Help with Monitor speaker requirements

[Brooks Montgomery]

I have a powered mixer PA that my small acoustic band uses : 500w / 500w
(monitor channel / main channel).

Monitors: For using two 10” 8 ohm , is this (below) an appropriate speaker?:

Eminence Beta-10A American Standard Series 10-inch 250-watt Replacement Speaker - 8 ohm
??
Thanks in advance to you electric gurus!
-Brooks

[Dave Grafe]

Guitar speakers do not generally make good sound system speakers, although it can work the other way around. Are you repairing abd existing monitor, building your own, or looking for a new monitor? I couldn't quite sort your question.

[Dave Mudgett]

I am also not sure exactly your plan is here. What type of cabinet, etc.

The Beta 10-A is designed as an economical pro audio PA or mid-bass speaker. Looking at the specs, frequency response, and so on, it looks like it would be a reasonable mid-level speaker for a floor monitor with a horn if you happen to like 10" monitors (I do - I just find they typically project my low voice better - YMMV). But with just the speaker alone, with its roughly 50-3800Hz useful frequency range, I don't think I'd find it adequate as a full-range speaker. Details here -https://eminence.com/collections/eminen ... s/beta_10a

So as a replacement for an existing low-to-mid level floor monitor with some type of horn, it sounds reasonable. I assume by 'acoustic', you mean 'not real loud', right? I mean, you're talking about powering with some type of straightforward mid-level 500/500 Watt powered mixer, not a high-end system. I assume relatively smaller, lower-volume gigs. A lot of the gigs I play are in this type of setting - typically mixed acoustic/electric, with or without drums but the drums are not loud - and that type of setup works fine for us in that situation. I really dislike it when the monitors blow us off the stage in this type of setting. We really try hard to keep our stage volume as low as possible.

[Brooks Montgomery]

Dave & Dave, thanks, I was particularly hoping you guys would respond. This would be replacement speakers for two small wedge monitors with horns. The speakers in them now are cheap and not clean sounding. The mains are big carpeted plywood Yamaha speakers that sound great.

The PA is a Yamaha EMX512SC power mixer that I’ve had for 20 years and it just keeps working somehow..

By acoustic, I mean, two acoustic guitars w/ inboard pu’s (and one guitarist also plays mando mic’d), stand-up bass, and I play dobro & blues harp (aura nashville PU & JD Aura system). Three of us play thru Fishman Loudboxes, DI out to the PA. Stand up Bass has a different amp, sometimes mic’

No drums.

I don’t understand what minimum watt ratings are required (I’ve got a handle on the ohms). or what makes for a good monitor speaker.

Looking for clean sound thru these little 10” wedge monitors.

We play little bars, micro-breweries, local-yocal events, and when we occasionally play bigger outdoors gigs, we’ve played with sound guys running everything with pro gear,.

Again, thanks you guys for speaker recommendations. Electronics is often a mystery for me, and completely baffling for my band mates.

[Donny Hinson]

my2cents

You never mentioned any vocals? Anyhow, if you're just playing instrumentals, I suspect what you're describing as an "unclean" sound is the result of either intermodulation distortion, or plain overdrive distortion. If it's intermodulation distortion (different frequencies interfering with each other), I don't think new speakers will help a lot. There's only so much programming a 10" speaker can handle before things get jumbled up, and high power levels (anything over 100 watts) just increases that problem. But if the speakers that are in the cabinets are "cheapies" (and I suspect they are), then better speakers might help considerably, but you really don't need ones with 250 watts of capability. Any efficient speaker driven by 100 watts is unGodly loud, and while a small speaker used for monitor purposes can be made to handle a lot more, it's likely going to sound "unclean" trying to handle mixed programming at high volumes.

[Brooks Montgomery]

Thanks Donny. Yes vocals, three Shure SM 58’s, and my mic is a Beta 57A (I don’t sing, just play harp through it).

So, interesting you say that 100watts rating on the speaker is plenty. We definitely won’t have the monitors very loud, but that is my confusion about electronics—I’ve read that the speakers in a PA, both mains & monitors, should be rated at least what the amp puts out. Is that accurate or more bad internet info?

Two of those Eminence speakers I listed above would add up to the output potential of the monitor channel—that’s why I thought that model might work……wrong?

