Our rock band will perform in a concert hall with a capacity of 2000 people. How much power will we require?
I recently purchased some PA speakers. I’d like to turn them up as loud as possible without blowing them up. What kind of amplifier should I buy?
Similar questions are frequently asked at Crown, and this post will provide some solutions.
First, decide what you want to achieve. Are you looking for a way to power some loudspeakers so they can play as loudly as possible without burning out? If that’s the case, all you have to do now is read the paragraphs below. Do you want to achieve a certain level of volume in a specific location? If that’s the case, skip ahead to the section on Power vs. Application.
How much power can my speakers handle?
By looking at the speaker’s data sheet, you can figure this out. Look for a spec called Nominal Impedance. It’ll usually be 2, 4, 8, or 16 ohms. Next, search for the Continuous Power Handling or Continuous Power Rating specification on the loudspeaker. It’s also known as an IEC rating or a power capacity.
Use a power amp that provides 2 to 4 times the speakers continuous power rating per channel if you can avoid the power amp from clipping (by utilizing a limiter). This leaves 3 to 6 dB of headroom for audio signal peaks. Short-term peaks are designed into speaker design. If you can’t maintain the power amp from clipping (for example, if you don’t have a limiter and the system becomes overdriven or feedback), the amplifier output should be equivalent to the continuous power rating of the speakers. As a result, if the amp clips due to overdriving its input, the speaker will not be damaged. Because there is no headroom for peaks in this situation, you’ll have to operate the speaker at a lower power than its rated power to avoid distortion.
If you’re mostly playing light dancing music or singing, we recommend setting the amplifier power per channel to 1.6 times the Continuous Power level. Try 2.5 times the Continuous Power rating per channel if you’re doing heavy metal/grunge. The amplifier’s power must be rated for the loudspeaker’s impedance (2, 4, 8 or 16 ohms).
Here’s an illustration. Assume your speaker’s impedance is 4 ohms and its Continuous Power Handling is 100 W. The amplifier’s 4-ohm power should be 1.6 x 100 W or 160 W continuous per channel if you’re playing light dance music. The amplifier’s 4-ohm power should be 2.5 x 100 W or 250 W continuous per channel to handle heavy metal/grunge.
If you use a lot more power, you’ll probably destroy the speaker because you’ll be pushing the cone to its limits. You’ll probably turn up the amp till it clips if you use much less power, trying to get the speaker loud enough. Due to overheating, clipping can harm speakers. So stick to 1.6 to 2.5 times the continuous power rating of the speaker.
Power vs. Application
This section will help you figure out how large of a power amplifier you’ll need to fill a room with loud, clear sound. The more electricity is used, the louder the sound system and the larger the room. High-sensitivity loudspeakers require less power than low-sensitivity loudspeakers.
The table below shows the overall amplifier power required for a variety of applications. Based on the required loudness and normal loudspeaker sensitivity, each application has a power range.
We made the following assumptions while producing this list:
- Home stereos have a sensitivity of 85 dB SPL/W/m, small PA speakers have a sensitivity of 95 dB SPL/W/m, medium PA speakers have a sensitivity of 100-105 dB, and large PA speakers have a sensitivity of 110 dB.
- For folk, jazz, and pop music, the recommended power allows for signal peaks of 10 dB. The peaks could be as loud as 25 dB, but we’re taking into account any inaudible short-term clipping.
- For rock music that is heavily limited or compressed, the suggested power allows for signal peaks of 6 dB.
- Gerald Stanley, Crown’s lead amplifier engineer, claims that amplifier continuous power and peak power are almost identical. Peak power is typically 1 dB higher than continuous power, and peak duration affects peak power.
