Tips on dining hall sound system

[T.I.K. 10+ year member]

So, as a project of mine, I've decided to put a sound system in my frat house's dining room. It's probably 20' x 20' and we use it alot for parties, formal events, casino nights, ect. ect. I want to make something functional as a casual system we can use to make announcements and maybe play light music over a dinner, but I definitely want kick *** bass for when we do throw a few ragers.

Anyways, I'm wondering what my best approach to this is, I'm looking at either buying the pre-fab DJ speakers, or buying my own drivers and making the enclosures myself. I'd like to keep the budget for the speakers around 300-350. I have no idea what home/pro audio brands are good, and in general I know nothing of home audio, so any help would be awesome.

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[Seraphim38 10+ year member]

In pro audio, the best selling speakers in that price range are the Mackie Thump TH15A. $349 retail with an amplifier built in, 15" woofer and high frequency compression driver. You really can't buy drivers, do it yourself and end up with something that sounds that good. The Behringer stuff sounds like crap, and the Alto stuff is not great either. JBL & QSC are out of your price range and don't sound any better.

Add an active 18" sub and you'll be golden. This is a little easier to do yourself. You can get a plate amp from partsexpress.com and build a box for a subwoofer and make lots of boom without spending massive amounts of dough.

 

[xmakeafistx 10+ year member]

So, as a project of mine, I've decided to put a sound system in my frat house's dining room. It's probably 20' x 20' and we use it alot for parties, formal events, casino nights, ect. ect. I want to make something functional as a casual system we can use to make announcements and maybe play light music over a dinner, but I definitely want kick *** bass for when we do throw a few ragers.
Anyways, I'm wondering what my best approach to this is, I'm looking at either buying the pre-fab DJ speakers, or buying my own drivers and making the enclosures myself. I'd like to keep the budget for the speakers around 300-350. I have no idea what home/pro audio brands are good, and in general I know nothing of home audio, so any help would be awesome.

Thats a really nice kazoo.

 

[T.I.K. 10+ year member]

In pro audio, the best selling speakers in that price range are the Mackie Thump TH15A. $349 retail with an amplifier built in, 15" woofer and high frequency compression driver. You really can't buy drivers, do it yourself and end up with something that sounds that good. The Behringer stuff sounds like crap, and the Alto stuff is not great either. JBL & QSC are out of your price range and don't sound any better.
Add an active 18" sub and you'll be golden. This is a little easier to do yourself. You can get a plate amp from partsexpress.com and build a box for a subwoofer and make lots of boom without spending massive amounts of dough.

That was my plan if i went DIY and just find a few 15-18" drivers, and put some plate amps in, If I did that, I'd probably end up adding 4 6.5" and a few tweeters around the room too.

If I wanted to do that (2 subs, 4 speakers, 4 tweets) do I cross over the 6.5 and tweeter, and have a plate amp running to the cross over? and what kind of receiver should I buy? on top of that, do many receivers come with USB input for iPods or CD players, or is that separate too?

 

[Seraphim38 10+ year member]

I don't suggest running 6.5" mids for anything larger than 2 people in a car: in professional / commercial audio environments you will always find requirements for larger drivers & output. In the real world outside of a car, if you were to run a DJ type system as 4 tweeters, 4 6.5" mid/woofers and an 18 inch sub, it would sound gawd awful.

I suggest going to your nearest guitar center or music store that has entry level sound system equipment and listen to stuff. As I said, it's not hard to build a sub that would do good things for not too much money, but mid/high packs are a whole different story for a variety of reasons. Auto sound tweeters and commercial high frequency compression drivers are vastly different animals. A 6.5" mid from a car door and a 15" 500w RMS low/mid in a well designed commercial sound enclosure are also vastly different performing animals.

 

[HillBillyJoe]

I use mackie with the built in amps, my buddy has one for sell actually