New Personal PA from LR Baggs
 

This looks interesting. No pricing yet.
http://www.lrbaggs.com/synapse

This is exactly the kind of thing I was interested in hearing about from NAAM. I just watched the marketing video and, holy cow, Lloyd Baggs can sell. Take my money. Heck, I don't even need a 2 channel system. He speaks my love language: engineering.

500 watts? Wow. Good video, anxious to take it for a spin, hope it's available soon.

My interest is peaked. I knew I could count on the AGF this morning.

Yes, looks quite interesting. Anybody heard of a price yet?

My duo partner checked in with the Baggs company. Weight is 38 lbs, which is a deal breaker for us.
Price was around 2 thousand.
Sounds really good in the videos, though.

I bet it will sound incredible, but $2000? If that's true, Larry Fishman will name a grandkid after Lloyd Baggs in gratitude. There can't be many other "personal PAs" in that price range. That's almost Bose territory.

Moving on to other gripes, placing the mixer on the back is not exactly convenient for a single performer trying to make adjustments mid-set. Just having the mixer on the speaker at all is a pain, but at least the Fishman has theirs on the front.

All that aside, I'm looking forward to hearing it.

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Looks interesting, shame it's twice the cost of a Schertler Jam.

Looks similar to the AER Cube. Somebody must buy those but many more buy the Compact.


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for 50% more you get 360°

http://www.benkcube.de/i/content/produkte/ds8combo.jpg

Will this amp have the same destiny as the late LR Baggs A-ref? (taht also solved the woofer-tweeter alignment problematic)

http://static.keymusic.com/products/...-reference.jpg

Cuki

Also a deal breaker for me at that weight and price... Would love to get one if it was half the weight with battery power

To quote the late, great Don Zimmer (aka "the gerbil"): "If 'if's' and 'but's' were candy and nuts, we'd all have a hell of a Christmas."

At $2K and 38 lbs, I boldly predict that perhaps dozens will be sold - mostly to people who can easily afford yet don't need to move them, or who employ people who will move 'em for them... ;)

I am always interested in these personal PA systems. However, I always have a hard time justifying them. I totally get their appeal but if this is $2000.00, I would much rather put my money into one or two powered speakers and a mixer. Down the road that will come in handy. Having a full sized PA is always ideal, even if you normally only take one speaker to use at a show.

That seems to be a popular opinion. The only counter to that is the benefit of coverage and dispersion from these line systems, or horn system, in this case. For certain long narrow rooms the Bose,JBL, Fishman, etc simply get to the back better without blasting the audience in the front. And, one handle portability is great.

For most square shaped rooms, a speaker on a stand is just as effective.

So, as a solo artist who plays in different venues, there is value in having a single portable system that gives great sound all the way to the back of any room, and acts as a monitor without feedback.

Bose has sold enough L1s over the years to solo artists to prove the concept works really well for them.

Since I don't play for a living, but still require PA gear occasionally for performances, I have a hard time justifying another system, or spending $2-3k for the Bose. Some of the professionals I play with swear by their Bose L1s. I love the way they sound too. I wish Line 6 would release a sub $1,000 stage source with a line array attachment. I'd sell my current gear and buy that. In the meantime, I'm curious about the JBL product that has more power than the L1 compact at the same price. If I thought the JBL mixer would work for me, I'd sell my gear and buy one of those.




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Good point. One counter argument then would be to get a speaker like the QSC K10 which has a very wide dispersion. I see your point though, some of those personal PA systems sound fantastic and definitely have an ability to fill a room.

Looks very cool. 2K, however, will probably be a deal-breaker for me.

$2k, Ouch!

Another advantage of line array systems isn't only their wide horizontal pattern, but also the narrow vertical pattern.

The combination of those attributes are what allow the sound dispersion to fall off more gradually with distance. That's how you can effectively stand in front of your speaker and still have it project around a small/medium sized room without being deafened.

A horn needs to be physically quite large to provide a similar projection, otherwise it has similar properties to a conventional speaker with only a benefit to horizontal coverage.

Hi M-Dave - absolutely not trying to argue, BUT - just MY personal experience - I DID buy the JBL Eon One, because of the description, but found it to be VERY under-powered, not "musical sounding" (sorry for lack of a better description), too heavy, and returned to dealer after initial tryout. I did a side-by-side-by-side with my Bose L1 Compact and Bose Classic. The Compact is a LOT louder than the JBL, and much more pleasing to the ear. Of course the big Bose Classic easily led the compare, but the Compact ran amazingly close.

Also, I'm sure you are not fooled by the JBL "6-Channel Mixer" - nice marketing claim, but in the real world - just not so.

I have since bought a second used Compact - I might go for a small herd of em! Seriously I would like to see if my 5-piece rock group could be effective with an All-Compact setup..

Best to ya, MIKE O'

Great feedback Mike!

