Phonic SEM 712 pluspassive speakers
I was very much in a similar boat, with nobody seeming to provide any current reviews of Phonic speakers. I have a Phonic 1062 powered mixer (2 x 300W), so was looking for a higher wattage budget speaker than yourself. Anyway, I went ahead and bought
Phonic SEM 712 plus speakers, but these are very similar in concept to the ones you are looking at. Bearing in mind that Phonic are at the low cost end of the brand name market, the following is a very amateur review of the speakers I purchased. Please understand that I’m not a professional reviewer or a pro sound professional, so some of my technical assumptions may be quite wrong (please let me know if they are).
The first thing I tested on this speaker was the packaging, since I purchased my two units via mail order. Sure enough the boxes arrived somewhat late and well scuffed – but otherwise intact. The carton itself was lined with expanded polystyrene and provided stout protection against all but the roughest handling during shipping.
Once extracted from its packaging, the speaker appears to be stoutly constructed from high density particle board, but has been covered with black carpet to protect it against rough handling on the road. The front panel is faced with a stout metallic grille, which both looks attractive and provides excellent protection for the base driver and piezo electric tweeter. Two ¼ “ jack connections recessed in the rear panel provides for both single and parallel connection to your amp and the 8 Ohm rating should allow for two SEM 12’s to be coupled together quite safely.
The speaker box has been designed to allow for three mounting positions: 1. Vertical (free standing floor speaker), 2. Transverse & inclined (free standing floor monitor) and finally, 3. Vertically mounted on a speaker stand (utilizing the built in 35mm pole mount adaptor). At around 15 kilos the SEM12 plus is a solid but manageable lift and its recessed hand holds will also make life much easier.
At the business end, the base driver seems to be of reasonable quality and delivers a solid (if unremarkable) performance. The piezo top end is where the unit seems to struggle, although I was able to use channel equalisation on my mixer to even out the frequency response quite well.
This is an important issue if evaluating a speaker because channel equalization allows an instrument player or vocalist to adjust their channel output and optimize frequency content in accordance with a speaker’s performance characteristics (within limitations). Even further adjustment to the combined channel output is available via the mixers graphic equalizer if required. The same cannot be said when using the speaker to broadcast pre-mixed music however, since the sound profile and frequency content will vary considerably between tracks and therefore cannot be optimised to a speaker’s performance in the same way a single instrument channel can. This is where I think any bumps or dips in a speaker’s frequency response will become an issue and may go a long way towards explaining why DJ’s are less accepting this speaker’s performance than live musicians. That said however, replacement of the supplied tweeter with a quality after market unit might well deliver some excellent performance from this speaker for small extral investment!
Output volume (loudness) does not compete with more expensive high performing speakers, but was by no means a total disappointment. Both tonal quality and instrument fidelity were excellent and far exceeded expectations. I should explain that the setup I was using consisted of a seagull anniversary guitar, LA Baggs pre-amp and a Phonic 1062 powered mixer ( 300 watts per channel). Vocals were provided via
an Audio Technica AT2035 studio microphone.
All in all this is a great little speaker for the money and I’ve seen a far worse on the market than this. For a home player, garage band or small venue artist this speaker’s performance would definitely not disappoint. With larger club venues it may struggle a little, although at this price you could always hire additional speakers or subs to give a helping hand. I suspect DJ’s might want to opt for something a little louder and with a flatter frequency response, but the SEM12 plus should prove very popular with live players or home studios on a budget.
Unfortunately Phonic Audio does not publish a frequency response chart for this speaker and I do not have the required equipment to test and generate my own. In the event, the best I could do was use a test CD and listen carefully, which seemed to reveal a slight weakness at the top end as described earlier. I suspect that a carefully chosen after market top end would do much to flatten out the frequency bumps and make this box really rock for the money. The trick would be to find a tweeter that smoothly transitions the top end frequencies to the bottom and provides plenty of leeway within the frequency band of the cross-over circuit provided.
