Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dustin Corey]

Hello,

I'm looking for some speaker recommendations for our small chapel (29ft deep/54ft wide/9ft ceilings).
The Youth Group is about to start using it for some lively contemporary worship which would include piano, drums (somehow muted I hope), bass, guitar, few praise singers. I'm going to pickup a QU-16 for the mixer as I already have some extra IO gear for it.

There are doors in each of the front corners, so the speakers would need to be at least 7 feet to the center. With the room being so wide, I was thinking something visual pleasing like the JBL CBT 50LA-1, but the closer I looked, they might not be powerful enough for live music. That left me with the 70J-1. In the 2-way scope I was also checking out the QSC K8's because of their wider coverage. I'm having a hard time finding how much speaker I need for the room. Balancing the shallow depth with possibility of loud drums. I would imagine we will end up with some acoustic treatment on the back wall as well.

Any help on the speakers type/placement is greatly appreciated, sorry all I could find tonight was an old realty photo. I'll take more tomorrow night.

[Ivan Beaver]

Wide rooms can be difficult to cover with just a couple of speakers.

In your case-LONG before you even start to look at speakers, you need to answer the following questions.

1: Where is the band going to setup?  The stage looks to small for a band.  That will help determine possible speaker placements.

2: Where are the structures in the ceiling that can hold the weight of speakers?  You could be limited to those positions.

3: What is your budget for speakers-amps-processing?  Without that, any suggestion that is out of the budget is worthless.

4: Are you looking to cover the entire room? or just the middle section?

You MUST define your goal-BEFORE you start to look for solutions.

Just like buying a car-there are certain limitations/parameters you look for.  Unless all you want is a "red" car and don't care about if any other aspect meets your needs.

How many people does it need to carry?, Does acceleration matter?  What about gas mileage?  Do you need to haul things in it?  Budget? 

[Stu McDoniel]

Hello,

I'm looking for some speaker recommendations for our small chapel (29ft deep/54ft wide/9ft ceilings).
The Youth Group is about to start using it for some lively contemporary worship which would include piano, drums (somehow muted I hope), bass, guitar, few praise singers. I'm going to pickup a QU-16 for the mixer as I already have some extra IO gear for it.

There are doors in each of the front corners, so the speakers would need to be at least 7 feet to the center. With the room being so wide, I was thinking something visual pleasing like the JBL CBT 50LA-1, but the closer I looked, they might not be powerful enough for live music. That left me with the 70J-1. In the 2-way scope I was also checking out the QSC K8's because of their wider coverage. I'm having a hard time finding how much speaker I need for the room. Balancing the shallow depth with possibility of loud drums. I would imagine we will end up with some acoustic treatment on the back wall as well.

Any help on the speakers type/placement is greatly appreciated, sorry all I could find tonight was an old realty photo. I'll take more tomorrow night.

Center cluster with the coverage you need would work also.

[Dustin Corey]

1. The stage will be rebuilt to be wider and sit about 4 inches high. Most if not all the musicians and singers should fit on there. With the room being so shallow, they really blend into the audience side.

2. The first pew is at 11ft from the speaker wall. I was thinking the speakers will need to be on the wall, however there is plenty of evenly spaced beams above to hold anything we would need for this room.

3. Money isn't a big factor here, I'm planning to spend up to about $3k on speakers, subs, amps, processing. Again, not a hard budget limit.

4. I would like to cover all the pews, which makes up just about the whole room minus stage.

Hope this helps, here are a few more photos.

Wide rooms can be difficult to cover with just a couple of speakers.

In your case-LONG before you even start to look at speakers, you need to answer the following questions.

1: Where is the band going to setup?  The stage looks to small for a band.  That will help determine possible speaker placements.

2: Where are the structures in the ceiling that can hold the weight of speakers?  You could be limited to those positions.

3: What is your budget for speakers-amps-processing?  Without that, any suggestion that is out of the budget is worthless.

4: Are you looking to cover the entire room? or just the middle section?

You MUST define your goal-BEFORE you start to look for solutions.

