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[Stephen Swaffer]

Our church is finishing a multipurpose building-primary use is Sunday School.  We will have 17-18 classrooms as well as a couple of other zones and then the gym that would double as a large assembly room.  From other discussions, I am leaning towards using an AHM-32 (since we are primarily A&H in rest of our facilities) to give us distributed audio/paging etc.  The classrooms themselves are small-think 15-20 children at the most-I want to say 15'X20'.

Lots of options out there.  We will likely use QSC k10's or 12's in the gym as that is pastor's preference.  I am more wondering about classrooms.  Is there an economical multichannel amp available?  Powered does seem ideal for multiple classrooms, though there will obviously be power there we could borrow-and I have at least 3 licensed electricians so installation is not a huge problem.

Suggestions specifically for class room speakers-other things I may be overlooking?  I know we could hire a contractor-but the project price has already ballooned due to covid/inflation and contractors walking away from signed contracts-and I feel confident we can setup a professional system.  I believe we had about $20,000 budgeted-if I can put most of that towards equipment and use the project to give some teens some good hands on experience on installation I think it would be a good project to do with volunteers.

[Dave Garoutte]

Is this a distributed sound sort of thing, or independent systems?  Music, or speech?
I would think a single 8" Yamaha or QSC would work fine in each.

[Mike Caldwell]

For what I'm picturing as a classroom I would go with ceiling speakers or if it's an open ceiling design maybe hanging pendent style speakers.
There are good sounding ceiling speakers and in a classroom they give good even coverage.

For what I picture as a typical multipurpose gym you may want to look at something other than K10's or 12", something with more directivity to put sound where the people are.

[Erik Jerde]

For what I'm picturing as a classroom I would go with ceiling speakers or if it's an open ceiling design maybe hanging pendent style speakers.
There are good sounding ceiling speakers and in a classroom they give good even coverage.

For what I picture as a typical multipurpose gym you may want to look at something other than K10's or 12", something with more directivity to put sound where the people are.

I was thinking similar.  For church classrooms I’ve been happy with 70V ceiling speakers in a mono configuration.  The great thing here is that you’re not running too far you can just use standard cat5e cable and do 4 classrooms off of one cable run.  Keeps all your amps in a central location which can be nice.

[Paul Johnson]

Forgive me, but you've not said what they are for? If you go to modern schools, the need to play music in classrooms is mainly for playing YouTube from laptops, or sometimes dedicated media players. High voltage 70/100V line systems are fine but need controlling so you are into zone products to send certain sources to certain destinations - or the speakers in the room need to be for playing in music from another area as overflow rooms - that kind of thing. Some needs dictate big bassy speakers if they might be used for a dance class, or small loudspeakers if general audio only is needed. The system in the rooms to set volume needs to be a knob or fader - which dictates a small panel. This system sounds so simple, but needs starting at the user end. What needs to be enabled. If the idea is to pipe a service to the entire complex, that's different to an English teacher plugging in their MacBook and showing them a video. The dance class might really be a movement class for people with learning difficulties, but their requirements might be different.

This means central control, with local tie ins. Not an easy one to guess without second sight, from experience. The room panels might need to be mixers - taking in an external feed and local input too?

[Stephen Swaffer]

This is primarily for walk-in music/paging and perhaps dismissal signals.  Children arrive over a 15-20 minute time frame.  I like the AHM platform as it should allow individual control in each room without physical controls-as much about keeping them from being messed with as cost.  There may be times when live "overflow" audio is sent to the speakers-possibly even from a different building if we get ambitious enough to set up a Dante network.

I'll be honest, I am familiar with and have been involved in installing 70V systems but overlooked this solution.  Any recommendations on multi-channel amps?  I don't want junk-but I do have a budget to consider.

We have looked at acousitc treatments-and being a PEMB, the ceiling and significant portions of the walls are exposed insulation which should help with reflections-I would hope?

[Glen Kelley]

This is primarily for walk-in music/paging and perhaps dismissal signals.  Children arrive over a 15-20 minute time frame.  I like the AHM platform as it should allow individual control in each room without physical controls-as much about keeping them from being messed with as cost.  There may be times when live "overflow" audio is sent to the speakers-possibly even from a different building if we get ambitious enough to set up a Dante network.

I'll be honest, I am familiar with and have been involved in installing 70V systems but overlooked this solution.  Any recommendations on multi-channel amps?  I don't want junk-but I do have a budget to consider.

To my ears, the EV EVID c8.2 ceiling speakers are the best bang for the buck. They go decently low and sound good doing it, have an integrated back-can with safety tie-off, and a simple dial on the front face to set the output tap. They can also run in 8-ohm mode.

Extron makes some relatively inexpensive 4 channel amps in both standard and Dante versions. They are something like 100w or 200w per channel, which is perfect for a small classroom. I don't know if they extend the same pricing to churches, but they do have education pricing that is quite competitive. Another plus....the controls are on the BACK of the amp, away from 'helpers'!

[Tim McCulloch]

Out of curiosity, why are pastors involved in loudspeaker selection?  Even/especially in a HoW, we soundies do not inject ourselves into theology.

[Lee Douglas]

Have you considered IP Network speakers?  They are available in a variety of form factors, including in-ceiling, require only a POE connection and  may be group or individually paged.  If you don't need individual paging I would go with a simple 70v system.

[Erik Jerde]

Out of curiosity, why are pastors involved in loudspeaker selection?  Even/especially in a HoW, we soundies do not inject ourselves into theology.

For the same reason that some CEOs stick their fingers in everything - they are control freaks.  Good competent leadership in any industry will define what a system needs to do with input from subject matter experts and then let the experts execute.  Control freak micro-managers take a different approach and the results will often give you a good idea of what kind of organization you’re looking at.

[ProSoundWeb Community]