Hi,
I am trying to find out what my options are for buying/building a PA system for a large home and yard. I am NOT looking for a intercom system. I am looking for a Public Address system that can be used to address 200-300 people that will be at functions held inside of a large house and back yard.
Since it is a home, it needs to be unobtrusive, as few seen wires and devices as possible, easy to turn on and off as needed and reliable.
In a typical scenario, The speaker (person giving the announcements, telling a story, reading into the microphone, etc.) Will be standing in the living room of the house, but needs to be heard by guests that are in the kitchen (30' away), in the dining room (50' away), in the yard (200' away), etc. Doors closed, no direct line of sight...
The purpose is to amplify the voice of a single speaker. We have a Sonos for the music and attempted to rig together a means of using it to amplify a person with a microphone, but that ended in complete disaster. What I need now is a real PA system to the aforementioned purpose. I am not working with a super large budget, but am willing to get what is necessary in order to satisfy my needs.
If anyone can help with ideas or suggestions I would be most appreciative. Also, let me know if you need any more details.
Please advise.
I am trying to find out what my options are for buying/building a PA system for a large home and yard. I am NOT looking for a intercom system. I am looking for a Public Address system that can be used to address 200-300 people that will be at functions held inside of a large house and back yard.
Since it is a home, it needs to be unobtrusive, as few seen wires and devices as possible, easy to turn on and off as needed and reliable.
In a typical scenario, The speaker (person giving the announcements, telling a story, reading into the microphone, etc.) Will be standing in the living room of the house, but needs to be heard by guests that are in the kitchen (30' away), in the dining room (50' away), in the yard (200' away), etc. Doors closed, no direct line of sight...
The purpose is to amplify the voice of a single speaker. We have a Sonos for the music and attempted to rig together a means of using it to amplify a person with a microphone, but that ended in complete disaster. What I need now is a real PA system to the aforementioned purpose. I am not working with a super large budget, but am willing to get what is necessary in order to satisfy my needs.
If anyone can help with ideas or suggestions I would be most appreciative. Also, let me know if you need any more details.
Please advise.
Hi;
I am unclear on a few things so a question or two:
No music at all, just voice?
Do you want to reinforce the speaker in the living room?
Do you want speakers in the kitchen and dining room or do you want to point a speaker at those spaces or have the living room loud enough to bleed into the other spaces?
How big is the area outside?
How loud do you want it to be?
Back ground noise level the system have have to overcome? ie noisy crowd or quiet intent listeners?
What is the expected farthest distance from loudspeaker to person outside? Aproximate dimensions really help.
Do you set it up and take it down? By yourself? Or does it stay set up?
What went wrong with the attempt at the distributed system?
This many questions may seem outrageous but this project has some real challenges and planning will avoid costly do-overs.
Some of the challenges are:
Gain before feedback if you want to support the speaker in a fairly small space. Non linear speakers and or poor/limited placement wreak havoc if you need a lot of gain eg person with a small voice and or poor mic technique.
Unlike music that can be enjoyed soft or loud, voice only when loud is uncomfortable to many people so even coverage is a must to keep the volume level from killing the people close to the loudspeakers while maintaining adequate volume farther away.
If you have people scattered over a fair distance in the yard, you will likely need elevate the speakers above the heads of those close by and point them down toward the people farther away to keep the volume fairly constant over the field.
Is it your house?
Barry.
I am unclear on a few things so a question or two:
No music at all, just voice?
Do you want to reinforce the speaker in the living room?
Do you want speakers in the kitchen and dining room or do you want to point a speaker at those spaces or have the living room loud enough to bleed into the other spaces?
How big is the area outside?
How loud do you want it to be?
Back ground noise level the system have have to overcome? ie noisy crowd or quiet intent listeners?
What is the expected farthest distance from loudspeaker to person outside? Aproximate dimensions really help.
Do you set it up and take it down? By yourself? Or does it stay set up?
What went wrong with the attempt at the distributed system?
This many questions may seem outrageous but this project has some real challenges and planning will avoid costly do-overs.
Some of the challenges are:
Gain before feedback if you want to support the speaker in a fairly small space. Non linear speakers and or poor/limited placement wreak havoc if you need a lot of gain eg person with a small voice and or poor mic technique.
Unlike music that can be enjoyed soft or loud, voice only when loud is uncomfortable to many people so even coverage is a must to keep the volume level from killing the people close to the loudspeakers while maintaining adequate volume farther away.
If you have people scattered over a fair distance in the yard, you will likely need elevate the speakers above the heads of those close by and point them down toward the people farther away to keep the volume fairly constant over the field.
Is it your house?
Barry.
Mostly in the biz we use powered speakers for this. Any small powered speaker from Mackie, JBL, QSC, Yamaha, etc would fit the bill. But you really need two, one inside, one outside. These almost all have a microphone input and a loop out to run to the next speaker.
I don't know if these are small enough of cheap enough for your needs, but it is what's done professionally.
I don't know if these are small enough of cheap enough for your needs, but it is what's done professionally.
A few months ago my family had a large (50ppl) birthday party and we needed some reinforcement for the announcements. I am located on the opposite coast and was not going to ship even my smallest rig out. Instead, we ordered a 10" powered speaker off of Amazon. This speaker was rated north of 1500 watts and came with a speaker stand and a mic with XLR cable. It even had BT and an MP3 player built in. I knew going in that at least 95% of those watts were imaginary but this was for a 1-time use and it was more convenient than renting a QSC K-8 at the nearest pro-audio store 40 minutes away. The speaker was a bit underpowered, the stand was a bit flimsy and the mic was cheap. However, it got the job done well. Now it will probably sit in my brother's garage for 10 years.
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