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Hi I am new here . But I am very interested in building myself the best set up for music party . So the gold would be to be able to have the best sound possible on a four channel amp( to be purchased) plus a subwoofer , do you have any suggestions for the best speakers to build ?all this on a budget… Sorry if it is not clear as I said I am a newbie … Thanks!
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Hello and welcome
Couple of initial questions for you to work out what you are looking for
Are you wanting 2 speakers using 2 amp channels each or 4 speakers using 1 amp channel each?
What sort of room(s) are you looking to fill with music? size, floor type etc?
What balance of sound quality vs volume are you looking for? one always has to take priority even if aiming for both
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Hi thanks for your answer .. let’s go to the easy questions .. the room is a 24 x 20 with not much furniture or obstacles . There is a high cathedral ceiling and hardwood floor . I am looking for a sound level not crazy high ,but enough to wakeup some lazy legs .. but there will be a special event during the party where nature sounds will be played and I would like it to be kind of intense .. for the amp question ..I am not quite sure .. I am open for different options since I don’t have the amps yet .
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is 24 x 20 meters or feet? there are enough people using each on this forum its hard to guess what someone uses
another question, what timeframe are looking at before you need the speakers ready?
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unless @123toid has a different suggestion id say make a pair of his soundstage 15 (plans in the forum webshop) and power them with DSP and a 4 channel amp that can bridge 2 of the channels. use the bridged pair for a subwoofer to get more power handling (bass power is what gets people moving more than volume in the mids/highs)
a subwoofer to go with them is something the forum can help you design based on driver availablity and how much budget you have left after building the soundstage 15s and buying the amp
although they can play down to around 50hz crossing over the soundstage 15 with the subwoffer as high as 110-120 hz will get more of the bass frequencies in the subwoofer which further helps with giving energy to a crowd of people (at the potential cost of some sound quality but this matter less in crowd playback vs home theatre single person listening)
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Perfect these are the speakers I had in mind ..but if I get it right… i end up with two speakers and maybe one sub.. if I bridge a four channel amp I will need half RMS per channel to power the speakers . .. but do you have any suggestions on a decent amp for this set-up?
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To clarify my previous post just to make sure you are understanding correctly, on a 4 channel amp you would do
-channel 1 – Left speaker
-channel 2 – Right speaker
-channel 3/4 – Sub (either bridged with 1 driver/2 drivers wired together or with 2 drivers with 1 per channel)
you need each channel to be able to provide full rms power of the soundstage 15. Sub driver configuration can be decided later when it is designed based on what amp you were able to get
As im in high end pro audio the amps I know and would use myself are probably out of your budget range but ill show you any way so you get an idea of power and features
One option id use is the Lab Gruppen PLM 5k44. This is a DSP amplifier capable of 1250W per channel at 8ohms. This amp doesnt support bridging channels so I would do 2 drivers on 1 channel each for the sub
https://www.labgruppen.com/product.html?modelCode=P0CN9
Another option I would use is the Powersoft X4. This is also a DSP amplifier and is capable of 1600W per channel at 8ohms and upto 6000W bridged at 8ohms (these numbers may be on a 3phase power input so lower on standard power input but still plenty for your use)
https://www.powersoft.com/en/products/touring-amps/x-series/x4
Both of these amps are in the £5500-£6500 price range so almost certainly out of your price range and might be harder to find for someone like you as they are high end pro audio amps but they give you an idea of the kind of power and features you would be looking for. You are probably better getting 2x 2 channel non DSP amps like crown or behringer with the same sort of power/bridging capability (still connected the same way) and external dsp to do your crossover and EQ adjustments e.g. mniDSP(s)
Others on the forum will be better knowledged to assist with this type of amplifier choice @tvor-ceasar @ajc9988 @123toid any of you have anything to add to this discussion regarding amp selection?
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20′ x 24′, basically a double garage space (2 car). Ceiling height?
Before you go hog wild on power amps, consider several things:
How will the space actually be used? Will there be need for people to talk to each other without screaming at the top of their lungs?
With the relatively high sensitivity of the main speakers, is it conceivable that you would really need more than, say, 100 watts per channel, L, R? And at that point, you’d really be needing much more power for the sub(s) in order to keep up with the mains.
