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How Big...

#3
I'm sort of asking about the minimum here. The PA my band has sounds like junk if you put anything besides vocals in it. So everything else, bass, guitar, and keyboards, are just going through their amps. And since we're spread out over the stage, everyone on my side hears only nothing but guitar, bass, and drums, and everyone on the other side hears only keyboards and drums, and no one hears the vocals well because we can't turn it up without getting tons of feedback. And we're not playing all that loud. But like I said the PA is bad, very low wattage and we only have two speakers, one of them being a wedge monitor.

How can we make our live sound better?

We don't play huge rooms. Banquet-hall sized, I guess. And we don't have to be super loud. I'm more worried about the house mix than volume.
 
#4
In similar-sized rooms, we get by with 2x500 watts into a pair of 4-ohm JBL 2x15 quasi-sub cabs (with horns) for the mains and 4x200 watts into four 15" 8-ohm Carvin wedge monitors (with horns). We are a medium-volume blues band with drums, bass, lead, harp, sometimes keys and sometimes acoustic guitar, male and female vocals + backing vocals. We mic everything - the drummer usually has a submixer. 16 channels on the main board with stand-alone compressors on the vocals, reverb on the vocals & drums, then through a maximizer and a 31-band stereo EQ with feedback detection for FOH. A side chain on the snake sends 6 or 8 channels (mostly vocals) to the on-stage mixer and feedback isolator/killer for the monitor mixes.

In smaller clubs we usually just put vocals and kick into the FOH and use a pair of single 15" cabs (with horns) for FOH.
 
#5
When you start micing everything and you want bass and kick in the PA you start needing subs to do it properly. Depending on room size,type of music, you could maybe get by with a pair of 12s with horns and one sub.
 
#6
modulusman said:
When you start micing everything and you want bass and kick in the PA you start needing subs to do it properly.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The 2x15 JBL quasi-sub cabs we use actually have high cut filters on the lower 15" drivers and low cut filters on the upper 15" drivers, plus full crossover between the upper driver and the horn. We've got our sub, mid and high all in the same cab and driven by a single amp channel. Not optimal, but decent. And we don't need all those extra power amps, extra cabinets and outboard crossovers like a discreet setup. It sure makes it easier on the poor, overworked bassist/sound guy!
 
#9
You'll want a minimum of 2, 18-inch subs on each side and appropriate wattage to adequately get the low end across. Then a cabinet or two on each side to cover the mids and highs. We like to tri-amp, but we have bi-amped before in a pinch (when we lost a cabinet) and gotten by.

There are some very efficient cabinets now that get the mids and highs across without a lot of wattage (and those frequencies take less power to get across by nature anyway). So use them to get by with as little wattage as possible for the higher frequencies and allocate as much power as you can to the low end.

In other words, don't scrimp on the subs.
 
#11
You might want to look at powered speakers. My band used A pair of Mackie 450s and 2-1501 subs for about 5 years with good results. You might be able to find something along those lines used on your local craigslist.
 
#12
OP, I´ll throw it back to you...

How much are you willing to spend?

Quality audio means quality gear (well in the thousands of bucks), and a capable user (are you? Is you FOH guy?)...

For 200-300 people, a quality PA with 3kW (2x1kW for subs, 2x500w for tops) of power is propably enough (assuming the system has a good watt-SPL ratio). But watts really mean nothing nowadays. With a good, efficient system much can be achieved, even with lower wattage.
 
#13
The rule of thumb for wattage is 1 watt per 1 meter of space. For practice it may not be necassary to mic anything up at all except for vocals. On the other hand, for gigs it really depends on the room size. I'm not sure if you have a PA in place already but if not, you should look into powered cabs.

I would also have to agree that wattage can be deceiving. The key thing is the efficiency of your PA. Higher quality PA with higher efficiency can be pricy.
 
#14
lightweight small powered speakers, small efficient amps with huge wattages?.....funny how technology-time flies....

hell I remember when we used to drag this stuff EVERYWHERE and the amp rack weighed close to 200lbs :D


P1010335.jpg

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#20
modulusman said:
I use to own a pair of those Peavey FH-1s. Boy did they suck.:)
Click to expand...
ah yes, the 70's and their great ideas. <<< NOT!! and yes the bottoms do suck for bass guitar cabinets if that's what you meant.

The original mids/sub speakers were cooked about 2 years into owning them after I inherited the stack from another band in 1982 who said no more heavy garbage, and the replacement speakers got their fair share of use for a good 10 years after that until like many others we all said no more backbreaking at 1-2am when packing up the stuff to go home

To me, they are just around like an old piano with a cracked soundboard....they just sit there till ONE DAY I'll take the speakers out and dump the wood in my fireplace :)

p.s. they are still hooked up to the 20 year old QSC amps and crossovers and I actually still use the stack in the jamroom to listen to mp3's on when the monitors just aren't loud enough :eek:
 

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