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Post subject: Why I love my Passport
Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:44 pm
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Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician

Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:24 am
Posts: 434
I have to use other sound systems from time to time. This heightens my appreciation for my Passport 500 and my Passport 300.

I like that you don't have "pan" knobs with one side marked "Left/Amp 1" and the other side marked "Right/Amp 2" with a small button that toggles between stereo "mode" and Amp1/Amp2 "mode". I know what all this does and how to use it, but it's not really useful and all it does is make my job of explaining how to use it to others more complicated. Thank you, Fender for NOT including this kind of unneeded complexity in the Passport line.

On the other system, I control volume with a "wide range" knob at the top of the channel stack, a linear slider at the bottom of the stack, the Amp1 or Amp2 slider on the right and the Main master slider on the right. By contrast, on the Passport, there's the one volume knob at the top of each channel and the one master volume knob at the top of the whole panel.

The "wide range" volume control at the top of the other board handles anything from mic (quiet) to line (loud) level signal. This remarkably wide range means the control is extremely sensitive. Turn it one notch and you go from, "I can't hear you," to "Ow, that hurts. Turn it down!"

On the Passport, the range of the volume controls makes sense. The 1/4" inputs are almost always line level (loud) signals from electric instruments and the XLR inputs are almost always mic level (quiet) inputs from microphones. There's a "pad" button to push if the XLR input is line level, to pull it down to the normal range controlled by the volume knob. This gives the volume knobs a narrow enough range that you can make comfortable adjustments for fine control over the volume mix of inputs coming into the system.

If I were recording musicians so that people would listen with headphones, I'd want pan controls to place mono inputs in an imaginary stereo world, but in a live performance, I want anybody near either speaker to hear everybody in the mix. Mono in is mono out.

The only time I want stereo is with keyboard synthesizers with stereo outputs or with swishy stereo effects. The stereo is not for locating sound in a fake stereo world. The stereo is for dynamic effects that move sound from one side to the other and back in a way that will be obvious to people, even if they are right next to one of the speakers. So, stereo in is stereo out. Thank you, Fender, for understanding that.

I like that the stereo channels can either take two 1/4" mono inputs (like from a synthesizer) or a 1/8" stereo patch cord (like from an iPod). That makes sense. This is also great for connecting two Passports together, so a 1/8" stereo patch cord gives me the option of using one Passport as a monitor and the other for mains, or I can have four house speakers to pump up the volume with two Passport amps behind them.

It works in the real world.

I like being able to record directly to a FLASH drive with a USB port on the Passport 500. It's a convenience and it is useful. The bands and callers appreciate having a recording to review how the evening went.

As I get new kinds of requests for my system, I like that I can expand the sound with an external, powered sub-woofer. It's bi-amping, made easy, with power amps and speakers tuned to each other.

I also like the power range of these amps. Most venues I use this for are in the restaurant-to-basketball-court size. Most power amps I run into are massively overpowered for this size venue, resulting in using volume levels in the 10%-20% range on the amp, making the controls extremely sensitive to the point of being twitchy. It's like trying to adjust a wrist watch with a sledge hammer. Depending on the music and venue, I'm typically using the Passports at 50%-80% of their capacity. Control is easy.

I like having cable storage in the amp. It's especially good for all those little patch cables that get lost easily in my gear bags.

You guys make running sound for little gigs fun and simple. I don't do colosseums. I don't have the budget or the transportation for that. Thanks to you, I do have both for performances up to a hundred or so people, with enough head room to go farther, if our little parties grow larger.

The Passport 500 and the Passport 300 make me happy.

Thank you, Fender, for doing it right.

The one thing I wish it had is monitors, but I'm realizing that I don't really want monitors built into the Passport. Each musician wants to hear themselves louder than everybody else, but they also want to hear each other. The real solution is to give each musician a monitor and arrange them so that their personal monitor is aimed at them, while being aimed generally toward the others in the group. They can then adjust what they hear by leaning a little toward whatever monitor is most important to them at that moment in the performance.

Some of my musicians already have them. I'll be looking at them to see what I might get, myself, to offer to those who don't.


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