Buying PA Advise, Active or Passive, for the DJ and Mobile DJ BY Ellaskins

0:00 First, active passive, inch

Alright guys, this video is all about active and passive speakers, hopefully helping you to make the right decision about buying either active or passive. Now behind me I've got an active speaker from a company called QSC, it's known as the K12. It's one kilowatt of power, there were two amplifiers in there, one to drive the 12 inch, the other one to drive the high-end compression driver. Now first of all what I do recommend is that you maybe put a little bit more money into buying good quality PA. Why? Well the last thing you want to do is spend a great deal of money on a fantastic controller, a MacBook Pro and then buy a cheap and cheerful PA because all that's going to happen is you're not going to get a good sound. You could have the world's best mixer, the world's best computer but

If you have not got a good quality PA system you're going to end up having really rubbish sound and it's pointless investing in your best controller. So let's imagine that you've got £100, €100, $100 and you're going to buy a speaker, a powered speaker. Let's have a look and see what that speaker maybe would look like and I'm going to use some Lego. So first of all there's the housing. Okay so that's the housing now let's talk about similar to the QSC K12 here. And a mid and top. So the first of all, first of all we need a 12 inch speaker so we're going to put the 12 inch speaker on there. All of this will be as clear as mud very shortly so you can see that that's our 12 inch speaker and now I'm going to put a high end speaker

A compression driver on the top. I'm going to do that, I'm going to put a compression driver on the top and now I need an amplifier don't I? So I'm going to put an amplifier on the top of that as well.

1:58 This is an active cheap speaker

So that's the speaker. All right, yes it is. I'll explain. This is an active cheap speaker. The housing okay as you can see is red. The base speaker is black. Now what happens with not all but a lot of the cheaper models is they'll just source a speaker and they'll put it into the box. There will be very little thought on how that is going to act and react and work with the box. They'll just get a cheap speaker and chuck it in the box. They'll also then find a cheap and cheerful compression driver and put it in the box and then they'll source an amplifier, they'll plug it all together and you've pretty much got a mix and match speaker that will work. It'll sound relatively good but it's highly unlikely that it's going to last a long time and as soon as you start turning it up it

May start to rattle and hum. So that's our 12 inch speaker. What I want to do now is show you, let's say for example something like the K12. Okay so there's our housing. Now what they do then is they will make sure that they have a 12 inch speaker that is designed perfectly for that cab. So there is our 12 inch speaker there. Then of course they'll make sure that they've got a compression driver that's designed perfectly for the cab. There is our compression driver and then what they'll do, sadly I don't have two separate pieces here but you imagine that that there is two separate pieces. So one half, excuse me, is the amplifier for the bass speaker. The other half is the amplifier for the mid and top and then that will be fitted there. So there you go. That is what

4:20 I want to talk a little bit now about passive

The K12 will look like. Everything is perfectly made, designed for the one purpose to give you pro quality sound. Now that's what mid price and above to high end manufacturers will do. They'll make sure that everything is made for the one enclosure not bits from all over the place. Alright I want to talk a little bit now about passive. Now again passive is slightly different because let's imagine now that that there is the speaker. That is the housing, the bass speaker and the mid and top. And all of a sudden you think I need to buy an amplifier so you go and buy an amplifier. You buy an amplifier and there you go. Now you'll notice that the amplifier maybe doesn't suit the speaker. A lot of people do this they will buy a JBL

Speaker and they'll go and buy an RCF amp or they'll buy a Nexo speaker and they'll buy a KAM amp. Now they may work but the best thing to do there is to buy JBL speaker and a JBL amp, a KAM speaker and a KAM amp. So what you're doing is you're making sure that the two work correctly. But again there's a lot more to it there. The difference with passive and active, excuse me, is active and active is active and active is active and active and active. With active, good quality active speakers the amplification inside those speakers will be perfectly manufactured for the speakers inside the enclosure. Whereas if you buy passive you need to make sure that the amplifiers you buy will work perfectly for the speaker.

Now this is where your choice comes in. There's no point buying a 1000 watt speaker and thinking well I don't want to blow it up. So I'm going to buy a 500 watt amp. You crank your amp up thinking the speaker will work perfectly because the amps 500 watts, the speakers 1000 it's going to be fine. It won't be because as soon as you start turning that amplifier up too much and put a square signal into that speaker it's possible that you could blow that speaker so you need to beware. Be wary.

6:27 With active you have two speakers right and left

So with passive and passive let's imagine you're at a gig and all of a sudden the sound system stops working and you've got one amp. It's feasible, it's possible, it's highly likely that the amplifier there's something wrong with the amplifier. It's blown, it's stopped, the fuse has gone so you've got to run around everywhere to try and get it fixed but of course if it has gone wrong to the point where you can't fix it you're pretty much stuffed. With active you have two speakers right and left. If one of them goes wrong then it's possible the other one might go wrong but at least you still have one speaker, at least you still have some form of sound to keep you going through the night so my advice is

If you're going to buy passive make sure you take along with you one active speaker as a backup. You could use it as a monitor by the side of you and if all of a sudden the proverbial hit the fan then turn that around and at least you've got some form of audio. If on the other hand you do buy active then if one of the speakers stops working at least you've got the other one but if you buy active, cheap active speakers then be very wary because you may not get the quality and fidelity of sound that the public would want. The public pretty much do demand these days. On the other hand if you buy good quality now here's something else that's really important with good quality sound systems the manufacturers especially with the likes of QSC have made sure that you can't, alright

You can, you can still blow these if you really tried hard enough but you'd have to try very hard but companies like QSC make sure that there's no limiters and they make sure that the speaker inside matches the amplifier so, so long as you look after the speakers and the system the system will look after you. Now I hope that's been a help any comments or any questions bung them underneath and don't forget to subscribe practice and enjoy thank you.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.