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Old 07-19-2006, 11:28 PM
sdelsolray sdelsolray is offline
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 6,951
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The Loudboxes I've tried were good overall. The Loudbox Pro is quite a bit nicer than the other Loudboxes. Well thought out features, adequate headroom and decent sound. They are more hi-fi sounding than the Ultrasounds. Bi-amping or (in the case of some Loudboxes) tri-amping can often outperform a single amp with crossovers. But it really depends on the relative quality of the amp(s), speakers and crossovers (some Ultrasounds don't use crosovers - they use coax speakers instead). A quality bi-amp or tri-amp, along with the attendant speakers, is quite expensive. Fishman's products (with the exception of the Loudbox Pro) are fairly inexpensive for such a design. They've cut corners somewhere on the lower priced models, and that shows up in the sound when compared to their flagship.

The Ultrasounds have very good preamps and power amps. Dunno about the speakers. The 8" coax used in many of their amps sounds a bit artificial, the mids suffer and the bass, although tight, is not very full. Plus they have rather poor dispersion due to the design. Still, they are very popular, probably for price reasons. I like the wy the CP100's speakers sound better.

There are numerous amps in the $500 to $1,000 range. They're all good to very good, and they all sound different from one another, at least the ones I've tried, which is most of them. There's definitely a qualitative difference once you get to the Schertler Unico, AER Domino or Acoustic Cube III or the Loudbox Pro. Better builds, better sound.

Still, the Ultrasounds are nice amps. I used a pair of Ultrasound 50E (that's just the power amp and speakers - no preamp) for a couple of years with a different brand preamp. They worked rather well.
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