New Budget Setup

Hey Alejandro,

There are a LOT of articles on the blog and posts here on the forums about picking speakers.

The general idea here is: “you get what you pay for”

You have a clear idea of your budget, next you’ll have to ask yourself a few questions (in random order):

1) How many people do I usually play for (what is the max. capacity I want to cater to with my own gear before switching to renting
2) Do I play only indoor or also outdoor events
3) How important is portability
4) How important is size
5) Do I need a 2 speakers (stereo) setup or something with 3 (2x top and 1 subwoofer) or even 4 speakers (2x top, 2x sub)
6) Do I want active or passive speakers
7) What quality level do I want
8) Do I allow extra budget for active speakers
9) What sound levels am I looking for

From there on out it’s finding out what goes on your shortlist and LISTENING to your shortlisted speakers. Trust your ears.

Let me give you a few considerations for each question:

1) There is an old “rule of thumb” that says indoor you need 10W per head for hi volume (i.e. dance) environments. This rule dates from the days of lesser speaker efficiency and designs though. Also it depends on many other factors, using sub yes/no, shape of the room/venue, concentrated dance area or not. Location of the speakers. Using 2 or 4 speakers. At the end of the day, unless you are willing to go into heavy mathematics, it will have to do. I’d always err on the high side, since it’s easier to keep it down a little than it is to go louder. Pushing speakers to their limits is not good for the speakers and will usually make the sound deteriorate rather quickly. So, for max 150 people, I’d say you need about 1500Watt (RMS).

2)Following up on the rule from question 1, if you play outdoor, double that number. Sound disperses/dissipates so much easier. So, to get the same effect, you’ll need about 20W per head outdoor. 150 people = 3000W. Personally I feel that adding one or two subs will have a relatively bigger impact than doubling the amount of power on your tops or doubling the number of tops. This is just my observation though.

3) Do you have 4 guys doing the heavy lifting for you and a big truck? Or do you run a tight 1-man show with you doing all the work and a mid-sized van? At the end of the day you have to carry the things 4 times a gig (storage to transport, transport to location, location to transport and transport back to storage). Lift them up and off stands. And obviously they have to fit in your transport with the rest of your gear. The days of bigger=better are over. Today’s high efficiency speakers deliver more and better sound than the old double 15″s. Also the material determines some of it. ABS plastic makes for more “fancy” shapes than wood, but some of us prefer wood because of the rigidity and sound color (the latter obviously very subjective 😀 ). So size and weight are determining questions with this one.

4) Although part of this is covered in question 3, this is more to determine two other factors that have to do with size. Namely image (what image do you want to project) and available space. Let’s say your parties always have a relatively lot of people in a relatively small venue (crowded rooms). Here it usually is not really wanted to have two stacks of speakers eating up the valuable floor/dance space. So you might want to go a compact 2.1 system (check the blog for articles on HK Audio and LD Systems to get an idea of what we mean) with an out-of-the way sub and two pretty small satellites. Today these provide an unexpected volume level, especially considering the space they claim. And perhaps you play for a crowd that isn’t happy if there AREN’T big stacks of speakers and they would frown on two relatively small speakers in the corner.

5) This is a big one. Subs can be good. Depending on how good your tops sound, they are either a necessity or a bonus. I have 2x 12″ tops that sound great and have decent bass even without the sub. So weddings, small events and other parties that don’t require ear-shattering bass, I tend to NOT take the sub (big, heavy, bulky) and just run with the tops. As soon as it’s a real dance event, more modern dance music and/or outdoor, I will take my sub. It adds a lot of Watts to the equation as well as frees up my tops to spend more energy on mid-low and mid. If you really need them depends on you. I often take 4 speakers all aimed “inward” on the “dancefloor”. That way I get a more even sound field instead of running loud at front to have enough volume left in the back. Also it somewhat isolates the dancefloor, behind the rear speakers you can create a space where conversation is easier.

6) For me this is a no brainer. Active speakers are easier, more convenient and with todays amps there really, imho, is no reason not to go active. Also, it’s great backup thinking. Unless you have two amps (L/R or High/Low), an amp dying (overheating, plain defect) means no sound. One active speaker dying means having the other still going. Also I rather run balanced audio cable to my speakers than the heavier, bulkier speaker cables, but that is details.

7) Another big question. I believe that if someone pays you to play an event and is paying for gear use/rental, that you owe it to play at a decent quality level. That leaves out all the budget brands imho. They are fine for birthday parties, house parties, pool parties at friends, where they are happy you are bringing speakers at all. But if you play pro, that doesn’t fly in my opinion. It’s one of the reasons that the advice you will find here often is, rent the quality you want until you can afford to buy that quality. There is a huge difference in sound quality, build quality and efficiency between low-end and high-end speakers. As I said in the beginning, you get what you pay for. There are no shortcuts. If it’s cheap, there’s a reason. Once you get in the higher echelons of PA speakers, there is still a lot of price difference, but other factors come into play and the picking becomes a little more complicated than just looking at the price tags. I think your current budget puts you at the right spot for a 2-speaker setups from a decent brand with good quality sound (not including necessary cabling, stands, speaker covers, stand bag and such!). Obviously you can easily spend half as much on a single speaker or even double, but again, that’s a different set of considerations.

