Fun Generation RTA-31

This S.A. is a major time saver. Rings my PA mics right, the first time, every time, in next to no time.

Visually ID problem frequencies and kill feedback very quickly and efficiently. No more guessing, no need for a complex/esoteric digital EQ/speaker management units riddled with firmware bugs and noisy circuitry.

I do have digital stage gear, used mostly for bigger events and recording jobs, but for smaller gigs, I love, and still use, old school rack of analog gear. This SA adds the ability to ring out mics just as easily as one does on digital gear, without the mouse and keyboard BS killing my workflow.

I whole heartedly recommend this device to everyone using an all analog setup. No more embarrassing mic ringing miscalculations and ensuing feedback disasters.

I bought this as a centerpiece for my production desk after having seen it in a TechMoan video - and it does exactly what I want it to do, i.e. react in a visually pleasing manner to my audio.

Some things to note:
The unit is passive and audio still passes through when turned off.

XLR in and out are linked as are RCA in and out. No summing of the two signals takes place, which might be exactly what you want. I use balanced audio from my interface and RCA from my record player so I thought this might save me a connection point -- it does not. Not a big deal, but worth mentioning.

With my studio monitors at unity gain I was not able to have this unit display well at a comfortable listening level, even with sensitivity turned all the way up - I had to have my interface output quite high. This was easily solved by lowering the input gain on my monitors.

Overally this is a solidly constructed rack unit and it's lots of fun to look at, but I wouldn't use it to make any mixing decisions.

I am very happy with this purchase - other than I had to hot wire the plug to make it work since I did not receive a US power cable. Now I have to find a US power cable that will work with it. 4 stars, since I am very disappointed that I did not receive a US power cable, or an adaptor that will work for US.

The display is bright and great fun to watch. Brightness knob is a great option since the green LEDs are very bright. I ran a frequency sweep into the unit and the LEDs respond as they should for each frequency. A couple comments: I would change is to add a couple yellow LEDs below the top red LED, in each frequency set, this would improve the appearance greatly and would let you know the signal is close to the top LED value. Also, I would include a way to adjust the display decay speed. Oh yes, and an option to add a peak hold that displays for a short time.

Firstly, I want to say that this piece of equipment is certainly impressive and snappy. It’s a nice light show. Now, when I unpackaged the contents everything seemed in order. However, I was disappointed to see that the screen was slightly peeling off on the right side. I fear that over time more of it will continue to come off. When that happens I’ll have to apply a little adhesive to seal it on there but for the time being I’ll leave it as is. That being said, I shouldn’t have to deal with that as the consumer.

Also, I had to figure out myself where to add this component in the audio chain. There’s no information in the manual to indicate where it should go. I ultimately put it between my preamp and amplifier, with all my sources going into the preamp.

I also had the problem of getting a visual signal to actually appear on the screen. This is ultimately because the signal entering the RTA-31 needs to be pretty strong to appear. I had to significantly lower the gain on my amplifier so I can turn the preamp up. Even then, the sensitivity knob on the RTA-31 has to be turned up all the way to 10. This kind’ve problem and solution should really be addressed in the manual.

Furthermore, what this all means is that you need to have a separate preamp and amp to get use out of this (i.e being able to increase the signal at the beginning of the audio chain without playing music so loud it shakes your foundation). That, or the sensitivity knob needs to be able to adjust to a much higher value then what we can do currently.

I WANT to give this device 5 stars, as it’s exactly everything I want in a spectrum analyzer, but I think it needs to go back to the R&D and QC department for a while. I’m still gonna probably buy a second one and hope it doesn’t have a peeling screen.

Overall 3.8 out of 5