As part of our latest series of blogs, we’ve been exploring PA systems for small venues and providing our tips and insights into the best equipment to use and how to set your system up. In this entry, we’ll be diving deeper into speakers and most importantly, where to place them in your venue to provide the best sound experience possible. Once you’ve chosen between active and passive speakers, you now need to optimise the placement of them. The correct placement of speakers, subwoofers and monitors are imperative to both achieve the sound that you want and to ensure the audience go home happy with what they heard .
Consider your space
Before you can start setting up your speakers, you need to consider: the venue space and its layout, the acoustics of the room, where the audience will be situated, where each performer will be on stage and of course, the location of electrical outlets.
In an ideal scenario for easier set up, the audience would be straight in front of the stage, but that may not always be the case and you may need to angle the speakers in a more diagonal direction to cover tables or dance floors to the side of the stage (this is where small speakers with a wider dispersion pattern can come in handy).
However, when it comes to smaller spaces, this isn’t usually a problem and the audience are often directly in front of the stage. As for the number of speakers in this size of venue, you’ll need at least two ‘front of house’ or ‘left and right’ speakers which are aimed at the main part of the audience.
The Angle of Speakers
Many speaker setups will point the speakers directly towards the audience in front of the stage.
There are some issues caused by this set-up however. By pointing the speakers straight forward, this creates a large area directly in front of the stage where the speaker’s coverage doesn’t overlap with one another meaning only one speaker will be heard by audience members in that area. The area with optimal sound is typically further away from the stage and is quite small with this speaker setup. Also, the direct reflections from any walls can be rather harsh, adding unwanted coloration to the sound and reducing the clarity of the performance.
By angling the speaker ever so slightly inwards 25º, these issues are reduced considerably.
In this example, the speakers’ 90º coverage overlaps over a wider area and at a much closer distance to the stage, allowing the audience members closer to the stage to benefit from stereo reproduction. The stereo field itself is now much wider and larger, providing the majority of the audience with effective and optimum sound coverage from both speakers. Now, the distance between the speaker and their sidewall reflections are much greater, which means that the reflections are weaker than before, providing a more balanced and stable soundstage imaging.
Speaker Height
The height of your speakers is another important element to consider. There are still a number of venues that place speakers on the floor of the stage or dancefloor, which can have a negative effect on the sound.
Whilst bass frequencies flow around most obstacles like water, midrange and high frequencies can be likened to beams of light, meaning that anything in their path interrupts and absorbs them.
When speakers are placed on the floor, audience members positioned near the front of the stage both receive an earful of high frequencies whilst absorbing and dispersing those ‘mid-high’ frequencies and sounds. Therefore, those nearer the back hear the lows of the sound without the all-important midrange presence and high frequency sound that improves intelligibility and helps any vocal performance to stand out.
So, to avoid your audience members muffling and impacting your sound negatively, you should look to elevate your mid-high speakers above the crowd. Aim to have the horns of the speakers at least 7-8 feet above the dance floor. All you need to achieve this is a set of speaker stands, as most PA speakers will have an in-built socket to allow you to mount them.
Deciding where to place speakers in a small music venue is crucial to achieving high sound quality and ensuring both performers and the audience have an enjoyable experience. By applying these basic speaker placement techniques and considering the acoustics of the space, you’ll maximise the sound output to achieve the best quality possible. Keeping these tips in mind will allow you to confidently set up your speakers at your next small venue event.
If you require any assistance in choosing the right products for your PA system or setting them up, call us on 01274 777 200 or send an email to sales@pasystems.co.uk and a member of our team will be more than happy to help.
