Skip to main content

Hey there all,
Hope this is the right forum for this.

Our church is considering the http://www.loudspea…"]Community Entasys[/]="http://www.loudspea…"]Community Entasys[/] speaker system for our FOH PA in our new building.

The new room is basically a gymnasium... with a basketball court and everything. Walls are slightly non-parallel. Sealed cement floor. Limited / no treatment on the walls. Seats about 660.

Per side, we are planning to do 2 high frequency boxes stacked on top of each other, with a low frequency box on top of that... and then some dual 8's and dual 15's for subs... we are powering the speakers with the new Crown MacroTec i amplifiers.

We demo'd the speakers, (only one high freq. box and 1 low, and only 1 side... with quad 8's as subs... so kind of a handicapped system) and they sounded pretty darn good. The clarity was great, and the pattern control was really pretty amazing.

My one concern is whether they will have enough "thump" (even with dual 15's on each side) to sustain a full band, week after week, and still keep the vocal on top comfortably...

My question is: Has anyone used these in a full band situation? I know they're super new, so I might be asking a lot. Anyway, if anyone has any experience, bad or good, with these speakers, I'd love to hear about it! Thanks in advance.

Aaron Sternke
http://www.willamettechurch.com

Comments

Codemonkey Sat, 02/14/2009 - 10:50

"Per side, we are planning to do 2 high frequency boxes stacked on top of each other, with a low frequency box on top of that..."

I would suggest putting the HF drivers on top.
Edit: the reason is for weight. HF drivers are typically lighter and probably less heavily built.

Any reason you want subs? I can't imagine they'll help in a terrible acoustic environment like that. BOOOOOoooooommmmmmmmmminess from a single short "pop" in the subs.

audiokid Sat, 02/14/2009 - 14:59

The sound in a gym is nothing short of terrible. A sound mans nightmare. The standing waves just get worse the louder you get. Codemonkey said it right.

I played 18 years on the road, solid and went through a few systems until I settled for a front loaded, stereo 3 way, JBL professional system. Besides the JBL's and excellent power... the crossover was the best investment needed to work the variety of rooms I played. When I played places like large halls and Gym's, I relied on using the crossover to move the crossover points up or down along with adjusting the levels for each speaker rather than messing with EQ's and mixing. My mixes stayed very similar in every room I played. My sound was killer.

To warm up the bass in those types of rooms, I often rolled the bottom crossover points up to about 300 hz , and rolled the mids up to about 2.5. This method helps takes the harshness out, thus warming your sound and allowing you to turn you bottom end down to help control boom. You need less EQ to your system which produces a more overall natural and warm sound. You of course loose a bit bottom end but its all round warmer this way. You need less HP filter of the subs from 80 hz by doing this as well. Less EQ the better IMHO. I then finally resorted to my 31 bands just to tweak the pain areas around the 2.5 k and 8k marks and, if you can, you can then actually boost 100hz a tad giving great punch and less boom. As soon as I saw people yell to talk I new I had to hold it there or ping out the room a bit more using the graphs. I always however, started with the speaker volumes and roll off points of the crossover first. As the room fills, temperature gets warmers you may find you can simply just move to points down a bit and turn the speaker volumes ( bottom, mids, or highs) up.

I guess what I am saying. I would spend money on gates, a great graph and active crossovers for rooms like that.

Hope that helped somewhat.

x

User login