NAD: Mackie ShowBox: Final thoughts - keeping it!

[JakeStone]

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldDude

Thanks man … hmmm i will writeup my opinions once i get mine thanks.

I would think the overdrive or fuzz may work for me good enough maybe could keep a one pedal tube screamer in play.

Is your prs the hollowbody 2 with piezo if so we have clones its the only guitar i use these days.

Been playing out with my everse 8 as guitar amp and using a nux mighty plug pro mp3 to get the high gain stuff right into the everse 8 aux input it works well enough and very loud ha ha!

Ya cool man. I bought a used PRS SE Hollowbody II around 2 months ago.
It's a cool guitar! Still getting to know it and have used it on my last 2 gigs.

I look forward to your review and thoughts on the electric tone..
When you get your Showbox.

As for Sam Ash.. I had one on order through them.
But when I saw Sweetwater had them ready to ship last week.
I had to cancel SA and get one thru SW,

[nostatic]

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldDude

My unit not shipped to sam ash yet …

Can someone try an electric guitar straight in give me an idea of if it seems useable as electric guitar amp?

Rock / blues / pop does it seem ok ish like that?

Thanks John

odds are it will suck for that. A decent amp sim takes some computational horsepower that this thing just won't have.

But - some dirt pedals and a decent IR pedal (I use a TC Impluse) should sound fine - like it would through any PA.

[martingitdave]

I’ve been rehearsing with the Mackie show box. It’s a great sounding unit. The controls are smart and the layout is good. Speaker design is efficient and the cost is reasonable. The mixer is easier to use. The Bluetooth streams nicely. Effects can be “strong” but dialed back sound nice for acoustic. Ovals sound clear and you can mimic a Bose sound with some delay and verb.

Complaints? Not many.

The rubber feet on the bottom and side need to be thicker and more substantial for positioning, a la Bose S1. And, I cannot get the hang of a one button looper.

What else do you want? A cookie?

[Methos1979]

Jake and I continue to trade thoughts on PM and my reply to him today was significant enough to be worthy of an actual update so I'm posting my reply in its entirety here:

My 'comparison' has been to the Stagepas 200BTR (and not the EV30M). Soundwise, I gave the edge to the Stagepas but that was also for streaming music and not for our duo music. I think for the duo it's a wash as both sound really good. The ShowBox is louder for sure. The Stagepas app EQ controls (like the Everse 8) are much more extensive but the app is a bit glitchy to use so I give the edge to the ShowBox. While having the ability to finely tweak every little detail is nice, I generally find it's overkill and I definitely MUCH prefer the breakaway mixer on the ShowBox. And of course the ShowBox has a few other things that are better than the Stagepas like the auto-feedback eliminator, built-in looper (albeit with the crappy one button operation) and the SD record function.

I have tried all of the effects and find them all to be lacking and if I'm honest pretty gosh darn awful but then again I rarely like any amp's onboard effects. I had a cheap Behringer mixer that had much better effects this this. Luckily, I don't use all that much anyway. Lately I've been using a little Fast Delay on one channel and Small Plate Reverb on the other for my guitar and just a little Small Plate Reverb for our vocals. I do like the Compression effect and dial in probably 40% on that. The Stagepas was definitely a backup to the EV30M, used only when the (rare) need for battery power arose or in case the EV30M had a catastrophic failure (nothing yet in nearly two years of constant use). The ShowBox is robust enough to potentially replace the the EV30M for regular use in a majority of the venues we play although that still has to be tested in reality this coming week.

I am a little worried about the battery life, in particular consumption of battery while not in use. I had the ShowBox fully charged as I was using it plugged in for the first several days of testing. Then I spent a few hours playing it unplugged (doing the streaming music A/B test) and then the next day when I played duo music through it (again on battery) I noticed the little battery indicator light was yellow. According to the manual, the battery level goes like this: Green = 20%-100% battery remaining, Yellow = 5%-20% remaining and Red = 5% or less remaining. This would indicate a very low level was achieved after not all that much time in use. But I also did not really pay attention to properly quantify this so I've since charged it fully and I'm letting it sit for a few days (unused) to see if it bleeds off battery power in standby mode like other battery amps I've used (Bose S1 Pro and the Stagepas 200BRT). They quote like 12-hours of battery time so I'll be interested to see what the deal is there.

