If your in the marcket for a medium PA, that will gracefully handle acoustic guitar and vocals keep reading!

I am a fan of Ion. They make the Blockrocker,and larger powered speakers. What I really like is the suitcase on wheels aproach, which makes weeling to a gig easy. I needed to build out a smaller system for a local venue here in Denver, and the Blockrocker just didn’t have enough power to cut it.

ION Audio Total PA Ultimate… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9Z1P41D?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

This powered speaker has the following features:

Experience Room-Filling, Lifelike Sound with a 650-Watt Bi-Amplified System: Prepare to be blown away! The dedicated amplifiers powering the 12-inch woofer and tweeter deliver incredibly rich sound quality with deep, booming bass and crystal-clear highs that will get everyone moving

It does come with two microphones which I have yet to test.

On the back, you have two xlr, two mic channels, quarter inch for each channel at mic level, auo eighth inch in, USB a for charging third party devices, as well as playing audio from a thumb drive. You also have 1 xlr out, to send the mix to a recorder or another speaker. Bluetooth is included to stream audio from a smartphone.

How is the sound? Very loud! and clean. No sub bass, but it sounds full. Nice bass and trebel seperation.

How is the eas of use? There is one multifunction knob on the back. It has click stops. It starts out on main volume. Press it once, Mic1, Twice, Mic2, 3 times, Source. There is also EQ in the mix to adjust bass treb, I don’t remember where that is in the sequence. If you leave the knob alone for 5 seconds it reverts back to master volume which is really helpful.

I didn’t think it would be convenient at all for mixing on the fly, so brought a mixing concel into the setup.

Professional 6-Channel Audio… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6YY9LJ8?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

I’d never heard of this brand before, but, the board had a lot of features for the price. It seems built very well. It uses sliders for each channel vs a volume knob for the pot. Above the sliders are your standard knobs. It does sport UsB audio. I have figured out playback, not recording. There is a USB knob on the right hand side. It offers prefade, so I can hear the channel through headphones before sending it out the mains. It offers xlr outs, stereo main, one sub. It is very clean, and really matches the output power of the Ion with the volume you get from Bluetooth. When I ran a mic directly into the system, I could turn the Ion all the way up and it wasn’t much to talk about. The master on the iON goes up to 35. I can have the Ion at 12 and be above the spl output when running the board.

I run the board into Mic1. Turn Mic1 on the Ion all the way up, run the master at 12-14. Master on the board can be up a fingernail length before it starts clipping, as the Ion has mic level, not line level inputs, but as long as you remember this you may run each channel up to 0 DB no problem and it’s quite clean! I can run a guitar in without a DI box with no ground hum

I tested the system out yesterday and the venu, in an empty room and was very impressed with the results! My wife recorded with her Binaural mics, a very nice surprise as I didn’t ask her too, but it lets me hear the system from different parts of the room. I ran my Taylor direct, Shure SM58 mic for vocal. Audio examples below.

She was walking around the room to get different perspectives in the recording below.

All and all I am very impressed! for the money, quite a nice sounding system! I’m looking forward to using it with the venue for years to come!