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how much power needed for setup?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:37 am
by coupon
I'm planning on running 2 dr250 and 2 t39s. how much power will i need total? any decently cheap amps for recommendation? i'm not a fan of behringer products unless somehow their amps are totally diff than everything else they make.

Re: how much power needed for setup?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:14 am
by Benj Ross
How much power you need depends on what your goals are and what drivers you have in your boxes. I would go with whatever the excursion limits for your subwoofer drivers plus a little and whatever your thermal limits are for the DR250s plus a little.

I am not a fan of Behringer either, but their amps and rack gear have been pretty damn reliable and get a lot of love around here. That being said, the IPR series from peavey has been mentioned a lot lately and is pretty affordable. Plus it only weighs about 7 lbs.

Cheers,

Benj

Re: how much power needed for setup?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:17 am
by Benj Ross
And welcome to the Forum! In case you havent gotten them yet, the excursion limits for the drivers are in the plans.

Benj

Re: how much power needed for setup?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:27 am
by coupon
Thanks alot for the welcome. You guys are very helpful around here compared to other forums. Most of my questions have been answered in other threads so I never had a reason to sign up till now.

I just got the plans recently but I'll have to read over them about this part more carefully. My plans for these speakers is for a DJ set up for smallish sized bar/lounges in my area and like to play mostly house and trance music with very amounts of dubstep and used with the premium drivers. They are usually around 40-100 people. I think the system I am building is overkill for my current needs but I planning for the future somewhat.

I used to have a rack set up for my guitar rig, but completely sold it so now I have to rebuild. I want to make sure I have enough clean power for the speakers with enough cushion for protection. I was pretty set on buying a pair of RCF Art312A for $800 that had rave reviews on the bang/buck factor. I'm hoping the dr250s will be better than those by spending a little more $ and work.

Also I've been wondering about what else I need in my DJ setup.

So far I have on my list:

-dbx crossover
-amps
-cables

I know for PA systems you need mixers but does a DJ mixer do the same job? Since I already have one of those, I don't want to buy another mixer if not necessary.

Re: how much power needed for setup?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:47 am
by Benj Ross
If you have a way to connect your source into your system properly you shouldn't need another mixer. I am not the foremost authority on Dj stuff though. One thing that you should have is a limiter and an EQ. The limiter will protect your speakers from the drunk guy who thinks it needs to go to eleven while your looking the other way, or if you get to where you are doing gigs at full power. EQ is a must to get the most out of any speaker system especially the high end ones. All of the high end systems that have really flat response that I have looked into are powered by the magic black box that does all the processing we need to do ourselves. Eq also lets you tune to the room. One of our local venues loads up at 200-250 like crazy. I have to cut it out of all vocals and instruments on the board as they dont have an EQ. When i have my system in there, I can just cut it at the eq and use the board eq to fix other issues.

Hope that helps.

Benj

Re: how much power needed for setup?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:51 am
by coupon
i was under the impression that the dbx crossover deals with limiter, eq issues. am i thinking of something else?

Re: how much power needed for setup?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:15 am
by Benj Ross
That sounds like a DBX driverack. that would cover the bases i believe. DBX makes just crossovers too.

Benj

Re: how much power needed for setup?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 5:15 pm
by Gregory East
You want a processor to do system eq, crossing and limiting, plus ideally another eq unit for doing room eq, another for monitor eq if doing live acts with monitors.