Today I’m going to be answering one of the biggest questions that I always get asked. How many people can this speaker do, how many people can this speaker do, how many watts do I need for this big of a room or if I bought this speaker, how many people do you think I could reasonably do we’re going to answer that call.
In today’s, let’s jump into it, so let me give you the short answer for that question how many speakers or recommending speakers? The short answer is that no one is right, and everyone is wrong when suggesting speakers. Everyone has a different opinion on what is too loud what is not loud enough.
What is more portable, what is not portable what is efficient, what is too much space, what is not enough face everyone has a different opinion when it comes to this some people have similar ideas, like me my buddy Joy, we pretty much have a similar taste for what we think is enough base and how much is loud enough. Everyone is different.
Everyone is completely different when it comes to that clarity.Output the full range sound everyone has a different taste and different experience for what they think is more applicable in a different situation. So the best answer to that is to use your own best educational guest or listen to speakers in different environments to see what you think, and it’s something you develop over time. The more gigs you do, the more mobile events you do to hear different speakers. That other DJs have that you have in separate rooms with varying amounts of people, different types of events the better educated you’re going to be on choosing the right speaker to work for your application.
With that said, let me give you my personal opinion on what speakers I would recommend in different environments. You should also consider yourself when selecting a speaker for a specific type of event you’re about to do, so behind me here, I have various speakers. These are not necessarily the ones that I would recommend for everyone’s applications. These are just the ones that I’ve selected for my application, the tools I use in terms of speakers for all the different ranges of events that I do and more or less. I’ve broken these up into categories, so like you have your battery-powered portable speakers. Over here not shown would be like your column arrays your beginner type speakers we have our intermediate type speakers right here with the pro’s we have our pro-level speakers with the pr X’s and then not shown would be something like touring great speakers such as line arrays and stuff like that. Within those different speaker categories, each one has various benefits or other factors that make them better than, say, something in another type, which is why you basically can choose which ones will be better for your specific application.
So that’s why I want to start by talking about the different factors that play into making your speaker decision for your particular event. I’ll also touch on why I chose these speakers to take in my application the first factor. When selecting a speaker for an event that you’re about to do is just that what is the type of event that you are doing and what is the application that you’re trying to achieve for that event to give you a couple of polar-opposite examples, here if you’re doing a wedding. You’re doing a cocktail hour. Your goal at that cocktail hour is to provide light and airy background music, not overpowering, not a big ton of bass. You’re just trying to give that background music. They get everyone in a good mood for the upcoming reception.
What are the factors to consider when choosing PA speakers?
1.The polar opposite is that you are doing a high school dance for 300 students. you want a booming sound system with many basses so that the students like immersed in sound, and they’re just like having a blast and having a time to polar-opposite applications and type of events number one factor you need to consider.
2.The second factor is the size of the room, and this is going to be an indoor or outdoor application. If you didn’t already know, the same speaker would sound louder indoors than it will in an outdoor application, especially when it comes to subwoofers. There are no walls for the couple to produce a more audible sound in an outdoor environment.
3.The third factor and probably the most commonly asked vain people are a huge factor when the sound people are significant bodies of water that absorb sound. Hence, the more people you have, the more they’re going to suck up your sound, and the quieter you’re going to sound point number four practicality and budget.
Now I guarantee all of us would love to buy some expensive JBL SRX or even more costly RCF Series speakers that can push out a ton of output but are that efficient for what you are doing? Are you doing a lot of events that are 15000 plus people?
If that’s not the cases and you’re more or less doing events around a hundred people, it’d be a little more practical and a little more affordable on your budget because we’re trying to make money here we charge money to try and make money in this DJ realm. Something like a peer x-series speaker would be more practical budget-wise and for the type of events we’re doing. That’s why if you guys haven’t noticed on my channel 90% of the weddings I do, I use my FYS 4015P series and not my FYS12PA-55 point.
