Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Just wondering how this cab sounds for a small rig FOH. Does the 1" horn keep up? I can't find any reviews where someone has used them in anger yet. Just looking for opinions here. I need to build a small rig and thinking about 2 of the 215's over 4 of the DSR118's. Should be a potent little club rig, but I'm worried about the 1" horn. I could go to banjo center, I know, but that won't tell me how they hold together in a 2000 square foot bar packed with people.

TIA
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Just wondering how this cab sounds for a small rig FOH. Does the 1" horn keep up? I can't find any reviews where someone has used them in anger yet. Just looking for opinions here. I need to build a small rig and thinking about 2 of the 215's over 4 of the DSR118's. Should be a potent little club rig, but I'm worried about the 1" horn. I could go to banjo center, I know, but that won't tell me how they hold together in a 2000 square foot bar packed with people.

TIA

Tim,

I've done the whole banjo depot listen thing to the Yamaha DSR line, and was rather disappointed. The 12" box was the best of the bunch, but the 15/1 was so weird that myself, and the touring A1 that joined me, wondered aloud if the particular units we listened to were broken. The most noticeable thing for us was the lack of last octave, and awkward midrange voicing. Certainly the boxes we interacted with were nothing like the ruler responses on the Yamaha datasheet. I've added them to my (rather long) list of under performing powered speakers.

All that said, the dual 15/1 form factor makes exactly zero sense to me. Big woofers, with all their problems for midrange performance, and then you're going to high pass them anyways. What are you trying to do, exactly?
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Hey Tim:

Phil is right as usual - those inexpensive Yamaha flat phase powered speakers caught my eye initially. Took both the 12" and 15" models outside compared to my Fowler recommended EV SxA250's and the comparison ended as soon as the EV's were powered up. The EV's went far louder, far cleaner and had a more even and wider horizontal coverage pattern. At low volumes I could hear the flat phase advantage of the DSR's in some ways, but it still sounded like cheap drivers with good processing.

Yamaha is a very smart company, thus I assume they know this. My conclusion is that the price paid for the fancy processing was low enough to include as part of an advertising budget instead of attempting what I'd hoped - the king of the inexpensive powered speaker market segment.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

What are you trying to do, exactly?

I'm trying to be cheap. LOL

Really I'm looking for a LOW COST rig that I can put less experienced guys on and not worry about it getting blown up. I realize that I can get good processing and power and use something like an MRX level pa, but that kinda defeats the purpose of being cheap. I was hoping that these new Yamaha powered jobbies would do the trick for me since they really could be the king of low cost PA, if only they sounded good!

the dual 15/1 form factor makes exactly zero sense to me. Big woofers, with all their problems for midrange performance, and then you're going to high pass them anyways.

I completely agree, but unfortunately it's kind of difficult to get a high output mid/top that isn't a dual 15 in this market segment. There are a couple 3-way self powered boxes, but there are no dual 10's or horn loaded 12's that are self powered and club-market cheap. The best I can hope for is a single 12 that is built to be more of a monitor wedges than a FOH cabinet...
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

I'm trying to be cheap. LOL

Really I'm looking for a LOW COST rig that I can put less experienced guys on and not worry about it getting blown up. I realize that I can get good processing and power and use something like an MRX level pa, but that kinda defeats the purpose of being cheap. I was hoping that these new Yamaha powered jobbies would do the trick for me since they really could be the king of low cost PA, if only they sounded good!

Looking briefly at online prices, it looks like you're planning on spending ~6k on club-level racks'n'stacks. Quite a few options in that price range, both self-powered and externally powered.

Heck, for cheap, it's pretty hard to beat Yamaha Club series and QSC RMX power...
 
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Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Looking briefly at online prices, it looks like you're planning on spending ~6k on club-level racks'n'stacks. Quite a few options in that price range, both self-powered and externally powered.

Heck, for cheap, it's pretty hard to beat Yamaha Club series and QSC RMX power...

Which, oddly enough, is what I'm using right now. Unfortunately the high end will absolutely not keep up. And, I still have the issue of handing it over to inexperienced operators in this market segment. Good system limiting is absolutely not cheap.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

It looks like I'm back to the Yorkville EF500p as the mid/hi's for this rig. It's a single 15 with a 2" exit 60x40 horn. It should be able to provide enough intelligibility. The bonus is that I can pole mount it to get it up high and angle it down.
This still makes no sense, to me at least.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Tim, take the trip to GC and listen for yourself. I did and thought the line sounded pretty good, good enough that I put some in stock.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

This still makes no sense, to me at least.

