With much fanfare, Mackie launched its new DLM speaker line at a packed event in a Seattle club filled with press, dealers and audio pros. The DLM line isn’t slated to ship until late October, but here’s a quick preview.
First, the Facts
The DLM series consists of three powered, DSP-driven systems: two full-range 2-way cabinets (the $699/street DLM8 and $999 DLM12) and an optional $849 DLM12S subwoofer. Each carries 2,000 watts of onboard Class-D amplification with SMART Protect driver protection. The DLM8 and DLM12 also feature a built-in, two-input digital mixer with line/mic inputs, 3-band EQ, 16 DSP effects, multiband feedback destroyer and memory presets for storing mix configurations. System tweaks include six preset EQ modes for different applications and up to 300ms of alignment delay.
Both the 8-inch DLM8 and the 12-inch DLM12 pair their woofers with a 1.75-inch compression driver using what Mackie calls TruSource™ technology. Here, the HF and LF drivers share a common magnet structure and the woofer cone forms the horn flare for the high frequencies, resulting in a conical 90° dispersion.
According to Mackie senior VP John Boudreau, the inspiration for this coaxial-style approach came from sister company EAW. “A couple of years ago, I was walking around InfoComm with EAW president Jeff Rocha. We were talking about the [coaxial] MicroWedge MW12 monitor. As we walked around the show we talked about how more manufacters were bringing this vertically-aligned transducer type back into the marketplace.”
What’s old might be new again. Coaxial speakers have a long history in sound reinforcement. Altec debuted its Duplex 401 in 1941, which piggybacked a compression driver on a 12-inch woofer. This was followed by the classic 604 15-inch Duplex in 1944, and many other companies have since made coaxial variants, including dB Technologies, Fulcrum Acoustics, L-Acoustics, P.A.S., RCF and others. Another popular coax came from mounting a tweeter in front of the woofer cone, as employed in the Electro-Voice 12TRXC (a T35 horn tweeter on a 12-inch woofer) and as used in hundreds of ceiling speaker and auto sound designs.
Mackie’s TruSource technology — with the voice coils of the HF and LF drivers using a common magnet structure and shared woofer/horn flare — closely resembles Ron Rackham’s design for Tannoy’s Dual Concentric® speakers, which date back to 1947. This isn’t to imply that anything is stolen, it’s just a another approach, in the same manner that so many designs use discrete separate horns and woofers in the same box. But all coaxial-style speakers share a high degree of coherency from having near-coincident drivers, resulting in point-source performance, where image smear is reduced and the listener perceives that lows and highs emanate from the same location.
Coaxial speakers are also inherently best suited to near-field — rather than long-throw — applications. This also makes them ideal for monitoring. The dimensions of the DLM8 (22 pounds; 12.3 by 12 by 11.7 inches) and the DLM12 (31pounds; 16 by 15.3 by 14 inches) were kept as small as possible, leaving no room for an angled side for slant monitoring, so both have a flip out kickstand that provides a 45° upward tilt. Each molded PC-ABS cabinet has an integrated top carry handle and is stackable, flyable (via M10 threads) or pole-mountable; a wall mount bracket is optional.
The optional DLM12S sub puts a 12-inch driver in an 18-by-16.4-by-18-inch, 48-pound poplar ply enclosure with 2,000-watt amp, variable digital crossover with preset EQ voicings and full-range and high-pass XLR inputs. LF performance goes down to 35 Hz (-10dB) and 128 dB max SPL.
Initial Impressions
Like its mega-selling SRM450 speakers some 15 years ago (and this year’s popular DL1608 digital mixer), Mackie seems to have hit a home run with the DLM series. The onboard mixer is nice for the M.I. crowd (I don’t do too many shows where I need a 2-input mixer), but could come in handy for voice/music playback gigs. But the DLMs are lightweight, LOUD, easy to use/setup and (based on an afternoon listening to program material and singer/songwriter Glen Phillips live in a club setting) sound pretty good — round, balanced and full. In fact, the overall impression is that the system (two DLM-12 and DLM12S) sounds much bigger than it really is. Thumbs up so far, and I look forward to checking out the final production models.
More info from www.mackie.com/dlm
Watch the Mackie DLM video on FOH-TV (www.fohonline.com/tv)
