I actually got to really test the EV ZLX-12P Wednesday night at practice. First, a little detail about the unit. It does not have EQ, but does have a DSP that allows separate adjustment of the 12" driver and the horn and has pre-programmed EQ for using the speaker as a floor wedge (bass cut), on a pole, or flown as well as for the type of usage (live, music, speech, or club). Between all these options, I think it is very easy to tweak to the room.
I had mine on a pole in a room in the house with odd shaped walls and about a 8' ceiling. I used my Tascam US-1800 recording interface as a basic mixer so we could set up 3 vocal mics and plug in an A/E guitar. The US-1800 does not have any EQ built in and I just used the hardware monitoring pass through so the computer was taken out of the equation.
With a single ZLX-12P, it was plenty loud with lots of headroom to keep up with drums, guitar, and bass. No problem at all and it sounded fantastic! Super clean and clear. We are all responsible about our volume, so a single speaker probably won't be sufficient for doom or groups with guitards (mine isn't), but if a pair of them isn't enough for rehearsal, you need to turn down.
Back in the day, when I worked for a decent sized sound company, I was not a fan of EV speakers because the horns were harsh and they lacked a smooth transition between the woofer and horn in the mid range. This speaker does not suffer from any of those issues and is the best sounding small speaker I have used. Of course, I haven't really spent much time A/Bing small PA speakers since the late 90s, but it blows away the small systems I have seen for small stages around town. For less than $400, I almost feel like I stole this speaker.
The only thing I wish EV had done differently was to add EQ to the inputs. Of course, since 2 inputs are not going to be enough for us, that doesn't really matter to me, but it would have made these speakers more useful for stand alone duty. I don't own a real mixer at this point, but have a line on a decent older analog board that I plan to pick up this weekend. At that point, a second ZLX-12P would turn this into a decent PA that I would be comfortable putting up for a small stage at a total cost of less than $800. If I still worked in live sound, I would be buying a half dozen of these to use for all my SOS gigs and they would pay for themselves in a few weeks time.
TLDR; I am very impressed with the EV ZLX-12P to the point that even though I don't need a second one, I am tempted to buy one just because.
