FYI DBX DriveRack

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DrJones

New member
Great peice of gear but.......

Crossever section misleading. It took 2 calls, 3 tech (inc head of dpt.), and 1 engineer callback from DBX and the final soulition is: The DriveRack your HI and LO shelves start and end points which makes you think you have to manually figure out your slope start and end points and where they crossover at whatever slope you want to use. That is not true. The graph ( as usual for any product) means nothing. It automatacally sums the crossover points. So basicly If you want your crossover between LO and MID at 100 hz, you set your HI shelf of your LO @ 100hz and your LO shelf from your MID @ 100hz at whatever db slope. Simple, but misleading. Just thought I'd let you know. Other than that what an awsome peice of gear. :cool:
 
Sorry, but I fail to see how that is misleading. Then again, I refuse to use my Driverack PA's anymore. They just do not sound very good. The Dirverack 260 seems a little better, but until you get to the 480 and 4800 series, they just sound bad. We have already sold off 5 of them, and I have been nagging my boss to sell the 6th one as well.
 
xstatic said:
Sorry, but I fail to see how that is misleading. Then again, I refuse to use my Driverack PA's anymore. They just do not sound very good. The Dirverack 260 seems a little better, but until you get to the 480 and 4800 series, they just sound bad. We have already sold off 5 of them, and I have been nagging my boss to sell the 6th one as well.
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I just got back from smarting the system ie. gain structure, crossover, comp.-limit, feedback, RTA, and delay and I am pretty impressed at the overall performance. As far as misleading, the crossover section is a little confusing as far the graph to actually how this peice of equiptment performs. Just like any manual, it does not give any specifics on how it is engineered to work. The graph shows start and end points of crossover shelves between the subs-mids and hi's. Which make you think you have to manually caculate where you want to make your crossover points. That is not true. You set your HI & LO shelves to the actual points where you want to crossover to switch between your speakers and it automatically sums the slope. What db slopes are you using? This system I am working on is in a club that has been around for 25 yrs. Ive been hanging around this club for 15 yrs and have been running sound for 5 yrs. The sound has never been better. Now In the past year I have been rebuilding the whole system. That has been a good reason why the sound has been getting better, but the DriveRack has been an A+ investment. If you have any questions about the DriveRack feel free to ask. Like I said the tech's didnt even know how to work it properly, I had to get a call back from one of the engineers to get a real answer. I firmly belive if you use the DriveRack properly You would be thourghly impressed also.
 
Well, I have owned Driverack PA's, Driverack 260's, and Driverack 480's. I sold the 260's as an affordable option for an install, and dumped the PA racks ASAP. You see, I also own some BSS Omnidrives and minidrives. Personally, the difference is huge and amazing just switching to the BSS. Everything that goes through the PA rack gets muffled and stepped on. It may be an improvement, but don't doubt how much an even better system processor would sound. The 480's sound OK, but are mostly good for their wealth of features. Typically, I avoid using even the 480's at FOH, but use them often on monitor rigs. As a point of reference, I run a Live sound company, and also work for a large regional company. Both are DBX dealers, and we are located only 70 miles from the Harmon Center where DBX is located so I am well versed and trained in DBX equipment. The Driverack PA offers a lot of features and competes well in its price bracket, but Sound Quality is DEFINATELY not its strength. I have on occasion recommended it when a client needs the features, but is constrained by budget. However, a BSS minidrive is not much more than a DBX Driverack 260. It does not offer quite as many features, but sonically sounds MUCH MUCH better and is much quicker to set up. I can not even begin to tell you how many club owners have come and asked me what I did EQ wise to their system to make it sound so much better. It's always funny when I tell them that I just hooked up my BSS and Midas and did 3 minutes of tuning on the rig. I also can not tell you how many of them have also replaced them soon after. Driverack PA's are a dime a dozen out here. They do the job, but they take a lot more work than good processors for just a little bit of result.

As far as slopes go, I generally use the Lenkwitz-Riley 24db per octave slope. When using most JBL cabs ( like so many people do) I also leave a gap between my crossover points. I guess you will also have to trust me that I have tried what looks like some strange options when using Driverack's to try and get them to sound right. So I have experimented with frequency overlaps, notch EQ's, graphic EQing and slope changing, and the Driverack PA still does not fare well. If however you are using the 48x series, much of this is a moot point, because sonically it sounds much better.
 
I understand there is much better quality equiptment on the market. For the price and reviews on the DriveRack PA I am impressed. This Thread was intended to help inform owners of this product what I thought as misleading (confusing) about the crossover section. Like I said it took 3 DBX Tech's and an engineer to get a responce. Let me add they were very prompt. It sounds like you run a little bigger systems than I do. One day hope to make this system BAD ASS! For now, money well worth spent. :D
 
Sure thing. For the pric it works fairly well. Consider though that a BSS minidrive can be had for $1k or less. What exactly do you mean about the points being summed by the way?
 
xstatic said:
Sure thing. For the pric it works fairly well. Consider though that a BSS minidrive can be had for $1k or less. What exactly do you mean about the points being summed by the way?
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I'm guessing he means that the actual starting points of the slopes are set automatically so flat response is achieved at the set crossover point, or that the response is automatically adjusted by the unit.
 
xstatic said:
Sure thing. For the pric it works fairly well. Consider though that a BSS minidrive can be had for $1k or less.
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There was a lot of equiptment replacement and upgrades. This is on a $4000 budget.

xstatic said:
What exactly do you mean about the points being summed by the way?
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Kind of like Boingoman said. When using a 24db slope there are 4 octives @ 6db (weather your going up or down). That is were you have to do math to find the intersect points so you dont get a 6db or greater spike. The graph on the driverack shows the start and stop points which make you think you have to figure that out. But it does work automatically. ;)
The DBX 223XL is what I was going to originally going to purchase. Just turn the knob to your crossover points and Wah Lah! Decent Reviews and better than what was in the bar already. Got sold on the driverack and its not bad at all. :D

By the way checked out your myspace Nice Studio! :cool:
 
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