Public Address System Is Not Sound System
Some of the customer who called us to put in a design for PA System for their meeting room. That is actually sound system and not PA system. Probably lots of public do not understand the term properly. We would explain to them that they wanted sound system for the meeting room and not PA system. Even some time we receive email from the ID consultant to ask for sound system design for the new building but in actual fact they wanted the PA system or Public Address System for the new building.
Public Address System
PA system or Public Address System is for public announcement for public area, car parks, schools and commercial building. It can be used to pipe in back ground music in restaurant or small bar. The system usually consists of ceiling speaker or box speaker distributed to cover the area and it is divided into zones. The idea is if there is any paging made people will be able to hear the announcement and response to it. This is useful during emergency in the school or public building for any fire breakout or emergency evacuation process.
The ceiling speaker is usually 3 watts and have high impedance transformer to allow link many ceiling speaker for one zone. So a 240 watts amplifier can power to about 70 nos of 3 watts ceiling speaker covering the building area. Playback music is not that clear but good enough for back ground music.
Sound System
Sound System requires bigger speaker and powerful amplifier in any room given. It is also called sound reinforcement system where the sound is amplified 10 times to produce louder sound with the playback music in good clarity for the audience to hear and appreciate. Auditorium, church and meeting room need this system for audio visual playback and music playback.
One of the important requirements for the sound reinforcement system is able to produce live speeches with clear spoken words to the audience. The coverage of the sound to all the seats has to be even within a different of 3 db or less. Thus designing a sound system is much more complex as the room is bigger. The sound for 1000 peoples is different requirement when compare to 100 peoples.
With this definition the sound system for your meeting room or lecture hall will have speaker ranging from 12″ to 15″ and sound power from 350 watts to 600 watts for just one speaker. In some area the speaker system will consist of loudspeaker and subwoofer. The amplifier power is calculated to match the speaker and sound is mix through the sound mixer.
Hence the Public Address system should not confuse with the sound system as the later are for live music, whereas PA system are reproduction of recorded music and announcement in public buildings and institutions.
In the lighting and sound company we will have basic rule for the sound system design and public address system design which make it easier to refer based on the drawing layout. Hence for sound system expect to have bigger speaker installed compared to ceiling speaker used for PA system.
Whether your requirement is a Matrix PA system, Digital Public Address System or just a simple Sound System you need to provide more details so that we will be able to offer our products recommendation to your requirement.