Mackie has long been an innovator in speaker technology. At NAMM 2015, Mackie debuted its FreePlay “Personal P.A.” system, a grab-and-go rig with an 8-inch woofer and two 1-inch compression drivers, 150 watts of amplification, onboard digital mixing with DSP, Bluetooth connectivity for music streaming and/or remote tablet/smartphone control and more. Now Mackie ups the ante with “Reach,” which expands its Personal P.A. line with a higher powered, more flexible speaker/mixer combination.
Like FreePlay, Reach is designed to act as stand-alone live sound system for smaller venues and situations such as corporate meetings and presentations or musical solo or duo artists in an intimate setting or anywhere a small footprint P.A. is needed.
Inside Reach
Mackie put a lot of thought into this design and included several innovations that I like. Let’s start with the speaker design. Reach has two 6.5-inch woofers and three horizontally angled high-frequency horns that point three directions (center/left/right) for a wide 150-degree dispersion width. Mackie refers to this configuration as the ARC™ (Amplified Radial Curve) array and the horns kick in at 2.6 kHz.
In addition to this, there is a 4-inch side-firing speaker on either side of the enclosure. They call this the EarShot™ personal monitoring system and its levels are controllable by the onboard digital mixer.
Driving the transducers are five channels of Class-D amplification. Mackie touts this as a 720-watt system, but those are “peak” watts and a more realistic assessment comes from the RMS amp specs. These include 100 watts to each of the two woofers, 50 watts to each of the side speakers and another 60 watts to the ARC compression driver array, for a total of 360 watts RMS. That’s a decent amount of moxie for the system, which requires AC powering, unlike the AC/battery options offered in FreePlay.
Reach is housed in a tough, molded black PC-ABS enclosure with a steel grill and a slightly trapezoidal shape. Dimensions are 28 x 8.6 x 9.5 inches (H x W x D) and weight is 31.4 pounds. The unit has comfortable top and rear handles and a standard 35mm stand mount socket and isolating rubber feet for floor, table or onstage use.
The Mixer Section
The six-channel mixer is mounted on the side (control panel) and rear (input/output panel) of the enclosure. It’s referred to as a six-channel mixer, but the configuration is four mic/line inputs with Combo XLR/quarter-inch connectors, a mono line input from a summed-to-mono 1/8-inch TRS jack, and one mix channel is a dedicated reverb return from the onboard DSP effects. Reach can also be set to receive streaming music from a Bluetooth source and when enabled, this is routed (and mono summed) to mixer channel #5 in lieu of the 1/8-inch analog line input. The mixer is mono (not surprising, since the speaker itself is a single unit). Also, the unit has no provision for phantom powering, although any of the Combo inputs can also accept a Hi-Z source (such as a guitar pickup), so there’s no need for direct boxes.
Below the Combo connectors are 1/4-inch jacks for Phones, Footswitch, Link In and Link Out. The headphone output is straightforward and it monitors the main mix. The other input accepts any 1/4-inch footswitch (momentary or latching) and can be used to turn the internal effects on or off — great for a singer hitting that delay at the end of a chorus, but I wish this could also be routed as a global or individual channel mute to function as a cough switch in a podium application. Maybe in the next software rev?
The TRS Link In/Link Out connectors offer some intriguing possibilities to link to another Reach speaker. This enables the output of that speaker’s mixer to combine with this one and vice versa. Your four mic inputs become eight without individual mic cable runs across the stage.
The Mixer Interface
On the side of the enclosure is the mixer effects panel. Rather than individual channel controls, the user simply selects the desired channel from a series of buttons and then adjusts levels of channels, effects, main/monitor outputs via a large, continuously variable knob. Levels of the selected function are displayed on a large, bright 15-LED display.
From this panel, other aspects are also selectable, such as FX presets; output EQ voicings (four presets tailored for flat P.A.; DJ “smile” curve; solo singer-performer; and a high-intelligibility voice setting); muting of front/side/both speakers; Bluetooth link; and Feedback Destroyer in/out. The latter searches for problem frequencies and automatically inserts multi-band filters to correct the problem. Operation of the Feedback Destroyer was remarkably simple to use, yet effective, and was sonically transparent.
Monitoring
The side-firing EarShot personal monitoring system is useful in all kinds of applications. Essentially, it sends the main mix (no monitor mixing is available) to either or both of the two side-mounted 4-inch speakers. Anyone expecting this to rival the sound of a custom “more-me” mix through a double-15 wedge with a 2-inch compression driver is bound to be disappointed. However, used in the context of a presentation meeting or a more intimate singer-songwriter gig, where the side-fill monitor needs are more modest, will appreciate the EarShot feature. One highly useful trick with EarShot is that it can be used to increase the system dispersion up to 250-degrees. And in situations where a single Reach is set off to the side (near a wall), the side speaker toward that wall can be muted, thus reducing room effects and keeping audio focused where it belongs.
Get Connect-ed
The real fun kicks in with Mackie’s Connect™ a free Reach control app for iOS and Android devices. Connect interfaces using Bluetooth via a simple link process and there’s no router/external box required. Once wirelessly connected, the app’s layout and easy-to-use GUI provide fast and easy access to detailed metering of nearly all system functions (except power-on and Bluetooth link), while at the same time providing more detailed operation of other functions such as the 3-band EQ, 16 effects programs, channel/output mutes, storage/recall of three system snapshots and more. There’s also a factory default reset, which is useful in situations where you arrive at a gig and simply want to start with a clean slate.
Overall, I like this. Reach can be an ideal solution in all kinds of applications that sound companies face everyday. The audio is clean and loud; the feature set is well thought out and operation (either alone or used with the Connect app) is fast and straightforward. Thumbs up on this one.
JJ Jenkins is a live sound and studio engineer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
At a Glance
A Grab-and-Go P.A. Solution
Reach is a complete self-contained P.A. system, offering ultra-wide coverage and built-in personal monitoring, along with Bluetooth music streaming, six-channel digital mixing and a versatile control app for iOS and Android.
Mackie Reach
PROS
Wide dispersion sound; simple operation; expandable with other units; easy to use control app.
CONS
No phantom power; monitoring limited to main mix feed.
SPECS
Main Transducers: Dual 6.5-inch ferrite woofers, three ferrite 1-inch exit compression drivers on tweeter array.
Side Fills: 4-inch full range speaker on each side
Frequency Response: 55 Hz to 17 kHz (±3 dB)
Dispersion: 150 x 50 degrees (H x V)
Amplifier Power, RMS: (2) 100-watt to LF; (2) 50-watt to side fills; 60-watt to HF array
Amplifier Topology: Class-D
Input Protection: Peak and RMS limiting, thermal protection on power supply and amplifiers
Dimensions: 28 x 8.6 x 9.5-inches (H x W x D)
Weight: 31.4 pounds
Manufacturer: Mackie
Pricing: $999 (street)
More Info: www.mackie.com