[Donny Hinson]

So, interesting you say that 100watts rating on the speaker is plenty. We definitely won’t have the monitors very loud, but that is my confusion about electronics—I’ve read that the speakers in a PA, both mains & monitors, should be rated at least what the amp puts out. Is that accurate or more bad internet info?...Two of those Eminence speakers I listed above would add up to the output potential of the monitor channel—that’s why I thought that model might work……wrong?

The question is "Do you really need them?" IMHO, no. If your primary concern is blowing speakers, then sure, they will "work", and probably be an improvement over what you have. But understanding the situation is far more complicated. Let me give you an analogy: Let's say you own a car that will do 130 mph. So, when you buy tires for that car, is your only consideration that they won't blow if you drive 130 mph? Probably not, you'll likely also be interested in things like traction, price, braking performance, and lifespan. And if you never actually drive 130 mph, who cares about how fast the tires will go? It's the same with speakers. When you design a small speaker to handle lots of power, it's probably gonna come up short in some category other than power handling. It's no problem to have a speaker handle lots of power, just drop in a big magnet, big heavy voice coil and former, and a sturdy cone, and presto! It'll handle gobs of power, but it might not sound ideal. Have you ever gone to a steel show and seen rows of high-wattage amps? Seems like everyone's got at least 250 watts, and many put out hundreds more. But have you ever wondered how much are they actually using? Truth be told, it's somewhere between 30 and 50 watts. All that extra power is almost never used, and its main advantage of it is that it provides lots of headroom for tone sculpting. You see, an amp rated at 300 watts will only put out 300 watts if all the controls are maxed out, and the input source is also maxed out. But we almost never do that; and all that "reserve power" gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, and little else in a lot of cases.

In my 60+ years of playing (I'm going back a few decades), I've blown my share of speakers, and I've blown several EV SRO speakers rated at 150 watts... with an old B/F Twin~Reverb that will put out an honest 80 watts - on a good day! So yeah, there's a lot to learn about speakers that goes far beyond ratings and spec sheets. But my point is that if you don't play loud, you don't really need speakers capable of handling lots of power. Truth is, all the things that give a speaker immense power handling capability are detrimental to how natural the speaker sounds. I know you've heard of some players liking old speakers because they think they sound better, and though some of that is due to the old (Alnico) magnets, a lot of it is due to the thinner, more flexible cones, the lighter suspension rings, and the lighter voice coils and formers. You reduce the mass of those pieces, and the speaker can respond faster, it sounds "light" and "airy". Engineers use terms like resonance, TS parameters, transient response, sibilants, back EMF, force factors, and a whole lot of other terms. We just know what sounds good to our ears. I've got a bunch of big amps, and sometimes I dig out something smaller with a cheap speaker, and it just sounds more fresh and clear compared to my powerful amps with big, heavy speakers.

But if you're pushing lots of programming, vocals and instruments through just a 10" speaker, it's likely no matter what speaker you use that you're going to have some distortion. The speakers you picked are good ones, but there's only one way to find out if they'll solve your problem. "Buy and try" is what most seem to have to do nowadays for definitive answers.

Good luck!

[Brooks Montgomery]

Thanks Donny …….so let me ask you this: if the same speaker brand has one rated at 250 watts, and they have another rated 100 watts, but if you’re using them only as a monitor right at your feet, pointing up at you, and you’re only putting 30 to 50 watts through them, which model would be cleaner (in theory of course), the 250 rated model, or the 100 watt rated model?

Can a speaker built to handle more watts, perform poorly at low wattage?

And again, thanks for your patience and your explanations , I get the “buy & try” (done it plenty), just don’t want to buy & try…and…..end up listing later at reduced price in the classifieds.

[Donny Hinson]

Thanks Donny …….so let me ask you this: if the same speaker brand has one rated at 250 watts, and they have another rated 100 watts, but if you’re using them only as a monitor right at your feet, pointing up at you, and you’re only putting 30 to 50 watts through them, which model would be cleaner (in theory of course), the 250 rated model, or the 100 watt rated model?

Can a speaker built to handle more watts, perform poorly at low wattage?

If it were me, I'd get the 100-watt speakers. They'd likely be lighter and cheaper, and their (possibly) lower efficiency would be a moot point, since you have 500 watts of power available.

And yes, I am of the opinion that high power speakers just don't perform well (sound-wise) at lower levels, if for no other reason than that is not what they were designed for. Everything is a trade-off; fact of life.

