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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => Pro AV Forum => Topic started by: Dan Dollar on October 18, 2019, 03:22:06 PM
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Hello. I need someone to help determining wattage required for a school arena. The arena will probably be the size of the attached picture. The admins want it to bump for pep rallys and other events. How much wattage should someone expect for something this size? Thanks in advance
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Hello. I need someone to help determining wattage required for a school arena. The arena will probably be the size of the attached picture. The admins want it to bump for pep rallys and other events. How much wattage should someone expect for something this size? Thanks in advance
Wattage is an absolutely useless parameter unless you also know the efficiency ("x" dbs @ 1w @ 1m) of the speakers that wattage will be pumped in to and how many watts the speaker can handle (and at what work load).
You really need to know the location the speakers will be mounted and SPL in db's required at a certain distance (farthest wall?).
Then how much headroom the system should have as to have a long productive live. A system riding at it's limit won't last nearly as long.
You also need to define bump. Is that volume, low frequencies, or both?
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Hello. I need someone to help determining wattage required for a school arena. The arena will probably be the size of the attached picture. The admins want it to bump for pep rallys and other events. How much wattage should someone expect for something this size? Thanks in advance
This is one of places where Danley's shine.
Contact you 'local' dealer.
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What you need is someone to design a system for that space. Selection and placement of the speakers is what matters. Efficiency of the speakers will determine how much power is needed. Marketing numbers will determine what kind of 'watts' you need too. Lots of products today advertise peak watts which gives a much much larger number than is really needed.
Reality is, average power will likely only be a few hundred watts at most.
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Nice echo chamber.
You'll need a real consultant here.
Acoustical "treatments" will likely be needed before "speakers" are even looked at.....
Chris.
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If you try and go it alone to save money you’ll probably end up with a poor outcome and end up spending more money in the long run to do it correctly. This is a years long expensive lesson that’s very common in “budget conscious” organizations. Be smart, that’s the real method to budget consciousness.
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If you try and go it alone to save money you’ll probably end up with a poor outcome and end up spending more money in the long run to do it correctly. This is a years long expensive lesson that’s very common in “budget conscious” organizations. Be smart, that’s the real method to budget consciousness.
Definitely a buy once, cry once situation.
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Hello. I need someone to help determining wattage required for a school arena. The arena will probably be the size of the attached picture. The admins want it to bump for pep rallys and other events. How much wattage should someone expect for something this size? Thanks in advance
Has anyone thought about budget? As many have pointed out watts has nothing to do with volume. This is a large complex space and the sound system has to be designed to be effective.
If the "admins" are thinking a $5000 off the shelf system is going to work with the janitor installing it, run don't walk away. They are tossing money away and the outcome will be awful.
For 50kUS you are getting closer but that may not be enough if electrical upgrades are needed and how difficult the install is.
It would not surprise me for the project to exceed 100k properly done.
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Can you gather the system info for what's currently in place? Did it ever meet their needs?
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In a gym like in the picture if you just want/need intelligible vocal cut over the crowd noise a van full of big Atlas horns and drivers will do the trick.
Increasing the frequency response and "bump" of the system all the way to a full on concert PA that's basically what some NBA arenas have the cost and system complexity will increase exponentially with every system upgrade option.
Run away from any proposal that the first thing they do is boast about how watts they are going to put in the gym.
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Thank you all for the responses. I'll try to answer your questions as best possible. Right now we're in the very beginning stages. The arena is probably 1-2 years out from being done at least. I'm just trying to get a general idea of what to look for with an arena system that will provide enough volume and low frequency for things like pep rallys and other loud events. We will be hiring a company so we'll be looking at proposals from different vendors in the near future. The problem we've had in the past is that we've paid vendors good money (I think someone said $50k) for a gym system that can't provide enough volume for these events. I don't know the budget is so far but I want to push for getting a better sound system rather than spending less and having regrets. Also i think part of the problem is when they were planning for the gym system, they didn't fully communicate what events would be happening there and what their expectations were for the sound system, so they came up with a decent but still underperforming system. Just hoping to avoid that. Thank you all.
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Thank you all for the responses. I'll try to answer your questions as best possible. Right now we're in the very beginning stages. The arena is probably 1-2 years out from being done at least. I'm just trying to get a general idea of what to look for with an arena system that will provide enough volume and low frequency for things like pep rallys and other loud events. We will be hiring a company so we'll be looking at proposals from different vendors in the near future. The problem we've had in the past is that we've paid vendors good money (I think someone said $50k) for a gym system that can't provide enough volume for these events. I don't know the budget is so far but I want to push for getting a better sound system rather than spending less and having regrets. Also i think part of the problem is when they were planning for the gym system, they didn't fully communicate what events would be happening there and what their expectations were for the sound system, so they came up with a decent but still underperforming system. Just hoping to avoid that. Thank you all.
Any decent company will be able to provide you spl plots for the space at a given frequency. It’s up to you to decide if the design meets your needs. If it does then it’s on the installer who bid to execute the design to deliver that. Don’t make the final payment till they do.
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"How many watts will it take" is akin to asking "how many calories will the football team burn to win a game".
For a space like that I'd start with a really rough guess at a quarter million for PA and go up (way up) from there. That is for the "modern" jock jams playing PA. And it won't sound very good unless you start with another quarter mill in acoustic treatment.
Many Gyms nowadays are built to be loud. The crowd noises are loud, the buzzer is loud, the announcer is loud, etc. This is the worst possible scenario for clear, high quality audio.
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Oh I thought he was talking about Electric heating system
It would stay toasty on those cold days with with a quarter million Watts
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Thank you all for the responses. I'll try to answer your questions as best possible. Right now we're in the very beginning stages. The arena is probably 1-2 years out from being done at least. I'm just trying to get a general idea of what to look for with an arena system that will provide enough volume and low frequency for things like pep rallys and other loud events. We will be hiring a company so we'll be looking at proposals from different vendors in the near future. The problem we've had in the past is that we've paid vendors good money (I think someone said $50k) for a gym system that can't provide enough volume for these events. I don't know the budget is so far but I want to push for getting a better sound system rather than spending less and having regrets. Also i think part of the problem is when they were planning for the gym system, they didn't fully communicate what events would be happening there and what their expectations were for the sound system, so they came up with a decent but still underperforming system. Just hoping to avoid that. Thank you all.
You definitely hire a system consultant to work with you on the design.
Try first with your project's architect, it may already be part of the scope and if you don't do anything you will probably already have a "cookie-cutter" system as part of the plan package.
Intercept that process now and either work with the architect's audio consultant or hire your own. It's best to have all 3 of the entities together for the design process -architect, consultant and client end-user.
Interview and study your consultants portfolios before contracting with them, a good one is what makes the difference between an underperforming system and project success.
Once the design and plans are set you can then go out for bids from reputable audio install companies.
Don't let the general electrical contractor get it, they will screw it up (sorry internet readers, find me just one example of this resulting in success and I will recant my opinion)
This also results in a system that's tightly integrated into the building with the cost rolled into the whole project, (making it a bit more palatable)