Peavey HB2 for wired IEM - a review

I haven't posted here in a very long time, but I wanted to share some info on the Peavey HB2. I researched IEM options, both wired and wireless, and came across this unit. Looked good, but I could find almost no info on it and no reviews. I took a chance and bought it, and wanted to post some thoughts. Bottom line - at about $120 without headphones, this is a very well thought out and affordable system for a hardwired IEM, with just a couple of minor caveats.




Link to the Peavey Product page, with front and back pics:
Peavey.com

Pros


Size and Build - The box is small! Just 1/4 rack space - roughly square at about 3 3/4" on a side. It has a wallwart power supply (more on this later), but that is to be expected for something like this. Seems well constructed, although the knobs are a little small and hard to turn (but that could be a good thing to avoid accidental turns).

More-Me with Stereo - What I really like, and what sets it apart from the popular wired and wireless rigs from Shure and Sennheiser, is that you can have a stereo mix *and* more-me at the same time. The other rigs I have looked at only allow more-me in mono mode. It does this by having a stereo input on the back and a separate mono input on the front, with level knobs for each. There is also a "through" for the stereo input to link mulitple units or tap into a monitor feed before it goes to the power amp.

Limiter - Another big plus is the limiter. It is very intuitive to use and has an LED light that varies with intensity proportional to the amount of limiting. Very easy to see how much limiting you want to dial in. I also found that with my very sensitive Shure SE530 headphones, if I set the limiter to its lowest threshold, I can't get my headophones loud enough to do damage.

The ease and effectiveness of the HB2 limiter is in contrast to a Sennheiser EW300 wireless IEM system I played around with. I found the EW300 limiter not very intuitive, and that even at the lowest threshold I needed a volume attenuator to avoid potentially blasting my ears by a careless fader movement. Part of my trouble with the EW300 was I could not see when the limiter kicked in. As far as I could tell, there is no visual indicator. I find the LED on HB2 very helpful in this regard. I admit I did not use the EW300 very much, so maybe there is a way to set it up differently.

As an aside, if anyone has advice on how to set up the limiter on the EW300, I am all ears. The other guys in my band are interested in using this sytem.

Power - Plenty powerful to drive my Extreme Isolation and ATH-M40fs headphones, as well as my IEMs

Sound - Nothing to write home about. Better that the wireless rigs I have tried, on par with my Sampson S-Phone, not quite as clean as my FF800 headphone output. Certainly plenty good enough for IEMs on stage, although I wouldn't check a mix through it.

Cons

Noise - This little amp has a lot of self noise/hiss. The hiss is certainly higher than the EW300 receiver. I am talking about just the baseline internal electronic noise - what you hear with the unit on at the lowest volume and nothing plugged in to the input. I find my Shure SE530s to be *very* sensitive to such noise. Solution - I use a headphone volume attenuator. I found this to be necessary when using the EW300 as well, although the noise level was less than the HB2. With the attenuator at about 1/2 volume and turning up the volume on the amp to compensate, the hiss is low enough I would never notice it on stage.

I can't git any power, Captain! (in my best Scotty voice) - Yes, this little unit did not come with its necessary power supply! Bizzare. Even stranger, when I Googled the part number for the power supply lilsted on the package, I couldn't find it anywhere. Not even Peavey's own website has it listed. I eventually called the Peavey parts department, and they shipped me one for about $15, although it took them a little while to find the part, too. I just don't get this at all. But, while annoying and weird, a quick call to Peavey fixed it.

How to get one - These buggers are a little hard to find. Seems like Peavey is sitting on a little gem here and doesn't know it. I used Parts Express and got one shipped immediately for $105.

For the power supply, call Peavey Parts dept: 877-732-8391 ext. 1386. Ask for part #03004300. Cost is $15.

To summarize, anyone who wants an portable, affordable, flexible, and safe (i.e., with limiter) IEM system and doesn't need wireless should check out this little box.

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