Quick PA question

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joseph123

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My singer bought a PA but he got the first one he saw and its kinda crapy. its 1 15" speaker with a built in 220 watt amp. When we try to get it to keep up with drums and guitars it clips and distorts badly. My question is about upgrading it. We want to take it back and get ether this GuitarCenter

or this GuitarCenter

Would it be would it sound better to have 2 speakers putting out 150 watts each or to have 1 with 550 or do you have a different suggestion? Thank you very much!
 
Well how loud are your guitars and drums?
If your guitars are at high volumes and the drums are just going ape to keep up with them Neither one of those options will work to your satisfaction.
 
Gonna be very hard to answer your question, as you have not told us anything about the 15"/220 watt amp. I suspect you are making some common beginner mistakes about the amp, and PA's in general.

First, noobs often look on the back of an amp or PA head and see something like "115 volts, 220 watts" and assume it is a "220 watt amp." Not by any meaningful measure, it isn't. That's the wattage it PULLS from the duplex wall outlet, NOT it's power output. That's sorta like saying that, since your car holds 20 gallons of gas, and a gallon of gas has approx. 11,000 watts of energy in it, which converts to abut 15 horsepower, you have a 300 horsepower car. It's not that easy. That is a measure of POWER INPUT to the amp, NOT POWER OUTPUT. If it really had 220 watts output, it should have little trouble keeping up with drums and most guitar amps. Something is not adding up.

And where did you get the idea something is putting out 550 watts?? Perhaps you meant 220 watts?

That PA you posted may have stuff you already have, like mics and cables, and things you don't really need, like speaker stands. Stands are nice to have, but you can put the speakers on top of shelves or crates or such, and do as well, at least in your rehearsal space. You don't tell us what your drummer is like (does he hit hard, or does he have a real sense of dynamics?) what kind of amps your guitarist(s) or bassist have (20-watt solid state practice amps, or 100-watt twin 12 tube amps?) or the size and reverberation in your rehearsal space. If no one is going "monster," you might do well with a little 100-watt PA system (Custom makes one,) which sells for $200, new. Still, there does seem to be a lot of value in that system, so if you can use all that stuff, you could do a lot worse.

Keep in mind, that system has TWO 150-watt self-powered (that means the amplifier for them is inside the speaker case) speakers, or 300 watts. That is most likely going to handily out-perform that thing your singer got. You might want to try using your singer's PA as a mock sub-woofer, placed in between the two 12" speakers- it might help, and with the others, you won't need to crank it as much, so you might get in below where it distorts.

I am suspicious of those Behringer powered speakers, when I read something like "
One of the coolest things about active loudspeakers is the lack of backbreaking racks of amps, crossovers, and EQs that are often required to make passive speaker systems sound almost as good. But that comes with a trade-off—:;that extra weight is transferred to the loudspeaker, making it difficult for a single user to heave all that mass onto the top of a speaker stand."
What a CROCK! There is just so much bullshit there, I don't know where to begin- but suffice to say that if a manufacturer is saying that kind of horse pucky in it's ad copy, you gotta wonder what the REAL story is.

Confirm that Guitar Center is going to extend the 30-day return refund to your PA (GET IT IN WRITING, AND READ THE SMALL PRINT), I'd try out that Alesis system- it may well work well for you. If not, return it and go up a step or two.

(I tried to keep that simple and to the point, and not bore you with too much tech stuff, or confuse you with too many alternatives.)
 
Gonna be very hard to answer your question, as you have not told us anything about the 15"/220 watt amp. I suspect you are making some common beginner mistakes about the amp, and PA's in general.

First, noobs often look on the back of an amp or PA head and see something like "115 volts, 220 watts" and assume it is a "220 watt amp." Not by any meaningful measure, it isn't. That's the wattage it PULLS from the duplex wall outlet, NOT it's power output. That's sorta like saying that, since your car holds 20 gallons of gas, and a gallon of gas has approx. 11,000 watts of energy in it, which converts to abut 15 horsepower, you have a 300 horsepower car. It's not that easy. That is a measure of POWER INPUT to the amp, NOT POWER OUTPUT. If it really had 220 watts output, it should have little trouble keeping up with drums and most guitar amps. Something is not adding up.

And where did you get the idea something is putting out 550 watts?? Perhaps you meant 220 watts?

That PA you posted may have stuff you already have, like mics and cables, and things you don't really need, like speaker stands. Stands are nice to have, but you can put the speakers on top of shelves or crates or such, and do as well, at least in your rehearsal space. You don't tell us what your drummer is like (does he hit hard, or does he have a real sense of dynamics?) what kind of amps your guitarist(s) or bassist have (20-watt solid state practice amps, or 100-watt twin 12 tube amps?) or the size and reverberation in your rehearsal space. If no one is going "monster," you might do well with a little 100-watt PA system (Custom makes one,) which sells for $200, new. Still, there does seem to be a lot of value in that system, so if you can use all that stuff, you could do a lot worse.

