I may have had the same questions others had, so I will try share the bigger learnings I have had after purchasing a pair of these.My wants/needs: 1) Something with as much low-end as possible that I could also lift on a pole by myself. Why? A lot of gigs we play are small bars, 50-75 people. I could leave the subwoofer at home if the tops could handle the lows (I play bass and bass keyboards and I push some deep bass through the system for some songs -thing "This Is How We Do It" type synth bass. For these rooms, these speakers will do enough. Not the same as 18" subs, but enough. That's a good thing. We still get full, deep sound and I can leave the sub(s) at home. :)2) Too many speakers don't think about room acoustics. Too much vertical and horizontal splay means too many reflections before sound reaches the listener and thus degraded intelligibility (i.e. mud). I was worried about these Mackie's (90 x 60), so I put them next to my F1's, which are very wide but very narrow vertical (a good thing!). I walked 40' away in a room with a low ceiling which should have made a mess, but actually, the amount of direct sound I was hearing from the Mackie's was about equal to the F1. This shocked me. The intelligibility was just as good on the Mackie's as the F1s. But more over, with everything flat on all units, the spectral character of the Mackie was much more accurate. Yes, I could eq the Bose, but I didn't have to eq the Mackie. That's less I have to bother with at the gig.3) The… read more Mackie is just a smidge bright at 8kHz on up (give or take). Easy to eq out, BUT, in a room with people talking, yelling, drinking...sometimes a bit extra high-end helps keeps the definition. Think of the masking effect of broad-band noise, and trying to cut through it. So I will keep the little bit of extra highs.4) Also it was quite noticeable how smooth the compression drivers are. Really a step-up over anything else I have heard. They are smooth, not harsh or shrill. Kind of a HiFi sound like a soft dome tweeter.I haven't played with the bluetooth yet, but I will use that to help me change speaker settings during a gig. Like many of you I will probably not bluetooth music through them.Other: This is the first box I have owned with tilt-down pole mount. It will get used for sure to help alleviate back wall reflections and/or hit audience when on a higher stage.Love the delay. It will be used for timing to subs at outdoor events.Can't wait to try the "outdoor" mode. Outdoors can be tough so I will take the help.Wish they had...1) Input/output connectors on the bottom of the back panel, not the top.2) Ability to see limit light from out front, around back, or both.3) Slightly better top handle4) Simple slip-over cover included would really be a great purchase incentive.Now that I have heard these I am wondering if they would array well? Maybe two side by side, splayed out, on each side of the stage? I would get the free 4 or 5 dB bass bump, maybe more spl, but I'm not sure about comb filtering if I tried this??... Mackie engineer out there? Any input?So far, I am shocked how good these sounded out of the box. I was looking at SRX, ETX, which are all amazing products, but in the 15" two way design they get a bit heavy and I needed something I could lift myself but with exceptional sound quality and power. I may have lucked out. :)

read less