Karaoke Forums

This is related to what makes a slow night. It's kind of come up over in that thread but it might be better to separate it out.

How many people can the place hold? Singers as well as KJs are welcome to participate.

My place seats around 80 if the booths along the walls are crammed full. I think I'm on the small side. I'm curious as to how many others are this small.

We have a 200 cap.  Standing room only probably 225-250 which i've seen before.
80 is small from what i'm used to running.  I had a club a few years back that only sat maybe 60 - this one we could pack and another in that time frame that sat about 250-300 - although this show never took off because of the location of the club so we never got more than 40-60 people, so it always looked dead even though I had 15-20 singers.

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This is a tough question for me to answer. I'm going to be guessing here. One of the reasons it is hard hard is we have very little seating and a lot of standers.

I'd say about 30 seats at tables, 20 at the bar and 12 on the porch. I know we are probably over capacity on Friday nights. It's standing room only on the porch and in the bar. I would guess 200 or more people. It is a small bar. A couple of nights the people spilled out into the parking lot and street. Until the beer garden opens Fridays are a challenge.

I'll take a look tonight at work. Capacity of a bar and how many people are actually there are 2 different things for me.

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Yeah Lonnie one of the advantages of a small room is that it can look busy with much fewer people. It's a perception thing. Very few want to stay long in a place that appears dead, even though it may have the same amount of people in it as a small room that they will eventually settle down in.

We were over last night during peak. It was three deep at the bar so I'm guessing it at around 100. With nothing firm I'll guess maybe 150-175 went through the place during the whole night.

We have one or two of these a month and you never know when. The old rule about  being busiest at the first of the month doesn't hold true with this generation. Everything's on plastic.

Kinda scary.

my current and last three gigs held legal capacities of 70 or less

I am surprised to see how many of us are in small rooms.

I would like to know how many of us who are in small rooms are using subs?  And, more precisly, of those who are using subs how many believe that the subs are actually adding to, rather than distracting from the quality of sound in a small venue?

I use a sub in a venue that is smaller than some men's rooms I have seen in big sports bars. We use a sub, and it adds to the sound. It is particularly important when the room is full, but you have to watch the mix on some songs. I have the music going into a channel with three-band eq, and I ride the low knob.

I've got three 18" subs up right now. My home group thinks that they're necessary, but when karaoke veterans new to the room come in they'll often tell me to turn them down.

So... if they decide to stay and sing I do for them, then they tell me to keep them the same as the other singers next time because the energy level of the track drops.

For the big boom bass generation you gotta have 'em.

It could be crowd dependent as well.  My crowd age is typically in the 20's-30's avg.  They like the full sound including the bass.  When I worked in small rooms I would use at least one or I would use my SP4 dual 15" system - which acts as a sub built in.

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Interesting point about the use of subs being somewhat dependent upon the age of the audience.  That makes perfect sense, once you hear it said.

That larger venue I recently attended with the house system, including huge subs was a 25-30 year old crowd.  I don't know if the crowd universally liked the subs.  To my ear "everything" in the place was "humming" in different keys

However, I'm now going to keep in the back of my mind the possible need to have a sub should I ever end up entertaining a young crowd, hopefully in a large venue.

BTW: what a pleasant and informative discussion regarding subs, as compared to the days of BD/SW who insisted karaoke cannot be done professionally without them.  thanx guys!

When we purchased the Mackie SM350s (which are a 10-inch speaker, believe it or not), we also got the 15-inch Mackie sub. The combination is tremendous - our use of the sub is to complement the bottom end. We have used it with the SM450s as well, but on the whole our Monday night gig, which is a small room by comparison to many, is better suited to the 350s with the sub. Clarity is important to us, and we used the 450s last week. I was not as impressed by the sound.

Our use of the sub is not to add huge boom-boom to the sound. There will be times when we may want to have that effect specifically, but typically we use it to just add a nice smooth bottom sound. Sometimes I actually have a diffcult time determining if it is on (depending on the music being played) and at other times it may be more obvious.  I think there are a lot of people around who are using just speakers who would really benefit by the addition of a small sub - takes away the feeling that the speakers are being pushed too hard and maybe lose some clarity. Active is the way to go because adding subs means adding weight in terms of amps/crossovers, etc., which is specifically why we went to active speakers/subs.

We use the 350s and the sub in a very small room - kind of a long room with the area where the system is set up being probably 10 feet narrower than the rest of the room...

It is nice, however, to know that if we want to really create that diaper club sound (boom-boom) we can in an instant and not push any of the equipment at all.

k

You will find that since many KJ's use the JBL speakers, they do not use, or believe you need a sub-woofer.  I Don't agree.  I use BMB 450 watt speakers and a nice sub.  I just don't believe that you can get great vocals out of the same speakers you have the real low stuff comming out of, and yes, I have heard many non sub systems.

No matter how big the room, or how loud you are playing, the music always sounds better with a sub-woofer.  Like your music volume, or your mic volume, it may need to be adjusted for every song, every singer.  Many KJ's keep these levels the same no matter what is playing or who is singing.  Some songs, which have alot of bass in the recording, will need to have the sub turned down to sound right.  It's all about doing what is neccessary to make every song and every singer sound their best.

That one guy is right, younger crowd likes more sub, older crowds don't like as much bass.  I can adjust my sub from my mixer, so it is easy to adjust as neccessary.  

Bottom line, a good sub properly adjusted, increases the quality of the overall sound.
I know every KJ thinks his system is the best.  You can see my whole setup on
http://felixthekj.com and click on the system components page.

Hope this helps,
Felix the KJ

Welcome to KS Felix. Nice first post.

You may want to go to your profile, edit it to add your web site from there. That way it will appear at the bottom of all your post.