dB Technologies Flexsys FM12

One dead, two working well

We ordered the package deal with three monitors. One was dead on arrival, which is of course impractical. The remaining two work well. These are practical active monitors, small yet quite powerful. Mechanical quality is OK. The carrying handle is well placed, but a bit flimsy. They are well designed, correctly angled, and unobtrusive on stage. Power handling is good - as others have noted, they are plenty loud enough! We haven't tried the DSP feature. The loudspeaker stand flange is logically placed. Powercon would be good. The most important part is the sound, of course. These are not stellar, but provide clear enough monitoring for vocalists or guitarists. The sound dispersion is rather good, you can move about a bit and still hear clearly. They are somewhat mid-heavy and lack treble sparkle, and of course you can't expect to push deep bass out of these relatively smal boxes. Spend some time getting to know them, use some EQ, and they will serve you well. Use other monitors if you require lots of bass or if you want more hi-fi sound on stage.

Great monitors

Sound great, always get positive comments from the musicians. Pity they are being discontinued

Great quality, fair price, very much up to the task and probably a lot more

I use two FM12s for my acoustic setup at home (stereo - I don’t use the link) - sound comes via an Avalon U5 through an Alesis mixer to the FM12s. Ideal for practicing with a loop station and building tone - also very clear when used for vocals, etc.

Very easy to use, LOTS of reserve power I don’t use usually, durable and great sound - what else do you want?

Absolutely recommended for similar applications and I am sure it would fare very well as a Monitor System for bigger bands etc.

A lot of bang for the buck

Excellent product for the price. High SPL with no feedback, perfect for small to medium stages.

Quality product at reasonable price...

If you're prepared to spend a lot more money, you probably will find other better monitor/fall-back speakers. But we've been delighted with this product. We use two of them as part of an open-mic youth project, and they have been ideal as stage monitors. They are robust, produce decent volume and give good sound quality. They can even be mounted on a stand, but I don't think they'd be powerful enough to be Front of House speakers... maybe they'd be fine in a small venue.

multi purpose wedge

This thing is REALLY well built, the structure is a very strong plastic that can take the knocks and scrapes of regular use. I did buy a cover with mine to give some added protection and it still looks nearly new after 3 years. The sound is clear and full and you can tweek the sound with the dial on the side depending on what you're using it for. Mine was predominantly a monitor wedge for our keyboard player although I have used it by itself as a small PA in a church and it was great.

We have worked through various foldback options. Selecting a high quality coaxial like this one improves everything - sound for the vocalist, less drift, more volume before feedback

A good buy

Great active coaxial monitor speaker

Relatively pretty light in weight and more compact compared to other products in the same output power range. Very good, natural sound, open sound thanks to the coaxial driver configuration.

Using these monitors for 2 years now all around Europe. Even on bigger stages and with demanding vocalists it produces a perfect output volume.

Like all monitors it needs proper EQ-ing when the maximum performance on vocal mics is required, room specific. However this is a smooth process and once all set it does not go into feedback easily.

12" low driver is perfect for many sources. I am happy that I went for the biggest FM12 model, although the 10" version performs OK in case less output is sufficient.

Do not compare this monitor with a D & B Max series, that would not be fair. Their sound is a step up, but so is their price!

However for the price (which even dropped in 2 years) it probably is the best you can get for an active wedge. Would definitely order more of them.

I like the simplicity of the amp panel, the basic connections and controls is all you need in a professional situation.

Would be even better and more neat on stage to have Powercons in/out on the amp.

High quality small footprint monitors

Great set of monitors that have been serving me well, nice small footprint, so easy to fit in tightly packed cars, but yet plenty loud enough for a 4 piece rock band.

A testament loudness of these speakers is a recent gig I did, a pair were almost for an incredibly loud punk band's singer!

Really good for the money!

They are really good! If you are looking for a good active monitor look no further! They have a ton of power, lots of eq setups with the onboard DSP and they deliver a lot of bass, even the bassist on stage will be happy. I found out you must "break them in" for having the best sound, so don't take them straight to a gig, play some hours of music on them before using them.

The only "problem" that you have with every active monitor is the fact that you must take some el current to them and I wouldn't trust the musicians on stage to plug them in the same multi-plug that you set up for the guitar player effects...so I usually power them with dedicated el cables. If this is a problem for you, just buy some passive speaker and you will have just 1 cable to set up, but a rack amplifier to take around with you.