So Phil, what would you recommend for a mid/hi that is powered, about a grand per box, not a constant-curve line array, and loud enough for R&R in a 200 cap venue?

Because I'm not seeing a lot of choice here...


edit; What I and my clients are used to using in this segment is one stack a side of JBL4719's and the 212 or 215 top. That's what I'm trying to replicate volume/coverage wise but with a foolproof powered option.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

So Phil, what would you recommend for a mid/hi that is powered, about a grand per box, not a constant-curve line array, and loud enough for R&R in a 200 cap venue?

Because I'm not seeing a lot of choice here...


edit; What I and my clients are used to using in this segment is one stack a side of JBL4719's and the 212 or 215 top. That's what I'm trying to replicate volume/coverage wise but with a foolproof powered option.

So powered is mandatory for foolproof? With a single itech and some pro speakers you can have a pretty rock solid mono PA that can be run through a single NL4 with excellent limiting.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

What's Yamaha putting in these boxes? I know their staple high driver for the club series was the PSD-2002. Hopefully they went with something a little nicer. If they're using the PSD, that could explain why Phil thought the last octave was lacking, lol.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

So powered is mandatory for foolproof? With a single itech and some pro speakers you can have a pretty rock solid mono PA that can be run through a single NL4 with excellent limiting.

I'm sorry, but I'm not building a mono PA. So, a pair of used iTechs costs me roughly 4 grand. Then I add speakers.

Or, I can get 2 EF500P's and 2 LS800P's for a little under 4 grand. And, I don't expect them to be bulletproof, but yes, generally speaking, powered cabs have way better protection than anything else in this price range.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

I'm sorry, but I'm not building a mono PA. So, a pair of used iTechs costs me roughly 4 grand. Then I add speakers.

Or, I can get 2 EF500P's and 2 LS800P's for a little under 4 grand. And, I don't expect them to be bulletproof, but yes, generally speaking, powered cabs have way better protection than anything else in this price range.

I used to own four EF500p's and four ES908 subs. The EF500p's were reliable when pushed into limit from my experiences (this only happened a couple times), but my feeling now is that I'd much rather have a pair of higher output tops without limiting than a barely big enough PA pushed into limiting all night.

The EF500p was too heavy and lacked a monitor angle for many of my potential uses, and didn't have enough balls for others (two per side outdoors sort of thing). While I was upgrading to larger mains to cover bigger gigs I replaced those four with a single pair of FBT Maxx 6a's which are easier to transport, sound better with and without subs IMO, complemented my FBT Maxx 4a's as monitors when needed, and had better dispersion to be used as singles per side (90 vs 60). I sold my EF500p's for fairly little because no one seemed to want them.

I guess it all depends on how this PA fits into your larger collection, but I was never blown away by the EF500p and when I'm worried about things blowing up I prefer to send something like the SLS960 with lots of extra output that can coast along than something that will be driven to the rails.

For example, when monitoring the output of a single SLS960 over two LA400's per side on the itech the 960 channel was in the 10-65 watt range all night while the subs were deep into limiting.

In summary, the EF500p wasn't enough of an upgrade over run of the mill SOS to be worth the extra weight and limited applicability IMO. I'd also take a look at the EV Zxa5 and some other higher output SOS from FBT, RCF, etc.
 
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Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Tim,
All that said, the dual 15/1 form factor makes exactly zero sense to me. Big woofers, with all their problems for midrange performance, and then you're going to high pass them anyways. What are you trying to do, exactly?

Are you suggesting a 3 way? Or just a hi-quality 2-way (perhaps 12" rather than 15" and/or a larger HF driver)?

JBL PRX635 seems like an option to consider. Lightweight, similar output (at least by manufacturer's specs) to the Yamaha, hopefully being a 3 way design would give it some chance at performing better through the midrange.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

So Phil, what would you recommend for a mid/hi that is powered, about a grand per box, not a constant-curve line array, and loud enough for R&R in a 200 cap venue?Because I'm not seeing a lot of choice here...edit; What I and my clients are used to using in this segment is one stack a side of JBL4719's and the 212 or 215 top. That's what I'm trying to replicate volume/coverage wise but with a foolproof powered option.

