Party Vibe

yeah peavey amps are meant to be ok, no better or worse than any of the brands i meantioned,

would definitely plan to get at least one sub, 2x 150watt midtops arent going to cater for 100 people, at least by getting a sub you can get a bit more from them as they wont have to be playing as much bass,

also youll want a seperate crossover, standard amps dont have ‘proper’ crossovers in them, at least not any ive come across, only filters that let you cut out certain frequencies, ie below 30hz or whatever. youll want one that allows you to have full control, nothing too fancy but it means you can run what you want into the sub and everything above that into the tops,

if you got that peavey amp you could run your speakers fine off it as theyd be getting 300watts each if you had them one per channel (just dont turn the up too much!) and then when you get a sub run the two midtops off one channel and then you could run a 300watt sub off the other. but its also not the bigest amp, you may find that its not powerful enough when you want to upgrade your speakers,

just had a look at the spec on that amp, it does have a crossover in it that plays everything under 150hz, ideal for a small sub, but i dont know if would allow you to only set it too one channel (letting you play everything above 150hz thru the tops on the other one)

we like peaveys – they are tough as old boots and do the job – still have my first ever amp [a second hand peavey] and its still going strong in my current rig raaaits from circa 1971 :weee: older than a lot of our party goers these days :laugh_at:

you need to match the amps to the speakers otherwise you will blow loads of equipment

My first rig was 2 2×12″ martins cabs and a pair of 15″ eurosys all running off a 260watt peavey [the one above] amp – loud enough for a serious party raaaraaa

avoid yamahas, qsc, warrior would be my advice

erm lost my thread here – may return later

Are the parties going to be indoor or outdoor? It’s an important question because you will need a lot more for outdoor – no walls or ceiling mean your sound level pretty much follows the inverse square law (essentially the volume is inversely proportional to the square of the distance meaning you get serious dropoff in the sound levels – and due to the bass dropoff effect which is part of human hearing the bass suffers more from this than other parts of the music). Indoors is far less problem because the enclosed nature results in an intensifying of the sound levels.

The result is that I wouldn’t consider using the first rig Raj and I had for outdoor parties – it had nowhere near enough power to do it properly, and the end result of having too little power is usually blown equipment (even if you know you’ve got to keep the levels under control, you can pretty much guarantee there will be some muppet vinyl monkey who thinks “thats not loud enough – I’ll just max out all the gain controls to make it better”).

I wouldn’t really consider outdoor parties with less than 2KW of power and at least 3 speakers in each stack – and bear in mind as a professional sound engineer who has designed and built many systems, I am able to get high efficiency from that figure. If you’re a novice in that department you will likely need more like 4-5KW for an outdoor design to deliver the sound level necessary…

check out the sales area on speakerplans forum too (google it), always good equipment going there

1 more thing mate… how old are yah?

alright, im 16.

one thing – u gotta b careful with the law. if you do an illegal rave & ur the organiser, you might get put in young offenders, which we all know, is pretty horrible…

GL probably knows the law better though, wait for his posts of wisdom 😉

Oh also, dont be one of them kids that buys a pair of skytronic “50,000w” speakers, puts a flatpeak on backwards and starts pumping out distorted rusko. theres enough of them already 😉

different amps for different ranges… well in some ways yes some ways no.

bass is more hungry on power, so if you were to use 1 amp for everything, 1 channel would be getting a battering from the bass, and the other would be taking it easy pumping out the mids and tops.

its also easier to manage if u got 2 amps… for sound levels etc.

for a small system, i would recommend a behringer EP2500 for bass (~£160 second hand). and a behringer EP1500 on midtops (~£100?).. EP1500 is a little difficult to find… i would recommend a matrix equivalent.

for subs i would build a pair of Gsubs… Speakerplans.com

on midtops, i would design my own cab… pretty easy to do

anyways thats the way i would do it for a budget mini rig that sounds pucca:)

do you have any idea of a budget for the whole ‘starter’ rig?