New Club Owner looking for speaker help

I'm trying to design my DJ setup and its killing me. I'm no sound guy and the locals in my area are worthless.

My Club will average around 300 people and max out at 700. I'm looking for a simple system with a lot of power. The SQ FT of the room is around 2500 sq ft.I think I can figure out my mixer, laptop, and all of that setup. I'm having a hard time deciding between amps and passive woofers vs active woofers. I see a lot DJs in my area using Cerwin Vega passive woofers. I was searching online and seen good reviews on the QSC KW181 and the JBL PRX618S-XLF Active Woofers. Which direction would you go in? I'm really looking for some serious bass

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Originally Posted by darklango

I'm trying to design my DJ setup and its killing me. I'm no sound guy and the locals in my area are worthless.

My Club will average around 300 people and max out at 700. I'm looking for a simple system with a lot of power. The SQ FT of the room is around 2500 sq ft.I think I can figure out my mixer, laptop, and all of that setup. I'm having a hard time deciding between amps and passive woofers vs active woofers. I see a lot DJs in my area using Cerwin Vega passive woofers. I was searching online and seen good reviews on the QSC KW181 and the JBL PRX618S-XLF Active Woofers. Which direction would you go in? I'm really looking for some serious bass

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I rented 4 QSC K12 speakers and 2 K subs and they were hella loud and bumpin! and light compared to other speakers.

http://www.amazon.com/QSC-K12-Powere.../dp/B000BKJPQY


http://www.qscaudio.com/products/spe...eries_ksub.php

The sub you are talking about from QSC is better then the one I posted. Definitely reccomend them for a quality speaker!

PA design takes some skills you are talking about a permanent club install. I would recommend asking around on www.diyaudio.com. You also need to tell us a whole lot more about the types of acts that will be in your club. Are you going to just play dance music? Will you need to be able to patch in bands mixers? What is your budget? How much work are you able to do yourself to install the gear?

JBL is fantastic, i have also had great results with Yamaha with multiple genres :D

your best bet is to hit the local shop and test out different sound systems in the store, from various distances :D it would also help if we knew what type of acts are going to be gigging and if its a permanent setup or not.

Personally I'd rather use lots of smaller speakers than a handful of large ones; the reason being, you can get much more even coverage at a higher level of quality, and the "it's too loud over there" problem tends not to rear its head. It depends on the size of the space though, obviously the larger the main room is, the more you're going to be relying on bounced sound waves and less on direct, unless you go for overhead speakers.

Most clubs over here in the UK, unfortunately tend to have 4-8 big speakers, with the end result that it ends up sounding shite, and obviously they have to run them hard, so the music is ridiculously distorted, especially on treble-heavy tracks. If I was doing an install from scratch, and I had complete say over what equipment was used, I'd scour the internet for a bunch of (about 20) Mordaunt Short MS5s; ideally the MS5.30s and maybe a couple of MS5.40s. An odd choice, I know, but the sound you'd get would be unrivalled.

A good example of the "many small speakers" approach are cinemas; typically each side wall will have about 8 speakers facing inwards, giving a nice even coverage throughout the hall.

if you can upload a layout of the club height of the ceiling etc it might make it easier to help you out properly as every venue requires a different solution.

Also whats the music style, are you talking low background volumes or intensely bass throbbing/poo in your pants loud.

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Most clubs over here in the UK, unfortunately tend to have 4-8 big speakers, with the end result that it ends up sounding shite, and obviously they have to run them hard

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There sure is plenty of crappy speakers out there, but something like Some of the bigger JBL rigs, Turbo, Nexo or Funktion1 when set up properly don't need more than a few speakers to comfortably rock a place without putting near any stress on the system and it'll still sound amazing at silly SPL's.

A venue I've played a few times has a similar capacity, has just 4 nexo boxes each corner of the main dance floor and 4 18' subs under the stage+2 subs to the back of the dance floor and is one of the cleanest system's I've heard ever at ridiculous ear-bleeding levels.

Another venue I used to play (max-500ppl) had 6xTurbosound Flashlight tops and 4x18 Turbo Subs from the DJ stage only reliability and sound quality was unreal, however the venue was a tunnel and lent itself acoustically to that kinda setup as the sound was channeled in a straight line.

You would rarely see either the systems going near the max levels. But both of them would be complete overkill for a run-of-the-mill top40 club.

I would not recommend ANY hi-fi speakers for a venue regardless, they are not designed for continuous high DB production regardless of what their spec sheet says however a few smaller delayed fill speakers might be needed in some areas depending on the layout of the room.

The Cerwin Folded Horn Systems rock and are not too expensive - their shape can make them awkward to place properly though.

Funktion1 yuppp

That's a pretty small room.
If you want to keep it simple with active speakers, I'd say QSC KW153 and 4-6 KW181 subs. The 153s are fairly directional, so you can get nice pattern control. There are tons of options, but you should find no objections from guests nor performers with this rig.

A budget option would be EV ELX112 or 115 tops, depending on how directional you need the pattern to be, with ELX118P subs.

Either of these options would greatly benefit from a DBX Driverack. Subs should be placed together, wherever you decide to put them, unless you can get them about 40' apart, or greater.

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Originally Posted by AllDay

I rented 4 QSC K12 speakers and 2 K subs and they were hella loud and bumpin! and light compared to other speakers.

http://www.amazon.com/QSC-K12-Powere.../dp/B000BKJPQY


http://www.qscaudio.com/products/spe...eries_ksub.php

The sub you are talking about from QSC is better then the one I posted. Definitely reccomend them for a quality speaker!

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No reasonable amount of K-Subs are going to be adequate for 300 people, much less 700 people. I don't even see the PRX route being realistic. A local club that fits up to 800 has 8 JBL SR-X double 18 subs sitting right in front of the dance floor, and I've heard DJs push that rig to the way harder than I would be comfortable with had they belonged to me. We used 6 SRX728 (driven by a Crown MT2400 per cab) in a 400 capacity club for a well known rap group last year, there we had a good bit of headroom.

Because JBL is what I'm familiar with, I'd say 8-12 SRX728 (or STX828) with ample amounts of iTech power would be a good plan, or something similar from a similarly respected manufacturer. None of these options will be cheap.

Mid-High frequency coverage is another issue altogether, one that can't possibly be commented on without knowing more specifics about the room.

Edit: Just noticed 2500 SQ FT, which makes me wonder if you are underestimating size of the room, or stuffing in more people than would be legal many regions. If room size is correct, perhaps 4-8 of the above mentioned subs would work.

speaker and sub layout is just as important as brand and performance. Many places just try to jam as much gear as possible in and call it a day. That works but you don't necessarily maximize your performance or money that way.

I also want to say that I would not use active speakers in a club install. They are great for portable rigs but if something breaks, and things do break, repairs can be costly. Rack mounted amplifiers and passive speakers are the way to go.