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[Andrew Cole]

Here's the second picture, I was having trouble attaching both to my previous post.

[Brian Jojade]

No crossovers for sure. The 15 (verified) and 12 for each side is connected via banana clips *sigh* at the amp. Nevermind the amp has perfectly good speak on connectors.

I talked to the pastor about a stop gap fix for now (he wasn't opposed) and saving for a legit redo but we need a goal to set. Now that I have better info, what are the opinions on a ballpark budget for a professional setup? 10k? 20k?

In a permanent install, perfectly good banana clips are much faster and easier to install that difficult to troubleshoot speakon connectors..

As far as a budget goes, the best thing to do is NOT start with budget.  Start with listing the requirements for coverage and volume.  Then, take that list to your installer and they can prepare a quote.  For an install of everything, a budget of $20K wouldn't be out of line.  If that's not realistic, repairing what you have with minor tweaks should be significantly less expensive.

With audio gear, you CAN use existing stuff and make it sound almost as good if not better as cheap new stuff.  Once you get passed a certain point, the more dollars you put into it, the less of an impact it ends up making.

[Scott Holtzman]

In a permanent install, perfectly good banana clips are much faster and easier to install that difficult to troubleshoot speakon connectors..

As far as a budget goes, the best thing to do is NOT start with budget.  Start with listing the requirements for coverage and volume.  Then, take that list to your installer and they can prepare a quote.  For an install of everything, a budget of $20K wouldn't be out of line.  If that's not realistic, repairing what you have with minor tweaks should be significantly less expensive.

With audio gear, you CAN use existing stuff and make it sound almost as good if not better as cheap new stuff.  Once you get passed a certain point, the more dollars you put into it, the less of an impact it ends up making.

This ^^^^ it's not about the dollars, it's about doing it right.

[Jonathan Johnson]

As far as a budget goes, the best thing to do is NOT start with budget.

My experience is that, in a church, it is much easier to get a budget for a predefined need than it is to meet your needs with a predefined budget.

Don't ask for money without knowing what it will actually cost.

In other words, once you know what you need (that is, what you really need, not what you want), you can present that to the congregation or the board along with the cost of implementing. They can then make an informed decision on budget. If that $2500 won't get you what you need, it can be seed money for a special fund that your congregants can donate to. You might be surprised how much more willing they are to open their wallets when the need is well-defined and understood.

Be sure to include all costs including infrastructure (cables, rigging, hardware), installation, permits & inspections (!), drywall repair, paint, carpet cleaning, etc.

("Wait, carpet cleaning?" Yes. If the installation gets the carpet dirty, you'll need to clean the carpet. That's a cost that can be attributed to the project. Think about these incidental costs.)

[David Allred]

The speakers you have COULD be full range with an "extender out".  Can you take pics of the front of the "12 in speaker"?  Can you pull the speaker off and get a pic of any internal electronics?  How well did the system perform before one 12" went down?  If you could get it back where it was for under, say, $300 - $400...would you?

[Ken Webster]

Hi Andrew,  I have only browsed through quickly on this one as I am very busy today.  Your hall is almost exactly the same size as ours and we have for many years sailed a very tight budget.  I agree with the advice that your best course is to repair the damaged speaker.  If you can source a replacement (same brand and model) for the damaged driver, it is an easy install to do.  Sometimes a suitable alternate driver can be found but that requires research and advice I can't give.

There is nothing wrong with 20 YO gear though you may want to consider replacing the XO capacitors some time as these do age and go out of spec.  It's actually the same deal with most analogue gear, it's just that some electronic components tend to go out of spec over time.  While there have been feature developments in more recent decades, the actual sonic performance has not advanced very much since around the 1990s.  It can be most cost effective buying top of the range vintage gear and having it serviced and maintained.  Getting a higher end repairer to judiciously replace critical components will generally bring performance up far beyond anything you can afford new.  Sure, controls and switches etc tend to get scratchy and noisy but that's easily fixed with a service.  But perhaps this is a topic for another time.

The speaker mounting you have is good IMO.  You have flush mounted speakers in an accessible area which has sonic and practical advantages.  Should have good clarity and you can keep those cable terminations clean which is more important for passive speakers than most people realize.  It might be nice if they had a bit more room away from the ceiling but there are always practical constraints with rooms.  All in all, I think it's quite reasonable, better than what we have anyway.

Something that may help protect your speakers in future:
Basically, I have set up our gain structure to achieve 90 dBC at 1 metre with -10 VU at the desk output.  As 0 VU is the maximum target output, this gives the main speakers a maximum output of around 100 dB at 1 metre (somewhat less in the house).  I am using pink noise and a $100 AUD digital multi environment meter to set this structure.  The fold backs are set 5-10 dB lower than the house.  This is potentially quite loud but ensures the speakers are not driven to clipping at stupid damaging levels.  We have a strict trained personnel only policy.  The meter includes some useful multimeter functions like capacitance testing, AC volts in the millivolt range (useful for measuring signal levels) and frequency.  The pink noise file was generated with free software call Audacity.


Regards, Ken

[Debbie Dunkley]

Did you see this today?

PRX deal

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