Featuring Bluetooth input, XLR inputs, and advanced amplifier platform, the KC12 is designed to offer exceptional sound quality and versatility for a wide range of applications.
The KC12 is a first-of-its-kind, 3-way, 3000-watt active loudspeaker system encompassing the visual aesthetic of a column loudspeaker while surpassing the acoustic performance of conventional designs. Simple and easy to deploy, the elegant KC12, available in black and white, is ideal for a wide range of customers and applications from solo entertainers, musicians and bands, mobile entertainers and DJs to corporate AV, event production, and static installations.
Column-style portable loudspeaker systems are most often put into service due to their unobtrusive form factor. However, typical designs lack clarity and definition, particularly when pushed to high output levels, forcing the user into a form-over-function compromise. Solving this common dilemma, the KC12 cleverly utilizes a 3-way design featuring QSCās patented LEAFā¢ waveguide (first introduced in L Class Active Line Array Loudspeakers) combined with a true 1-inch compression driver, two 4-inch midrange drivers, and a high output 12-inch subwoofer, while still maintaining the desired, elegant appearance of a ācolumnā system. The KC12 produces an outstanding full-range horizontal coverage of 145 degrees and 35 degrees of audience-directed vertical coverage with clean and natural sound at all output levels.
The system features three inputs: a Bluetooth Ā® input combined with a 3.5 mm TRS stereo input, as well as two combo XLR inputs (Mic/Line/Hi-Z and Mic/Line/+48 V), with independent, assignableFactory Presets for each XLR input, making it ideal for small events where two microphones are needed for different uses. The rear panel incorporates a multi-function digital display, offering control and selection of several loudspeaker functions, including Global Parametric EQ, Subwoofer level, Presets and Scenes, Bluetooth configuration, Delay (maximum of 200 ms), or Reverb. Bluetooth functionality also provides True Wireless Stereo (TWS), which ensures low latency pairing between the music source and both left and right loudspeakers simultaneously.
Additionally, the KC12 can be deployed with or without its lower column pole, making the system ideally suited for utilization on a floor, riser or raised stage. The system is backed by a 6-year Extended Warranty (with product registration).
āThe KC12 exquisitely resolves the form-over-function compromise that has frustrated users of this category of products since they made their market introduction over 20 years ago,ā states David Fuller, VP of Product Development, QSC Audio. āWith the benefit of time, experience, extensive customer research, and cutting-edge innovation, our talented design team has truly created something very different from the status quo ā not simply a differentiated product, but an overall better solution for the customer.ā
The feature set and performance characteristics of the KC12 are complemented by a new, advanced amplifier platform, first incorporated into the L Class LS118 subwoofer released this past October. Fuller adds, āAmong the platformās key attributes are layers of real-time telemetry and protection to ensure uninterrupted performance day after day, which is a foundational QSC brand attribute.ā
āJust like our first K Series reset the bar for powered loudspeakers, elevating customersā expectations for performance, quality, reliability, usability, and professional appearance, the K Column offers a compelling, new approach to a familiar category and is destined to redefine the whole notion of what a ācolumnā is for users of portable PA products,ā states Ray van Straten, VPBrand, Marketing & amp; Training, QSC Audio. āThe product is simply stunning in its sleek and elegant appearance, but with the marketing tagline, āJust Listenā, weāre confident that once again, QSC sound quality will ultimately be the reason customers will quickly embrace the K Column as the next āNew Standardā in its category.ā
The QSC KC12 K Column carries a MAP price of $1,999.
For more information, please visit qsc.com.
Tedās parachute
If you want to escape from the pressures of modern life, go pick up your guitar. Now. Youāll be glad you did.
As I write this, weāre a few weeks away from the election, and Iām feeling as nervous as a cat in a dog park. No matter how youāre voting, thereās a good chance you feel the same way. These are complex times.
