Make sure that any cloth, drape, foam, or other material used to treat the acoustics has fire ratings. Fire Marshals get very curious about acoustic materials of any type, thinking they might contain the dreaded, flammable foam. If you don't you might wind up having to remove your hard work later.
The best way to handle it is to buy materials from a dealer that will provide fire testing documentation. Put a copy behind plastic on the wall in a janitor's closet, mechanical room, or someplace where the building staff can point to it during inspection.
How do you see it becoming worse in other areas?
So moving from a discussion of acoustics to buying a small sound system. Question one for the school is do they want to just replace the current simple all in one system, in which case I can build a nice system for $1500 or do they want to upgrade to a larger more pro setup... possibly one that can be used with a future built in system or portable.
I'm envisioning something like a 16 channel mixer, a big amp, EQ, CD player, build a nice rolling rack to keep it all in. You can roll it wherever you want and use with the existing speakers. Once a year there is a big fall festival on the school grounds, with a concert stage. Last year we paid a lot of money to rent a sound system. With this upgrade all I need to do is rent a couple of extra stage monitors and I'm good to go. If we can set aside a couple more grand in the future we can get a DSP and install some wall mount speakers in the gym to be the other half of the system.
So:
I'm thinking something like:
Mackie VLZ3 16x4 mixer $900
Crown XTi 4002 $1000
ART 31 Band EQ $330
Furman power conditioner M-8Lx $100
Numark MP103USB MP3/USB/CD player $200
2 SM58's, stands, cables, couple of cheap direct boxes, rack rail, wood for case... another $500ish
Total package around $3000
So suggestions to cutting costs? Obvious I would be consulting my favorite dealers for bid, I just jumped on Sweetwater to get some pricing to start with. I want to build something on a budget but decent quality. It will mostly be operated by students that I train or myself. Does that amp make sense? is it overkill? Do you have any favorite alternatives I should consider to these products? I'm just sort of picking stuff out of the air at this point without much research going into it, but this is the general idea of what I'm looking for. They told me they have $1500 to spend. So I'm going to be pushing my luck getting up to $3,000.
Finally how do you feel about buying a good amp and using the existing speakers vs. buying a set of powered new speakers and dumping the old ones?
I need to discuss the long term plans for system use with some people at the school before we start talking about amps and mixers.
So moving from a discussion of acoustics to buying a small sound system. Question one for the school is do they want to just replace the current simple all in one system, in which case I can build a nice system for $1500 or do they want to upgrade to a larger more pro setup... possibly one that can be used with a future built in system or portable.
All the mics, stands, cables, case/rack, etc. for a fully functional system with a 16 channel mixer for $500 seems a little low but then this goes back to the other two comments as it is not real clear what the envisioned use and related needs are for the sound system. For example..
First, a few nit-picky details. The GX amps, and many other amps, are rated at 1kHz, so unless you only run a 1kHz tone through them then the power in actual use will likely be less, say maybe closer to 625-650W than 725W. The SR4725A is rated 600W continuous, not RMS (there is no such thing as RMS Watts). The relationship of the amp power rating and speaker power does not define headroom, it defines the maximum crest factor the system can accommodate when providing the maximum average level the speaker can handle.
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