[Dave Mudgett]

Brooks - now that you have clarified your usage, I personally would probably go for the Eminence Beta-10a instead of, let's say for comparison purposes, the Eminence Alpha-10a or Delta-10a. This is governed by a few things:

1. You say the 10" drivers you're using now don't sound 'clean' or 'good'. You didn't say exactly what these were, but my guess is that they are probably something like a 50-100 Watt type of generic, stamped-frame speaker with a small magnet that doesn't control the cone well.

2. My take is that the Eminence Alpha-10a (rated 150 Watts RMS) would be an upgrade of that type of speaker, but not much. Here are the specs - https://eminence.com/products/alpha_10a#specifications - and note that the speaker magnet is 20 oz, the net speaker weight is 4.5 pounds, paper cone, and the efficiency is 95.6 dB (they say with 1 Watt in, measured at 1 foot, not sure what their frequency spec is, but probably at least the same over all their PA speakers of this class, so they should be reasonably comparable). A 20 oz. magnet is a typical weight for a typical medium guitar speaker. This is emphatically not a guitar speaker - but I'd be fine with that type of magnet weight for standard use in something like a Princeton Reverb or Deluxe Reverb.

3. The Eminence Beta-10a (rated 250 Watts RMS) gives not only more power handling and a bit better efficiency (97 dB vs. 95.6, not a lot), but has a significantly bigger magnet (34 oz), but only at the expense of net weight increase to 6.8 pounds vs 4.5 pounds. This is not a super heavy-duty speaker at all. Similar stamped-frame, 2.0" voice coil vs 1.5" for the Alpha, larger gap height, and so on. It's moderately more robust.

There is a Delta-10A, which is rated 425 Watts RMS. Still a stamped-frame speaker. 56 oz magnet, net weight 10.8 pounds, efficiency about the same as Beta-10a, 2.5" voice coil. Again, more robust but not clear to me that it's gonna add that much to a small setup.

None of these are super heavy-duty speakers. I suspect any of them would be an improvement over what you have, but I don't know exactly what you have. Prices (e.g., sweetwater) are $95, 100, and 140 for Alpha/Beta/Delta, respectively. But since you're saying what you have really doesn't sound good and not 'clean enough', I'd probably opt for the Beta for a bit of insurance for very little $ and weight difference. You have plenty of power to power them, but that's not saying you have to use all that power at all.

Also look at the frequency responses on the Eminence website. I do note that the Beta is a bit more peaky in the 2.5-3 KHz range, and each has a reasonable dip in the 600-800 Hz range. I like the low midrange dip - I'm generally cutting those frequencies some anyway for vocals - and I guess the behavior above 2 KHz is a matter of taste. For me, the usual issue is getting monitors to cut through without being real loud, so I guess I like that bit more peakiness.

But again - my bet is that either of those speakers would be an improvement. Alpha-10a gets good reviews on Sweetwater. Beta-10a gets good reviews on partsexpress.com.

[Brooks Montgomery]

Hey guys thanks so much for your in-depth replies. I think I’ll order one “Beta-10a” and do an A/B test before ordering the second one, and I’ll let you know what I find.

[Dave Mudgett]

Another thing - might want to pull the 10" speaker out of your current monitor and see what you have, to get an idea what a 'bad-sounding/distorted' speaker for your application is. Take a look at the magnet, cone, voice coil diameter, and so on. Very gently press the cone in and see if it's rubbing - that would definitely make it sound distorted. If it's a real piece of crap, perhaps the Alpha-10 would be a significant upgrade. And make sure the horn/piezo-tweeter isn't what's distorting. I don't disagree with Donny on not crazily over-spec'ing the speaker. You also have to concern yourself with how it matches with whatever horn is in the cabs.

I have four small inexpensive monitor cabs for small things - a couple of relatively inexpensive 12" + horn monitors, and a couple of even cheaper 10" + horn. Someone was blowing the 10s out for $30/each. I use these with a Mackie 400/400 powered mixer, and the 10" cabs really can't handle a lot. I think they're rated 160 peak, 80 "program" Watts, which might be something like 40-50 Watts RMS. I think they sound OK for lightweight speakers in low volume solo/duo situation, but even an acoustic band with anything more than one or two singers in the monitors turns to mush with these. I expect the Alpha-10s would be a significant improvement. But if I was going to the trouble to upgrade them, I'd go with the Beta for an extra $5 each and a couple of pounds difference in weight.