# How loud of a PA system do we need (Outdoor Gig)



## Toogy

Our band recently got invited to play an outdoor birthday party/pig roast this July.

It is at a farm and there will probably be 50-100 people there, we are just doing this for fun and exposure.

We practice with a 100W (50Wx2) PA system and that does fine for practice, but will that be loud enough for this party? 

If not, what should we be looking at? I don't think they want us SUPER loud, but they will want to hear us.

Thanks
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## allthumbs56

I think we need a bit more information: Style of music, # members/instruments, drums?, just the vocals or instruments too? That kind of thing.

I mean, if you're two guys with acoustics that's one thing...... and.....umm..... anything else is another :smile:


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## marcos

*How much*

Basic set up for drums guitar and vocals outside would be 800watts plus.depending on what speakers you are using.Bass can play without going through board and you should be good to go.This will not be too loud.


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## kw_guitarguy

Hey Toogy,

Not sure, I would go as high as 800 watts...but certainly you need to be in the 500+ range (I guess 800 isn't that much higher! hehe)

Marcos is right about the bass...use a separate amp and stack for that and you are set...

If Milkman chimes in he will have some good advice as he does outdoor gigs all the time.

~Andrew


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## mrmatt1972

I play outside in the summer at a trailer park on lake Nosbonsing. Playing to 50 of our closest drunken friends we've gotten away with vocals through a Fender Super Reverb! You probably only need the PA for vocals and you can easily get away with your practice PA for the 1 night.


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## GuitarsCanada

So there you have it, Toogy. Anything between a 100 watt guitar amp and a 800 watt PA. Hope that helps.


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## greco

GuitarsCanada said:


> So there you have it, Toogy. Anything between a 100 watt guitar amp and a 800 watt PA. Hope that helps.


LOL..I was thinking the same thing !!

Is the wattage required directly related to the amount of alcohol consumed?

Dave


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## Lemmy Hangslong

800 watts should be enough for two FOH and two monitors... add to that a sub of the same value or close too the same value and you should be plenty loud.


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## Milkman

Having more power does NOT mean you will be too loud. It only means that you will have a better chance of producing a clean sound. 


Put it this way, you CAN'T have too much power for ANY show, but you sure as hell can have not enough. 

I wouldn't play outdoors with less than 1000 watts (and only that low a power if all you want in the mix is vocals). I use much more power than this even for clubs.


Just my opinion of course.


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## Don Doucette

+1 What Milkman said.

If you bring 1000 and need 500 great but no fun if it's the other way round.kqoct

Don:smilie_flagge17:


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## dwagar

also keep in mind all amp wattages aren't created equal, neither are speakers, horns, cabs.

and the difference between 100W and 200W is what, about 10%? Your 100W cranked will probably work fine for vocals.

I think the hardest part about playing outside, if you aren't pumping everything through a PA with a soundman, is controlling everyones levels. Find someone with a pretty good ear to check your levels before you start, and throughout the night. You'll probably find one or two guys creep up, and someone just isn't loud enough.


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## marcos

*How many watts*

What it boils down to is how good or crappy you want your sound to be.Sorry but 100 or 200 watts outside will not cut it.You need some head room and believe me after doing this for more than 40 years more is better.By the end of the night you will be greatfull you had more power.If you have a good sound guy he will make you sound like a million bucks,not too loud and no distortion in the mains.Ask any people who do this for a living and I think they will agree.


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## theelectic

dwagar said:


> and the difference between 100W and 200W is what, about 10%? Your 100W cranked will probably work fine for vocals.


In theory a doubling of wattage represents a 3dB increase in volume, and you need a 10dB increase in volume for it to sound twice as loud.

So if you had a 6W amp as a baseline, 12W would be 3dB louder than a 6W, 24W would be 6dB louder than a 6W, 48W would be 9dB louder than a 6W, 96W would be 12dB louder... so yes, a 6W amp is a little less than half as loud as a 100W amp.

