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Post subject: Fender Passport Conference Frequency Response?
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 5:12 am
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Hobbyist
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Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2020 4:36 am
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Hey all,

Newbie to the forum looking for some help. I'm wanting to buy a Fender Passport Conference for small gigs. I considered the Venue and Event models as well but for the size rooms that I play the Conference should do. I want to use it for vocals and instruments - guitar mostly. I've looked at a discussion and comparisons of the Fender on OuterAudio (https://www.outeraudio.com/portable-pa-systems/) and a few other sites but have been unable to find the frequency response range for this setup.

I tried searching this forum as well, to no avail. Apologies if this has been discussed before and I missed it. Any help appreciated.

Thanks,
Jack


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Post subject: Re: Fender Passport Conference Frequency Response?
Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 5:58 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:24 am
Posts: 434
Home stereo systems tend to give frequency response stats because the environment is fairly predictable in terms of size and is most applicable in the most predictable environments (like headphone use). PA systems? Not so much.

You could be using this outdoors. You could be using this in an institutional conference room for a dozen people. Frequency response delivered to the room would vary wildly depending on the environment.

The issue here is bass response, since most acoustic guitars are have a significant bass component to the sound. Outdoors, the bass evaporates over short distance unless it has a lot of wattage behind it, plus either a large speaker surface or really deep-throw drivers to move a lot of air.

I have not worked with current versions of the Passport, but having owned a 300 and a 500, the two primary differences between smaller models and larger models is a combination of power and bass response, which tend to go hand in hand.

Consider that if you play a stereo quietly, you can hear the treble clearly, while the bass is gone. Turn it up, and aside from the increased volume, you can now hear bass. It takes watts to play bass so that it can be heard.

If the important issue for you is "clarity", the smaller unit will be fine. The larger units cost more and they have more wattage in the amp and bigger speaker surfaces, so they play bass better. The low E on a guitar is the first ledger line below bass clef in "piano" sheet music. (Classic guitar music is written an octave higher than it sounds for convenience, so the most common range of the instrument all fits on one clef.) That's a low note.

You probably want to get the biggest Passport you can afford, if you want to impress your audience with the rich tone of your guitar. The Conference unit is probably focused on clear speech more than musical reproduction, and the important frequencies for understanding human speech are well up in the treble range. You can hear bass notes on a small unit like this, but they don't get the same emphasis in the overall balance as they do acoustically, from your guitar. It's like listening to your acoustic guitar from a distance. Treble carries better over distance (when there are no obstructions).

Another option would be adding a subwoofer, but likely your results would be better with getting a larger Passport, since using separate hardware for the bass would require balancing two separate systems with each other, and it's a LOT easier to work with just one system that handles the full range of sound. A subwoofer could easily make your sound muddy and ugly.

I suspect that if you played your guitar through each Passport unit side by side, you'd be happy with the smallest unit, but your grin would be wider each time you moved to a bigger unit.


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