If it is a converted garage, will all 4 walls be present (garage door open or closed)? Loss of the 4th wall and its reverberant characteristics, along with the pressurization aspect drastically changes how things work.A bit of analyzing will help put things in perspective. I will say this, it’s better to go with more power than less. A reserve will get you through those times you might/will need it.
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I’ll add that I had assumed the SS15 runs full range with the sub doubling up 100-110hz and below (this is a common way of crossing over subs in PA music playback scenarios) so some decent power would be needed for the main speakers even at a moderate volume.
Your 100w is probably still more reasonable and closer to realistic power required than the full 800w I will admit 😂
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I’m also looking at the size of the room, trying to equate that to something easily compared. And honestly, a big full bore PA system in a room that size would just be puttering along for the most part. Now, if Thealchimist were to take this out to larger venues, then by all means “pump up the volume”, I mean power.
What I base my thoughts on are that when a much younger me was hanging around my oldest brother, he was hanging around a friend who would do sound for State Fairs where relatively big acts, mostly Country, would play on outdoor stages. Thus, my brother built some big 15″ cabinets (based on the friend’s units) with mid horns and tweeters. He would routinely DJ with just them and his 65W Pioneer receiver. And dang, this setup would be almost unbearable in the rec room on volume =3. Rec room is comparable to the projected room in the OP.
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Completely understand and agree with the things your saying
At the same time Ive recently done a musical theatre show in a smallish theatre about 1.5x bigger with quite a high vaulted ceiling than these dimmentions and I had 2x 250w rms 8 inch main L/R at 95db sens, 1x 200w rms 6 inch centre at 93db sens and 2x 1000w rms 12 inch subs cant remember sens for these. Often runing all of them close to their maximum in some of the songs and whilst it was loud it was never close to unbearable and I would have liked more at times
I think we need @Thealchimist to clarify exactly what type of room this be, how loud it will be and the type of music that will be played to get us all on the same page here
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Also there is a somewhat standard practice in my tier of pro audio to always use amps that can deliver at least the full power (or more) of the speaker even if only planning to use 1/4 of it. This covers us for the unwanted massive transient spikes that can sometimes occur in live performances (knocking a mic or loose connections for example) as an over powered amp/underpowered speaker is a far safer combo than underpowered amp/overpowered speaker due to risk of amp clipping and sending DC voltage to driver
Its hard for me to not default to the same practive when dealing with smaller projects
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First . Wow ! Thank you for your help ! It is really appreciated!.
Now . My girlfriend and I own a yoga studio and are planning a sort of ceremonial event . There would be all kind of music .. but mostly native music ( lots of percussions) , some Bocking music .Japanese drums , some trance music…but also classical, progressive rock,… I guess you get the picture.. so that is why I want some really good bass ..
The room is a 24 feet by 2t bigger than what I thought )with 16 feet high wooden ceiling (cathedral)
But in the future we would like to create events outside , or maybe in a friend empty barn( 40feet by 24)so I would say go a little bit overkill for the room we gonna have the next event in .. so I have some power left for bigger places.
What do you think about the amp 123toid built ? Would it do the trick ? And if after a few events they are under powered I’ll upgrade . I was looking at a aiyima amp .. ( it doesn’t have to be that cheap tho!)but I guess for the price I would be able to have my first event . I have found some used power amps .. I will post them here tonight so you could tell me if they would work for my project. Again . Thank you!
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Well, if building an amp instead of buying, you will have issues because certain companies (*cough – Hypex – cough*) lock away their better tier 2000W N-core (https://www.hypex.nl/product/nc2k-oem/79) behind solely to companies for integration. So you cannot buy those on the open market and the Hypex 2000W older model UCD2K (https://www.diyclassd.com/img/upload/doc/ucd/ucd2k_oem/Documentation/UcD2kOEM_R9.pdf) has a THD+N that is all over the map, but that is the only one that can reach the over 1000W.
