Sound in a room and a Marquee, what does it sound like?

0:00 Sound in a marquee and sound

Alright folks, Jonathan here. Let's talk about sound in a marquee and sound in a room. Right, now there we've got a square box and I've opened the box up, okay? The reason being is when it's open like that it's a marquee and when we close it up we'll pretend it's a room. Alright so let's put our speakers in the room like that and we've got our DJ, okay? And we'll put that guy there, right. Now what's happening, let's say a marquee, the sound is leaving the speakers, it's travelling towards the crowd and then it's continually travelling until it hits a wall. But in a marquee you haven't got a solid brick wall, you've just got cloth. So what happens is the sound will go directly through the cloth. Yes there'll be a very very tiny amount of echo but not enough to keep that sound...

0:54 In other words, the sound will just vanish

In other words, the sound will just vanish. Now then, if we then all of a sudden make our marquee into a building. Now just imagine we've got a wall on the top and also there's a wall behind the actual DJ. Now what's happening here now is the sound is leaving these speakers, it's hitting the wall here, it's hitting inanimate objects, tables, chairs, people. Well, not really inanimate, but you know what I mean. And what's happening is the sound is actually bouncing around and it's being kept in this room. Now then, not necessarily a rule of thumb, but I'll say this. If, let's say, you're playing in a room to 200 people and you've got 500 watts of power and you think that that is adequate, it probably is. The people are happy, they've got a decent sound. But if all of a sudden you take away those walls...

2:13 The sound will decrease far more than if you were in an actual room

And you're in a marquee situation, you'll find that that 500 watts of power maybe to exactly the same amount of people, 200, will not be enough. Because what's happening, the sound is just vanishing, it's going, it's just disappearing. Now if when you're in a marquee and you're stood right next to the speakers, it will be quite loud. But as soon as you start to walk away... The sound will decrease far more than if you were in an actual room. So what I would recommend is maybe not so much to double your amount of power that you would use, let's say, necessarily say if you've got 500 watts in a room. What I'm saying is you shouldn't then think I need 1000 watts in a marquee. But what I will say is you definitely need more power if you're playing to people in a marquee.

Because this is one of the main reasons, and that is if you stick to the amount of power you've actually got, what happens is that you tend to turn it up, and you tend to turn it higher and higher, and eventually what happens is you start overpowering your amplifier, overpowering your speakers. Thanks for watching. Practice and enjoy!

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