Venue: Planetarium stardome.
Size: 80-ft diameter, 40-foot ceiling (it’s a half-sphere)
Estimated attendance: 300-400 (will absorb a lot of sound). There will be no tables in the main area, just one huge dancefloor.
This picture (it’s not showing up on the post, just click on it) shows the size well
and this picture shows the whole area, but makes it seem smaller than it actually is
As you can see, it’s a pretty cavernous area, and I’m expecting a ton of sound to bounce off the walls everywhere. Our setup is 2 400W Peavey subs and 2 400W hi/mid Peavey’s, all passive. I daisy chain the hi/mids to the subs, whose output comes from the amp.
Anyway, I am worried that my setup won’t be enough. I need your experience, since this is the first time using our speaker system for such a large event. Should I tell the organizers that they need to rent speakers from someone else too?
Sound reflections are going to TRIPPY in that space. You also didn’t mention the amp’s specs. I’d recommend having monitors very close as reflections will totally mess with your mixing.
Thats a pretty huge space, I don’t think it will be close to enough at all. I would at least double that at the bare minimum. If you expect to get a dance floor going and care about sound quality you are going to need a lot more sound. Like a lot more.
Consider renting a more suitable PA system, your speakers right now are not cut out for this.
Rent a decent system for that space and you can use the PA speakers you have as booth monitors.
Ok, so here’s the sound system I’ve secured so far:
x1 crossover so I can split the main out into bass/mid/hi
x1 Crown 1300W amp
x1 400W amp for monitors
x3 Mackie 1000W towers, self-amped (idk the exact model, they’re my friend’s).
x2 Peavey 400W subs (passive)
x2 Peavey 400W mid/hi’s (passive, for monitoring)
And the lighting system:
LAZERS! The cheap, made-in-china, set-up-on-a-stand-and-let-them-go kind.
x20 LED RGB LED strips, controlled by my friend with 2 flight simulator joysticks. He can program patterns in on the fly, making it so that the lighting matches the music perfectly.
If that is not feasible, you face the subs forward and your tops diagonally facing away from each other as far to the side of the dj booth as possible to displace sound. Space out the powered speakers in front of the DJ booth/stand.
You should be alright. Also assuming that when you say “towers” on the Mackie, that they are dual woofers.
I do A/V Tech for a living and even when I’m setting up meeting rooms for 100 (seated) people (whom are generally quiet) the two Mackie / E/V or Eon self-powered speakers (on stands at about head level) are O.K., when people break between sessions, people talk over what’s audible because the room isn’t filled with sound so there’s at least two concerns I have for your set-up.
In order to fill the space with sound, you should probably place more speakers to increase the optimal audible area instead of trying to push more sound from one side of the room making the space near the speakers really loud and anything away from that area easily talked-over. Those people near the speakers WILL more than likely get Tinnitus when they go home… which is not good.
and
Pass-through means that each speaker in that chain will be on the same channel… and most music is recorded in Stereo. You can do it but you’ll have delay between the front and back of the room… (noting the Dome has the same kind of delay problems as well) and you WILL hear it. So try to get a mixing board with delays and do your best to handle the acoustic anomalies of the dome (by setting up as many of the same kind of speakers as you can). If you go the route of of pass through be prepared to have people get confused when they hear music (which sounds like a whole night of train wrecking) and sit a lot of songs out. The goal here is to try and drown out the reflected sound and make that sound space sound as good as possible… by using multiple speakers around the room.
First, what kind of event is this? Is that entire space just going to be 1 huge dance floor or will there be an area with tables? I mean will there be an area where people are going to want to go to talk to each other without having music blaring at them. Is it necessary to fill the entire room with loud music or just the dance floor area. Once the room is filled, the echo delay will be cut down and I think you will find out that you have more than enough power.
I am actually in a pretty similar boat because I will be djing in an area that is larger than I have done before. My gig will be in a hotel grand ballroom which is 10,125sqft. The event is a Law School Prom. I will be djing after dinner(they have a string quartet for dinner) and will be playing mostly dance music. The event will have around 300-400 people there but most of the room will be filled with tables. But I am worried that my setup wont cover the dancefloor and this thread is worrying me even more.
My current setup consists of:
2x Peavey PV115 Passive Speakers (400WProgram/800WPeak)
1x Peavey PV118 Passive Subwoofer (400WProgram/800WPeak)
The event planner says that I already have more speakers than the dj brought last year to the event but I still dont know if it will be enough. I’m not sure how big the dancefloor will be but I want to be able to cover this so people can dance and if people sitting at tables across the room cant hear it and just want to talk im not too worried about that.
The towers are setup to do bass, mids, and hi’s. I’ve seen them in use, and they’re pretty incredible. The peavey subs will be for additional low-end boostage.
We plan on having the towers speaker around the room so that one is at 0, one is at pi/2 radians, and one is at pi radians. The subs will likely go at pi/4 and 3pi/4 radians. Hopefully this will work out so we maximize optimal sound zones. Sound will be mono, like most dj setups.
