Recording - November 2015 - 40

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Barefoot Sound is a name that carries
a lot of weight in the pro audio industry,
both metaphorically and literally. Its
speakers use a variety of unusual technologies to deliver impeccable sound in
unapologetically huge packages-the
signature MiniMain 12 speakers weigh a
whopping 120 lbs. each, and the smaller
MicroMain27 is almost 70 lbs. Engineers
who work in smaller rooms have looked
enviously at these massive systems for
years, and some have taken the plunge
and tried the (somewhat) smaller
MicroMain35... but there remains an
untapped market of recordists in really
small spaces who want the very best, if
only they could make it fit.

Barefoot Sound MicroMain45 Active Loudspeakers
The sound of uncompromising quality-now available for any studio
With the release of the MicroMain45,
Barefoot Sound has planted a flag firmly in
that market. This is a daunting, but not
unmanageable, speaker that distills much of
the Barefoot magic into a package that's surprisingly friendly to even the smallest rooms.
A 3-way with 4 speakers
The MicroMain45 is a triamplified 3way active monitor with four drivers: one
tweeter, two midranges, and a woofer. It's
worth discussing these drivers separately
before we look at the monitor as a whole.
The tweeter is the same 1" dual ring
radiator that's found on all of the other
Barefoot monitors. It's a unique design
that "pins" the center of the tweeter in
place with a metal phase plug, and
sports a tuned waveguide chamber
behind the tweeter, inside the sealed
enclosure. The end result is easy to hear:
a very wide and accurate sweet spot
that's nothing like the narrow, "beamy"
performance of some other tweeters.
The midrange drivers are 2.5" aluminum
cones placed in a vertical line so they're
phase-aligned as the listener moves from
side to side. Similar to the behavior of the
multiple speakers in a 4 x 10 bass cabinet,
the dual midrange driver provides the tight
and controlled sound of a smaller speaker
with the punch of a larger speaker. The
woofer is an 8" aluminum cone.
The cabinet is unported and filled with wool
acoustic damping. There's no waveguide
40

RECORDING November 2015

around the tweeter and mids, nor is the cabinet contoured beyond beveled edges and
front corners. A tiny LED glows aqua with
power on, flashing red when the onboard limiters engage.
Specs and features
The MicroMain45 is a DSP-driven
speaker; analog input signals are immediately converted to 24-bit/192 kHz digital
audio, and converted back to analog right
before the three power amplifiers (180W
each for the tweeter and midrange array,
250W for the woofer). The digital signal
processing chain includes all of the rearpanel level and EQ adjustments, as well as
built-in crossovers (at 600 and 3600 Hz)
and individual peak and RMS limiters for
each driver signal.
The speakers are rated at 350W continuous power and have two frequency
response curves quoted: 53 Hz-40 kHz
±1 dB and 40 Hz-45 kHz ±3 dB. The
bass rolls off at 12 dB/octave below that

-3 dB point of 40 Hz; that means that
unless you're doing a lot of stuff below the
fundamental of a bass guitar's low E (e.g.
grand piano, 5-string bass, dubstep drops,
etc.) you'll hear all the bass you need from
these speakers without a subwoofer.
The rear panel features a locking XLR
input, stepped controls for Level (-9 to +3
dB) and EQ (see below), a manual voltage
selector switch (recessed for safety), standard IEC power connection and power
switch, and a USB port for factory calibration (it's not an audio interface input).
The MicroMain45 is 11 x 15.5 x 11
inches in size and weighs a respectable
but not outrageous 37.5 pounds. The
speakers are sold in mirrored pairs for
horizontal placement; vertical placement
for surround center-channel use is possible and discussed in the manual. Barefoot
recommends that the speakers be tried
out with the tweeters on the outside first,
then on the inside, and for the user to
determine what seems to work best for his
or her particular setup.
Barefoot also describes in the manual
how the speakers are expected to behave
if they're not set up in the usual toed-in
equilateral triangle. Aiming the speakers
more forward gives a less precise sweet
spot, but extends the sweet spot out to the
sides and back behind the optimal listening position so it's actually possible for
people to sit behind the engineer and
hear almost exactly what he's hearing. I

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2015