A GOOD MONITOR sound is key to any gig, but purchasing enough quality wedges to outfit a band can be a expensive proposition. Community's MVP28 wedge, part of the company's MVP series of enclosures, offers a practical solution to this conundrum. It's a lightweight, compact monitor that packs considerable punch. Although its sound isn't as sweet as more expensive wedges, its performance relative to price makes it a serious bargain.
WARM AND FUZZY
The MVP28 features a 12-inch woofer and a compression driver, loaded into a ported enclosure that's covered with black carpet. (Community also offers the MVP38, which features a 15-inch woofer.) Although the enclosure itself appears to be solidly built, its recessed plastic jack panel — fitted with two ¼-inch and two Speakon jacks — seems fragile to me, and my guess is that it might be prone to cracking over time. The similarly fragile inset plastic handles help keep the weight down, but they don't allow a one-handed grip, so even a muscular stage tech will have to use two hands to lift the MVP. The plastic corner protectors appear sturdy, as does the perforated metal grille.
I was not immediately impressed when I connected an MVP28 to my practice room P.A. and tested it out with my own (baritone) voice. Although Community claims that the proprietary drivers deliver low distortion, the reproduction of my voice was decidedly gnarly, reminiscent of the buzzy sound common to two-way speakers that feature piezo tweeters. When I gave a good shout I heard a chopped-off, splatty quality suggesting power compression in the horn driver. According to Community, I was perceiving the driver protection, which is always in-circuit to a greater or lesser degree and attenuates the high frequencies. Paradoxically, playing CDs revealed a tipped-up top end, in which the percussive attacks of an acoustic guitar sounded almost like they were coming from a separate instrument.
THE DIRTY LOWDOWN
The MVP28's 12-inch woofer and ported enclosure produced a bottom end that was strong, although perhaps a bit elevated through the midbass, resulting in a fat and sometimes overly chesty quality. The lows started rolling off gently below 100 Hz, providing usable response down to 70 HZ, after which they sloped away rapidly. While cool for guitars and most instruments and voices, this is definitely not the monitor to put by a drummer or other musician who asks for more and more kick drum and bass.
I was impressed with the the horn, which throws a wide pattern of sound but is nevertheless quite punchy. In my experience, many singers want the sound to jump out of the monitor and whack them in the face. The MVP28 did just that, practically blowing me off my feet while the monitor was being fed only about 12 or 15 watts. Engaging the 10-band graphic EQ in my practice P.A. allowed the wedge to get even louder while helping to smooth out the tone.
The 90-degree horn's horizontal orientation atop the enclosure provides impressively usable highs way out to both sides. This wide coverage makes the MVP28s particularly useful to users who can only afford a single pair, and it gives these monitors an advantage over others — budget or otherwise — that mount the horn vertically at one end of the enclosure. Such loudspeakers can have a narrow sweet spot, with profoundly different sound at either side of the box and highs that can cause sonic mayhem by reflecting off floors and low ceilings.
CABINET MEMBERS
The MVP's enclosure walls are made of Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) and are internally braced, resulting in a fairly nonresonant cabinet. MDF is a popular material for high-end hi-fi speakers because enclosure inertness minimizes frequency response peaks and dips caused by flexure of the walls. This inert quality is partly responsible for the MVP28's apparently smooth frequency response curve. This smooth response makes the monitor well-suited to be controlled by the 7- and 10-band graphic equalizers customarily found on entry-level and low-end mixers.
Because the sound of many speakers improves as the driver's suspension becomes more flexible from use, I decided to “break in” the MVP28s before testing them further. I connected the monitors to an amplifier being fed pink noise, kept the levels moderate, and let the audio play though the speakers for about 60 hours.
I then tested the monitors, using my own voice and that of my female assistant. The MVP28s, now broken in, still had some rough edges sonically but sounded much improved.
I also tried miking a resonator guitar with a Shure SM57. Gain before feedback was substantial, and once I'd found the guitar's sweet spot, the tone quality was quite satisfying.
KICK IT UP A NOTCH
Until this point, all my listening had been done with relatively low-powered amplification. The MVP28 is rated at 150W RMS, 375W program, and Community recommends an amplifier that provides 0.80 to 1.25 times the program rating. As a result, I chose a Crown Power-Tech 3.1, which provides about 540W into an 8ž load and does a good job of controlling a speaker's motion. Driven by this stellar amp, the MVP28s sounded much better; their harshness diminished even more. Although I would not originally have used the MVP28 for my more discerning clients, the idea was becoming more plausible.
I next brought the wedges to a rather raucous open mic, along with a faithful old 175W-per-channel (at 8ž) power amp — which I felt would be more typical of the units used with these budget-conscious speakers — and turned them over to the resident engineer. The move from the clinical confines of my practice room to the ambient sounds and relatively reverberant airspace of a neighborhood bar further assisted in smoothing out the MVP28s' presentation.
Feedback had been a recurring problem at this venue, but the MVP28s brought a reprieve to participants and audience alike. A casual survey of the evening's entertainers, who ranged from absolute beginners to experienced performers working out new material, indicated general satisfaction with the monitor sound. I sat in behind a friend in order to listen from the musician's perspective, and while there was not necessarily a strict cause-and-effect relationship between the MVP28s and his performance, I have never heard him sing better or perform more effectively.
IN CONTENTION
The MVP28 is a strong contender for the budget-monitor crown. Although its sound may not suit every taste and application, it packs a punch that can fight its way through a fairly loud band. It gives satisfying performance, even with entry-level equipment, and gets better when the components around it are upgraded. The MVP28's unusually high bang for the buck makes it a must-audition product for bands starting out, small venues, community arts presenters, first-time P.A. buyers, and musicians everywhere whose ambitions are bigger than their credit limit.