I’ve mainly looked at DIY amps. Now, if talking DSPs, make sure you pick one up that has at least an ADSP-21489 if you want advanced correction. Otherwise, you can do an OK job with an ADAU1701 for a crossover. What you pick will depend on your goals regarding DSPs, along with how much you care to learn sigmastudio. In the image attached, that is my WIP for a 3-way, although I think the FIR is going to be removed from it. That is for a Sure Electronics JAB5 (rebranded by Dayton Audio in their KABD-4100). I just doubt it will have enough taps left to do a proper FIR phase correction on the ADAU1701 after doing all that. But you still have a PEW, Crossover, time alignment (technically, you should be able to get away with only two on the schematic, but you should have the largest driver, usually a sub or the woofer, as the one without the time shift. Why? Because it is already the furthest away from the tweeter and plays the longest wavelengths. So you will be time shifting the mid and tweeter to match the time of the woofer. I went with a gain to be typed in instead of a slider. Why? Ease and accuracy. The signal detection is important to mute it when nothing is playing. The cascading slew volume controls helps to make it more exponential than linear, which is what people like when they turn up the volume know. Also a Gain and time delay before the infrasonic filter (high pass) is meant to time align both speakers with each other and to volume level for the target seating area. You can do even more with the ADSP-21489 SHARC.
But I haven’t flashed this to the unit yet, so I don’t know how many instructions I will have to cut. Just something I’m working on. Also going to do a similar as a 2 channel which I want to eventually buy this for a bookshelf speaker (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001849585611.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.542c144dsnIBIR&algo_pvid=5b4fffdc-072a-4a80-b6da-b31cc5761f04&algo_exp_id=5b4fffdc-072a-4a80-b6da-b31cc5761f04-47&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000017847920780%22%7D&pdp_pi=-1%3B94.99%3B-1%3B21.37%40salePrice%3BUSD%3Bsearch-mainSearch ; review here https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/3e-audio-sy-dap2002-review-dsp-amplifier.20114/ ).
But, that is woefully under-powered for your speakers you are considering, which would need, with an active crossover, just under 880W to drive it full tilt. Now, if you wanted to drive something to 400W, you might look at the Icepower 400A2 ( https://icepoweraudio.com/download/9283/ )would do alright (although usable is much less). You might look at the Icepower 1200A2 ( https://icepoweraudio.com/buy/as-series/1200as2/ ) as well, but still not where I’d like it to be (although some specs you just cannot get real good at higher watts without access to something like the N-core 2KW model or above, which is why the ones mentioned by @chedwin are so good but cost so much).
So I can point you at things to look at, but don’t know what would be best for you, nor do I know what you plan to do to address setting up the components if going the DIY route for amps, power supplies, and DSPs. Also, even if doing an active speaker, remember you can pull finished products out of their cases, make your own mounts, do connectors on the back panel, and wire it to the pulled board you mounted.
If you want high end 400W, then the Orchard Audio https://orchardaudio.com/ ; the Purifi (my choice if you have the money, although this cannot fully power the speaker, it is the budget balance with great performance, not to suggest Orchard doesn’t have great performance as well; https://purifi-audio.com/eigentakt/eval1/ ) ; and the n-core series available to the public (although I prefer orchard and purifi over n-core is spending that much).
So it depends, I suppose. But that is the DIY side. If you want a finished product, I can tell you Erin of Erin’s Audio Corner drives his home theater with Crown. And considering chedwin also mentioned them, you won’t be disappointed. But I don’t know amps outside of DIY that well, so would recommend listening to these guys, Toid, or ask over at DIY Audio Guy’s channel (although easiest way to get hold of him is patreon, so you can choose if you want to do that).
Also, good dyno testing of amps at Williston’s channel on Youtube might be worth checking out. https://www.youtube.com/c/bigdwiz
That won’t show you how the response looks per power in a chart, but you can see where it hits clipping under certain conditions with a high end benchmarking unit. Worth a look.
Hope that helps.
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I wholeheartedly agree with the venue size in relation to the system size – there’s no replacement for displacement. Even multiple driver arrays increase displacement. You need cone area for proper pressurization. Stroke helps, but doesn’t completely replace.
Yes, amp power is better being overabundant than just barely adequate. Over driving the speakers with a clean signal often allows them to run well, just keep an eye on overheating, whereas the nasty clipping of the underpowered amp not only sounds bad at lower volumes, it “can” stress the driver in non-standard ways that can cause overheating early.
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