Just like buying a car-there are certain limitations/parameters you look for.  Unless all you want is a "red" car and don't care about if any other aspect meets your needs.

How many people does it need to carry?, Does acceleration matter?  What about gas mileage?  Do you need to haul things in it?  Budget?

[Dustin Corey]

Another photo

[Scott Holtzman]

Another photo

The drummer better be able to hit very soft because the loudest instrument will dictate how much PA you need to get the vocals on top of it.  An inexperienced sound person could make a royal mess out of this.  It would take real finesse to balance the stage and PA volume and make it sound decent without being too loud.

[Mike Caldwell]

Your going to need to re-think your $3000 or so budget! Is the Qu-16 part of that budget?
For any sort of "complete" system to do what you are envisioning it to do and sound like your budget will be way short.
By complete system I mean after all the fun stuff like mixers, amps and speakers are bought you still need mic cables, mics, stands, an equipment rack or two,stage monitoring, a couple DI boxes, mounting hardware for the speakers, installation labor, do you have power already ran to the right places to plug the equipment into, maybe a couple of floor boxes for mic jacks to keep the stage free of mic cables running all over the place, are you going to put the board in a sound booth at the back of the room or have it at the stage and control it with an iPad, if your going with the board in a sound booth you'll need a snake from the stage to the booth, someone to configure and optimize the system, a power sequencing system to properly power the system on and off in the correct order from a single location, equipment maintenance with a youth group even more so! That list could go on and on.

To add to Scott's post with, that if your band shows up with their guitar amps, keyboard amps, drum kit of almost any size and then factor in the stage monitors........unless they are VERY controlled with their stage volume it will turn ugly fast.
For the band I would suggest electronic drums, guitars and keys all going direct to the system and using in ear monitors. In ear monitors could be hardwired with headphone amps.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

2. The first pew is at 11ft from the speaker wall. I was thinking the speakers will need to be on the wall, however there is plenty of evenly spaced beams above to hold anything we would need for this room.

3. Money isn't a big factor here, I'm planning to spend up to about $3k on speakers, subs, amps, processing. Again, not a hard budget limit.

Remember that putting the speakers behind the mics is just asking for feedback trouble-and lots of "garbage" getting into the mics and making them muddy.

$3K is a pretty small amount for speakers/amps/processing for a Praise type of band.

You could easily spend that on a good single sub and no amp.

[Caleb Dueck]

$3k budget doesn't jive with what you're expecting the system to do.  Who is going to design the system, ensure it covers well, install it, tune it?  Do you want it to look good, or some black boxes on tripods?   I just talked with a church last night that did the "couple cheap speakers" approach rather than a coherent system a few times - they now are tired of wasting money and need to do it right. 

The first thing you need is to involve a good church AV integrator.  Then set a realistic budget based on meeting with them, possibly a demo or two. 

[Ivan Beaver]

$3k budget doesn't jive with what you're expecting the system to do.  Who is going to design the system, ensure it covers well, install it, tune it?  Do you want it to look good, or some black boxes on tripods?   I just talked with a church last night that did the "couple cheap speakers" approach rather than a coherent system a few times - they now are tired of wasting money and need to do it right. 

The first thing you need is to involve a good church AV integrator.  Then set a realistic budget based on meeting with them, possibly a demo or two.

And in the end-they will spend the money to do it right PLUS wasted the money trying the DIY approach.

So the total expense to the Church is more than if they had done it right from the beginning.

The old saying "Many Churches buy 3 sound systems" is very often true.

But I know of several Churches that have bought a new sound system (because somebody in the Church thought it would be "cooler" and more "hip") only to downgrade from what they had with the old system.

BUT HEY-at least they think they are "cool" now.

What REALLY bothers me-is why does not the leadership force the installer or planner to make it better than before-or at least equal?

They are not held accountable for spending lots of money for lower performance than what they already had.

If it does not perform as well, then they need to pay for the removal and reinstallation of the old system.

But that never happens. 

I guess it is OK to waste other peoples money-as long as it makes them "feel better".

Or maybe I am missing something-----------

[ProSoundWeb Community]