MACKIE SRM350 2-WAY - Manual (Page 5)

5
The Crossover
The built-in electronic crossover is a
24 dB/octave Linkwitz-Riley design. Although
more expensive than other crossover designs,
the benefits provided by the Linkwitz-Riley
design have been well documented. These
benefits include:
• Absolutely flat frequency response
throughout the bandpass, without the
characteristic ripple near the crossover
point exhibited by other designs.
• The sharp 24 dB per octave roll-off of
the filters ensures that the transducers
aren’t reproducing frequencies outside
of their capabilities.
• The acoustic sum of the two driver
responses is unity at the crossover
frequency, resulting in perfect power
response.
• Our heroic engineers have worked
carefully to ensure that the SRM350
also provides perfect phase response.
This diligence has yielded phenomenal
accuracy, even if you are standing 20
feet away.
The Cabinet
The SRM350 cabinet was designed to be
the strongest molded composite cabinet on
the planet. This material is as strong as con-
crete, and rigid enough to prevent unwanted
vibrations in the cabinet. An optional
bracket kit is available for the top and bot-
tom of the cabinet to be used for flying, and
a socket is provided in the bottom of the
cabinet for mounting on a tripod stand.
Although it is an exceptional choice for in-
stalled sound situations, its light weight and
durable finish also make it ideal for portable
sound system use. The asymmetrical trap-
ezoidal design of the cabinet makes it easy
to use as a floor wedge for stage monitor
applications.
The Active Advantage
There are a number of advantages to us-
ing an active speaker system over a passive
loudspeaker:
• The internal crossover is active, and its
low power circuitry operates on line-
level signals. It does not waste
speaker-level power like a passive
crossover with large coils, caps, and
resistors.
• The input signals are crossed over
before they reach the amplifiers, so each
amplifier only receives the correct
frequency range for its driver.
• The amplifiers are designed specifically
for these speaker load impedances.
There is no guesswork as to what load
each amplifier has to drive, so they can
provide maximum acoustic output from
the speakers, yet minimize the danger of
speaker damage due to overdriving a
lesser amplifier.
• The connecting wires between the
amplifier outputs and the drivers are
kept to a minimum, so the damping
factor of the amplifier isn’t compro-
mised by the resistance of long speaker
cables. In addition, all the power from
the amplifier is transferred directly to
the drivers with no speaker cable losses.
• The acoustic sum of the outputs from
the two drivers is optimized electroni-
cally, as well as physically, so the
amplitude response is flat and there is
no lobing error.
• The presence of active circuits within
the speaker cabinet allow the designer
to add on extra details, such as a high
quality mic/line input section and
optional accessory modules.
In short, all the complex interconnected
components in the system are designed to
work in harmony with each other to pro-
duce the best possible sound.