Of course this doesn't take into account speaker efficiency, cabinets, clean headroom, etc. etc. but I agree with most others here, the more power the better, at least it's there if you need it.


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## buckaroobanzai

Here's what we did ( others may disagree) for our first couple of outdoor gigs.

We practice with a 200w Yamaha PA with 1 set of 15" speakers-on-sticks. For the outdoor gig, I rented a pair of 400 watt powered speakers, which cost $50.

I plugged the powered speakers into the preamp-out on the PA ( most pa's have some sort of preamp out somewhere). These were my mains. ( The cables went from preamp out > powered speaker 1 > powered speaker 2. Most powered speakers will daisy-chain together this way, handy if you have only a single preamp-out like I do.)

My regular speakers were connected to their usual spots on the back of the PA and became the monitors. Some tweaking of levels was required since I was not using the traditional monitor-out jacks and controls, but in our case it worked fine and required very little learning curve.

( Warning - Tech Content The monitor system on my PA does not have a built-in amplifier, so I could not just plug my own speakers into it for monitors. So, I used the built-in main amp to power my regular speakers as monitors, set the levels on these speakers first so the band could hear themselves, and then used the volume controls on the powered speakers to set the main levels so the audience could hear. The potential problem with this setup is that if , during the show, you crank up the main speakers using the master-out on the PA, the monitors will go up in volume as well, possibly causing feedback.
In our case, once set we left everything alone, and didn't have a problem. If I had needed more main volume during the show, I would have adjusted the volume controls on the powered speakers. 

Get some help with making sure you have the right adapters to go from the preamp out to the powered speakers! In my case I needed a 1/4" jack-to-Speakon adapter to make it work. The rental place asked all the right questions and provided the correct adapters. I would have been sunk without them.

The setup was a bit clunky and I'm sure it breaks a few soundman rules, but it was cheap, it worked and the crowd was dancing, so I'm ok with it.


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## Milkman

buckaroobanzai said:


> Here's what we did ( others may disagree) for our first couple of outdoor gigs.
> 
> We practice with a 200w Yamaha PA with 1 set of 15" speakers-on-sticks. For the outdoor gig, I rented a pair of 400 watt powered speakers, which cost $50.
> 
> I plugged the powered speakers into the preamp-out on the PA ( most pa's have some sort of preamp out somewhere). These were my mains. ( The cables went from preamp out > powered speaker 1 > powered speaker 2. Most powered speakers will daisy-chain together this way, handy if you have only a single preamp-out like I do.)
> 
> My regular speakers were connected to their usual spots on the back of the PA and became the monitors. Some tweaking of levels was required since I was not using the traditional monitor-out jacks and controls, but in our case it worked fine and required very little learning curve.
> 
> ( Warning - Tech Content The monitor system on my PA does not have a built-in amplifier, so I could not just plug my own speakers into it for monitors. So, I used the built-in main amp to power my regular speakers as monitors, set the levels on these speakers first so the band could hear themselves, and then used the volume controls on the powered speakers to set the main levels so the audience could hear. The potential problem with this setup is that if , during the show, you crank up the main speakers using the master-out on the PA, the monitors will go up in volume as well, possibly causing feedback.
> In our case, once set we left everything alone, and didn't have a problem. If I had needed more main volume during the show, I would have adjusted the volume controls on the powered speakers.
> 
> Get some help with making sure you have the right adapters to go from the preamp out to the powered speakers! In my case I needed a 1/4" jack-to-Speakon adapter to make it work. The rental place asked all the right questions and provided the correct adapters. I would have been sunk without them.
> 
> The setup was a bit clunky and I'm sure it breaks a few soundman rules, but it was cheap, it worked and the crowd was dancing, so I'm ok with it.


So basically you were using 800 watts mains (400 X 2) and 200 watts for monitors, correct?


