I need help with my wish list.

soundman

Well-Known Member
Well mt TD wants to spend all the money in the bugdet before the school can take it back so Im thinking I will hit him up for some sound upgrades this year seeing how lighting has gotten intells and a new board in the past two years and might trade up for spots. Anyway I was think the theater lacks low end seeign how we have no sub would 3k be a fair budget for this project? I am thinking a nice PRO quality sub cross over cable and an amp (we have an extra channel but I like the amps to be nice and close to the speakers :) I would have the cross over right after the effects unit then a cable run to where the sub would be the problems I can think of, Pulling cable our theater is pretty new so the cable runs still have rope in them so this shouldnt be too hard, next would be placement, I fell under the apron would create to much vibration (think crappy system in rusty car) and on either side of the stage would be too directional to the point where I would have to crank the sub so high so the people on the far side could hear it that the people right next to it would have mushy organs, and lastly would it really add that much, right now when I crank the some good old styxs or floyd most people agree that it sounds better with the low end heavly boosted but for musicals it sounds decent except for sound effets like wind, hard to get a nice boomy sound.


Mike
Also whats a good sub 500 doller cd player and why?
If need be cash from the sub can be put towards the player I am tired of the 5 disc change we have right now great for dance shows but horrible for cueing effects because after awhile of being paused it seems to stop spining.
 
Well that depends on how big a sub you need. 3k would be a good amount ofm oney. You should look into Yamaha or JBL for that price range, including amps and X-overs. Anyways, it would be nice to know how much air you want to move. As for speaker placement, its hard to tell without seeing the theatre. If it rattles too much beneath the stage, and if you're looking for a nice, not "chesty" sub, try using a balcony and putting a sub on a balcony on each side. You'll have to time align them properly though. As for a CD player, get yourself a nice Denon, they're great. Not the DJ version, well if you want to you can, but they have professional single CD players which are great.
 
I think the theater seats 800 or 900 . The inly thing close to a belcony would be the spot bay which would be nice and easy to run cable to and right onto of the amps. Any good sites for theater quility audio products, all my normal sites dont have what I need.
 
I'm assuming the spot bay is high in the air? that could work..I've done that only once...but it may as well not work.
 
yes they are kinda high but it look like the only real space for it, Im starting to think under the apron would not rattle so much as be in effective because we take the pit cover off for most shows but it would just blast off the wall right in front and to the stage. Bahh might have to call somebody.
 
Well that may be a good idea. If you pu the beneath the stage what you're likely to cause if you drive them too hard is to completely blast away the first front rows. Have that in mind. I'd rather place them i corners
 
Bass is really hard to do unidirectionally. The nature of the low frequencies actually makes things vibrate and thus, it spreads pretty omnidirectionally.
 
The only reason I can think of for not placing the sub in the air is if there's literally no place for it. If your spot bay is smackdab in the center, or you've got two on either side that have room for the subs then you just have to make sure that when you're putting that much low end in that area that the spotlights don't lose bulb-life, (It isn't gonna be looked on nicely if you spend 3k on a subwoofer system and then have to change your spotlight bulb(s) two or three times more often) and that the bay doesn't 'rattle' obnoxiously.
The other choice you've got is deciding whether it is possible/cost effective to fly the speaker. My neighboring school district just finished constructing a new theater and their subwoofer is located directly above their mains, just above some acoustical tiling. It sounds good, except for the fact that we have no access to any EQ unit for the mix in order to boost the low end higher during certain programs.
The nice thing about flying the sub is that the only physical point for the vibrations to travel through are the fly rigging hardware. The low frequencies then travel through the air until they reach a physical object and then transfer that energy into vibrations there. Doing this it takes longer to shake things and I've found it can be easier to provide nice full 'sweet' bass without turning the audience's brain to mush. The only real negative point about hanging the sub is if you don't have a place for it and if you do the actual act of hanging it. You can't just stick it in a corner and let it be, you get to learn a little bit doing it. (And it is probably wiser to hire someone to do the installation for you if you don't have anybody experienced in the processes involved.)
Hope this helps...
 