And the last thing you need to consider when you’re selecting a sound system for a particular event that you are doing is portability if you’re like me. You’re doing a lot of weddings in the middle of nowhere at these barns. It’s not that practical to bring some big subs and prominent speakers. That requires a trailer and is hard to get into the location. If you’re in a city application where there are elevators and stuff, you need to think about portability, so now let’s dive into my recommendations.
What speakers do I recommend for the specific amount of people the size of the room; all that fun stuff starting on the smaller side. Let’s talk about things like wedding ceremonies and wedding cocktails. Now, like I just mentioned, if you’re doing a lot of traditions like I am nowadays, they’re in the middle of nowhere a lot of times very far from power? And why I’ve gone to complete battery for style speakers that I choose to get for ceremonies and cocktail solution for a battery-powered speaker when it. It comes to a tradition or a cocktail of around to maybe a hundred and twenty-five people or under; I would recommend getting FYS 8PA-32 on one compact, just one of them, or a Bose s1 pro. However, the JGA is cheaper, so that’s why I would go with that. If you’re doing over 125 people up to 200, you could double that speaker, so get to JBL the All man compacts or bose s1 pro or buy one LD systems Maui five go. If you’re doing a ceremony-size cocktail from over 200 people very far and few in between to LD systems Maui five trials will do the job now the battery is not a concern for you. You don’t need a battery-powered speaker. You could do just as well with buying one beginner-style speaker, so JGA ELECTRONICS one eve Alexis Mackie pumps. I would recommend getting the 12-inch version. One of those should be able to do you.
150 people out of ceremony on your cocktail no problem you could also bump up and get yourself into the intermediate category with the PROex’s thee XK is the QSC k-series a KW series from QSC all of those are great options our RCF art those are all great options for cocktail and for ceremony speakers.
Now that they got but one thing that those do really well is cocktails and ceremonies so if you’re looking for a powered speaker to use at cocktails and ceremonies calamari speakers; Now let’s move on into actual DJ environments where we’re playing music trying to get people to dance I’m going to break this up into two different categories for my recommendations one we’re gonna talk about school dances and one we’re going to talk about wedding receptions because I have different opinions for what you need for each different environment.
So let’s start off with wedding receptions the first category speakers we need to talk about is call mores like I said not a huge fan of DJ environments using column or a style speakers. I would use it at a wedding reception but it would have to be 75 people at the maximum at the maximum a hundred people and the room has to be on the medium to small size and it cannot be outdoor; that is a hundred percent the only thing that I would ever use those speakers for, because that is the only application I would use them for, it limits its. functionality in terms of what I can use it for, which is why I did not get into column array speakers so let’s talk about beginner style speakers.
Like your Mackey foams your JBL ions your EV Alexis there’s a variety of other all in one PA System that are in this category as well your beginner style speakers what do I recommend them for for beginners style speakers. I would highly recommend getting 15-inch versions of the viateur style speakers two of those tops at a wedding reception if we are indoors in a medium to small environment; so medium to small size room about a 100 to 150 people would be the maximum that; I would do in an outdoor setting I wouldn’t go above a 100 people; that’s about the cap I would go for one thing to consider with only using those two 15-inch tops you’re gonna have a lot of the midbass it’s gonna sound good, no one’s gonna complain about the sound. but in terms of full range you are going to be missing some low-end a lot of people would jump to buying a beginner style sub and I have a whole articles on why I don’t recommend beginners style subwoofer. So I’m moving on from to beginner style 15 inch with move on into to intermediate style 15-inch such as the PRO x-series of speakers from JBL to the QSC k-series what would two speakers in this range do I would put it at a caps of like JGA FYS-3012P for just two tops.
I wouldn’t go above JGA FYS-3012P in an indoor environment again medium to small size room we’re not talking big rooms when we’re talking big rooms we’re gonna move on into the big boy speakers over here but we’re talking medium to intermediate size all of these wedding receptions are 200 people so two of the intermediate tops could do up to 175 people outdoors probably cap it around 125 to 150. now so far at wedding receptions I’ve only been mentioning two 15 inch tops beginner style or intermediate style only been mentioning 15-inch tops and the reason for that is practicality and budget wise; that is the most practical way to get into this at a low cost is to only have two 15-inch tops.
