Has anyone rigged up a PA power amp in a home set-up ?

[bardley]

I used two Crown XLS amps bridged a few years back. The sound was effortlessly powerful but ragged and very unrefined. In the end, they had to go.

Interesting, designed for sheer grunt, like a nightclub setup, but no clarity.

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[rigger67]

Hmmm ... been away for a couple of days and I'm just catching up on this thread again.
I wonder if given what's been said above they would be fine if the listener mostly played dance music ? I mean house or EDM as it's known by the kids.
Or metal or hiphop come to that ?
Stuff that's meant to be heard very loud ...

I think I will try it out as there are too many big and beefy amps of the type I'm on about for next to no money for me not to give it a go.
I'll just keep an eye on Marketplace till one pops up for £30 or less and I'll have a go

[Macca]

The Crown amps are interesting - the expensive ones (several grand) measure reasonably well, the cheaper ones seem to have a lot of high order harmonic distortion, although at a low level. But they have DSP and crossovers so you can cut the bass to satellites and feed it just to the subs.

I get the rough sounding thing as that's been my impression too but with a PA system you never know if it is the speakers to blame.

I did once get a listen to a fairly small PA system that still sticks in my mind as one of the best things I ever heard. But that was a long time ago.

[Enossification]

I can't be 100% certain but I think I remember the amps being Crown XLS2002 types. I had two of them from new and bridged them into KEF R5 speakers. The preamp at that time was a Prima Luna Prologue 3 which I also was glad to see the back of replacing it with my current Fidelity Audio Pre120 SE, a big step up in smoothness. The Crown amps were replaced by my current Usher R1.5 power.

I have also in the past used Samson Servo 600 power amps and they were so good. Heavy, solid and powerful with great bass control. I'd recommend these.

[Enossification]

I wonder if given what's been said above they would be fine if the listener mostly played dance music ? I mean house or EDM as it's known by the kids.
Or metal or hiphop come to that ?
Stuff that's meant to be heard very loud ...

I listen mainly to electronic music with large amounts of sub bass and very few vocals. OK so not really club music but even with this kind of noise I could not recommend the Crown amps I had.

[bardley]

I listen mainly to electronic music with large amounts of sub bass and very few vocals. OK so not really club music but even with this kind of noise I could not recommend the Crown amps I had.

I get that the roughness can come from the flight case type speakers. What you listening to them through out of interest?

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[rigger67]

I did once get a listen to a fairly small PA system that still sticks in my mind as one of the best things I ever heard. But that was a long time ago.

Yeah, me too - at a club I DJed at for several years, The Soul Cellar in Southampton.
The entire sound system in the main room was replaced and the company who supplied it - which I can't remember now, of course - gave the owners a massive discount in order to be able to use it as a demo room for their customers.
I think they got a £12k rig for about half that and it sounded sublime.
We had loads of really great acts play there during that time - Brand New Heavies, Craig Charles, Marva Whitney (James Brown's #1 female vocalist), the James Taylor Quartet, etc - and they always sounded great. The room isn't massive - holding 200 tops - but it had a low ceiling and a really intimate vibe.

We just played some acid jazz on it one day when it was empty, not long after being fitted out, and even at stupidly loud volumes it was controlled and clear and tight but really guttural in the bass department too.

The only other time anything of the sort got close was at another small venue - the Student Union at Winchester School of Art - when they had a reggae soundsystem down from London. They put a giant bass-bin speaker (the size of a coffin on its end) in each corner of the tiny dancefloor and if you stood in the middle, the four units would force you to dance .. either that or your solar plexus would just fly from your midriff like a scene from Alien

[Macca]

Yeah, me too - at a club I DJed at for several years, The Soul Cellar in Southampton.
The entire sound system in the main room was replaced and the company who supplied it - which I can't remember now, of course - gave the owners a massive discount in order to be able to use it as a demo room for their customers.
I think they got a £12k rig for about half that and it sounded sublime.
We had loads of really great acts play there during that time - Brand New Heavies, Craig Charles, Marva Whitney (James Brown's #1 female vocalist), the James Taylor Quartet, etc - and they always sounded great. The room isn't massive - holding 200 tops - but it had a low ceiling and a really intimate vibe.

We just played some acid jazz on it one day when it was empty, not long after being fitted out, and even at stupidly loud volumes it was controlled and clear and tight but really guttural in the bass department too.

The only other time anything of the sort got close was at another small venue - the Student Union at Winchester School of Art - when they had a reggae soundsystem down from London. They put a giant bass-bin speaker (the size of a coffin on its end) in each corner of the tiny dancefloor and if you stood in the middle, the four units would force you to dance .. either that or your solar plexus would just fly from your midriff like a scene from Alien

The one I heard was not even an installation, just two large satellites and two subs at some corporate do. That was when I was at University. It was during holidays when they rented out the campus to the OU and various companies, and some business was having their Xmas party in one of the refectories.

I only went down there to use the cigarette machine in the lobby and heard this fantastic sound so had to stick my head round the door. I wish I knew what the kit was.

[Enossification]

I get that the roughness can come from the flight case type speakers. What you listening to them through out of interest?

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KEF R5's.

[bardley]

KEF R5's.

Fantastic...I bet that sounds something special.

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