What size speakers and amp should i buy, part 2

0:00 These are the fans and that huge thing there is the actual transformer

Alright, now then what is a fan? Alright, basically if we look inside a power amplifier, should I say, what you'll have these lines here are the heat sinks. These are the fans and that huge thing there is the actual transformer. There's a lot more gubbins in there believe me. If they were that simple and easy I'd be making them now and I wouldn't be standing here. Right, what happens here generally is the air is... circulated through it comes through here and it's thrown out the back so you have cold air coming in hot air at the back now then you're probably thinking why am i saying this I've seen so many times people put glasses of beer coats and whatnot on top of their amplifiers the amp isn't there to keep people warm or to warm your jacket at the end of the night so you can walk out thinking it's just been on the radiator because my mum put it there

1:48 These guys here can be quite big

Thank you for watching. Now, these guys can be run two ways. You can buy them three-way passive. In other words, there is a three-way passive crossover. So you will have an input and then that will be split three ways. You will have bass frequencies that can be anything from 20 Hz up to about 150 Hz in the bass speakers. That is one part of the crossover. The second part of the crossover then will go from, let's say, 150 up to about 500 Hz. And then upwards into kilohertz, and that's where you get your top. That's a compression driver. It can be anything from a 1-inch compression driver up to a 3-inch compression driver. And again, remember, on your mixer, top, mid and bottom, OK? That's what it's all about. All right, now, large parties. These guys here can be quite big. Again, you can have... Generally, you won't have these as 12-inch. More likely, they'll be 15-inch drivers. The mid-range quite often will be 8-, 10-inch.

And like I've said with that one, 1, 2 or 3 inch. Now these guys here, very similar. They'll be run off what's known as a power amplifier. The price of these, anything from £200 up to £2000 plus just for one amplifier. Big outside venues could have 20 to 30 of these each side. Bananas I know but it sounds rather good. Anything from 500 watts a side. Up to a thousand watts a side, which is probably what all you'll need. Now a thousand watts, when we get to a thousand, instead of writing all those noughts, in the industry we class it as K, kilowatts. So a thousand watts is one K or one kilowatt. Okay, now then, with that system you just saw, that one there, like I said, if it's passive, you would only need one amplifier.

3:45 Up to, right, gulp, £5,000 to £6,000

One amp for your passive and two for active. So the one amplifier would do mid and high, the other one would do low. And of course then, unless your amplifiers have got dials on there, and sometimes you can have a little system whereby you can cut the mid off one and cut the bass off the other, so you don't need a crossover, you would actually need an active crossover to run that speaker. And then we come into these guys here. This is where we start having two speakers. This one here, quite often 15 or an 18 inch, they will do the bass sounds. Again here you can go back to the second speakers I was looking at, 10, 12 or 15 because you'll be putting less bass into this speaker so it will be working less hard therefore this guy will be doing all the boom sound and this will be doing the vocals, the mid and top. Cost of the four cabs because of course you would need two each side, you're looking anything from £400

For cheap and cheerful, but remember, try not to buy cheap and cheerful. Up to, right, gulp, £5,000 to £6,000. It is a bit bananas. Right, OK, now lastly, now that looks a bit outrageous, so I'm going to just move the camera up. Now then, have you ever been to an outside venue? Because this is very, well, I mean, it's not to scale or anything like that. But if you can see here, this is known as something like an array system. Now this is the sort of system that they will use in huge outside events. Now of course they will use probably a lot more speakers than this. But what you'll find is they will fly huge systems of speakers. Any speakers that are above your head 99 times out of 100 will only supply you with mid and top because they'll have to be thrown out. The sound will have to be thrown quite a distance, sorry.

The square items there you can see are the compression drivers, the round ones are the mid and top, and then you come here to more say just mid. Now these guys here are the bass speakers, alright? Now again a hi-fi system, you're looking maybe 100 watts. A disco system, maybe up to 1000 watts. A club system, up to 10,000 watts. An outside venue, yes, 100,000 watts plus. So again, H, hi-fi. Yes, I do talk a lot. If you want any more information, give us a shout and don't forget if you want any makes, models, numbers, names, email me and I will try and help you out.

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