Karaoke Forums

The place where I do my regular bar gig has me playing "dance music" on Fridays when there isn't a band now. I was really disappointed by the amount of dancers for the first few weeks, and I thought, well, maybe it will never work at this venue, or maybe I'm just not good at doing "dance music" in bars.

Then I had a huge crowd last Saturday for karaoke and got aggravated at the crappy house PA they recently put in, so I brought my own for this weekend. The house PA is a JBL SF25 over Pyle Pro PASW18(?) 18" sub per side, with two Behringer EP4000s for power, and appropriate signal processing. I high-pass the subs at about 45Hz and have an output limiter on them set around 400w RMS each. Any more power or lower cut-off frequency and they bottom out easily, and would get torn up.

So my setup is MRX525 over SRX728S per side, with 900w per top cabinet and 2400w per sub, HPF at 31Hz, well below where the 40Hz "boom boom" in modern dance music thrives. I don't need to limit my subs since the clip light on the sub amps would have to be solid red for a good while to damage them.

This honestly made all the difference in the world last night. There were dancers non-stop, and plenty of good ol' country boys who didn't care that they were listening to hip-hop and old school rap, because there were dozens of hot young girls shaking their butts on the dance floor. It was suddenly fun to play the music they wanted because I wasn't watching the damn LEDs every time I touched the bass EQ knob to make sure I wasn't clipping the DSP inputs. "Enough rig for the gig" made my job almost effortless.

I wish I had never let them talk me into using their house PA. I can't believe I dealt with that crap for so long. I am looking forward to karaoke tonight and I will be glad to have all the sound I need.

_________________
Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

You can even give those subs more wattage. I have run them with a Crown xTi6000 for each sub. I thought the place was going to cave in.

I am planning to buy a PL380 or I-TECH 8000 for them in a month or two, depending on if I can find a used I-TECH or not. I am actually very happy with the EP4000 amps but I would like a little more transient power, which the I-TECH could do for me easily. Or at least a PL380 would be one 25 pound amp vs two 35 pound amps.

_________________
Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