If you are someone that values audio quality and you like full range or you want more base there’s some other options we can do so if you take two beginner style tops and you add an intermediate stub either 15 inch or 18 inch you’re not necessarily going to be able to do more people it’s not really gonna make your system any louder for the most part; now let’s jump to the intermediate style speaker, I’m gonna list down in the description down below the full list of speakers that I recommend for each category you can also go watch my top powered speakers articles that explains all these different speakers that are in those categories as well. now with the intermediate style if you would like more full range and you would like more bass I have a few recommendations if you only want to have two speakers and you want more full range than what just to 12 inch or two 15-inch tops are going to give you; I would recommend looking into the 3-way cabinets that they make JBL prx 835s Evekx35PS or the QSC KW35PS the three-way cabinets they have a 15 inch sub an eight half inch mid and a one-inch tweeter it’s going to give you a lot more full range than what the single fifteen inch or twelve inch speaker will give you you again are not going to be able to do more people necessarily. you’re just gonna have a fuller range sound that will come at a condo because it is a heavier speaker and you still have to put it up onto a speaker stand so practicality might go down a little bit but you only have to have two speakers now the other option is to add a sub and there are two configurations that I personally would recommend one would be your 15-inch top with an 18 inch sub or what I do which is a 12-inch top with a 15-inch sub now with the 15 inch tops and the 18 inch subs if you go with one 18 inch sub you’re basically going to achieve a full range sound output you’re gonna gain that low and have an equal full range sound output if you go ahead and buy 2 18 inch subs you’re then gonna have a lot more of an impact base set up the bass is going to be a lot heavier, so if you value bass at your wedding receptions, get to 18-inch subs.
You will not be disappointed.Now the other caveat to running the 12 inch tops with the 15-inch subs, and that’s the set up that I rock and I personally love now the 15 inches; don’t get necessarily as low as the 18 inch subs but when it comes to a practicality and budget standpoint the 15 inch subs are cheaper the 12 inch tops are a little bit cheaper and size wise they take up a lot less space one good example of that the 15 inch sub will fit underneath of a cover in the back of the pickup bed the 18 on the other hand will not and personally in my opinion a 12 inch woofer produces better mids than a 15 inch woofer so in my opinion this delivers a cleaner full range sound than a 15 inch top and 18 inch sub, just my personal opinion. When it comes to adding subs to intermediate tops but when it comes to like size of the room and how many people you can possibly do this will be the first time that I will say adding a sub will actually increase the amount of people that you can do when it comes to the big ear style speakers the tweeter which does the highs for the most part is already kind of like at limit when the speaker is running full range versus if you add a sub and take some of the bass out of the speak the tweeters already kind of at limit but in the case of the intermediate style speakers normally the tweeter the highs and the mids have a little bit more.
Output that they can reach when you take the bass out of the top and put it into the sub so with that said the 12 inch top with the 15 inch the sub I use this indoors in a medium to small size room for up to 200 people if i am in a large room this system can handle it but I wouldn’t really want to go above 125 maybe a 100 people at Max. outdoors about that same sort of large room scenario outdoors may about 125 to 150 people, no problem with this system now. that’s about the sweet spot for that in a large style room 150 caps outdoors again 150 caps that’s about what I would do;
so that was a long discussion when it comes to wedding reception style speakers and I’m kind of ending there because mass majority of weddings that we do are rarely above 200 people if you’re one of the rare ones out there that does wedding receptions all the time of over 200 people like I’m talking all the time look into something in the pro level category with the speakers in my pro level category like the JBL SRX Azure the EV TX’s most of the time these tops right here. 15 inch tops you can do up to about 150 to 200 people with just the tops alone again you’re gonna miss a lot of that full range sound so you could do the 3-way tops but I really would strongly recommend when you’re in the pro level don’t get into the freeway tops because they are ridiculously heavy and hard to manage unless you’re some big strong bulky dude that can handle them I wouldn’t mess with the 3-way tops when it comes to a wedding reception being mobile they just really don’t fit the bill the one thing with the pro-level tops where they shine, though, is when you add subwoofers. The real cap when it comes to the pro-level speakers is the base output.