Total amplifier power required in various applications
- Nearfield monitoring: 25 W for an average of 85 dB SPL (with 15 dB peaks), 250 W for an average of 95 dB SPL (with 15 dB peaks)
- Home stereo: 150 W for average SPL of 85 dB (with 15 dB peaks), 1,500 W for average SPL of 95 dB (with 15 dB peaks)
- Folk music in a 50-seat coffee shop: 25 to 250 W
- Folk music at a 150-250 seat medium-sized auditorium, club, or institution of worship: 95-250 watts
- 250 W for folk music at a small outdoor festival (50 feet between speaker and audience)
- In a medium-sized auditorium, listen to pop or jazz music. 150 to 250 seats in a club or temple of worship: 250 to 750 W
- Pop or jazz music at a performance hall with a capacity of 2000 people: 400-1200 watts
- Rock music at a 150-250 seat medium-sized auditorium, club, or institution of worship: At the very least 1,500 W
- Rock music at a small outdoor festival (with a speaker 50 feet away from the audience): a minimum of 1,000 to 3,000 W
- In a stadium, arena, or ampitheater (100 to 300 feet from speaker to audience), rock or heavy metal music: 4,000 to 15,000 W at the very least
Although a rock performance in a stadium could use 15,000 watts (leaving only 6 dB of headroom for peaks), huge touring sound firms are more likely to use 80,000 to 400,000 watts altogether. That much power is required to handle 20-to-24 dB peaks without clipping, as well as to power additional speakers to cover a vast area evenly.
If a single loudspeaker cannot handle the complete power necessary, the total power must be divided among many loudspeakers and amplifier channels. Assume you require 1000 watts to attain the desired average loudness, but your speakers’ continuous power handling is just 250 watts. You might use a 500-watt per channel power amplifier. On each channel, connect two loudspeakers in parallel. Each speaker will receive 250 watts in this manner (not considering the change in amplifier power at different impedances, and not considering cable losses).
The overall impedance of two speakers is reduced when they are paralleled. Two 8-ohm speakers connected in parallel, for example, have an impedance of 4 ohms. Each speaker would receive half of the amplifier’s 4-ohm power in this situation.
Power Calculator
A calculator on the Crown website calculates the amplifier power required to reach the specified SPL at a given distance. It also takes into account how many decibels of amplifier headroom are required for audio peaks. The equations utilized are listed in the text that comes with the calculator. To access Crown’s power calculator, click on the following link: Calculator
You’ll need to know the loudspeaker sensitivity, peak headroom, listener distance, and target SPL to use that calculator. Let’s take a look at each element individually.
The sensitivity spec can be found in the data sheet for the loudspeaker. A PA loudspeaker’s typical sensitivity ranges from 95 to 110 dB-SPL/watt/meter. High-frequency drivers have higher sensitivity than low-frequency drivers, and larger speakers have higher sensitivity than smaller speakers.
Because music has transient peaks that are 6 to 25 dB higher than the average level, the power amplifier must be capable of handling those peaks without distortion.
If you need 100 watts of continuous power to produce the desired average SPL, you’ll need 1,000 watts for 10 dB peaks, 3,162 watts for 15 dB peaks, and 10,000 watts for 20 dB peaks. Peaks clearly demand significantly more power than ordinary levels. Enter 6 dB in the Peak Headroom field of the calculator for compressed or limited rock music, or 20 to 25 dB for uncompressed live music. Enter 10 to 15 dB if you don’t mind any short-term clipping that may be inaudible.
The distance between the loudspeaker and the farthest listener is measured in meters. This distance is measured from the nearest loudspeaker if you’re employing multiple loudspeakers that reach into the audience. The listener distance is 50 feet if the audience is 100 feet deep and you have speakers at 0 feet and 50 feet.
If you don’t know the exact distance, you can make an educated guess using the figures shown below. Make sure the distance is entered in meters (m).
Sound pressure levels (SPLs) for various forms of music are listed below. The SPL meter was set to delayed response and C-weighting. To achieve a decent signal-to-noise ratio, your system should be at least 10 dB above the surrounding noise level.
Other Considerations
The estimates shown here are for anechoic or outdoor environments. If the sound system is installed inside a venue, room reverberation will normally boost the SPL by 6 dB. This excess headroom can be put to good use.
Assume you need 1000 watts of peak power and your speaker’s continuous power handling capacity is 250 watts. The peak power handling of a speaker is typically four times the continuous power handling. As a result, the speaker is likely capable of handling 1000 watts peak. That means you can drive that speaker with a 1000 watt amplifier as long as you just use that power for peaks and don’t use 1000 watts consistently. To put it another way, don’t raise up the volume to the point where it clips.
