Hi,

I am an engineering student working on a project for a non-profit
organization in which they want to convert a couple of rooms into a
cafe/social room for their clients. One of the components of this
cafe/social room is a sound system, both for recorded music during the
day, as well as for hosting live groups on a weekly basis. Having
almost no knowledge about sound systems, and finding so much stuff
online that I don't even know where to begin looking, I'm wondering
what kinds of resources everyone here can suggest. I need information
about systems (speakers, amplifiers, mixers, etc), but what is more
important, I need to find something on sound theory - based on
size/shape/composition of the room, what kind of sound will be best -
pros and cons of wall-mounted speakers vs in-ceiling speakers, etc.

What kinds of resources can you suggest for me?

Thanks,
Phillip

PS - I first posted in rec.audio.opinion and they sent me here, saying
that the constraints of the situation are going to dominate the
solution that we end up providing, and that people here have more
knowledge of how to resolve the problems posed by these types of
restraints (ie, a cafe has a high ambient sound level - people
talking, etc), and that in-wall speakers will not provide optimal
sound. Having seen their response there, I ought to add that this
non-profit organization is a senior center, and the cafe that they
want to build is not a full-scale cafe. It's more converting a room
into a place that they can go to socialize, that will have a small
coffee table that they can get a cup of coffee, and not a full-size
cafe. I'm assuming that in the weekly live entertainment that these
people bring in, the atmosphere will be more concert-style: there
won't be much noise from the audience, but those are only assumptions
on my part. What can you suggest, not in the way of specific
equipment, but more generally?

PPS - I forgot - the room that we're looking at is about 460 square
feet (about 21' x 21'), so it's fairly small. The organization wants
all the main equipment there, but they also want to feed the sound
into a room that they call the Ballroom, and I don't know how big it
is.

Phillip wrote:

I am an engineering student working on a project for a non-profit
organization in which they want to convert a couple of rooms into a
cafe/social room for their clients. One of the components of this
cafe/social room is a sound system, both for recorded music during the
day, as well as for hosting live groups on a weekly basis. Having
almost no knowledge about sound systems, and finding so much stuff
online that I don't even know where to begin looking, I'm wondering
what kinds of resources everyone here can suggest. I need information
about systems (speakers, amplifiers, mixers, etc), but what is more
important, I need to find something on sound theory - based on
size/shape/composition of the room, what kind of sound will be best -
pros and cons of wall-mounted speakers vs in-ceiling speakers, etc.

What kinds of resources can you suggest for me?


Start with the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook. You need to get a
grasp of the basics of live sound presentation, and those are very
different from distrubted sound for playback of prerecorded material,
though you can play back prerecorded material via a sound reinforcement
system.

--
ha

Phillip wrote:

PPS - I forgot - the room that we're looking at is about 460 square
feet (about 21' x 21'), so it's fairly small. The organization wants
all the main equipment there, but they also want to feed the sound
into a room that they call the Ballroom, and I don't know how big it
is.

The room is so small that an ordinary music playback system should
suffice, and also small enough that no sound reinforcement system should
be necessary for musical presentation. Any artist that can't cover 500
square feet with their voice and instrument shouldn't be playing out.

The Ballroom is potentially problematic, and for starters you absolutely
must find out its size.

Do that, and then come back here with more information about exactly
what type of live music is to be presented in the little room and then
exported into the Ballroom.

--
ha

(hank alrich) wrote in message . ..
Phillip wrote:

PPS - I forgot - the room that we're looking at is about 460 square
feet (about 21' x 21'), so it's fairly small. The organization wants
all the main equipment there, but they also want to feed the sound
into a room that they call the Ballroom, and I don't know how big it
is.

The room is so small that an ordinary music playback system should
suffice, and also small enough that no sound reinforcement system should
be necessary for musical presentation. Any artist that can't cover 500
square feet with their voice and instrument shouldn't be playing out.

The Ballroom is potentially problematic, and for starters you absolutely
must find out its size.

Do that, and then come back here with more information about exactly
what type of live music is to be presented in the little room and then
exported into the Ballroom.

Thanks for your suggestions and the book that you suggested I look at.
Here are the more specific details that might be helpful in looking
at solutions:

Dimensions of the "cafe" room: (length x width x height) = (23' x 20'
x 9'5")
-I got to go into the room and it is fairly small and fairly closed.
While I was talking to the director of the center, I noticed that
there was not much reverberation (the room is carpeted, which probably
contributes to sound absorption).

Dimensions of the "ballroom": (length x width x height) = (60' x 36' x
17')
-This is a much bigger room, but I'm not sure about its acoustics.
It's floors are bare hardwood floors, and there's not much covering
the walls or the ceiling, which is basically flat (no angling at all).
Thus, sound in there echos much more, and so is not as clear to hear,
which will probably be a problem we need to address (if you've ever
been in the waiting area of Union Station in Los Angeles, these are
the types of acoustics I'm reminded of).

About the type of use that this sound system will receive: upon
visiting the site, we learned that this senior center is a program
under the direction of the city of Los Angeles, which means that
*lots* of other people are currently renting out the building. While
it would primarily be used for the seniors who come there on a daily
basis, other organizations would be coming to use the equipment
(people from the Police Department, people from LA schools, and
conferences and meetings of various types).

Here are the specific applications for the sound system:
-for the seniors: weekly live entertainment (mostly jazz and blues
groups), some recorded music during daytime hours, short plays and
skits, readings, etc.
-for other groups: presentations, some sort of music

Because the size and type of group using the system will determine the
needed space, we're thinking that we will need to be able to set up
the stage, sound board and other equipment in both the cafe room and
the ballroom, with the option of having sound only in the room where
everything's connected, or ported to both rooms. This will complicate
the setup of the system.

Finally, we're wondering if there's anything that we can do to
actually test different types of systems in these rooms. Are there
instruments or computer software that will help us to measure sound
quality, given different types of speaker arrangements? What books
and/or websites, in addition to the book by Yamaha, are there that we
can use to research sound theory?

Thanks,
Phillip