As I said, the tops alone in a medium-sized room could do 150 to 200 people no problem in a large style room they could probably do about 150 people, and outdoors, they can do 150 people with just two 15-inch tops with two pro-level 15-inch tops if you add two pro-level 18-inch subs or one dual 18 you can do 250 to 300 people in a medium to large style room or outdoors can do 250 people no problem. if you go beyond the two subwoofers, it comes down to what you consider is adequate. base output with the correct amount of subwoofers and say you fly these up in the air, so they’re nice and high. You can do four hundred people with two of these tops in the indoor environment on an outdoor environment, maybe around 300 to 350. Still, when you get into the pro-level series speakers, you can do quite a lot of people when you start pairing these with subwoofers.
For wedding receptions, I’m not going to even touch on touring level speakers because if you’re doing wedding receptions, over 400 people contact me to let me know. After all, that’s insane, so we talked about the cocktail ceremony. We went really into depth on wedding reception setups.
Selection of application scenarios PA speakers system.
I’m going to end by talking about school dances small concerts now. When it comes to school dances, it’s tough to get away with just using like two beginner 15-inch tops, and the main reason for that is because school dances are normally held in big rooms and in big rooms to begin tile speakers cannot do it in terms of outputs compared to what the students are going to want to hear and how loud they’re going to want it to be you can probably get away with using two beginners style 15-inch tops and a subwoofer or maybe a couple of subwoofers for maybe around 100 people but it’s going to be a stretch it’s tough to do them I highly recommend if you’re in that sort of area where you have beginners style speakers, and you’re trying to do school dances to rent some speakers if you’re only doing a couple and keep your beginner style speakers and save it with money to buy something better;
when it comes to school dances and concert.I don’t skip out when it comes to bass kids love to have bass at their dances it’s just a factor of a school dance a school dance with bass the kids love it more than school dance without bass so with that said I always and strongly recommend that you always bring subwoofers to school dances so talking about the speaker configurations that I mentioned in the wedding reception section the 12-inch top with the 15-inch sub two 15 inch subs to 12 inch tops in a medium-sized room about a hundred in 50 people is about what I would do in a large style room 100 Navy 125 it depends with the 15-inch top and the 18 inch sub so – 18 inch subs and one 15 inch tops I would do about 200 to 225 in a medium to small size room on a large tile room about 150 to 175 would be that category now moving in to the pro level speakers we’ve kind of already touched on these for the most part they can do a lot of people I would not recommend just using two tops again because I said you subs for all events so if you’re using two of the pro level tops with two of these subs on the bottom right around 250 to 300 people more or less 250 in a really large room in a medium;
May be on the slightly large room you can do around 300 people now if you wanted to do a school dance of like 400 to 500 students you can still use two of these tops right here but you would want to have some really high stands to get them up high or fly them on trust and then pairthem with to do teens or four single a teens and you’ll be able to do right around 400 to maybe 500 depending on the size of the room if it’s substantial 400 if it’s kind of just a normal large the room that can fit 500 students than 500 you can do 500 no problem, but that right there is a cap of the pro level.
style speakers when we get over 500 people, we need to start looking into touring style sound systems. Now on the touring style sound systems, I’m not going to get into the extensive touring sound system the costly stuff I’m going to talk more or less about school dances five hundred to a thousand students or small concerts around that range the most popular system by far probably on the market is the JBL V Rex series you see them literally everywhere if you guys literally if you’re walking around places at like concerts and venues and stuff look for the V R exterior speakers you’ll be surprised they’re literally everywhere.
