PA Audio System Discussion

[Nigel Goodwin]

Your subs are carrying a LOT of weight, and if you have 1000w on your mid/highs, and 1000w on your subs, your subs will be using a lot more of that 1000w than the mid/highs are. You can momentarily exceed the power rating of the circuit, but if you keep it up, you can still thermally overload the breakers.

It depends a GREAT deal what country you are in, I'm presuming Australia is probably more like the UK than the USA?.

In the UK we use 13A fused three pin plugs/sockets, so each individual plug has it's own fuse, which can be a maximum of 13A, but also 10A, 7A, 5A, 3A or 2A - depending on the appliance it's connected to. The sockets the plugs connect to are wired in a 'ring main', which is essentially a loop of 2.5mm twin and earth cable that starts from the fuse box, runs round one floor, and back to the fuse box. The sockets for that floor all connect to this single loop, so each socket is fed by two sections of 2.5mm cable. The ring itself is fed from a fuse or circuit breaker in the fusebox.

So each ring can probably provide a total of 6000W or so, and higher power circuits are available for items like cookers and showers.

So from a normal domestic UK supply, you 'should' be able to manage a total of 6000W of sound and lights for a single ring main, if it was a building with a stage for performances, presumably more than one ring could be used to increase power capability further?.

But as already suggested, what really draws the power is the lights - perhaps that's why raves are usuall pretty dark?.

Audio wise I agree with the previous comments, for the style of music you're talking about you need serious bass power - multiple bass bins are probably the way to go?. No matter how you look at it you're talking BIG! speaker systems - hard to move, hard to store - hard work all round!.

 

[Eva]

As I have previously explained, multiple bass speakers placed together (even low-cost ones) produce absolutely superior performance than any a single one. A good "stacking factor" is 4 or more.

 

[Rademakers]

I understand, but instead of using 15" or 18" with 4 mm Xmax I suggest using 18" speakers with around 9 mm Xmax.

I've been doing raves for the past 4 years just for the fun of it and tried both types in several designs. With 18" it's easier to expand with smaller transport. My latest subwoofer, after own design is actually a small basreflex tuned low
Because of the 18" lower Fs there are less factors to be overcome.

Wkr Johan