What if your sound system has an active crossover and each speaker has its own power amplifier channel? Use the calculator for each type of driver. Let’s pretend you have a three-way system. Determine the power for the subwoofers, midrange drivers, and high-frequency speakers independently. At the same distance, all three types of drivers should create the same SPL. Because horn-loaded drivers have a significantly higher sensitivity than subwoofers, the horns use less power to achieve the same SPL.
Assume your sound system includes many loudspeakers that reach out into the audience. Consider an outdoor festival with 100-foot-long speaker clusters or a series of ceiling-mounted speakers. Apply the calculator to each speaker cluster or individual speaker in the area.
Crown Amplifier Selection Guide (rated by total power)
You can choose a Crown amplifier from this list after you know how much power you require. Because each power amplifier produces varying amounts of power depending on the load impedance, there is considerable overlap in this list.
If you plan to expand your applications, you might wish to buy an amplifier with more power than you require. It’s also a good idea to provide a little more power than you’ll require. If the system is too loud, you can always turn down the power amp, but if the system is too quiet, you can’t turn it up past maximum!
400-800 W: CE 1000, CE 2000, CH1, CL1, CTs 600, CTs 1200, K1, MA-602, MA-1202, SR II, XLS 202, XLS 402, XLS 602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602, MA-602,
CE 1000, CE 2000, CH1, CH2, CL2, CTs 4200, K1, MA-1202, SR II, XLS 402, XLS 602, Xs500, Xs700, XLS 402, XLS 602, XLS 402, XLS 602
1000-1,500 W: CE 1000, CE 2000TX, CE 4000, CH2, CH4, CL1, CL2, CL4, CTs 1200, CTs 2000, CTs 3000, CTs 4200, CTs 8200, K1, K2, MA-1202, MA-2402, SR II, XLS 402, XLS 602, Xs500, Xs700, Xs900, Xs1200, XLS 402, XLS 602, XLS 40
CE 4000, CH4, CL2, CL4, CTs 2000, CTs 3000, CTs 8200, I-T4000, I-T6000, K2, MA-3600VZ, MA-5002VZ, SR I, XLS 602, Xs700, Xs900, Xs1200, MA-3600VZ, MA-5002VZ, SR I, XLS 602, Xs700, Xs900, Xs1200, MA-3
You should be able to purchase or recommend a power amplifier with the appropriate wattage for the style of music and venue using the tools and information in this article.
Second edition of Don and Carolyn Davis’ Sound System Engineering. pp. 273-275, Howard W. Sams & Co., 1987.
Gerald Stanley, Crown International’s Senior Vice President of Research and Development.
How much energy does a concert consume?
A complete concert does not pull anywhere near the power levels we expected, as shown in the graph below. The concert utilized 6.43 kWh of energy in total, which indicates that a single Gridless 7000 could have powered the entire stage.
What is the energy consumption of a music festival?
Unfortunately, no definitive statistics on the number of generators utilized per festival is available, however some sources suggest that it is around 250. For a single music festival, this translates to about 16,000 gallons of fuel burned. According to Powerful Thinking, a think tank focusing on energy management for live events, the United Kingdom’s festivals alone utilize 5 million liters (1,320,860 gallons) of gasoline every year.
How much power do large speakers consume?
If you’re a frugal person, I’m sure this question crosses your mind from time to time. If you appreciate music as much as I do, I’m sure speakers are one of the home equipment you utilize on a regular basis. Most of us leave them on all the time and never think about turning them off.
Is this unhealthy habit, though, driving up our electrical bills? Do speakers consume a lot of power?
Speakers, on the whole, don’t use a lot of electricity. Speakers require about 100 Watts of electricity on average, which isn’t much when compared to the numerous other electrical and technological devices we use. The amount of electricity used by a speaker is determined by the volume of the speaker amplifier, as well as the speaker’s sensitivity.
Don’t worry if this sounds overly simplified to you. Because I’ll go over everything you need to know about speakers and electricity in great detail.
You’ll find out what causes speakers to consume so much power towards the end of this article. This is critical because it is very dependent on the sort of speakers you have and how you want to utilize them.
You’ll learn how to calculate a speaker’s power consumption later in the article so you can figure out how much electricity your speakers use. Let’s get started if all of this sounds fascinating to you.