But other than that potential issue, I'm overall quite pleased with the ShowBox and assuming this coming week's gigs where I use it go well then I think I'll surely end up keeping it and using it much more than the Stagepas.

[Chriscom]

I was reading some promo copy about the Showbox and it mentioned "settings for indoor and outdoor performance." This sounds a little gimmicky but I wonder if any of you new owners have come across it.

Also, does anyone know what the dispersion is? I don't think it was mentioned in this thread and I can't find a manual on the Mackie site.

Greatly appreciate the field reports and detailed reviews!

[Groberts]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

I’ve been rehearsing with the Mackie show box. It’s a great sounding unit. The controls are smart and the layout is good. Speaker design is efficient and the cost is reasonable. The mixer is easier to use. The Bluetooth streams nicely. Effects can be “strong” but dialed back sound nice for acoustic. Ovals sound clear and you can mimic a Bose sound with some delay and verb.

Complaints? Not many.

The rubber feet on the bottom and side need to be thicker and more substantial for positioning, a la Bose S1. And, I cannot get the hang of a one button looper.

What else do you want? A cookie?

Thanks for your input on the Mackie SB Dave. Yeah, I'll never use a single-button looper that requires double pressing for some functions like 'stopping.' Even at home it's annoying.

Can you leave the mixer attached to the speaker for set-it and forget it operation? I've found once I get my sound and levels dialed in, I don't need to touch them further. So I just don't need to mount a mixer on my mic stand.

[JakeStone]

Originally Posted by Groberts

Can you leave the mixer attached to the speaker for set-it and forget it operation? I've found once I get my sound and levels dialed in, I don't need to touch them further. So I just don't need to mount a mixer on my mic stand.

Yes the mixer works same when attached.

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by Groberts

Thanks for your input on the Mackie SB Dave. Yeah, I'll never use a single-button looper that requires double pressing for some functions like 'stopping.' Even at home it's annoying.

Can you leave the mixer attached to the speaker for set-it and forget it operation? I've found once I get my sound and levels dialed in, I don't need to touch them further. So I just don't need to mount a mixer on my mic stand.

Yes, as Jake said, there’s a built in connection between the box and the mixer. No cable required when it’s inserted in the box. I think this is a good replacement for the Bose S1 when you need an all-in-one and something maybe a smidge louder than the Bose.

[RogerPease]

Chriscom asked about dispersion. I would like to know about this, too.
Has anyone checked this or at least the specs? Thanks, _RP

[Methos1979]

Sound dispersion values are 90 degrees horizontal and 60 degrees vertical. Max SPL is 122 dB.

As for the Outdoor/Indoor mode, from the manual:

Regarding outdoor mode... in a sentence, choose whether you are using ShowBox inside or outside.
The speaker’s voicing is altered to the environment. That’s all you need to know, but we’re going to give you more!
When speakers are outside, a combination of low and high frequencies don’t build up the way they do inside.
ShowBox corrects for that by boosting the frequency ranges that become deficient so the speaker sounds the same outside as when it’s inside. You make the selection, we’ll do the rest!
Additionally, when outdoor mode is engaged, the LEDs on the breakaway mixer are at full brightness, but are down to around 25-50% brightness when the outdoor mode switch is disengaged.
The outdoor mode LED will illuminate green when engaged (outdoors).

