Skytec/Vexus powered speakers…anyone actually tried them?

Never even heard of this brand.. I wouldn’t trust it.

Stick with JBL, Yamaha, QSC, and Mackie.

I bought a pair last September as my first pair of PA speakers, and they do a job. They still get loud enough to do a job and while they’re not great, they’re a cheap solution and starting out, it’s relatively low risk. Nine months on, I haven’t had any problems with them as yet.

It’s comparing apples with pears though.

You cannot say that using low quality gear 4 times is the same as renting high quality gear 4 times. Make no mistake, rental speakers often cost 1.000 bucks or more a piece, plus come with cables, stands, all of high quality and come with guarantee and backup – if something fails, you call the rental company and they come bring you another one. Also you can rent the exact gear fitting the venue/event. If you own, it will fit a smaller range of venues/events perfectly and be too big for some and too small for some others. No need for storage and often transport (my rental company delivers at the venue and picks up afterwards). Finally, since you should charge your customer for gear rental anyway, financially it makes no difference other than you playing with high quality professional gear.

Frankly, I think the ownership of PA gear is highly overrated, especially if you only use something 2-3 times a year. Let me ask you a question: if you needed to use a car 2-3 times a year to a business meeting where you get paid to appear, would you rent a representative car or would you go and buy a 500 dollar banger that sits in front of your house all year and drive that to the meeting? My guess is you’d rent the car, as would I.

I have just purchased a Skytec SPA 1200 active speaker with VHF microphone.
I have not spent much time touching or hearing speakers. I am impressed with the build of the speaker. The pots are stiff not sloppy which I have seen complaints made about for other brands. I have touched a Behringer speaker and noted the pots on this speaker were loose.

The unit I have is 12″ mid/bass. I have only tested in a large household lounge and have been impressed with sound quality. The sound level seemed low and nowhere near the stated 300 watts RMS (600watt) peak.
I investigated the poor sound level. I am playing out of a Dell laptop and use Helium music manager. It appears that most laptops have low line level output via headphone socket. I think I have solved this by using a sound enhancer, which increases the sound output from laptop by about 100%. After boosting the signal I think I could achieve 300 watt RMS.
The Skytec speaker has excellent control for volume, a line-in level control and effective base and treble controls.
I bought this speaker from DJ City in Melbourne, Australia for AUD $169.
I will be using the speaker weekly to play music at Nursing Homes, so I guess lack of loudness would not really be an issue. But from time to time I might need to turn it up and are now confident I can get pretty loud.
So for me now the Skytec is vgreat value.

I used to have a pair of SKytec speakers when I was at University. Used them for throwing house parties which are perfect for. They won’t do for anything larger than a house party.

Dave8 is a good choice, worked with them even a few smaller gigs. Work extremely well for their size.

Let me step in here for a minute. While I am not disputing nor affirming the opinions about DJ City as a store or Skytec as a brand, there are some things to be said about this topic before we put it to bed.

As can be easily found out, the general consensus at these forums is that for PA the universal truths “if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is” as well as “you get what you pay for” are valid.

If you want good quality PA, stick with the reputable brands. If you stick to the budget end of their offerings, you will still get something halfway decent. There are, however, no shortcuts to getting good PA sound for near to no money.

Watt ratings on no-budget speakers have always been highly exaggerated by their manufacturers. The only “formal” way to rate and compare speaker power is in RMS. Over the years music power has gained some traction, typically twice the RMS value. The better brands will generally report RMS values. I believe it was Jamo who, in the late 70s/early 80s invented PMPO (Peak Music Power Output or something similar). This was something like twice the amount of music power, bringing the values up to 4 times RMS.

This is the first thing to watch for when buying speakers. RMS is an accepted measuring technique and all reported RMS values should be measured the same way. Music power is not an official measurement, but -again- take half of the music power rating and that would be your RMS value.

However RMS rating is only half of the story. This only tells you how much amplifier power the speakers can handle. Or for an active speaker, how much output power is available.

The other half of the equation is the efficiency of the speaker. This is measured at one meter from the speaker while it is fed 1 Watt (RMS indeed) of white noise (a signal that contains all audible frequencies at identical levels). The result is reported in dB. It is important to note that increases in this value are logarithmic, meaning that a 3dB increase is equal to DOUBLE the amp power. So if you have one speaker with an SPL (Sound Pressure Level) of 92 and one that is 95 dB, you would have to double the amp power to the first one to get the same volume!
You can see how amp RMS power on it’s own means little without the efficiency of the speaker.

Finally there is max. SPL. This is the maximum volume in dB that a speaker can deliver before it reaches a certain distortion level. Again, the “cheapo” brands will often use higher distortion percentages so they can report higher max. SPL levels. You want to watch this as well when comparing speakers.

If you look at some of the Skytec speakers (and other OEM, no-brand offerings) from DJ City, but also from companies like Amazon, you can clearly understand that at the price point they are offered, it can’t be quality gear. Simply take the purchasing cost into account of the cabinet wood or plastic molding, the speakers, connectors, (often) carpet covering, cross-over filter and in the event of active speakers, the actual amplifier and you know that there is no way that can work. Let alone the factor labor (putting it all together) and Research & Development (which they really don’t do much).

You get a 4 foot high, double 15″ low, mid horn, triple high end speaker for 150 bucks or so. Which is less than you pay for a small 10″ PA speaker from a reputable brand.

Ok, so why is this stuff still produced and sold? Because many a man-cave or kids bedroom is dominated by a set of speakers that are both BIG and LOUD and … CHEAP. Quality does not come into the equation.
And as such these speakers have a right to be.

What is silly, is being a serious DJ and expecting that this kind of home/bedroom stuff for next to no money is suitable for your purpose. If you think that, you have missed a few of our reviews and posts.

If you are on a budget as a starting DJ that wants something to use for parties or even practice room, it is often better to get a used pair of decent brand 10″ or 12″ active PA speakers than throw away your money on the no-brand stuff, even if that comes brand new in the box.

In conclusion, bitching about companies like DJ City, Amazon and others still selling sub-par equipment does not make much sense. Sure they know what they sell and who they target. If you haven’t put in the effort to find out a bit more about what makes a speaker a good speaker and you decide to go for price as your only purchasing criterium, you shouldn’t be to surprised when things don’t appear to be what you thought they were. Consider it a lesson about proper preparation learned the hard way.

The good news is, you won’t have spent TOO much money yet.