New Speaker Alert - RCF NX 985-A

Audio Playback
1

this speaker just came out - first YouTube videos appeared about a week ago but that’s in Europe - i don’t think it’s out in US yet …

the other 3 models from the new NX 9 series are all out in US already just not the 3-way …

yamaha DZR 315 came out a few years ago trying to unseat JBL SRX 835P as the king of live sound portable PA 3-way speakers … but it failed

the reviews on the DZR are mixed … but more importantly for me i find some design choices in DZR 315 questionable …

mainly i have a very strong feeling the DZR 315 uses a stamped steel closed back midrange based on the high crossover frequency of 700 hz for a 8" driver … stamping puts a limit on the volume of rear chamber and its pretty much always too small … this pushes QTS up above 1.0 making crossover impossible which then has to be moved up an octave or more into another frequency range … to get the right volume the chamber has to be cast aluminum ( as in JBL 835 and in RCF midranges ) but that is more expensive obviously …

this begs the question of why even bother with a 3-way ? it is my belief that companies make these 3-ways for the particular customer who thinks a 3-way is inherently better. in reality many of these 3-ways are so compromised they are WORSE than a good 2-way. for example the stamped back 8" midrange in DZR 315 is actually crossed HIGHER at 700 hz than top of the line RCF 2-way boxes cross their 4" compression driver ( at 650 hz ). in other words - it is completely useless. it just makes the speaker big and heavy for no benefit in sound quality.

even beyond that the cabinet on DZR 315 is overly complicated ( read heavy / bulky ) with several unnecessary parts and the cloth grille durability leaves some questions … all in all DZR 315 just isn’t it …

but RCF NX 985-A looks like a worthy contender to challenge the SRX 835P …

even though it isn’t as advanced as SRX 835P ( no differential drive, no LCD screen ) … it has the advantage of being 7 years newer …

of course that’s also a disadvantage …

SRX having been around for so long is PROVEN.

but i have some reservations about the 835P as well … basically there is reason to believe JBL simply didn’t want this speaker to be good … because the SRX line is supposed to be a mid-range line and even though the components are high quality in the SRX 835P they configuration is deliberately holding them back …

the other thing holding SRX 835P back is it’s passive counterpart … the design was limited by the fact that SRX boxes are offered as both passive and active whereas DZR 315 and NX 985 are active-only which gives the designer more flexibility with midrange crossover frequency and horn / waveguide design as it doesn’t need to level-match the woofer anymore …

furthermore it’s likely JBL wanted similar voicing for passive and active boxes which would further limit what JBL could do with DSP to tune the sound of the SRX …

lastly the huge 3" compression driver in 835 is not necessary in a 3-way but again for voicing reasons its carried over from the 2-ways …

in other words SRX 835 is simply not the best speaker that JBL could have built at that price point but a side effect of having to fit with the rest of the SRX lineup - both passive boxes and 2-way boxes

on other hand the NX 985-A is less crippled by design IMO … it just makes more sense to me …

the main advantage of SRX 835P is it is massively configurable whereas 985A only has 60 hz crossover option … but it’s really all i need ( though 80 hz would have been better ). what stopped me from trying RCF powered PA speakers is most of them have no crossover option AT ALL. this one at least has one crossover setting - major step forward for RCF !

2

check this out, here is the response of 835p according to JBL themselves:

srx 835p response
srx 835p response1920×1348 101 KB

you’re probably wondering - WTF is going on at 600 hz ? surely that can’t actually be there ?

well Amir from AudioScienceReview has independently measured this speaker and this anomaly is in fact there …

it has to be some kind of artefact from the midrange horn, but surely it would have been trivial to EQ it out with the massive DSP that this speaker has ?

