Advice for an amateur - Bose 802?

[spasticteapot]

Hi all,
First time I've posted, and am hoping maybe some of you might care to offer some suggestions...

I am a dance teacher using my laptop and Bose Companion speakers for class which is fine when there is ~20 people in a small hall. I'm looking to buy a system to use for gym size rooms with 80-100 people. Mostly I'll still be using my laptop, but occasionally will have live musicians (fiddle & piano). I've been to all the pro audio places in my area and told such a variety of things I don't know what to believe.

Any suggestions/comments about the Bose 802 system, Yorkville (Elite or pulse series) or Yamaha stagepas 300? I'm only able to spend in the $1000 - $2000 range for the everything. The music is mostly fiddle/piano and sometimes accordian/drum/keyboard.
Thanks for any help!
Totally confused in Ottawa.

Line arrays. You want some line arrays.

http://www.lonesaguaro.com/speakers/array/array.htm

There's a lot of ways to do these, but generally the formula is simple.

1. Get lots and lots of mid-woofers. Put them one on top of another either in a box or open baffle.
2. Get either one really good tweeter, or mutliple tweeters. One tweeter makes more sense for home listening; multiple tweeters for PA use. You want multiple tweeters.
3.Put the tweeter either in the dead center of the array, or multiple tweeters right next to the woofers, as close as possible. Generally, the closer are the tweeters are to each other and the mid-woofers, the better.
4. Build a crossover at the point that the assorted formulas dictate. You're better off bi-amping with an active crossover. This means you have one stereo power amplifier for the tweeters, and one for the woofers, and one for the sub-woofers, with a small electronic filter (essentially a few $5 op-amps and some capacitors and resistors - they're cheap!) between the pre-amplifier and the power amplifiers. This results in much greater efficiency, and a lower cost.
5. Add subwoofers, preferably one per speaker. If you're on a budget and need lots of power, four 8" Silver Flute woofers per side would be great - you'd have a massive amount of bass with a cost of under $40 per driver.

There's a couple of approaches to designing these - I'm hardly an expert. However, aside from the terriffic efficiency (sixteen drivers per side means +28db of efficiency and 16x the power handling!) the biggest advantage lies in that the more drivers you have, the lower the distortion will (usually) be.

The boxes are also pretty simple - some drivers don't need boxes at all.

While directionality can be a problem, these can often be surprisingly economical. For example, the NS4-193-8e is a very nice speaker driver for only $8.50 in quantity - 32 of them, for 16 per side, would only be $272 plus shipping. While the treble won't work past 5khz due to comb filtering, you'll get very nice results from about 100hz on up.

An example of these in a much smaller array:
(it's near the bottom)
http://www.diyparadise.com/fetish/fetish.html

For the tweeters, you'll want them spaced as close together as possible in one up-down line. A nice bet is the ND20FB, which is only $5 each - sixteen of these per side will be more than adequate, and result in a two-foot-high line that should give plenty of treble up to a very high frequency before comb filtering is a problem - and the active crossover can help fix that.
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=275-035

This adds $160 to the cost of drivers.

Alternately, you can go with some Bohlender-Graebner Neo3-PDRs. These are planar tweeters, which eliminate many of the issues with combing, and they're also of much better quality. However, this is reflected in the pricetag - $40 each in quanities of four or more.

You'll want at least four per side, for a cost of $320 - however, eight may not be a bad idea. Thankfully, you can always buy more later, and because planar tweeters are immune to most problems with comb filtering (which happens when you have lots of individual sources of sound), I might consider these instead.

Add either two or four of these per side in ported boxes - you may as well just stick the arrays on top of them. These are essentially mini-arrays of four drivers - but they're big drivers!

http://www.madisound.com/cgi-bin/ind....6456&pid=1638

Two woofers per side is likely more than adequate, and will run you an additional $160.

The total cost would then be $270 for the mid-woofers, $160 for the sub-woofers, and either $160 or $320 depending on which type of tweeter you get. This results in a total cost for the drivers of $590 for the dome-tweeter version and $750 for the planar tweeter version.

For the amplifer modules, I would go with the Hypex UCD180's, at about $100 each, or the UCD400's, at about $150 each. These are "amplifier modules" - connect wires to the inputs, outputs, and power leads, and you're done. You'll need six, so you'll be paying $600 or $900.

These are highly efficient amplifier modules, and you'll need the power - 540 watts per channel for the 180's, or 1200 watts per channel for the 400's. I'm not sure you'll need that much power, though - the max power of the tweeters would be 160 watts, so the 180's will be more than adequate if you give them sufficient ventilation, even if used for hours.

For the active crossover, you'll want some OPA627's or similarly high-quality op-amps. You'll need quite a lot - most active filters use tw or three op-amps, and you'll need six active filters. The exact design depends on how, exactly, you build you speakers, but I doubt that the total cost would be more than $100 or so.

Alternately, you can get a pair of Behringer DEQ2496 active EQ modules. These would allow you ease of use and excellent performance, but at a price - $350 each. However, if you want reliable, pro-level gear, this is the way to go. (I'd go with a pair of simple active filters for the subwoofers - all you really need is a "low-pass", which is very simple indeed.)

So, here's the layout for a pair of very nice line arrays:

Midwoofers - $270
Tweeters - $320
Sub-woofers - $160
Hypex UCD180's - $600
Behringer DEQ2496s(2x) - $700
High density fiberboard (HDF) for cabinets - $100

Total: $2200.

EDIT:

By eliminating the Behringers, you can save $600 or so, for a total cost of only $1500.