And then there is PA/Amp mode:

The ShowBox works as two kinds of “loudspeakers” with different built-in voicing modes:
Amp(lifier) mode: The default voicing – AMP MODE – is optimized as a busking instrument amplifier. The EQ curve focuses on clarity in the mid- and high-mid frequency ranges and is optimized around vocals and guitars. The LED will not be illuminated when in AMP MODE.
PA mode: PA MODE is optimized as a typical “loudspeaker”. It is a great selection to choose for when live music has wrapped up and you simply want to play music through a “PA speaker”. The EQ curve focuses on low frequency extension and resembles a slight smiley EQ curve (scooped mids). The LED will illuminate green when in PA MODE.

[Methos1979]

Just completed my first battery test. I had fully charged it yesterday and then unplugged it mid-day and left it alone for approximately 24 hours. Unfortunately, since there is no app associated with this unit you can't get too detailed a battery reading. You just get Green (20%-100%), Yellow (5%-20%) and Red (5%-0) lights. So it will be a bit difficult to properly judge just how much and how fast the battery is draining being left alone not in use.

Anyway, we plugged in around noon (two mics, one guitar, BT engaged to my phone) and held a band practice at gig volumes. Within one hours time the light went from green to yellow. This surely means that the ShowBox battery is draining significantly when in standby mode (not powered on, not connected to AC). That said, we practiced for another two hours and then streamed music for two more hours after that and it stayed on the yellow. So that's a full 5 hours, more than enough for our (one hour) gigs and then some.

I'm recharging overnight and I'll keep it on the charger until we practice again tomorrow and then we'll see how long it takes to go from green to yellow. I'll report back then on that.

Another thing I noted today, I used mostly auto-gain to connect my mics and guitar. I had a bit of the red clipping light when playing/singing hard. With the master volume at 50% I did not hear any clipping of the speaker. However, when I dialed it up to about 70% I could hear clipping whenever the light clipped. So I dialed back the gain on everything until there was no clipping of the light but dialed up the individual volumes to get back to gig volume and thankfully no speaker clipping.

More to come.

[JakeStone]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

I’ve been rehearsing with the Mackie show box. It’s a great sounding unit. The controls are smart and the layout is good. Speaker design is efficient and the cost is reasonable. The mixer is easier to use. The Bluetooth streams nicely. Effects can be “strong” but dialed back sound nice for acoustic. Ovals sound clear and you can mimic a Bose sound with some delay and verb.

Complaints? Not many.

The rubber feet on the bottom and side need to be thicker and more substantial for positioning, a la Bose S1. And, I cannot get the hang of a one button looper.

What else do you want? A cookie?

I concur with Dave on the SBox sounding great.

Comparing it side by side to the EV Everse 8.
They sound very similar with acoustic guitars and actually the Mackie may have slight edge.
Could be due to the larger box.

Although, I may give the Everse slight nod overall,,
Due to the extensive EQ's on the APP.

But the multiple inputs are a huge plus for me on the SBox..

1 Button Looper... Is what it is!
It works as advertised even with my generic footswitch.
But I will keep my Boss RC500 for shows!

[martingitdave]

Incidentally, the looper works and has good mixer controls. I, on the other hand, suck at looping. I think the one button makes it a little harder for the inexperienced. I’m an old fashioned singer/songwriter.

[AeroUSA]

Originally Posted by JakeStone

I concur with Dave on the SBox sounding great.

Comparing it side by side to the EV Everse 8.
They sound very similar with acoustic guitars and actually the Mackie may have slight edge.
Could be due to the larger box.

Although, I may give the Everse slight nod overall,,
Due to the extensive EQ's on the APP.

But the multiple inputs are a huge plus for me on the SBox..

1 Button Looper... Is what it is!
It works as advertised even with my generic footswitch.
But I will keep my Boss RC500 for shows!

How do you feel the volume of the ShowBox compares to the Everse 8?

[Chriscom]

Originally Posted by AeroUSA

How do you feel the volume of the ShowBox compares to the Everse 8?

I think everybody who compares the two has so far has said the ShowBox is louder, although the specs are close even given the logarithmic scale decibels deals with. Scott said the max SPL fo the Showbox is 122 dB, and EV lists the Everse's at 121 dB