Mobile DJ, Choosing the correct speakers for your Road show

0:00 A bit of help here on speakers

Alright folks, a bit of help here on speakers. Now mainly I suppose this is for the mobile DJ, but hopefully it'll give you a little bit more of an idea of what to use and what to have. And also, first of all, when is a speaker a ladder? Now of course in the UK, a ladder is something that you climb up. So in other words, and by the way, I use recycled paper. If you imagine there's a ladder, it's got steps on it like so, like that. Let's imagine, all of a sudden, that that there is our small speaker. So that's, let's say for example, a 12 inch and a horn or maybe a 10 inch and a horn. Now all of a sudden, let's say we've got another ladder but this ladder is slightly longer. It's like that. Now that is our big speaker, that could be a 15 inch and a horn or maybe a twin 15 inch and a horn

For the high frequencies. Alternatively, this guy here could be two speakers. Now let's imagine now we've got a huge hole. Let me get a different pen so we can get a bit of a difference here. We've got a nice window here. Beautiful window and we can see outside and we can see the sun and we can see all the birdies flying etc. And then also we've got another window down here.

And same thing, we've got the sun. Strange planet this, two suns. And we've got lots of birdies flying. Alright, now all of a sudden, we've got two people who want to climb up these ladders. So, we've got person number one, who climbs up this ladder and he can happily look through this window here. But, the thing is though, he can't look through that window because he's too short. But, we've got a guy who can come along here and he walks up the ladder and he can happily look through this window because the ladder passes this window. And also he can look into this window here. He's quite happy. So, he's got the best of both worlds. Right, so what on earth has this got to do with speakers? Well let me explain. Let's imagine now we've got our speaker here.

2:29 We've got say a bigger one like this

That's the big one, that's the little one like that. But this guy here is maybe only say a 10 inch speaker and a horn or maybe a 12 inch and a horn. Then we've got say a bigger one like this. This one's a 15 inch like so and a horn. Now here is the scenario. This guy here you can only turn up a certain amount. When you get to a certain point You can't turn it up anymore because you'll start getting distortion and it'll sound awful. This one here, you can turn this one up as much as you want. Quite high in fact, a lot higher than this one here. Of course it's dependent on how good a quality the speaker is, the make etc. But the analogy here is you can also turn this one down. So in other words, this one at its peak will only get to so high of a level let's say.

You can reach that level and quite happily tick over and look through the window. But this one can also get higher. So in other words, my philosophy or one of my sayings is you can only turn small speakers up a certain amount but you can always turn big speakers down. Alright, so let's say for example you're this person and you've only got this small speaker. And you're wondering now, oh dear. Should I have to now sell that speaker and buy the huge, big, massive one? Well, the answer is yes and the answer is no. Why is it yes and why is it no? Well, yes maybe because possibly you may be thinking, well, you know, maybe I should get some bigger speakers. But more so the answer is no. I'll tell you why. Now quite often, excuse me, one single speaker like that is eight.

Ohms. And if you want to know any more about ohms law, etc., then go and check out some videos that Brian S. Redd has done. Now, a lot of amplifiers are... That's trying to come in here now. It's a pain in the arse. A lot of amplifiers, if we imagine a power amplifier like so, split up into half, we have right and we have left. A lot of power amplifiers are four ohms aside.

5:01 What you can do is you could buy yourself a bass cab

4 ohms aside. Now, what you may find, and have a look on the back, is your small speaker could be 8 ohms. Now this is where you may be very, well not necessarily very lucky, but this is where you can turn that guy into something a lot more powerful. Let's say that is a 10 or 12 inch speaker, that's a 1 inch compression driver, or the horn, that's where the high frequencies come out. What you can do is you could buy yourself a bass cab. Now let's say, like I said earlier, 10 and a horn. Maybe this one now could be a 12 or 15 or even an 18 inch and a horn. Now what you need to do if your top cab is 8 ohms, you need to make sure that the other speaker you buy is 8 ohms as well. Also what you need to find and make sure is that this big speaker here

Has inside of it what's known as a passive crossover. Now the passive crossover will take away all the mid frequencies and only give you bass for the bass speaker, and then what happens is it transfers all those mid frequencies into your top speaker like so. So in other words what we're dealing with here is you've got the best of both worlds if you think about it. Now again this is where it gets not necessarily confusing but The person that had this huge, let's say, speaker of two 15s and a little mid one here and then a high frequency. Alright, if that's all they've got, they can theoretically only take those to every single gig, which is fine. But of course, if it's a really, really small gig, you don't necessarily need them. If you've got stairs, you've got problems. But, let's say you've got your four speakers like this now, because of course you would have two one side, two the other side.

If you've got a small gig and always phone up, always enquire about the amount of people going, then it gives you the opportunity to just take the small ones, and of course the small ones then you can stick on a tripod or a stand. There's a small speaker, and there's your tripod like that. So you could take those for say 50 people. But if, let's say you've got 100 or 200 people, then you can take your bass cab All you'll need is a pole to go in between. Alternatively, you could just put that on there. Alright, so a little bit of help. Now, of course, there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. There is power ratings and also there's power ratings for amplifiers as well. And if you want any more information on that, I'll try and go slightly more in depth. So basically what we're looking at here is mobile DJs and ideal speakers for your gigs. Practice and enjoy.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.