Tim,

I'm not much help on talking about a specific powered product that meets those criteria at that price point. I feel like with such constraints you probably have adversely pre-selected the Yorkville. Not that there's anything wrong with yorkville, as I don't hesitate to suggest their product. That said, let me put on my loudspeaker design hat and talk about the other notion in your post. The idea that a powered speaker is automatically going to provide the best limiting is not universally true.

The fact of the matter is that it is very difficult to put enough amplifier inside a powered speaker to overdrive a quality modern low frequency driver. The 'peak limiting' in a given powered speaker may be nothing more than the amp module's clip limiter. The important limiting then is the long term thermal limiting, and there is wide variability in the sophistication of such schemes.

An advanced picture of limiting should account for a number of effects, and i'll try to most of them here briefly:
  1. The voice coil of a loudspeaker heats up as energy is dumped into it. Metals increase their resistance with increasing temperature due to phonon scattering.
  2. This changes the dc resistance (Rdc) of the voice coil (increases it)
  3. The change in Rdc affects the current in the voice coil, for a given input voltage, by Ohms law (V=IR). The resistance goes up and the current goes down. This change in the resistive component of the voice coil is independent of the reactive component of the impedance.
  4. The motive force on the cone is proportional to B*l*I, where I is the current above. Less current means less motive force for given input voltage. Crudely this can be thought of less output for a given input voltage, which we commonly call power compression.
  5. Also affected is the Q of the driver's electrical dampening (it increases), as the more resistive voice coil provides less electrical dampening
  6. This in turn changes the Q of the driver/box combination (raises it), changing the frequency response near the vent tuning frequency, and making the overall bass response more underdamped.
  7. Once there is sufficient heat transfer from the coil to the driver's magnetics structure, the magnetic flux strength of the magnet will be affected (it will be reduced). This further reduces the B*l*I product, because you've now reduced B.
The voice coil resistance resistance of a driver that has experienced substantial heating can be nearly 2x the standard, cold Rdc. Functionally that means that the amplifier in the system needs to provide nearly 2x the voltage swing to reach the same cold output level. Another way of thinking of this, is that the limiting voltage threshold of a hot driver needs to be raised relative to a cold driver to keep the output level consistent once the driver has heated up. Its not that the energy into the driver has increased, but rather a greater voltage is now needed to induce the same amount of current in the voice coil.

A sophisticated limiter would measure/calculate voice coil heating and tightly control it. Further this limiter would apply corrective equalization to account for the change in the low and low-mid response due to the voice coil heating. This limiter would also adjust threshold(s) based on the true peak excursion the "hot" driver would produce for a given input voltage, accounting for the heating. None of these things are easy to implement, especially for low frequency drivers where the potentially substantial magnitude of the cone movement affects many of the parameters involved.
 
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Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

What's Yamaha putting in these boxes? I know their staple high driver for the club series was the PSD-2002. Hopefully they went with something a little nicer. If they're using the PSD, that could explain why Phil thought the last octave was lacking, lol.
At several times I have contemplated designing and selling a crossover upgrade for the Yamaha club boxes, but the limited performance of this compression driver has stopped me. There's only so much that a passives upgrade could do for this driver.
 
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Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Are you suggesting a 3 way? Or just a hi-quality 2-way (perhaps 12" rather than 15" and/or a larger HF driver)?

Loren,

I generally prefer three way designs. Each driver can be more specifically tailored in design to its respective bandpass. There are some tweaky distortion advantages for the three way. There may also be some tweaky voice coil heating advantages, and certainly having an additional voice coil for thermal dissipation is not a bad thing.
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Despite the issues, I still really like the Mackie HD boxes. I had a lengthy conversation with a rep at Mackie a few weeks ago, and they seem to have nailed out the issues with those boxes. ...Or so they say. I sent my amp module back to them, and they fixed it for free under warranty(turn around was just over 2 weeks). The subs were a little underwhelming, but the HD1531's are really quite impressive. I ended up with HD1531's over LS800p's, and I couldn't be happier.


Evan
 
Re: Yamaha DSR215 Anyone mixed on it yet?

Seems now more then ever with all the great processing power out there, it might be time for more esoteric drivers that have thermal sensors at the VC gap and maybe optical sensors for excursion measurement. Also a mic for distortion measurement in real time. That would open up a lot of possibilities for really keeping things in check protection wise and optimizing system performance. The possibilities are interesting.