Fender Passport Deluxe PD-500 Portable PA System

They do not publish any real specs, other than hyped lies about power rating. Conspicuously absent are useful facts about frequency response, how they achieved the "magic 500 watt" number or what kind of components are used. They tout the fact that the woofers are "Celestion designed." They do not claim that they are made BY Celestion. Even if they were, that wouldn't be a good selling point. Celestion is famous for making low-fidelity guitar speakers, NOT hi-fi PA speakers.

Sounds like imported "DJ" junk.

The feature set is good, only because it is copied from other makers.

This PA is OK for acoustic players who need a small simple rig. Dual 8" speakers in vertical alignment form a (sort of) line-array that enhances wide horizontal dispersion. The horn in between the two woofers is (sort of) like a D'Appolito design that takes advantage of high frequencies "hitching a ride" on the low frequency wave-forms produced by the woofers. That should help with intelligibility and projection. Big knobs and clear labeling are a plus too.

But why is this so expensive? It is foreign made. It uses cheap components. Celestion is famous for making cheap (though vastly overpriced) guitar speakers. Celestion has NEVER been known for hi-fidelity PA speakers. I can't even find out what the horn is or who makes it. It is definitely cheap though.

And "class-D" amps? Class-D amps have been highly-hyped NOT because they are good, but because they are cheaper to make. They also do not require heavy transformers so they are less expensive to ship abroad. Class-D amps are NOT necessarily better in any way. In fact, it is quite an engineering feat to get a class-D amp to behave as well as any standard amp-topology. The ONLY reason we are seeing so many Class-D amps on the market is because profiteering companies are reducing costs to increase margins.

The power-rating is misleading. It DOES NOT produce 500 watts.

Like many companies that take advantage of consumer ignorance, Fender exaggerates the power rating by including both channels, (doubling the rating) and using peak rating methods, which effectively doubles the rating again. In reality, this PA has about 100 watts a side, (on a good day, going downhill, with a tailwind.) No attempt is made to time-align the high-freq drivers (deep in the cabinet) with the woofers, at the front of the cabinet. High-frequency ???smearing??? is evident the instant you turn this thing on. Play any recorded program material from an iPod into it, you???ll see!

The frequency response specs are bogus too. It MUST have the feedback eliminator, because the frequency response is SO FAR from FLAT, it feeds-back at the slightest provocation.

Neodymium? It a powerful magnetic substance so it take less to do the same job. Great! That makes speakers lighter. But there is no reason why it should be expensive other than corporate greed or consumer ignorance. Neodymium is technically in a class of materials called ???rare earth elements,??? but it is NOT at all rare. The only reason companies charge so much for it is because we let them.

The features of this PA are good. At low volumes, with narrow frequency demands, it sounds OK for the 100 watt system that it is.

If you NEVER play loud or LOW, and if you never need hi-fi response, it is perfectly suitable to many low-rent ???coffee-house??? gigs.

The price is HUGELY inflated. The extra junk they sell you with this package is just add-on cheapo mics, cables and hardware; cheap stuff that you probably have already. That only serves to increase profit margins, not provide true value.

If this system had: premium drivers, flat frequency response, time-aligned cabinets (or circuits) and an honest 150 watts RMS per side, it would be worth fully half of its asking-price. As it is, even with the mics and stuff, it performs only about as well as the imported $250 PA systems you see at ???DJ??? supply houses.