Smaart RTA of dr250 and Mackie c300z

[Dave Non-Zero]

the other day i got back my single DR250 that has been sitting in a friends lockup for months. I decided to test it outside now that (ahem) summer has come. So i chose a likely break in the rain and set up my dr250 next to one of my passive mackie c300z. (12'' + horn, 300w rms)
here is the set up...




with a behringer reference mic about 3m away.
i ran them with no eq to begin with to get a base comparison... (the t48 is not connected but the tops are still crossed over at 125hz)
here is the mackie to begin with-



i then EQed to get a flat response-



bear in mind there is a busy road at the front of my house so plenty of LF rumble. This was also a rushed test so forgive me for not getting it as flat as i could etc.

here is the beta loaded dr250 with crossfired WLE 16 piezo array without eq-



and with eq-



note the peak i had at 5k that was still there after eq. that was because the slider on the eq ran out. no matter how hard i pushed it down.....
here is a pic of the eq for both cabs. the top band is the DR250 the second one is the Mackie -



and a close up of the high mids-



once flat, i panned between them whilst chanting the soundman mantra....ONE TWO ONE TWO ONE TWO etc etc...

the DR sounded AMAZING. i know there is still variation between the plots, but the DR was so much better than the mackie. and i love the mackies! The low mids were so much clearer and the high end was more defined. the mackie suddenly sounded muddy. And the DR was VERY much louder! That was throught the same mic, channel, amp,gain,slider position, everything but the pan knob. Ive read all this stuff before in the reviews and discussions but when i first built my DR i was slightly disappointed with the sound i got out of it. Now ive learned a lot since then and also there was no way i was ever going to stumble across such extreme eq settings by ear! I had decided to build the Otop12s, but now im not so sure again! Argh!!! Decisions decisions. Im going to test my t48s next....

Let me know what you think of the eq/settings/what i should do differently/general comments.

Cheers
Dave

[Dave Non-Zero]

p.s. how do you get the pix in the post? it didnt work soi changed them to url links... any idea why it didnt work?

[DAVID_L_PERRY]

Great stuff Dave.

Similar wacky eq curve I have with my DR280's. As you say you would not have had a chance at setting your eq like this without the RTA to aid you. I had a similar big boost at the crossover freq that you have at 1.6, but I think mine is at 1.2k (from memory)

Perhaps try the mic further back to allow the HF elements to merge, this may flatten out the upper freq's...??

Dave

[DAVID_L_PERRY]

p.s. how do you get the pix in the post? it didnt work soi changed them to url links... any idea why it didnt work?

I can only get photos to show if they are hosted on my web site, cant get them to show when they are on frapper...dont know why either

Dave

[Strapping Young Stu]

Nice dave from what I can see from your charts even when eq'd the DR is 5-6dB louder than the mackie across the board with the most strength coming at below 250Hz which is where you need it.

Stu

[DaveK]

how do you get the pix in the post?

I had the same problem and Bill told me the trick. You have to use a different URL. Right click (in Windows) on a Frappr photo and look at the properties. Cut-n-paste the big, hairy URL in the properties window into the PIC directive in your forum message.

[Dave Non-Zero]

Cheers! ive changed it to show the pix now.
p.s. Stu - i think you need to be called dave to post in this thread. sorry dude!

[JazzyRick]

By chance is there a +6/+12 or even +6/+15 button to increase the effect of each slide on your EQ. I could see maybe having to drop a frequency 6db in rare cases, but not 12 or 15 db.

[Dave Non-Zero]

well there is a button for +-6/12 but it was set at +-12.
its a really extreme eq and i wish i had had more time to play with it. I would hav taken out the extreme peaks and troughs and seen what happened. ill hav another go at it soon. Think im gonna start my second Dr250 today tho. hope it doesnt take as long as the last one!

[Dave Non-Zero]

just had another look at dave perry's dr280 curve. its got a couple of pretty big slider moves. not as many or are far as mine tho.



Im assuming the massive boost i required at 8k or so was partly due to the use of the confirmed rubbish WLE skytronic piezos. Hopefully if i get some of the CPC piezos i should get top end eq more similar to Daves. It was really the bump in response at 5k that was very unplesant to the ear.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Im assuming the massive boost i required at 8k or so was partly due to the use of the confirmed rubbish WLE skytronic piezos.

Probably. Goldwoods don't have that sort of response either.

[DAVID_L_PERRY]

just had another look at dave perry's dr280 curve. its got a couple of pretty big slider moves. not as many or are far as mine tho.



Im assuming the massive boost i required at 8k or so was partly due to the use of the confirmed rubbish WLE skytronic piezos. Hopefully if i get some of the CPC piezos i should get top end eq more similar to Daves. It was really the bump in response at 5k that was very unplesant to the ear.

Certainly 8CPC piezo's out shone 12cut and glued WLE piezo's in both freq and output by a fair old margin. Never even bothered to compare 12WLE against 12CPC (the WLE array is just hanging off my garage wall with no home....)

remember that the eq graph you see here was smoothed out a little. I did have two very prominent eq spike's, one at 1.2 and one at around 14k. I tamed both down to what you see here as I didn't like the excess eq boost.

Also the overall EQ was boosted by 2.5db to allow for eq adjustment loss.

Dave