except that if JBL did that then this speaker would have completely different voicing from the passive version - you see the problem now ? the 835p is a victim of some unfortunate circumstances … it has to voice match both the passive models and the 2-way models which means that despite being a 3-way DSP model it really isn’t much better performing than a 2-way passive model, because if it did then it wouldn’t belong in the SRX lineup …

this is really messed up but that’s how things work in the real world …

here is the response of the RCF NX 985 by comparison ( from the RCF spec sheet )

rcf nx 985 response
rcf nx 985 response1977×1289 159 KB

midrange is MUCH better behaved …

furthermore in Amir’s testing the high frequency response of the JBL was quite bad - they had to use a lot of smoothing to get it to look pretty in their spec sheet but really a 3" titanium dome is a mess above 9 khz …

by contrast the RCF is only a 1.75" dome, which means the real-world response is likely to be closer to the chart than the JBL …

the 3" is theoretically better than 1.75" as the RCF models with 3" compression driver are far more expensive than ones with 1.75" … but the JBL for whatever reason doesn’t use the 3" to it’s full potential … in other words it doesn’t cross it at 1.3 khz ( as the same driver is crossed in Cinema speakers ) but instead closer to 2 khz …

why ? i suspect again it’s because of the passive counterparts. in a passive speaker tweeters are often blown, so to prevent that JBL used a big tweeter and crossed it high - a smart choice for a passive speaker. but an active speaker can use limiters to protect the tweeter and can therefore use smaller tweeters crossed lower …

but then it wouldn’t voice-match the passive speakers … SAME PROBLEM AGAIN

this is what i meant when i said NX 985 is less crippled than SRX 835 …

even though component level of NX 985 is lower than that of SRX 835 the RESULT is likely better sound quality simply because NX 985 is allowed to be the best it can be whereas SRX 835 is held back by the need to voice match passive and 2-way speakers and also by the need of its tweeter to be able to survive abuse in passive configuration where a distorted program might be fed into the speaker …

JBL and RCF are both reputable companies so i think their frequency response charts, while obviously using smoothing - are not completely useless. and what they show is that JBL has a significant anomaly in the midrange whereas RCF does not.

it’s worth noting that JBL offers EQ capabilities while RCF does not so you might be able to EQ that anomaly out …

all in all these two speakers ( JBL SRX 835p and RCF NX 985-A ) should be very close in both price and performance.

3

unboxing:

sound check:

4

two new sound check videos were uploaded today:

5

midrange sounds excellent.

the plastic tweeter leaves a lot to be desired.

i think this may actually reflect recent trends away from hi-hat in music …

JBL is an older speaker back when artists wanted their music to sound bright …

RCF is a modern speaker and today a more laid back sound is en vogue …

6

Are there any higher end PA speakers like this that pack a lot of output into a 15" or 18" 2-way or 3-way design but with better parts than the cheap ones used in these speakers? The JBL SRX 835P is a nice speaker, but it uses cheap drivers. Surely one could do better that that with some neodymium drivers with higher power handling and more excursion and a midrange and compression driver with lower distortion. Also a bigger speaker would allow for a bigger horn with deeper horn loading.

7

Maybe something like this? It looks pretty cool.

9

3-way speakers with integrated amplification are rare and pretty much all suck because they all use 2-channel amplifier with passive tweeter crossover. They are designed for old-timers who don’t understand new technology and simply assume 3-way is going to have cleaner mids.

for those who do understand technology RCF used to make TT 5-A

but generally speaking, outside of the discontinued TT 5-A, if you want high-end you’re not going to find it in a self-powered box.

you will need to look at something like this:

it’s active but DSP and amplification is external.

there was a pretty deep sale on these a while back and i considered doing a DSP crossover tune by ear for them with used amplifiers from eBay …

the actual amps that come with the factory DSP for these cost an arm and a leg …

ultimately i realized i simply didn’t need that level of performance.

yes something like SRX 835 uses second rate components but frankly it’s probably all anybody needs at home, when paired to some good subs.

the VTX F35 would have roughly double the output of SRX from almost the same box size but at many times the cost. for home use this is a very questionable tradeoff, considering the SRX is already louder than what almost anybody needs at home.

yes with factory DSP the VTX F35 will be much flatter than SRX 835, perhaps flatter than most studio monitors, but the factory DSP is only available in one line of Crown amps that are $$$.

if you go the route i envisioned, namely tuning by ear, then system cost becomes more reasonable so long as you get the speaker on sale but then also the sound will probably not be much cleaner than SRX until you get to absurd SPLs.

however if you have $$$ burning a hole in your pocket it would be a cool setup for bragging rights whether you go with factory DSP or your own custom solution.

if you go with custom DSP i heard that Q-Sys is the best, but you might also consider BSS as it’s owned by Harman like JBL so maybe in the future there may be some presets available for the VTX …

Q-Sys is generally regarded as more modern / powerful / flexible than BSS but both are good and some think BSS might sound better …