Didn't someone post that they wouldn't play outdoors with less than 1000 watts?:smile:

What you describe above looks fine. Most boards have line outs that will work fine to drive powered mains.

In fact I ran a system in a very similar way and I think you probably saw (and heard) it in Simcoe and maybe Kitchener.


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## Wild Bill

I don't think it's been stressed enough how important are the cabinets to this question!

Back before the last Ice Age, when I was a sound man/roadie, we did outdoor gigs with the same PA we used in clubs. We had a 300 watt Crown amp for the outfront bins and a 100 watt amp for the monitors. The vocals, drums and regular guitars were miked. The bass player was on his own.

We were ALWAYS loud! It was the cabinets!

Cabinet efficiency depends on the size of the cabinet. It's just physics and there's nothing you can do to change this. The usual standard of comparison is the Altec A7, or Voice of the Theatre cabinet. This was a box about half the size of a full refrigerator, with a port across the bottom and a 12" or 15" speaker mounted back in the box and then flared out with plywood to the front sides.

This cab was designed, as its name implies, for movie theatres. In the days before stereo sound ONE of these boxes mounted up on a wall with only 50 WATTS (tube amp watts, natch!) You could not run it full out or you would deafen everybody watching the movie.

This type of cab has an efficiency of about 33%. This means that for 100 watts of electrical amp power you get 33 acoustical watts of moving air.

By comparison, those little 'girly man' boxes they sell in the hifi stores would be lucky to reach .5%!

This leads to the common scenario witnessed all too often today. Older guy still has his 70's stereo with big ass speakers that sound great! His woman keeps nagging at him to get rid of them. "They're too big and ugly!" she keeps telling him. "Go buy some cute little ones from Rat Shack!"

So he goes to the store and he talks to a salesman about tone. "These modern speakers have space age cones and foam surrounds attaching them to the basket! They have neo-dime-ium magnets and everything!"

So he takes them home and connects them to his system. Right away he notices a problem. He cranks his system all the way up and he still can't comfortably hear the new speakers!

He marches back to the store and confronts the salesman. "Well!" huffs the little twerp. "If you're still running that primitive 70's stuff then you would only have about 50 watts or so. That's not enough to drive today's speakers! You have to buy this Barbie-wood home theatre receiver! It runs 500 watts per side!"

He's not lying! The efficiency of those little boxes is so poor that you do indeed need that kind of power.

Meanwhile, his woman has sold off his old speakers in a yard sale. I know, 'cuz that's where I got a beautiful classic pair of 100 watt Fishers to go with my tube receiver. Paid $5 for the pair, honest! Not a mark on them and they work as well as they did in the 70's!

A small box on a lollipop stand with a piezo horn at the top is not going to have great efficiency. We used to use two A7's stacked on each side of the stage, for bass and mids. On each top we had a wide Altec multi-cellular horn. That's why we got by with such low power compared to today's setups. Even then, I rarely ran the masters past 3 or 4 in even large clubs. For the outdoor gigs (small parks, of course. We were never good enough for Canada's Wonderland!) I did have to crank them up to about 7.

Power amps today are much cheaper than they were in the 70's. You can trade off the size of your cabinets for easier lugging but you'll have to compensate with more power to drive the smaller boxes.

As with most everything, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch! If the sandwich was free you paid too much for the beer!:smile:

:food-smiley-004:


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## Guest

Wild Bill said:


> Power amps today are much cheaper than they were in the 70's. You can trade off the size of your cabinets for easier lugging but you'll have to compensate with more power to drive the smaller boxes.
> 
> As with most everything, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch! If the sandwich was free you paid too much for the beer!:smile:
> 
> :food-smiley-004:


Bill: Thanks. Indirectly (semi-obscurely? at-a-slight-tangent?) you just helped me solve the question of whether I should go with an FBT Verve 8ma or 12ma powered monitor for my Axe-Fx. I'm going to grin and bear the weight of the 12ma. :smile:


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