Members nchangin Posted January 31, 2014 Members Share Posted January 31, 2014 Howdy folks. The purpose of this review is to give my thoughts of these speakers out of box and if others are looking for an affordable small sound solution. I own or have owned B52 matrix system, Peavey TLS's and MRX 515's which is what I will attempt to compare the sound to from MY experience. Out of box, hooked up to zed10fx, they both fired up correctly and amps went through POST successfully (about 10 sec or so). I set one on the floor on the legs and the other down like a monitor in my small office space. I went through a variety of music, my very first impression was shrill, must say shrilly, high sounding. Kinda like cheap car stereo shrill. No mids, lows were existent, didn't sound balanced. There are 4 DSP modes. Music (default), Live, speech, club. When you turn it to the dsp mode in the list it take immediate effect, so you can hear the changes immediately. Music seemed as I stated shrilly, too high. Live seemed to be best fit for music, speech mode brought out strong mids and club was as you'd expect muddy club uber smiley face eq and to be honest cannot think of any application for that mode, I suppose if you want to spice up some polka or waltz's for twenty some year olds to listen to? I mean if you ran any of the newer music with this setting it would be a pretty bad situation live, I just don't see it as a useable funtion. Location settings: 3 settings. Pole (default), monitor and bracket. Pole setting has more lows than monitor which makes sense as under normal circumstances you want a low cut on monitors anyway to reduce feed back tendencies and unneeded frequencies. Question would be: location settings is a predetermined eq setting right? Limit: they hit about the same time the zed hit yellow on it's meters and you can set the LED to fire on limit, noticed one didn't limit and LED didn't come on, hmmm so I switched it to LED = ON and it didn't come on. So thought hey maybe it's didn't post right for some reason, reset it and no go. Either LED, send, or path is bad. really don't want to mess around with sending it back for a replacement but alas what do you do, maybe open it up to check the path later on today if I'm ambitious. Sub setting is a crossover: Have not tested it out yet I have a EV ELX118P coming in mail today, once I hook that up I'll test that feature. the seb settings are: Off (default), 80 hz, 100 hz and 120 hz rolloff. I am assuming this on the box only and the output is full range regardless of what you have this set to. Can anyone confirm if the output is crossed over or not? Overall: Once I changed up the DSP mode to more of a flat setting the EV smoothness did come out but I will still state it's a little more "shrilly" compared to say MRX or Peavey's TLS (running class h power). I don't know if the amplifier has anything to do with the sound or not and that's a separate argument anyway but if I HAD to choose it wouldn't be these, BUT on the flip side, these are super light @ 34 lbs, love the top handle, the monitor angle works nicely and it's not that hard to flip it to get the dsp adjustment if needed in quick situation. Eventually I will run some live vocals through them and see how they cut in that respect. For their application they seems to be great little speakers and I can't wait to get them out somewhere bigger to get a full listen to, it's really hard to judge using just one enironment. Thoughts: DSP should have had a NOTHING mode just a good ole flat response which I assume is the "live" setting? At least with my passive system I always know how it's setup at a glance. I'm excited to hook up the sub and play with the crossover and see what happens to the overall sound, I am assuming it will be a better overall sound and give the 12's a little more headroom giving a better overall sound. Amplifiers were luke warm to touch after running them for 4 hours, not hot to the touch. I have read in other posts others have had these thermal being in the sun, I won't be able to test that until this summer and I think that thermaling has a lot to do with how it's set up (and enough rig for the gig), if you are running club mode, I'd expect it to thermal quite quickly just because of what you are making that amplifier do, and I would think if matched with subs and the proper crossover setting it would allviate a lot of excess heat off the 12's. Apologies for long post and all grammatical errors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WynnD Posted January 31, 2014 Members Share Posted January 31, 2014 Knowing nothing about you, please don't take offense. Have you had your hearing checked in the last year? I've personally never used these speakers. I do have the EV - ZXA1s with matching subs. I'm also running the mixer into a DriveRack PX set up for every configuration of those speaker that I could think of. The satellites didn't need much EQ. Just like JBL's MRX 515 doesn't need much EQ either. Pretty flat for speaker response. The subs, not so much, but I love how tight they sound. I would love to see a pink noise RTA on that speaker. That would tell you immediately where there are shortcomings and probably verify your impressions. (Sounds like a dip in the frequency response about 2-5K from your description.) I'm with you on a flat setting. I'd rather see that as one of the options. I also don't generally like the suggested settings that many mixers are offering now. (Might just be me.