Budget may not seem a concern, until they see the numbers then it tends to suddenly become a concern.
I've been involved in several community, city and county amphitheater projects. The direction taken typically falls into one of three general approaches:
1. Spend a significant amount to support the wide range of events envisioned. This investment is not just in equipment but often in personnel and infrastructure as well.
2. Define a reduced
level of event that represents the vast majority of typical use and a spend a significantly smaller amount on systems based on supporting those uses. Rent systems as needed for larger events.
3. Focus on the infrastructure (
power, cabling paths, physical space and so on) and either rent systems or let performers bring their own systems as appropriate for each event.
In your case, the facility being existing could factor into the decision. For example, does the
venue have the
power provisions to support sound and lighting for a significant concert event? If not then supplementing what is there needs to be part of the project or there seems to be little sense in providing systems that would require renting a generator,
etc.
One potential benefit of it being an existing facility is that there may be some history of audio, video and lighting systems that have been used for events held there in the past. That could provide some reference for what may be required and what was or was not acceptable for the type of events envisioned.
Absent any historical information, you mentioned looking at some packaged systems, probably something like this,
Buy Yamaha EMX5016CF / S115V / SM15V PA System | Live Sound Packages | Musician's Friend, or this,
Yamaha Concert Sound System 8400Watts with MG32/14FX Console and FREE ITEMS !!!. There are still going to be numerous other items required for an functional
system such as a
snake to get from the
stage to the mix position, other mics, mic and
speaker stands,
power distribution, racks for equipment, storage cases. A packaged
system like this supplemented with the proper additional components might work fine for some types of events. However, this would probably not be sufficient for many concert events, both in aspects such as quantity and type of mics as well as in the
speaker system performance, and it would be very unlikely to be acceptable to anyone with a tech
rider. Just as a reference, a very experienced live sound operator put together a typical 'small bar/club'
system for someone starting from scratch and came up with a
bit over $25,000. Now you could do something for much less, but that was also for a
system in a smaller indoor space for maybe 100-200 people, outdoors and for a larger audience would much more likely push the cost in the other direction.
Providing a
system that could support concerts will probably be a big jump in cost. And I'm not talking about just for rock and pop music concerts, the local university here does an annual Fourth of July "concert on the green" that last year had the local county symphony performing. The mics, mixing and
speaker system required to support even a local symphony are extensive and the
system they rented for that event combined with the mics they supplied were probably worth well over $100,000.
I'll be upfront and say that my experience with similar situations where they initially wanted to have everything in place to support a very wide range of events is that few actually continued in that direction once realistic budget numbers started being presented. Rather than getting into details for the systems it may be better to first define a more general
level. No use discussing a $50k+ option or even a $20k+ option if they are thinking under $10k. And if that is the case, while you could put together a
system for that budget it would have to be accompanied by some significant 'expectation management' regarding the types of events it could practically support.
Hope that helps.