What is the average amount of electricity used at a festival?
Festivals can consume over 30,000 megawatts of electricity over the course of a weekend, equivalent to the amount of electricity consumed by the residents of Bath!
Despite these enormous demands, event organizers are growing increasingly keen to make the event as environmentally sustainable as possible, and they are increasingly looking for methods to advertise it in a way that increases its green credentials.
Do servers consume a lot of power?
World data center power use reached 416 terawatts in 2017, accounting for 3% of global electricity consumption, with American server rooms using 90 billion kW.
What is the average amount of electricity used by speakers?
Much depends on your listening habits and the effectiveness of your speaker. If you enjoy listening to loud, uncompressed music and your speakers are 90dB efficient, 200 Watts should enough. 50 Watts is plenty if you merely listen to light classical or jazz and don’t expect them to rock the house.
High-efficiency speakers, such as horns, use extremely little power. This is due to the fact that one Watt can produce 95 decibels of sound, which is already quite loud. A 6dB increase in sound pressure will cost four times as much in Watts, but we’re still talking about less than five Watts to produce more than 100dB of sound, and sixteen to thirty-two Watts for rock concert levels.
Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that most music isn’t always loud. The volume of soft sections is significantly below 90 decibels. This indicates that the average Watts required by your speakers for most listening is around ten to twenty at most.
Go for more Watts if you want the best sound, but never at the sacrifice of sonic quality.
1000 watts equals how many RMS?
While my Clarion DPX1001.2 is in the shop, I bought this amp to temporarily replace it.
I didn’t want to spend more than $100, and my Audiobahn A1206T required roughly 1000 watts RMS.
The subwoofer is a twin 4ohm voicecoil type with an RMS of 1100 watts and a maximum of 2000 watts.
I found a refurbished 2500M for $85 delivered, which is a good price and it appears to be brand new.
Keep in mind that you’ll never reach the max rating on modern cheap amps like this SSL/Soundstorm amp or others like Power Acoustik or Planet Audio, and it’s not a continuous/RMS rating, so ignore it.
The watts for your amp is what the amp can do RMS at 4 ohms, and that’s the amount you’re searching for.
SSL’s website puts it at 1250 RMS in this scenario, which is around 1000 watts RMS.
Both values are generous for a $100 amplifier, but let’s just suppose they’re true at 4 ohms.
It may be able to push more power at 2 ohms, but once you start putting more strain on the amp, things start to go sour.
Because my amp is a single channel amp and my sub is a dual 4 ohm, I have it set up for a 2 ohm load.
Obviously, I wouldn’t try to run a low-cost 1000 watt amp at 1 ohm because you’re simply begging for thermal protection to kick in assuming it works at all.
So, I used a 2 ohm load on this amp with the gain set to slightly over half because that’s what I got before the sub began to produce noticeable distortion.
With some rock and hip hop music, I played it for around 20 minutes.
I checked several older tunes that have a lot of bass but don’t put too much strain on the amp.
I experimented with the following tracks:
Then I became intrigued and began listening to some Bass Mekanik.
“Rule the Universe” is a tune from the album Sonic Overload.
The amp never gave up or went into thermal protect after roughly 20 to 30 minutes of steady bass lines and 30hz tones.
Since I increased the gain a little, I was pleasantly delighted.
I’m not sure how much longer it could have gone, and I’m glad I didn’t try to find out because the amp was extremely hot when I opened the trunk and touched it.
Anything with a long bottom tone, such as bass music, should be maintained to a minimum.
Depending on the music, bass-heavy rap like 2 Chainz or whatever people are listening to these days could possibly fall into that category.
I don’t listen to much bass music these days, but I do like to stretch my subs with some Bass Mekanik nostalgia every now and then.
I’m pleased with this amplifier, which provided me with the 1000 watts RMS I required for $100.
It’s somewhat heavy and will take up some trunk room; nevertheless, it’s well-built and didn’t shut down for over an hour at 2 ohms, which shocked me the most.
On dynamic music, this amp can reach rather loud at 2 ohms.
Bass music isn’t for everyone, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
1000 RMS watts for under $100 is a steal given we used to pay an arm and a leg for 1000 RMS watts in the 1990s.
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