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nchangin Posted January 31, 2014 Author Members Share Posted January 31, 2014 My wife checks my hearing everyday. Thank you sir. haha (ex drummer here)The ZXA1 series, yes hear some good stuff about them and from what I see the IO is similar to the ELX series which I was contemplating as well but what made me decide ZLX was the DSP and the xover for the ELX118P.To be honest in a "live" situation I would rather have the ZXA1 IO setup cause of it's knobs, knobs are quicker I think but that's just an opinion.I sometimes rent this equipment out, issue I see is if the DSP isn't set up right (or gets messed with) could cause a disaster very quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted January 31, 2014 CMS Author Share Posted January 31, 2014 Live mode is the closest to flat. Speakers only go so flat, none are perfect, most are far from it. If you compare the response curves in the owner's manual against the passive ZLX12, the DSP does a decent job of improving the flatness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bigjd Posted February 6, 2014 Members Share Posted February 6, 2014 I use a driverack for a xover with no issues on my subs. It does help to control them and get what you want out of them. I also try to couple them together whenever possible. Bang for buck they've been solid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nchangin Posted February 9, 2014 Author Members Share Posted February 9, 2014 bigjd wrote: I use a driverack for a xover with no issues on my subs. It does help to control them and get what you want out of them. I also try to couple them together whenever possible. Bang for buck they've been solid. May I ask why you still use the drive rack? Wouldn't that be dual processing of the signal? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AntonFlint Posted February 13, 2014 Members Share Posted February 13, 2014 Thanks for the Great Review.. I purchased a set of these last year.. I have a nice set of QSC K10's and wanted an inexpensive set of powered monitors.. It seemed a little silly to buy speakers that were bigger for monitors but quite honestly, I am happy with the EV's as monitors and have even used them for tops (Above my ELX-118p Subs). Ok.. Well.. The K10's definitely just sound "Better".. But they do cost nearly twice as much.. For a $400 speaker, the ZLX-12P holds its own.. I have been happy with the sound I get out of them and have used them in my solo act and Duo act (as well as when we add a drummer). As well, I will add that I think the ELX-118p's are a good alternative to the QSC kw181.. My partner has a set of the KW181's and we use them for our duo (With the K10's On the top) but before he had these, we used the ELX-118p s for quite sometime and they did absolutely fine.. Now, they are more/less backup in case something happens to the KW181's but I still sometimes pull one or two of them out for a boomy solo acoustic gig!! As well, I have a pair of the small EV powered 12" subs (SB2A) and a set of the ZX-1 90's (Unpowered).. This little setup sounds pretty good and I actually prefer it for my solo acoustic shows because they are portable, simple and are pretty loud for what they are.. The SB2A has two 350watt power amps in it and one can be used for the internal sub and you can either use the other to power a passive satellite sub or you can cross over and power a mid high frequency speaker. I was bummed when they quit making the sb2a but there are many great thing).. I came close to buying the elx-12p speakers for monitors and it was just after the ZLX series was released. So, I bought two ZLX speakers and love them. Overall, for the price of the ZLX series, I would still buy two of these over buying two Yamaha passive speakers and a power amp. Has anyone "A B'd" the ELX-12p with the ZLX series or even the QSC k12's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted February 13, 2014 CMS Author Share Posted February 13, 2014 AntonFlint wrote: Ok.. Well.. The K10's definitely just sound "Better".. But they do cost nearly twice as much.. For a $400 speaker, the ZLX-12P holds its own.. This was the gist of my HC review of them a few weeks ago. For $400....only ahundred bucks more than the passive ZLX12, you've got a good-sounding powered speaker. That's hard to beat for the money.And I agree, the K10's sound a little better. It's a different sounding speaker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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