Equipment Advice - Active or Passive Speakers?

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MacOCD
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Joined: Wed Feb 24, 2016 1:18 am

Equipment Advice - Active or Passive Speakers?

Post by MacOCD »

I just did a mammoth post on how my first show went, but I need to buy some equipment of my own for future shows. The first question for me is:- "Active or Passive Speakers?" & "How Big?"

I'm holding events in a club, one room is 50ft x 26ft and approx 12,500 cubic ft (a tall pitched roof). The other (Main) room is larger in floor area, but not as high. I think I have similar needs to a "Pub & Clubs" venue tourer.

I'm leaning towards Passive speakers.

With Active Speakers I'd have 1 less item to lug around (no power amp), but I'd have to find a power source at both speaker locations. They also seem to be a more expensive solution, but you KNOW the power amplification is perfectly matched to the speaker. I actually have 5 reference 8" THX Active Studio Monitors in my Home Cinema, but those are used with a sub-woofer and I'm a little concerned they may get damaged (possibly by the screamers?) in a Karaoke environment.

Passive Speakers obviously need a power amp which gives extra positioning flexibility, but I'd then need to know something about matching Power Amps to Speakers. I'm not looking to spend a huge amount here if possible (to start with at least).

What size speakers should I look for? 12"? 15"? I can't see a simple solution for adding a subwoofer via the mixing desk, so I imagine I'd need a separate crossover for that. Seems to me getting speakers that can handle the full range would be far simpler. Can 12" speakers handle it?

What sort of Amp & speakers power capability should I be looking for? Many PA Power Amps seem to be 1000W-3000W is that really overkill? Some are listed as Mosfet, what type of Power Amp best suits Karaoke/Live Performances?

What Speaker connectors are best? Speakon? TRS Jack?

Thanks for any help :-)

Mark.

DaveT
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Re: Equipment Advice - Active or Passive Speakers?

Post by DaveT »

if you want plenty of power, then passive tens to allow you to drive the speakers that bit harder. Active is usually my speaker of choice for most venues. It gives me peace of mind. Passive -- if you have one amp for your PA and it goes down then your gig will be lost for the night unless you have a spare. active -- most speaker are bi amped, so if you lose one amp then you maybe lose a woofer or a tweeter output in that speaker, but still have the other speaker to keep going, even if you lose a complete active speaker amp you still have your other speaker to get you through. I have in the past had to reconfigure a two amp passive system (one for tops the other for subs) so that left channel run tops and right run subs to get me through when amp died on me - but this is only if you have a setup like this.

My normal active setup for most medium venues is 2 (or sometimes 4) Mackie 1850 subs and two 650 tops -- 1600watts per box and sounds great

For Passive i would normally run 8 mackie s410s with 4 s408 on the top, but using 4 m4000 and 2 m3000 amps with a spare behringer ep2500 for back up.

Believe you me, i prefer the passive system with its digital light weight amps to the M range heavy weights. each M series amp is about 24kg not including flight cases (usually 3 per rack and 2 racks of them). where as each of my SRM active 18" subs are only about 29kg complete, plus the back up of twin amps in each active makes it a no brainer for me. The passive system only gets an outing when i need that little bit extra power and i have an extra body to help me lift everything.


Dave

dave
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Re: Equipment Advice - Active or Passive Speakers?

Post by dave »

:shock:

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