PA Speakers

Early B.

I am setting up a PA system for an organization I belong to. The system will be used for lectures and singing at small to medium venues (<100 people). I'll need to purchase a powered mixer, speakers, wireless mics, and accessories.

To keep costs at a minimum, I'd like to save money with the speakers, if possible, at least in the short term. A decent pair of PA speakers start at $300, but our budget is $150 max. Other than the durability concerns, can a set of floorstanders or large bookshelf speakers be used effectively instead of PA speakers? I'm asking because if this option is viable, I may be able to borrow or loan out some speakers for this purpose.

Thanks.

Jim Shearer

Since nobody else is saying anything, I'll put in my $0.02.

If the speakers are big enough & have enough power, then you can get away w/ using home grade equipment for voices. As soon as you put an instrument through it, you risk blowing the drivers. That said, I have filled a good sized church hall using a pair of RTR-280DRs (six tweeters, four 10" woofers per enclosure) driven by a 120 w/ch amp (old style power supply, not the new switching power supply crap.) As long as you don't try to over-drive the system, everthing should be fine. If what you want is ear-splitting sound levels and/or instrument re-inforcement, then you need pro-level music gear that can stand up to abuse.

Cheers, Jim

thehaens@cox.net

E.B.

I really don't think you would be happy with home speakers in a large venue....

I know that Bose doesn't exactly have a good history on this forum...but

Back in 95 as a young Sgt I was tasked with installing a speaker system on our "compound" with the following requirements in mind.

Be able to withstand the weather, as they speakers were to be installed on the roof of two buildings.

Be able to hear "colors" all over the compound.

So I bought 4 Bose 802's driven by Crown Amps and had installed them on top of the 4 corners of the compound.

Fast forward 10 years, I got orders back to the same unit, and guess what, them weathered Bose speakers are still on the roofs and still playing colors every morning.

They are also used for our wireless PA system whenever we have a formation.

So, I would recommend them without hesitation.

Scott

jrlouie

From my experience (dj during college years), some really large floor-standers can be used but you won't get the room filling sound PA speakers can provide. I used to use a set of Cerwin Vega RE-38's with a pro-audio amp I currently use in my home theatre. I actually still have them, just in storage.
http://www.cerwinvega.com/products/homeaudiovideo/reseries/index.html
It was loud, but for the larger rooms it still wasn't quite what I needed so I had to purchase a set of PA speakers and use all 4, which I still have, stored in the closet. They have a 12" woofer, carpeted, 2-way design (Yamaha). Now, whatever they do to PA speakers I don't know exactly, but these things really project out. In fact, put them in a smaller room and you don't notice their loudness. Put them outdoors and walk a couple blocks up the street and you realize their potential. Easy to drive too.
So agreeing with Jim, you can get away with some floor-standers. But a pro-audio set can really make a difference, even if they're not expensive.

That being said, I've always wanted to sell my meager pro-audio stuff, but I've never had the packaging and everything. No boxes or anything so the shipping ended up being too much.

Early B.

Thanks for the responses, fellas. I'll go back to the group and tell them we'll need to increase the budget to accomodate some decent PA speakers.

ninerbj

It's amazing how many PA systems you can find at pawn shops that just might fall into you price range.

Toxis

Look into some B52's, JBL, Yamaha, Gemini etc... there's a lot of decent PA speakers to be had on the 'bay.

Or look into new packages but just lower name brands.
Here's an option to get you started... http://www.pssl.com/csearchresults~command~search~db~search/maindb.txt~woint_KeyIDdatarq~12960,21719,38897,12961,21720,41630,40182,41755,41756,41753,41752,41751,33453~int_KeyIDword~ww~group2field~str_Status~wngroup2datarq~C3~cur_Pricesort~1~cur_Pricesdir~as~int_Ordersort~2~int_Ordersdir~as~max~20~cur_Pricetype~num~UID~2002121511300163.tpl

www.pssl.com can be a good place to start looking but then search for other retailers who sell them cheaper. Their prices aren't the best but aren't bad either.

dudeinaroom

a couple of my friends and I used to dj high school dances(in the gym) with a yamaha receiver, a pioneer and a kenwood cd player, a pioneer and a kenwood tape deck , and a set of cerwin vega dx-9's , and we would rock the gym at about 1/3 volume(100w/2ch receiver) did this for about 3 years with out a problem