BenFranske said:
Bass is really hard to do unidirectionally. The nature of the low frequencies actually makes things vibrate and thus, it spreads pretty omnidirectionally.

Meyer Sound makes a really cool cardioid-response subwoofer :D Expensive as all hell though.
 
well now that you brought up flaying the subs I think one center cluster would look damn fine with a nice sub below it. Or the cat walk but that might have a bad problem with vibs. While they hang the sub they couls also hook up the center center speaker darn lazy sound company. I wold like to demo a sub to see if it is really worth the cost, just have it center stage to see if it makes 3k worth of differnce.

SAWZ ALL FOREVER
 
Yes it is true, a center cluster is sometimes a very good answer if stereo is not a goal you have specifically. In any case if you have a production that demands stereo imaging you can always bring in additional equipment.

Subs in hanged clusters are good as well because besides the added advantage ofthe lack of the hard thump (which may not be desireable in a theater), they provide much less phase aberrations that in the floor. This means that aligning it will be much easier and the outcome will be much better. This would be because the sound source (ie: the cluster) would be approaching a true source point in that all would be emanating from a single source, this will create a much more coherent wavefront.

I have seen subs hanged in 2 ways:
In the cluster (which is what i did when I hung subs), this means that between 2 boxes you put the sub. Advantages: You don't have to worry about diffraction in any wavelenth that may be caused in the other case. Disadvantages: If your coverage isn't exact, putting a sub in the middle may cause you'll have to splay the boxes in weird angles, and maybe not get a good coverage.
Behind the cluster, this has the only problem that if your cluster is too big and you cut the sub too high, you may get some diffraction, or blocking from the cluster. Shouldn't be the case as long as you put the sub some space behind the cluster and cut it low enough to get just the big wavelengths. It will give you freedom to adjust the cluster as you need it. this is used a lot with line arrays, where interrupting the cluster may not be a good idea. i've only seen one line aray with a sub stuck in the middle in a musical theater. Don't remember which though.

Hanging the sub will give you 2 griefs: One, you lose any space loading you may have, unless you manage to put the sub against the ceiling/wall joint or something. Two, changing speakers if any blow up will be a drag if you don't have easy acces, remember 18" are heavy!

I don't think there's much detraction though with these disadvantages, if theamount of air moved is OK, I'd go with it, this creates a great sounding sub. No thumps though, if you're looking for a hard, "club" or rock sound, this won't prouce it.
 
Any recamendations on how much power I should be looking at for an 800 seat theater I just want enough so they can tell its there not enough to feel it.
 
Well... my system, with about 800 watts into the subs, does a decent job for rock concerts in a venue fire-code rated for 885 people in the audience area. Some of your power needs are determined by the size, shape and accoustic treatment of the room, height of the ceiling and the final position you get the sub or subs into, but for general theater use and given good placement and fairly efficient speaker design, you shouldn't need much more and could probably get by with less.

John
 
Mmmm..for an 800 seater you should do great with around 1000W. Still, this will depend as DMXTools said, on the position, if you're gonna hang them, you're not likely to half- o quarter-load them. But 1k would be around a good number. Depends on the sub though. More precisely, try looking into SPL. You're gonna want around 95-100dbSPL for subs to make them know its there, so try and get a sub that produces a number at 1W/1M that approaches this at the RMS power and at a middle distance in the hall. Also, try and see if you can get subs with rigging. Again, with your price range, I'd go with Yamaha or JBL, although I'd try to check out EAW (the SB1000 has rigging, and is one hell of a sub) as well. Personally, if you can't get any big brands, I'd go wth JBL, as they are likely to get you a sub-xover-amp deal. Plus their stuff is good enough.
 
Let me add a comment, I was talking about 95-100dBSPL C-weighted, thats about 88dB A-weighted. Just beafore anyone claims my rock n' roll numbers are to big!
 

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