8) You say you want to replace passive speakers and have a 1500 budget. Then you say you might want to get rid of the amp too (do it! LOL) and possibly get active speakers. But you don’t mention if you are willing to add the price of a good amp to your budget (for example go to 2250-2500 total). This obviously has an impact on what you can buy. The difference between getting a sub or not for example.

9) Finally, what sound levels are you looking for? If you are playing predominantly for groups of young people that come to listen and dance to (or rather immerse themselves in) ear-shattering music, then obviously you need something else than when you play weddings, corporate events and other “ear plug-free” events. So take that into account as well.

Hope this wall of text has helped some.

My personal setup is a pair of Mackie 12″ HD1221s that fit in your budget (just about 799 a piece online) and that I have been using a few years now. They are loud, sound great, versatile (can be switched to speech profile and monitor profile if I need to do live audio gigs), have great bass for 12″s. The ticked all my boxes on weight, efficiency, sound quality, build quality. They don’t look fancy and are only a shade over boring, but hey, I am not selling speakers, just using them to play music 😛 . I augmented my setup with the HD1801 active sub (just one) and this setup carries me through to 200 people easy. Even with the 1200W total tops only, I would confidently do a 150 people room (provided the room isn’t too large) as the efficiency and sound of the speakers is so good.

I’ll finish with the most important advice by stating again, that at the end it is all about trusting YOUR ears.

Hi, don’t know them from hearing, but the specs seem ok and Yamaha is a good brand overall. Let us know what you think when you’ve got them hooked up and playing.

I hope the controller help question goes out to all our readers, but I’ll pitch in my first two cents.

Software comes as a second question once you figure out what your workflow is. Serato is used a lot. Not too long ago it was a rather confined product working with only a handful of “certified” hardware. But since last years NAMM they have clearly changed course and now (almost) every brand of controller features one or more Serato controllers. At the end of the day controllers are midi-devices and as such can usually be used with any DJ software that has a mapping for it, or allows you to make your own mapping.

While there are many nice controllers around in the price bracket you mentioned, I would be slightly worried about getting a relatively expensive controller to start my digital DJ-ing with. If you are sure about your (digital) workflow, then it’s not an issue. You pick the software that suits your workflow best (others to consider should, imho, include Traktor, Virtual DJ and Mixvibes Cross) and then go looking for a controller that fits your workflow, software and wanted features (and budget of course) best.

If you DON’T know your workflow and/or are not sure about the software you want and perhaps can’t oversee the available versus the needed/wanted features, then it’s hard to pick the right piece of gear or to advice you about it.

You say you play out, yet mention parties. Does that mean paid gigs in venues or parties at peoples homes? Whose gear are you using then. What gear is it. What kind of music do you play primarily. It makes a difference if you are a mobile DJ or a club DJ when it comes to picking the right tools.

So, please tell us a little more about your general DJ-ing style and the direction you are moving in. Music style too.

A word of caution: if you are already struggling with your collection now that it is on CD, the biggest risk in moving to digital is that it’s going to be WORSE (not physically of course). Collections blossoming out of control, hoarding every piece of music you think you might play some time.
If you follow any of the blog or forum posts on collection control and gig preparation, you’ll see that it’s recommended to have a compact collection and to take only about 2 times the amount of music to a gig that you could play (say 20 tracks an hour times the number of hours of your gig times 2). And also to make sure you have appropriate (mini)playlists setup.

I can safely say I fell into the “the more music the better”-trap when I started digital DJ-ing (and I even have somewhat of an excuse being a mobile DJ that needs more tracks because of requests coming in) and ended up with 45000+ tracks.

Impossible amount of music to know intimately, prepare properly in DJ software and generally organise. So, I am now rebuilding my collection to end up with a maximum of about 1200 to 1500 tracks. And from there on out it will be a 1 in = 1 out system to prevent the collection from everlastng growth.

My suggestion would be to do this while you transition so you don’t have to be like me and go back in a few years and realise you have to start over 😉

Hope that helps some.

Consider software first, then hardware. My personal choice of software/hardware mat the moment is Mixvibes Cross DJ with a Reloop TM4 (picked it up off eBay never used for $400 instead of $600). ALWAYS scour eBay and other classifieds websites for cheep cheep. Traktor Kontrol S4s, usually retailing for $900 go for $300-$500 used on eBay.