There are other options in the space as well but i only researched Q-Sys and BSS …

10

it looks like some kind of a horn, which combined with the trapezoidal shape suggests it is probably designed to use in clusters of multiple units for the bass horn section to work correctly …

the VTX F35 and RCF TT 5-A are also trapezoidal shaped for use in clusters but since they aren’t horn loaded it is more like an option, whereas for a horn it would be more like a requirement to get full performance.

as i told you horns are being phased out in favor of arrays. the VTX F35 has dual slot loaded 15" woofers which allows it to produce maximum output using smallest enclosure size. it’s a much smarter and more modern design than the Martin audio speaker IMO.

in fact when you consider that the VTX F35 has four drivers with two voice coils each for a total of 8 voice coils it is basically like three 3-way speakers arrayed together in a single box. quite clever and should have unmatched performance for its size.

11

Yeah the VTX looks nice. The woofers are slot loaded, which is a form of horn loading I guess. Two slot loaded 15’s are probably better than a single 15 in a folded horn.

These PA speakers would work very well in home theater I bet. People dismiss them because they are PA speakers and they think that because they are marketed for DJ’s instead of home theater that there is some inherent quality that makes them bad for home theater. Yet when people use PA speakers like Danley’s for home theater they can’t get over how good they sound.

Meanwhile the speakers that JBL actually markets for home theater are many times more expensive and have a fraction of the output.

I bet a home theater with a bunch of JBL SRX 835P’s would be unbeatable for the price.

12

because it is nice. when i saw it on sale i had to do some quick cost analysis and i looked at it from many different angles such as power, spl, distortion and so on but the one easiest to understand will be something i am particularly proud of - COUNTING THE SCREWS.

on my JBL EON 1500 there is only one handle for example held by just 2 screws. on the VTX F35 there are 6 handles held by 8 screws each. on EON 1500 the grille is held by just 4 screws. on the VTX F35 it’s held by 18 screws. so my EON has a total of 6 screws, while the VTX F35 has 66. an order of magnitude more screws.

why is that important ? each screw takes time on the assembly line. if VTX uses 11 times more screws it means it is in a completely different product class from EON. sort of how like a hand built Ferrari engine versus a mass produced Hyundai engine.

this goes back to what i was explaining in your other thread, not sure if you read it, but EON is a “PA” ( public address ) speaker, while VTX if a “Prosound” speaker. they are literally not in the same category of product at all.

you could tell as much from just noting that EON and VTX will not be found on the same page on JBL website, but i wanted to test if it was just marketing hype or a legit distinciton.

it’s legit.

if it was marketing hype one of them wouldn’t be 10 times more time consuming to build than the other. it’s also about 10 times more expensive as well.

you will also need to be 10 times more knowledgeable to even be able to use it, as it doesn’t include a crossover and has terminals most people have never seen and wouldn’t even be able to connect to anything. which is good because if they could they would damage the speaker.

It connects via Neutrik NL-8 which means each connector has 8 contacts for 4 channels of amplification. the speaker also requires 4 amplifier channels from Crown I-Tech with the appropriate DSP preset.

the second connector appears to be a pass through connector for daisy chaining multiple speakers.

This is brilliant because it reduces the chance of screwing things up. If it had separate terminals for every driver there would no doubt be some asshole who would plug the tweeter into woofer channel, whether due to stupidity or out of sadism. I knew MANY people who would do something like this for one reason or another.

13

a slot is actually a form of bandpass loading. it has a narrowband gain at resonance frequency followed by an acoustical low pass filter above it. this is beneficial as it increases output of the fundamental while reducing the amplitude of distortion harmonics.

the reason you don’t see it done often is 2-fold

1 - how do you access the driver ? with VTX F35 you remove the middle horn section and that gives you the access to both woofers … the middle horn must be removable anyway even without slot loading, but in most speakers the horn isn’t large enough to fit a woofer through.

2 - the crossover point needs to be close to slot resonance frequency. in case of VTX F35 the slot tuning and the mid-horn tuning match. because JBL makes every part of that speaker - drivers, horns, cabinet, DSP presets … they can optimize it to the point where the slot and horn work together as parts of the crossover.

14

as i explained above the slots here aren’t to boost output but to create a more compact cabinet and shape the crossover / reduce distortion. so for sake of SPL calculations just assume they are direct radiators.

as far as i remember from playing with HornResp two direct radiators will outperform a single horn loaded driver in most cases except a very highly optimized horn that will be completely impractical in most situations.