But we have a source of respite that many do not: We play guitar. Lately, Iāve made it a point to carve out an hour or so nightly to play through some of my bandās current repertoire to keep the dust off between shows and to explore some fresh sonic options to work into songs. The practice is paying off musically, but thatās not the biggest benefit. Iāve noticed, after I shut down my amps and pedalboard, and put my guitars back on their stands, that I feel better. About everything. For that hour or so, I am simply lost in the joys and mysteries of playing guitar. Things start to reveal themselves, new ideas tumble out of my fingers, and suddenly Iām in a place where anxiety canāt get to me and my mind is largely clear. Itās a safe zone where Iām not judging myself or others, and Iām relaxed and present. Itās a place where polling numbers and attack ads, family members with difficulties, and other concerns donāt even exist. And while it may be temporary, it is also beautiful.
Iām certain many of us have the same experience when weāre playing at home or onstage. And if youāre reading this while voices in your head are nattering with worry, I suggest you immediately go plug a guitarāthe one that plays like melted butterāinto your favorite amp and play a little melody, or your favorite set of chord changes, or even a nice campfire chord. Iād be surprised if you donāt soon feel the sensation of tension trickling out of your spine.
This is the great gift of guitar playing and music in general: Its ability to transport us to another placeāthat zone of safety and delight. Under the weight of the world, it is often possible to temporarily forget guitar playingās curative power, or be distracted from it, and that is why I am reminding you.
"This is the great gift of guitar playing and music in general: Its ability to transport us to another placeāthat zone of safety and delight."
For me, and Iām sure this is not just my experience, music has always been a refugeāa special thing that makes my heart fill with peace, joy, and wonder. I recall watching Johnny Cash on TV as a child, listening to his spoken stories and the tales in his songs, and feeling like I was being swept through time and space, to places and eras full of exciting people and things. It stretched my imagination and worldview, and made it seem that lifeās possibilities were endless. I still cherish that feeling, and listening to, for a couple examples, Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Merle Haggard, Lucinda Williams, Son House, Kevin Gordon, Coltrane, and the Messthetics, still delivers it. And the next step, playing music and writing songs, makes me feel like an occupant of a small corner of their universe, and thatās a place I cherish.
Iāll mention safety again, and pardon me if this gets too personal. Many of us, after surviving the pandemic and the last decade of turmoil, do not feel safe. Having grown up in a household with a physically and verbally abusive father, where a blow could come at any time without reason or warning, thatās long been an issue for me. And when the news of the latest mass shooting, for example, is fresh in my brain, I tend to map out places to hide or flee when Iām at a concert or a mall or a large public gathering. Maybe thatās just my problem, but my gutāand what I hear from othersātells me itās not.
Oddly, one of the places I can feel safest and happiest is onstage, whether performing solo or with my band, when everything is flowing and the music is in my veins. And thatās the magic of guitar and music again. Itās given me a place to be in the world that I love and that makes me feel complete. If you get that feeling from playing and listening to music, donāt let anything get in its way. Sometimes, in these times, that can be challenging, but the first step to your personal oasis is simple: just pick up that special guitar and plug in.
Bruce Springsteen, Live at 75: Everything Dies, Baby, Thatās a Fact
Bruce Springsteen: the last man standing.
On Halloween, the pride of New Jersey rock ānā roll shook a Montreal arena with a show that lifted the veil between here and the everafter.
It might not seem like it, but Bruce Springsteen is going to die.
I know; itās a weird thought. The guy is 75 years old, and still puts on three-hour-plus-long shows, without pauses or intermissions. His stamina and spirit put the millennial work-from-home class, whose backs hurt because we āslept weirdā or āforgot to use our ergonomic keyboard,ā to absolute shame. He leaps and bolts and howls and throws his Telecasters high in the air. No doubt it helps to have access to the best healthcare money can buy, but still, thereās no denying that heās a specimen of human physical excellence. And yet, Bruce, like the rest of us, will pass from this plane.
Maybe these arenāt the first thoughts youād expect to have after a rock ānā roll show, but rock ānā roll is getting old, and one of its most prolific stars has been telling us for the past few years that heās getting his affairs in order. His current tour, which continues his 2023 world tour celebrated in the recent documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, follows his latest LP of original music, 2020ās Letter To You. That record was explicitly and thematically an exploration of the Bossā mortality, and this yearās jubilant roadshow continues that chapter with shows across the U.S. and Canada.