That was one of the very best amps I've ever sold. Too bad we only sold two, and it eventually left the market.

$1999 MAP—even if you subtract our standard AGF discount—will still be a pretty penny. But 500 watts with great dispersion in a single box will meet the need of quite a few players. Not as many as a Schertler JAM, I suppose, but I have a lot of customers looking for exactly this sort of product. Now for the playtest in one week...

What was the story on those A Ref amps? I was never able to see one in person.

I appreciate Loyd's desire to bring something different or unique to the market.

Reading through the comments, it occurs to me that a $2,000 investment for a solo amp product would be a tough pill to swallow. I think many musicians would reserve a $2,000 investment for a PA system with many more channels and features. This is especially true given the quality of the options in the $1000 - $1500 price range, on the market today.

I appreciate this innovative design, as well.
There are already plenty of $1k column designs out there, so I like it that Mr. Baggs taking his personal PA design in a different direction.

And I don't think that 38 lbs. is an exceptionally heavy amount for an adult to carry, or at least put on a dolly.

The A-ref was based on a distributed mode loudspeaker (DML) also named Balanced Mode Radiator (BMR).

Read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distri...de_loudspeaker
and
https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/blog/what-is-bmr

https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/sites...ogy-small1.gif
The goal is to get rid of the tweeter.

Having the the tweeter away from the woofer creates phase misalignment when the listener is not in front of the loudspeaker. (That's why AER compact 60 has a twin cone speaker for example)

However a standard loudspeaker needs a tweeter to handle high frequencies. At high frequencies, a loudspeaker quits the "pistonic" mode and starts to support many differrents modes. It's called the loudspeaker break-up
Here is a simulation at 500 Hz from nedlab.com
http://nedlab.com/wp/wp-content/uplo...eq-300x224.jpg
Then at 1500 Hz
http://nedlab.com/wp/wp-content/uplo...eq-300x224.jpg
Then at 3000 Hz
http://nedlab.com/wp/wp-content/uplo...eq-300x226.jpg

All thoses high order modes have resonances at different frequencies so the response of a standard speaker at high frequencies has a lots of peaks. That's why we use crossovers, tweeters, horns...

The DML/BMR idea was to structure the loudspeaker cone to actually select one higher order modes against the others.

Here is the response of a HIBM65C20F DML speaker measured and posted on diyaudio forum
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/b...easurement.jpg

The hole between 1kHz and 2KHz is the transition between the pistonic mode and the "selected" higher order mode (the one pictured in the first image for example). Ok it's not flat, but there is not hundreds of peaks.

To say it simply, the speaker has a flat surface and is "braced" like a guitar top.

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/naim5/1.gif

On the picture above, you can see a cross-sectionnal view of the speaker. "Balancing masses" are indicated in the middle. They act as the bracing of a guitar top.
http://www.guitarrepairbench.com/aco...ar-bracing.png

So basically the A-ref was an amp with a flat speaker that was braced.

I liked so much the idea that I started to build an A-ref / Phil Jones Bass inspired amp. I wanted to use a DSP to control a dozen modes to mimic the beaming of the guitar top (that has more than two modes of course). So I bought many small DML speakers but did not have the time. So they are still in the basement... This is something I should think of because the IR I made for Doug Young is only stereo but the pedal we use has only the 2nd best Sharc processor. With the Sharc processors you have in the Universal Audio devices or Kemper you could probably address 4-8 ouputs and control as many DMLs. That makes 8-16 addressed modes. That would definitely sound closer to a real acoustic guitar...

I hope it answers the question. I've read people thought the amp was not very powerfull and some have reliability issues... Anyway I think the biggest problem is that it was too expansive. Only two or three companies are allowed to make them because of the patent... So LR Baggs had to import them.

If you like the idea, you can also look for
http://www.jmclutherie.ch/en/soundbo...-made-tonewood
it's basically a braced top with surface exciters.

I am suprised that a company like Taylor did not start to sell an amp like that. With all their CNC abilities, it would take them less than a year to put on production an amp that behaves like a guitar. Well they would only need a guy with some DSP abilities but there are plenty of them on the market today.

Anyway A-ref was really a nice move from LR Baggs... But I've never seen any in Europe, I wish I had.

Cuki

Cuki, a fascinating read, an education really. Thanks for taking the time!

AREF resonance
 

When I first received my AREF, it developed a resonating vibration when playing a C chord or note that I couldn't notch out. It spent several months at Baggs as they tuned the electronics and added bracing to the interior (I think). A few years later the speaker developed a rattle. It is my understanding that the speaker manufacturers were unable to reliably reproduce the quality of the prototype speaker, and so Baggs stocked up on an inventory of repair parts and discontinued the model.

Good stuff guys. Thank you.

It seems everyone was interested until the price was mentioned. Me included.

Eh, yup.


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