speakers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/headrushboard/about/ -1k+ users. (This is a minority share of the market but still growing) 35k+ potential FRFR users just in those groups - there's going to be none facebook people not represented in those figures... and all the people that are using PA cabs for PA use alone. I would argue there's a lot of FRFR solutions being sold...

Lots of sales and yet none come up second hand. Kinda tells you what you need to know.

Indeed! More dsp in a box!

Everybody's gear is their gear and if it works for them, so be it. I'm always interested in what other people are doing as it may inspire me to do something different. RCF demolish a Barefaced? Well, I guess that depends on which RCF, which Barefaced... and whether you want the colouration of a bass cab, or the FRFR of a PA cab. My smack all others into the ground wasn't directed at Barefaced or any particular manufacturer to be honest - I wasn't even thinking about Pete's comments either than I wrote it. The reason I wrote it, performance, weight and price wise, there is simply not a competing product offered from any other manufacturer whether they be predominantly PA manufacturers or bass cab manufacturers or crossover (like Barefaced?). To some extent though, the Hulk Hogan comparison actually hangs true. The components in those particular two models outclass those from cabs even more than double the price. That pretty hulk in my book. In regard to BF and your passive speaker cabs - they probably are comparable... but I'm very wary of passive cabs being branded as FRFR for reasons I've mentioned earlier. I just don't think it's possible to engineer a flat response cab anywhere near that of a cab with DSP. Sure, you could add DSP pre the amp that drives the passive speaker... but again, more shizzle to carry around. As opposed to brands being mentioned in threads - it's natural - thats what makes the stuff we write about more real world. People like stuff. People don't like stuff. Some people can justify why they rate stuff... others just rate it because they own it and very protective if what they have bought is then brought into question on a forum. I think that's a fair observation isn't it?

We don't play with backing tracks. We do play with a click when required. When is it required? When we have the synth player playing synth patches with arpeggios or samples being triggered that are beat dependent. It's not cheating - as unlike backing tracks, we can go round verses, choruses, bridges until the cows come home. We are not limited by the playback of a backing track. At one point, I was syncing MIDI across the stage for patch changes and being able to trigger different tempos (so we are still not bound by a song structure) - but ultimately, it was overkill, extra complication and another thing to go wrong. It also depends on the drummer... a great drummer can groove to a click and push and pull the tempo around that click. Hell, I use three drummers regularly and they all share a common pad with all the notation (they are all theatre show drummers) - makes learning new songs really easy for them... they just turn up and read.

The tone of the thread can be pretty much dictated by the title. I don't quite know what you would be expecting! The modelling thing has only really been nailed in the last few years... and the software in the current modellers are still being improved month by month to incorporate better fx and more models etc. The Line 6 modelling bass is now old technology... and carrying around a few basses is certainly different to carrying around a few backline rigs, both in terms of size and weight.

As flat as any passive PA - maybe - but certainly not as flat as any cab that is given a helping hand with DSP to control the actual resulting response. It's a bit of a cheat really - you could actually manufacturer a pretty poor cab and fix most of the problems with DSP. I don't think anybody is running anybody's systems down. They are just different approaches to the same problem. Some people will want FRFR, some people may not. As I stated above, what it does enable you do is to get that studio processed sound into your live rig. I think you are confusing the real thing behind FRFR in your statement, "I'm actively going out of my way to stop the system as a whole providing FRFR, because it sounds and feels more appropriate in context." The point is, if your rig is exactly like you like it, if I miced it up and profiled it with my Kemper, it would sound exactly the same as your rig miced up. The reason? My FRFR cab is not changing the sound coming out of the Kemper. If you put the Kemper back into your Barefaced cab, you would get the sound signature of that Barefaced cab changing the sound. FRFR doesnt mean your bass sounds flat or sterile... it just means that it has no impact on the sound that is being fed into it. You not using FRFR to get your sound from your rig is fine... but my model of your rig requires FRFR to not colour that modelled sound of your rig. Put it like this, if you were to put a Trace through your Barefaced speaker, it would sound like a Trace through a Barefaced speaker. If you were then to put an Ampeg through your Barefaced speaker it would then sound like an Ampeg through Barefaced speaker. You may actually prefer the sound of a Trace through a Barefaced speaker but prefer the Ampeg through an Ampeg speaker... so you'll have to cart that around too. I can model all that with my Kemper and a FRFR cab... and not have to carry the Barefaced or two amps around.... in fact, I could take as many virtual amps and cabs as I need... and the resultant sound through the PA would be exactly the same. Whats not to like about that? Your RCF monitor comment seems to have no context to the rest of your post?