āThe older you get, the more you realize that, unless youāre Ć¼ber-wealthy, you probably have a lot in common with the characters in Springsteen songs.ā
I was at the Montreal show on Halloween night, where Bruce, the E Street BandāSteven Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Garry Tallent, Max Weinberg, and Roy Bittan, along with Soozie Tyrell, Charles Giordano, and Jake Clemonsāand a brilliant backing ensemble of singers and musicians performed for roughly three hours straight. The show rewired my brain. For days after, I was in a feverish state, hatching delusional schemes to get to his other Canadian shows, unconsciously singing the melody of āDancing in the Darkā on a loop until my partner asked me to stop, listening to every Springsteen album front to back.
āThe stakes implicit in most of these stories are that our time is always running out.ā
Photo by Rob DeMartin
I had seen Bruce and the E Street Band in 2012, but something about this time was different, more urgent and powerful. Maybe itās that the older you get, the more you realize that, unless youāre Ć¼ber-wealthy, you probably have a lot in common with the characters in Springsteen songs. When youāre young, theyāre just great songs with abstract stories. Maybe some time around your late 20s, you realize that you arenāt one of the lucky ones anointed to escape the pressures of wage work and monthly rent, and suddenly the plight of the narrator of āRacing in the Streetā isnāt so alien. The songās wistful organ melody takes on a different weight, and the now-signature extended coda that the band played in Montreal, led by that organ, Bittanās piano, and Weinbergās tense snare rim snaps, washed across the arena over and again, like years slipping away.
The stakes implicit in most of these stories are that our time is always running out. The decades that we spend just keeping our heads above water foreclose a lot of possibility, the kind promised in the brash harmonica whine and piano strokes that open āThunder Roadā like an outstretched hand, or in the wild, determined sprint of āBorn to Run.ā If we could live forever, thereād be no urgency to our toils. But we donāt.
Springsteen has long has the ability to turn a sold-out arena into a space as intimate as a small rock club.
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Bruce has never shied away from these realities. Take āAtlantic City,ā with its unambiguous chorus: āEverything dies, baby, thatās a fact.ā (Then, of course, an inkling of hope: āMaybe everything that dies someday comes back.ā) Springsteen used those phrases on Nebraska to tell the story of a working person twisted and cornered into despair and desperation, but on All Hallows Eve, as the band rocked through their electrified arrangement of the track, it was hard not to hear them outside of their context, too, as some of the plainest yet most potent words in rock ānā roll.
In Montreal, like on the rest of this tour, Bruce guided us through a lifecycle of music and emotion, framed around signposts that underlined our impermanence. In āLetter to You,ā he gestured forcefully, his face tight and rippled with passion, an old man recapping the past 50 years of his creative life and his relationship to listeners in one song. āNightshift,ā the well-placed Commodores tune featured on his 2022 covers record, and āLast Man Standing,ā were opportunities to mourn Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, his E Street comrades who went before him, but also his bandmates in his first group, the Castiles. It all came to a head in the nightās elegiac closer, āIāll See You in My Dreams,ā performed solo by Bruce with his acoustic guitar: āGo, and Iāll see you in my dreams,ā he calls
Iām still trying to put my finger on exactly why the show felt so important. Iāve circled around it here, but Iām sure I havenāt quite hit on the heart of the matter. Perhaps itās that, as weāre battered by worsening crises and cornered by impossible costs of living, songs about people trying desperately to feel alive and get free sound especially loud and helpful. Or it could be that having one of our favorite artists acknowledge his mortality, and ours, is like having a weight lifted: Now that itās out in the open, we can live properly and honestly.
None of us know for sure whatās up around the bend, just out of sight. It could be something amazing; it could be nothing at all. Whatever it is, weāre in it together, and weāll all get there in our time. Until then, no matter how bad things get, weāll always have rock ānā roll.