Powerful speakers for the outdoors ??

[AdamZuf]

Hello!
My friends and I like to go and party outdoors.. Yet it almost always ends up in a party with cheap music/poor amplification. We have a wide taste in music and would like to take it outdoors.
We also play instruments and would enjoy outdoor sessions, and would like it to be LOUD (-:

It would be nice to take something like high quality, high volume 4 upper-two-way speakers and 2 subs to the bushes, and party on!

Anyone know there are any good exsisting DIY designs for something like this?

Thanks!
Adam

[BillFitzmaurice]

You might want to take a look at the DR horns and Tuba subs on my site.

[Cal Weldon]

Hi Adam,

Another option is to get some old cabinets and refill them with updated gear like I did.

Cal

[rcavictim]

Originally posted by Cal Weldon
Hi Adam,

Another option is to get some old cabinets and refill them with updated gear like I did.

Cal

Sheesh!


Cal, You'll pick up a lot of outdoor useable bass if you put 4x8 sheets of plywood (wings) on each side of those 210's. That was an Altec option.

What do your neighbors think?

[Cal Weldon]

Hi rca,

I've oft thought of the plywood wings. Putting them on hinges in fact, so I can fold them back easily for storage.

But if you think I'm short of bass well, perhaps you should hear them first.

Neighbours? Don't know, I can't hear what they are yelling.

Cal

[synergy]

check out www.speakerplans.com

there's quite a few different designs on there from horns to bandpass and direct radiating mid/tops

[Swedish Chef]

Cal,
awesome setup!

Did you paint those green and blue HF horn flares yourself?

/Magnus

[Cal Weldon]

Hi Magnus,

The horn ports were painted four different colours because I was using up some old cans of spray paint (not kidding). Those are bass reflex ports not HF. They are small bass boxes (dual 10") and they go with the small mid/high units on top. Great for small venues. The A4 and A7 boxes get put together for another system.

All together they make up my "Speakerhenge"

Cal

[Swedish Chef]

So Cal, are you using horn flares as ports? I just assumed they were HF horns 'coz they look pretty much like miniature 2380 flares. Anyway, the color coding scheme would work great for easy identification I guess.

Are there something like an 8'' and piezo horns in the small top boxes?
What amps and crossovers are you using for this setup?

/Magnus

[johninCR]

Some nice tall line arrays is what you need. Keeping dispersion within the plain of the array is a huge advantage outdoors. Why play music for the birds flying overhead?

That's why all outdoor or large venue concerts use line arrays. It's easy to get high sensitivity using mulitple drivers, plus the gain in sensitivity vs distance for arrays over point source speakers is tremendous. Within the range that an array acts like a line array, SPL decreases by only 3db for each doubling of distance vs 6db for a typical speaker. That's a 9db difference at 25ft, which is huge.