House Party System

Recently, there was a discussion (in another forum: sorry ODJT) started by a guy who wanted to put together a small, inexpensive system for his wife to use for small events. He only wanted to spend $1000. It got me thinking about what I could cobble together with gear I already owned, to assemble a small system for house parties. That’s what prompted me to revisit the Linux system I talked about in another thread.

I do occasional house parties, and I use my Small (rack) System, but it’s even a little too much for some of those parties. I’ve used just a single EVOX8 at several smaller parties, and it worked fine.

Here’s the thing; right now I only own three PA speakers, and they’re all identical RCF EVOX-8’s. They are not REAL big, and not real heavy, but I think there might be better alternatives for small house parties.

My question is: What would be your ideal choice for a set of house party PA speakers (no budget restrictions)?

If you only had a $1000 budget, what speakers would you choose?

If you do house parties, what speakers do you use and why?

wifedj said:

I choose to delay the purchase until I had sufficient resources to obtain professional, reliable, quality, unused gear...

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There was already a question in my original post that covered that scenario.[emoji1]...

My question is: What would be your ideal choice for a set of house party PA speakers (no budget restrictions)?

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OK... Apparently some of you are a little apprehensive about delving into this conversation. It's obviously not as exciting as say... a Mixmastmachom thread. Let's see if I can get it going by adding s little more background...

Most of the small parities I've done would NOT have required two EVOX-8's. I used to take my pair of Alto TS112W's. In some cases, one TS112W would have been enough, but I always liked to set up two just in case I had a problem with one (never happened). Here's the downside... the tripods for those two speakers took up WAY too much space. Maybe a different kind of stand would have been better. Regardless, I don't own the Alto TS112W's nor do I own the Alto TS110A's anymore. Selling all of my old tripod mounted speakers was probably a bad idea now that I think back on it, but I did what I did. But now I have NO real scalability options... don't even have any "fill" speakers if I needed them.

So... I want to buy some kind of smaller speaker setup I could use for house parties, AND I want a couple of speakers I could add as fill speakers with my current EVOX-8's. They MIGHT be the same speakers; they might not. I'm looking for suggestions.

At first I was thinking about some kind of smaller Column PA System, but most of the good ones are about the same size and price as my current RCF EVOX-8's. Even if I went with something like a Bose Compact, I'd still want to buy two (though one would have worked for many parties I've done). I'm probably going to pull the trigger on a EVOX-JMIX8 and a J8, but for a different purpose. Both of those are the same size and output of the one's I already have. I want something less powerfull, lighter, and smaller for these small events, but something that still sounds really good. I'm not the type to take ALL the HUGE gear I own to a party with 10 people.

steve149 said:

A lot depends on what you need. If you have a laptop/tablet and that is your music source, I would probably spend $200 on a decent mixer, $100 on cables and $700 for a pair of speakers. I might shop sales for a pair of RCF HD10A (normally $800/pr, I've seen them for $700ish), maybe a Rolls RM69 MixMate 3 mixer ($175ish) and a pair of stands/cables.

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Just thinkin’ about PA speakers for now. I’m hoping to use them with my Linux/Mixxx Laptop and American Audio VMS 4.1 for smaller house parties, keeping in mind I can already use one or two EVOX-8’s for larger house parties. I’m looking for something smaller, lighter, less powerful, and less expensive than the EVOX-8’s. It would be nice if I could also use whatever I buy as fill speakers for larger events, but not necessary. I’d buy two different sets if that’s what I need to do.

I asked the $1000 question because that’s about what I hoped to spend, but it’s not a set limit.

I appreciate your input.[emoji4]

wifedj said:

I saw dat but didn't answer because my honest, considered answer would "Depends on the house and on the party."

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Anybody can answer ANY question with; “It depends”. It’s an answer, but not a very helpful one. If you were trying to be funny, then you were as successful at that as you usually are.

If I had a PARTICULAR house or house party in mind, I would have described it, but I’m merely looking for some speakers for small (future unknown) events that would require less output than the speakers I already have. If you have never done a house party and don’t have any suggestions, that’s OK.

OK... Let’s take a different approach...[emoji1]... A pair of Yamaha DBR12’s cost about $500 each... 1000Watts. My Alto TS112W’s were only 800Watts, and they had more than enough power for most any house party. If I need more power, I have the EVOX-8’s. So what do you think about the DBR12’s?

What about the Electro-Voice ZLX-12P’s???... Similar to the Yammy in power and weight, but around $100 less?

steve149 said:

Watts never equal watts and shouldn't be in a conversation of performance .. just my opinion .. there are much better specs to compare...

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OK... true.[emoji4]

Here’s an out-of-the-box option...

The LD Systems Maui 5... costs about $550 each. I saw a video review of the battery powered version by Brian Redd, and it looked and sounded pretty good. The battery version costs more, but might be something I might like to have in my arsenal.