Horns are now largely in the same category as Vinyl records and Vacuum tubes - mainly a tool that allows audiophiles to spend more money.

Take Avantgarde Acoustic for example:

image
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it can probably be outperformed by a JBL system of less than 10% the price. but which one looks fancier, and which one would an average audiophile show off to their friends ?

reality is that an average Audiophile has a lot more money than they have hearing left and they buy speakers not to listen to anything but to convince other deaf Audiophiles that they aren’t in fact deaf by pretending to hear things that aren’t there.

Avantgarde Acoustic would be great for them. It will probably sound better than what these deaf old folks can hear especially when listening to music recorded 50 years ago that they listen to.

And the fact that it costs 10 times more than it needs to ? Well that’s a feature not a bug in the world of Audiophool audio.

15

actually they are Prosound speakers not PA.

they look like PA speakers but they are from VTX line, which is a prosound line.

what’s the difference ?

voicing …

all VTX products are voiced to match each other, which means even the smaller VTX F series products must still have the sound quality of the enormous VTX arrays. towards this end they use the same drivers, same DSP … just a smaller cabinet.

why is it done this way ?

because there will be some VIP room in a club that maybe the main array will not reach because it’s blocked off by some wall and something has to go in that room that will match the overall sonic signature of the main array …

this is basically what you were asking for - a PA speaker but built to a higher standard.

why don’t people use them at home ? mainly the price. plus 90% of people wouldn’t even be able to get sound out of them due to this being a system that requires 4 amplifier channels per speaker with external DSP, relatively uncommon ( yet not proprietary ) cabling etc.

but mainly price - most of the system cost will be in those Crown I-Tech amplifiers, and those are the only ones that have the proper DSP presets.

If you need ear-bleeding SPLs that match the sonic signature / voicing of a VTX array then it’s worth the money. If you don’t - it’s still a great speaker but the price is now harder to justify.

16

you bring up an interesting point. why do people hate on PA speakers but love Danley ?

well one reason is Danley is actually a Prosound speaker, rather than PA but most people don’t know the difference.

the other reason is that Danley has a large presence on online forums. i was personally banned from DIY audio for speaking against Danley and was chastised on Prosoundweb for fact checking Ivan Beaver of Danley.

So it’s a bit like how black Rappers can say the N-word but old, white conservatives can’t. as Chris Rock explained you need to have a “pass” to say certain things. If you’re a black Rapper you have a “pass” to say the N-word but if you’re an old, white conservative you don’t have a “pass” …

likewise Danley has a “pass” in the Audiophile world while “PA” stuff does not …

well JBL reps aren’t as prevalent in Audiophile forums as Danley but there is one good forum dedicated to just JBL, namely:

so you would get a “pass” there …

you would also get a pass on AVS because JBL is the number one brand of Cinema speakers …

you would also get a pass on AudioScienceReview because they love DSP and VTX F35 is one of very few 3-way speakers that doesn’t have any passive crossover components …

however there will also be many forums where you will NOT get pass with VTX because those forums are for people who know nothing about technology and don’t listen to music ( or watch movies ) and are only in the hobby to signal how much money they have by spending on mahogany finish and silver cables, rather than performance …

17

i think we can probably differentiate between two kinds of home theater. there are people who buy a receiver package with a subwoofer and a few speakers and call it a home theater.

and there are people who excavate a giant hole in the ground and construct a real home theater using double or triple layer drywall sandwiched with Green Glue compound for noise dampening.

i haven’t seen any JBL products marketed to that second category, then again, they simply use JBL Professional Cinema speakers …

https://jblpro.com/product_families/jbl-professional-cinema

these are actually great value - much better value than VTX

the reason Cinema speakers are cheaper than VTX is cabinetry.

Cinema speakers are designed to be installed once while VTX speakers are designed to live on the truck installed and uninstalled every week … a much more demanding application.

