I thought I would share my experience of finding a small, light, good sounding portal speaker system I could take around to practices with my Genos and as a personal foldback monitor for when I'm performing in church with Genos.
I have started performing at our church with Genos, previously prior to Covid I used a Yamaha PSR-S900. Due to the current restrictions of where I can be seated along with our singers, I am actually inside a side chapel so somewhat distanced from the congregation and to the side of the main altar. Although I can place my main PA speakers (Yamaha Stagepas 150 amplified speakers on stands), these are facing away from me and the rest of the folk group/singers, so the foldback sound isn't great. I didn't want to carry another large speaker system with me for monitoring, as I can hear some of the bottom end from the main speakers, but I needed a clean and powerful sound that would cut over the singers and acoustic guitars next to me, so we could all hear my performance. I also needed something I could easily take with me to another home or place for practising with Genos.
I looked at many options, such as small amplified keyboard amplifiers, large bluetooth speakers with line inputs, however in the end I settled on the IK multimedia iLoud unit. This is a high quality and very powerful bluetooth portable stereo speaker, about the size of an iPad and just a couple of inches thick. It can deliver an outstanding 40W of undistorted power, either from its built in rechargeable battery which can last up to 10 hrs, or using the included power supply. The speaker unit is pretty simple and unassuming, it has 2 mini woofers and 2 tweeters plus a bass reflex port. Given the size I was very sceptical as to the sound quality, but it is truly amazing, especially if placed on a solid surface and reasonably close to a solid wall. It's not cheap though, I paid around £200 here in the UK, but the audio quality is far superior to many other popular top brand portable speakers. It has a very clear and detailed presence, excellent top end and most importantly a controlled solid bass - not over bassy or boomy like so many other units. It has just a large volume control on the front, surrounded by an LED illuminated ring. This is actually handy during performance, because one of the only 'downsides' of this unit is it has a sleep mode. If no audio is input to the speaker within about 10 minutes, the speaker will go into standby and the LED ring starts to pulsate. However as soon as it receives audio, or you touch the volume control, it will come back on (although if you rely on just audio it can take a couple of seconds). To combat this when there's a long pause between hymns in our service, I'll just touch the volume control just before we play if I notice the LED ring is pulsating.
Audio input is either via bluetooth, a 3.5mm stereo line in jack or there's a facility to feed instruments or a mic via a 1/4inch jack into your smartphone and process it using the iRig software (I do not use this feature as it's more intended for guitars). The 3.5mm stereo line in jack is fine for my use and I either connect the tape monitor outputs from the main PA speaker system to this, or if I'm practising with just Genos the main left and right outputs from Genos. It's also possible of course to use the aux outputs of Genos to feed into the speaker, however these are fixed level from Genos meaning you have to adjust the overall volume on the speaker itself.
Overall I am extremely impressed at the iLoud. I've got the matching carry bag for it which is great and houses the power supply, speaker and some extra cables. Whilst iLoud won't shake the floor with gut wrenching bass, it does deliver a superb solid sound with plenty of detail and top end, sufficient bass and depth without any distortion and at amazing volume levels.
I definitely recommend trying it out if you are in the market for something similar. Most small practice amps intended for musical instruments tend to be mono, or just have a single speaker unit and have a rather raucious harsh sound. iLoud has a more HiFi sound AND it is designed to be used by musicians!
Regards
Simon
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