Surprisingly Good Little System

I am an engineer with a day job at a retirement community. I know good gear and good sound.

My retirement community was looking to purchase a very small PA to use in our dining rooms and gathering areas. The system we wanted would be portable, durable, and so simple to use that our activity assistants would be able to make it work without help. The main purpose of the system was to amplify a speaking voice clearly so that our elderly residents could hear announcements, bingo calling, story telling and the like without anyone having to yell. Oh, and this is healthcare, so the system had to be extremely affordable.

After a little research I decided the Alesis TransActive Mobile might just do the trick. It arrived today and I just got done checking it out.

It was fully charged out of the box, a nice touch. With an amp and speaker inside this unit, it's a little hefty, but one of our smaller gals was able to carry it up the stairs. It's on wheels, so if there's an elevator, there's no carrying required. The telescoping handle doesn't seem terribly sturdy, and unfortunately my guess is that it will break before the rest of the unit becomes inoperable. The cabinet is well built with good solid handles on the sides. The included standard power cord was only a six-footer, but since the TransMobile is mainly designed to operate on battery power, this should not be a problem.

I drew up a short instruction sheet on how to make the connections and turn the system on, presented that to a totally inexperienced worker, and she was singing “happy birthday” through the mic in less than two minutes. I am very pleased with the system's audio quality for speaking. I didn't try the unbalanced, iPod or aux inputs because we won't be using those. There is no EQ on the unit, but I liked the sound, surprisingly clear with the included microphone, even with the system placed on the floor. I detected very little distortion with both the master and mic gain up all the way. We were using it in a 100' X 40' X 12' carpeted dining room and it was plenty loud enough so that all the residents could hear our soft-spoken female activity assistant clearly.

Pros:

• Affordable
• Portable
• Simple to use
• Well built
• Sounds surprisingly good

Cons:

• Telescoping handle doesn't seem very sturdy

If you need a simple and economical system to ampl