Cinema speakers are built using basic particleboard without any real protective coating or corner chamfering … while VTX speakers are built using high quality plywood, with rounded corners, heavy duty finish, heavy duty grills, weather protection and so on …

Essentially if you compare VTX to Cinema line they are both professional quality but Cinema speakers are large and fragile while VTX are compact and durable …

Personally i have a preference for compact and durable … but you do pay for this flexibility.

a speaker designed for a real cinema is probably never going to get moved in its lifetime so it would be waste of money to install handles on it for example … whereas a VTX F35 box has six handles with 8 screws each …

most Cinema speakers don’t even have grille as they go behind a screen … whereas of course VTX speakers have a grille that is designed to take a beating from both transportation and weather …

it’s really about figuring out what you need …

18

i agree the value would be pretty strong, especially if you place value on a speaker being light weight, portable and durable.

something like SRX 835 would be like a low-cost, easier to use alternative to VTX F35. the main problem with SRX 835 is it has active and passive versions and the active is still voiced to be similar to the passive. whereas the VTX F35 is voiced to a higher standard with more powerful DSP plus you can use your own DSP if you want.

remember not all DSP is the same. the DSP in SRX is basically not much better than the passive crossover in the passive version of the same speaker - and that is by design. all speakers within the SRX line should perform to about the same standard just like all speakers in VTX line should perform to about the same standard. so even if you get an SRX 3-way with DSP in the end it will still sound like an SRX because it’s designed to sound that way.

VTX doesn’t seem to have any passive speakers in the lineup so the line up isn’t held back by the need to sound like some old passive speaker.

Understand that even though Lexus and Toyota may be the same car the Toyota version is held back on purpose because it is designed to occupy a certain space in the overall hierarchy and that space is below the Lexus …

VTX F35 to SRX 835 is kind of like Lexus LS to Toyota Camry. i had a Camry it’s a great car but they definitely hold it back to make sure it’s just good enough to be the best car FOR THE MONEY but not 1% better than that, because then it would be eating Lexus sales which are more profitable …

by the way the the “95” or “64” in the VTX F35 refer to horn coverage angle of 90 degrees by 50 degrees or 60 degrees by 40 degrees. aside from that VTX F35/95 and VTX F35/64 are the same speaker. and of course “35” refers to 3-way using 15" woofer. this is true of both VTX F35 and SRX 835.

for the most part JBL only uses 18" for subs so if you need more than what 15" can dish out you need to go to dual woofers. there was a 3-way for the Chinese market with a 18" and very irregular response and also a 3-way Cinema speaker with 18" woofers but FOUR 8" midranges to reach 220 hz crossover … but these are oddball speakers.

so in JBL land woofers go to 15" and 18" are subs. and there are no 21" or anything bigger because that would make array modules too heavy to constantly move around and tour sound is apparently where the money is and JBL isn’t about to shoot themselves in the foot.

19

i think i may have tracked down RCF NX 985-A locally

they said they should have it on hand at the brick and mortar location later this week and that i would be able to listen to it

google maps reviews are decent and judging by the pics these guys are passionate about audio so maybe they are for real

if i can somehow fit the trip in with some other shit i need to do i would love to listen to them

they are way overpriced versus SRX 835 but on other hand they are a bargain compared to VTX F35

thing is i don’t need the level of output of either of those 3 speakers - i just need a speaker that sounds clean

if i can listen to them and verify that they sound clean …

well let’s not get ahead of ourselves …

20

Clean meaning low distortion? Why don’t get a smaller speaker then? A dome will be lower distortion than a compression driver. Or you could build something or build it from a kit.

21

distortion is a sort of an umbrella term. many things can be considered distortion. it’s not just harmonic and intermodulation distortion. compression could be considered distortion. even bad frequency response could be considered distortion.

clean to me simply means music sounds the way it should without my attention getting drawn to anything that isn’t right or shouldn’t be there or should be there but isn’t and so on.

for an amplifier we could define this as ratio of signal to noise and distortion ( SINAD ) because amplifiers create a lot of noise and measurable distortion but their frequency response is essentially flat …

for speakers SINAD would be somewhat meaningless because speakers produce little noise but have very audible aberrations in frequency response and in case of smaller speakers perhaps audible compression as well … neither of which SINAD measures.

IMO a speaker sounds clean if you can believe that you’re there. if you are obviously listening to a speaker then it is not clean.

for example if you ever heard one of these:

image

you know what a sound that ISN’T clean is.

at no point listening to a device like this do you ever get the illusion of being there. you are always aware of the playback device itself. even if you’re a deaf grandma you wouldn’t mistake it for anything else. you know exactly what device you’re listening on.