They’re super popular and they’ve been around for a long time with that said they’re a constantcurvature array so it’s really weird when it comes to the amount of speakers that you need but doing like an array of three or two tops on either side and then adding in like four do 18 subwoofers you can do right around 800 to 900 if you went ahead and got the full 5 or 4 arrays on both sides and you set them up in a proper way and you did like 6 or 8 delay teens you could definitely get up to a thousand people a couple other speakers in that category that you can look into again with combination of a lot of subwoofers the RCF HD l6 is paired with the dueling teens from RCF are a great option in those same quantities that I mentioned the one benefit of the RCF is it’s a true line array versus the VXR it’s like a constant curvature ray the VXR is weird when it comes to like sound output, and where it goes, it’s bizarre when it comes to that it’s not true line array it’s also not a true point source it’s some weird hybrid in-between;
Now one other company I want to mention in the touring category is Martin audio also because that’s the company I’m looking at in terms of getting a sound system that’ll do somewhere in that five hundred to a thousand-person range, and these are still powered speakers, and that would be their CVD live 15-inch top paired with their CSX live two 18 inch and subwoofers again in similar quantities to tops with like for dual a teens you should be able to get somewhere around that 800 to a thousand-person range of max output in a large style room again when you go outdoors might lower it a little a bit maybe somewhere around the 600 to 800 range, but you’re talking about some big loudspeakers when you get into that category, and I do want to mention I say touring style speakers, but those are definitely when it comes to the touring side of things, they’re beginner level speakers in the touring realm for anyone that doesn’t know what I’m talking about there are tour-level speakers, and then there are consumer-level speakers. These right here the pr x-series your ex series oldest and down that is technically consumer-level speakers. The SRX falls into the touring category.
Still, I would put them on the borderline to that everything when you’re talking like VXR and above for JBL and get into the çf HDL series. All that stuff, you’re talking about touring level speakers, and those are the beginner level speakers when it comes to touring great sound systems. I mean, you can go all the way up the line to 10,000 person sound systems; it gets pretty crazy when you get down to that in but for the most part, most of us are not dealing with that. I would say the average mobile DJ your cap is somewhere, probably around 400 people. When we get into the school dances, some will get closer to that 800, maybe to the thousand marks. Still, most of us are not going to get anywhere really past a thousand people, very rare, and not many of us mobile guys are doing a thousand plus that’s going to be your production guys, and I guess a little side plug too. the man himself John Simmons DJ Whoo pick if you want to learn more about production stuff like big sound systems and stuff like that, go check out my man John Simmons DJ Whoo pics channel that’s. All he does is production concert stuff they.
Also, mobile DJing, and stuff like that, but he does a lot of the production staff and knows quite a lot more than I do, so if you’re looking for more of the touring grade stuff, go check out his channel. Still, anyways guys, this was quite a lengthy discussion on application speakers and the number of people.
So I hope you now understand my short answer when it comes to it comes down to your personal opinion. There’s a lot of factors that play into it, and a lot of it is just this right here it’s mental factors in terms of what you think versus what I think, so here at the end, let me wrap it up by telling you the speaker systems behind me why I chose these and what I use them for starting on the far right here the JBL eon one compact short answer is I don’t use it that’s kind of my like shop speaker party speaker;
I don’t use it if we need it I would use it for like a cocktail for less than a hundred people probably less than 75 people tiny events main speakers we’re going to be using are those right there the LD systems goes we have to go to be three very shortly probably we use them for 90% of our ceremonies and cocktails most of them; falling under 200 people which is what that speaker is good at next n the line is my central wedding reception sound system that is the JBL PRO-712 tops with the 7 15-inch subs this is the central sound system that I use for 90% of all my weddings as long as they are under 200 people I’m using that sound system if I do have a wedding reception in a vast room or over 200 people I will bring my two JBL VXR-918 subs now when it comes to school dances I pretty much never use my PRex rig only because school dances nowadays are a lot of hip-hop has a lot of low notes. Those 15 inch new subs don’t do it for me in terms of bass output for the hip-hop music. so I used my Viereck subs with my SRX tops for basically all of my school dances, no matter how large with a cap of 300 people after I start adding more heroes. That I don’t personally own, then when we get to like 500 person amount, that’s when I start looking into renting like vertex line arrays to do the job anyway.
That is all for this introducing the article. It took quite a bit of time to put it all in. These facts and stuff together, so if you would please have a like-on.