Anyway, it's probably best that we get this thread back on track - if anybody wants to talk wireless in depth, I'm sure you could set up a thread in accessories and misc and we can continue conversation on such things there and let the Smooth Hound discussions resume.

Just to be a pedant... micing up the a Barefaced rig would give you a "studio"-esque take on the sound that comes from a Barefaced rig. You have the inherent sound of the mic and the fact that it is taking just one point of the cab and the sound that is produced rather than the sound of a cab as a whole. But yeah, would agree with the rest.

Just to clarify, there shouldn't be any RCF worship here - the word RCF could be replaced with any competitor brand... Yamaha, QSC, EV whatever... HOWEVER when it comes to the RCF 735 and 745... they are stand out cabs because of these things - VC size and resultant performance of the drivers and the horns that they are used are not used in any other ABS cabs - they are only usually found in wooden cabs. VC size and resultant performance of the drivers and the horns that they use are not found in any other cabs at this price point. VC size and resultant performance of the drivers and the horns that they use are not found in any other cabs of this weight. Smaart shows the DSP to be a true FRFR with a pink noise test - and these cabs will actually handle so much lows that a lot of users could (and do) use them without a sub. So those two cabs in particular are cabs that should not exist - and therefore are worthy of mention because for the reasons above, they smack all others (comparable but ultimately non comparable) into the ground. Are RCF the cabs the best in the PA world? No. Far from it. Are the 735 and 745 the best compared to their non-existent competition? I'd say so. If that makes them flavour of the month, I'd say given the reasons above, it's fully justifiable.

^This. Trying to get over 10 systems working in tandem within a small slice of the spectrum is hard enough. When you are talking about the distribution of high channel count wireless, you are looking at far more than plug and play. Sennheiser and Shure have invested heavily in computerised systems to calculate the frequency and powers that are appropriate at the venues and enable the configuration to pushed out to the devices over ethernet to try and reduce the headache. There's incredible indepth analysis showing interference, dropped packets, induced latency... and a lot of these systems are encrypted so that the transmission streams cannot be intercepted, distribution can happen over Dante etc - that's the reason why I am saying Smooth Hound is not in the professional camp. It's not a slur on Smooth Hound - it's just a statement of the reality of the situation with regard to the other gear that is out there. Lets not forget that one channel of Smooth Hound is just over a hundred quid... one channel of ULXD say, is over a thousand pounds. Oh ... and regard to co-ordination, it doesn't mean it's doesn't all change after soundcheck when the audience come in with all their phones! The radio guy's job is sometimes the easiest job on the crew... but sometimes, it's without doubt the most stressful. No radio, no show!

PS don't get me wrong, I think there is a place for this product - if the latency was sub 3ms, I'd buy one today at this price point - and I'd be super interested if there was a XLR mic version.

Nice pics - but also not situations where a lot of wireless has been deployed. No radio mics, no IEMs, no metal staging... so not really a testing environment for a 2.4ghz deployment.

Shh. Now let Chad have his monopoly.

It depends on what you are having to amplify. For example... If I was playing with a reggae tone, the larger voice coil would (all other factors remaining the same) be a better shout. What you have to remember is this, dedicated bass guitar cabs rarely sport the same quality of drivers found in the comparable prices PA cabs - so you are onto a winner on a performance point. Whether you want the flat response of a PA cab vs say the colouring of a bass cab, well, that's a different thing - but that's where your modelling comes in.

Been watching the politics of Chad on the line 6 fb group. Pfft.