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Live Sound System for a Bar

Big_Dog_NYBig_Dog_NY Posts: 4
I need help with designing a live sound system for our bar. The main dance floor in front of the entertainment is a 21'x24' with 10' ceilings and hard wood floors. The bands we have vary from national acts to local musicans, everyone talked how good the live sound is in the biulding so from that I know our local sound people are doing a good job. We want to install our own system to reduce the setup and teardown each evening and to get a system that will be setup to the house and give us the best possible sound.

The band area for the band is a same level stage area of 21' wide by 14' deep with again 10' ceilings and hard wood flooring.

We feel that we need a minimum of a 24 channel mixer given most bands we deal with use 18-20 channels. The best sound we believe we have had is with two 18" base units with a top stack. The base was very powerful and you could feel the vibration of the base yet the high tones remained very clear.

The two rooms are divided by support posts at the 14' mark, we also have a 3 foot divider/header at this point. I would like to place the monitors for the bands on this header wall facing the band if it would work. You sound experts would know best if floor mounted units would work at a angle downward at about a 8' height. Monitors are normally one center with one each on the left and right, the last monitor is normally setup for the drummer.

I would like to know the best smallest footprint speaker system we could install to give us the best sound yet not over take the dance floor area.

The next area is the power requirements for a square footage area as we have. We also are interested in other rack equipment we should not overlook to insure we have enough power and effects along with equalizers if needed.

Any help would be greatly apreciated, our capacity on the main dance floor runs about 75-100 people so that can help you figure power and sound as the people absorb sound.

Thank You in advance!
Keith

Comments

  • GadgetGadget Posts: 4,915
    well.. my first question is what kind of budget do you have, and are you PLANNING on making national acts use the system...in other words, is a "Rider friendly system" necessary?

    Monitors flown can really be a problem depending on the what mic type you use...plus not everyone likes a monitor in the same position.

    How tall is the stage, and if it's high enough putting the subs under the stage would free up tons of space...also flying the mains would be a great way to free sight lines and floor space.

    Gadget
  • DennisDennis Posts: 801
    If we are going to design a system, we should really have some photos of the room...Gadget will explain how to post them. Forget flying the monitors.

    Dennis
  • Gadget wrote:
    well.. my first question is what kind of budget do you have, and are you PLANNING on making national acts use the system...in other words, is a "Rider friendly system" necessary? We also have another venue for national acts to perform with a full hired sound system.

    Monitors flown can really be a problem depending on the what mic type you use...plus not everyone likes a monitor in the same position.

    How tall is the stage, and if it's high enough putting the subs under the stage would free up tons of space...also flying the mains would be a great way to free sight lines and floor space.

    Gadget

    The main room is one large room separated by support posts, so we divied the room at that point. The main floor speakers have a room to fill of 21x24 I think it was and the band area is 14x21 if you put the two together the total area would be 36'x21' but the first 14' are used by the bands and the ceilings are all 10' high. We have a divider that comes down from the ceiling at the 14' line about 3.5' and runs between the pillar posts. The picture is taken looking into the band area 21'x14', the area the picture is from would be 21'x24' 10' ceilings and hard wood floors, this area then leads into the bar area.

    index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=311099666&albumID=1160642&imageID=15030483
  • The floor area that is 21x24 roughly and then the bar area is off to the left through the doors.

    http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=311099666&albumID=1086204&imageID=13334964

    The stage area that is another 21x14 area.

    http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=311099666&albumID=1154901&imageID=15229291

    We are looking to install a sound system that will sound good without breaking the bank. Do not wory about national acts for we use another venue and if we use this venue we then bring in extra equipment and 32+ channel mixer for the additional ear peices.
  • GadgetGadget Posts: 4,915
    You need to get an account with Photo bucket in order to post photo's here:
    http://photobucket.com/
    We don't have the bandwidth to post photo's... Get a free account and post the photo's there... then post the outboard processores...YIKES!   I have a system that costs about $8000 that fits in a 4'w X 6'H X 8'long that has 20 channels (behringer mixer with EFX) that offers tri-amp, mono FOH @ 5000watts and 2 monitor mixes with 4 fullrange monitors with a 260 @ FOH and a DRPA for 2 mixes..thats all.... but sounds amazing and is pretty much idiot proof...  It ain't cheap to put together a killer system...  If your handy with wood I can offer some options, otherwise you can throw a TON of money at the subs alone...  G
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