Keep in mind, that system has TWO 150-watt self-powered (that means the amplifier for them is inside the speaker case) speakers, or 300 watts. That is most likely going to handily out-perform that thing your singer got. You might want to try using your singer's PA as a mock sub-woofer, placed in between the two 12" speakers- it might help, and with the others, you won't need to crank it as much, so you might get in below where it distorts.

I am suspicious of those Behringer powered speakers, when I read something like "
One of the coolest things about active loudspeakers is the lack of backbreaking racks of amps, crossovers, and EQs that are often required to make passive speaker systems sound almost as good. But that comes with a trade-off?:;that extra weight is transferred to the loudspeaker, making it difficult for a single user to heave all that mass onto the top of a speaker stand."
What a CROCK! There is just so much bullshit there, I don't know where to begin- but suffice to say that if a manufacturer is saying that kind of horse pucky in it's ad copy, you gotta wonder what the REAL story is.

Confirm that Guitar Center is going to extend the 30-day return refund to your PA (GET IT IN WRITING, AND READ THE SMALL PRINT), I'd try out that Alesis system- it may well work well for you. If not, return it and go up a step or two.

(I tried to keep that simple and to the point, and not bore you with too much tech stuff, or confuse you with too many alternatives.)

This was all really helpful thank you so much for putting up with my being so new to this. I was getting the 550 watts from....

"The high-efficiency design of the Behringer EUROLIVE B215D speaker system cranks out 550 of the cleanest, punchiest audio watts you've ever heard from a compact PA system. The integrated sound processor provides total system control, along with dependable protection of the LF and HF transducers, thanks to the built-in active high-pass filter, which virtually eliminate distortion?even at extreme operating levels. In addition, it features an ultralow-noise mic/line input with LEVEL control and a dedicated 2-band EQ (bass/treble) for easy control."
at this link

GuitarCenter

were playing metal kinda loud. we have 2 100 watt guitar half stacks (both 4 by 12) 1 300 (i think) watt bass combo (4 by 10) and a loud drummer. If the current PA is at about 7 or 8 it can be heard but it sounds really crappy and distorted. (its this one by the way Harbinger APS15 15" Powered PA Speaker and more PA Cabinets at GuitarCenter.com. ) i just have no clue where to go and thats why i came here haha. thanks again. i really appreciate the time it took to type that whole thing.
 
I try to be thorough.
Is the singer's PA some POS with a name brand that NOBODY had ever heard of?


What will you driving those powered speakers with?
You could, I suppose, plug a mic directly into it, but really, you need a mixing board or other device that has a pre-amplifier.Beri gear is far from top-drawer, but not bad if you are on a budget. It could work for you, again, stay within your budget, don't buy pieces you don't need unless they are essentially free, and make sure you can at least exchange within 30 days if you find you bought too small.
 
would it sound better to have 2 speakers putting out 150 watts each or to have 1 with 550 or do you have a different suggestion? Thank you very much!

That amount of wattage would barely be enough to keep up with an acoustic guitar.


were playing metal kinda loud. we have 2 100 watt guitar half stacks (both 4 by 12) 1 300 (i think) watt bass combo (4 by 10) and a loud drummer

In that type of band situation I would normally use about 5000 watts for the mains and at least 3000 watts for the monitors. It's very important to have plenty of headroom.
 
Not trying to be smart, but sell the guitar amps and buy 30 watt rigs and turn down, 100 watt guitar riggs are for stadium use, no local venue will need anything like 100 watts, bass is a different story you need the wattage for clarity. You will never get a small vocal PA to keep up with 2 x 100 watt guitar stacks, I would be surprised if you could hear the drums in a venue without micing them up. Remember live stage is different from a rehearsal room.

Cheers
Alan.
 
My experience with a smaller PA is from a 4 piece band I do sound for. We use 2 Mackie SRM 450v2s for the mains and 2 MackieSRM1801 for the subs. The mains have a 300 watt RMS LF and 100 watt RMS HF amp built in. The subs have a built in 500 watt RMS amp. Our drummer plays far from quite and the bass player has a 4x10 which we use a direct out on, and the guitar amps are miked. The entire system seams to have enough power to get over the whole band. I haven't had problems with clipping the mains in this setup, but ever the drummer gives the kick a good hit, I'm at the max output for the subs. This setup works well but my biggest complaint about is the output of the subs and the harmonic distortion in the mains. This setup might be out your budget and you can get it for around $2600 new. I you can find it B stock then you should save about $600 at most.

One way you could get by on a lower power setup is by only sending things that absolutely need to be amplified though the PA. So maybe only sending the vocals though the mains. This may not work so great since your sound guy will lose some control over the mix. Hope this helps.
 
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