"Difficult" Venue PA Advice Needed

[jbass]

We have a local venue which hosts live music four nights a week ranging from solo/duo acts to full bands. Surprisingly, this venue has no house PA to offer, so each act has to bring in its own sound system. As such, a few of us who play here on a regular basis are now kicking around the idea of holding a benefit to raise money for a house system (if for no other reason than to avoid having to haul our own gear). The problem we face is that the layout of the space is not at all conducive to an easy installation, and I've provided a rough sketch to illustrate the situation. In a nutshell, the room is divided by a wall running roughly down the center with the stage located in the far back corner, so sound emanating from the stage is effectively prevented from reaching all areas. This isn't really a problem, however, because the people who want to hear the music simply congregate near the stage. It's strange, but it works.

We'd like to keep the coverage centered primarily around the stage and adjacent seating areas due to the layout of the building and the fact that there's no room apart from the immediate area of the stage for PA gear. As far as overall level, we'd need a system capable of handling a rock band for a crowd of less than 200 (for reference, the largest act I've seen used a pair of 15" two-ways on tripods and it was "adequate"). I'm certainly no expert on this stuff, but it makes sense to me to place a couple of subs on the floor in front of the stage and then "fly" tops directly above (10' ceiling). The only consideration would be that the tops would have to be relatively small/low profile to avoid obscuring the performers.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

[jbass]

After doing a bit of thinking on this today, I'm wondering how a pair of SLA Pros would work for the tops if they were ceiling mounted horizontally. I'd estimate the height of each cabinet to be about 10" in this position (I'll be ordering plans once I get this and another project firmed up), which would leave ample clearance above the stage area to avoid obstructing the performers. One cabinet could be angled to fire down the length of the room and the other angled toward the seating area on the left.

Thanks for any input.

[Chris_Allen]

Hi,

Because people move round, you would get interference patterns from the SLAs if mounted horizontal. An OmniTop12 array design would be far more suited to the application, it's probably only 6" higher than the SLA.

I would centre the subs left of the stage, for 200 people, a single wide T48 with Lab15 or 3015LF would do the trick - or two slims if you want more flexibility. I would run the system in mono so you could get away with one amp. If you get an amp with DSP (and limiter), you'll have a really good value implementation.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

I'm wondering how a pair of SLA Pros would work for the tops if they were ceiling mounted horizontally.

http://www.gtaust.com/filter/05/07.shtml

[LelandCrooks]

It begs for single stack solution to the left side. I've done that in many venues that were similar. You will kill the bar any other way. Nothing wrong with mono for live.

[Bruce Weldy]

It begs for single stack solution to the left side. Nothing wrong with mono for live.

+1 to both statements.

[jbass]

Ah, I see where I made my mistake. I was thinking of the SLA Pro as being akin to the other tops in that it could be used individually or as part of a line array when, in fact, the SLA Pro is the line array. Forgive my newbieness. What I was hoping to achieve was something similar to the CurvedArray which could be mounted above the subs out of harm's way.

I'll be playing at this venue again next weekend and will check into the viability of hanging a larger cabinet from the ceiling. I'll also look into the possibility of mounting SLA Pros on the walls ahead of and to either side of the stage. If all else fails, I guess we could store the tops off to the side and have the performers drop them onto tripods before a show.