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thanks, dude.
i am not expecting there to be gig levels of music, but am anticipating the rising volume thing as the evening progresses. i just have to be careful/warn all the prospective jazzy jeffs that it isn't ibiza.
the speakers are likely to be the weak link, i suppose.
the other options are: borrow/hire a pa or use the ipod/3.5mm jack in the pub.
secretly, i also want to hear my rig flat out...
BRM-
secretly, i also want to hear my rig flat out...
Unsurprising fact is unsurprising
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"secretly, I also want to hear my rig flat out..."
You are infected with the sound-mans virus. I'm sorry to say if it's not treated you will end up watching you tube videos of Jamaican sound systems in the afternoons whilst constantly scanning ebay for crown amps. The later stages involve huge amounts of cables with terminations most humans have never seen, constant back ache and tinnitus.
A few things to bear in mind :- Your speakers will be in mortal danger from drunks all night, you probably have no way to mount them on tripods so you can get them up out of the way of spilt drinks and projecting over the crowd. You can put together amplification with a simple mixer, so you can use your own speakers as mains then turn them into DJ booth mointors and add the pub pa or a hired PA/anything else you can raise as the night progresses. This keeps you busy all night tweaking but that's half the fun.
For the price of hire you could pick up a second system that you can reinforce your current system with. Then you need to store it though.
Aroogah
Airhead
Last restaurant venue I used around 4.5kw of amplification. It ended in a lock in and I could feel the mixer surface bouncing with the bass pressure. :) By the time I reached that stage there's limiting for speaker safety and eq on 6 different speakers to tune the PA to the room. It's the kind of situation that suits the ZXa5 perfectly (1250w each). I've done it with just them and it's almost too easy. They have no internal limiting though so it's easier to fry a driver. Minimum I'd want to have would be 400w, you'd be pushing them most of the night though. Problem is you get a few bodies in front of the speakers and the sound drops off quite fast.
Problem with an 80w setup is clipping at the amp burning up the speakers.
You don't need a huge system to rock a pub, its just easy to get carried away as the gig progresses. Sometimes a small rig is easier as you don't get increasingly deaf.
If you're playing records you need to keep a careful eye on the mixer, most DJ's will start clipping the outputs on the mixer as they try to emphasise the tracks, then you end up hitting the max input for the amp.
I would never discourage anyone from trying their hand at PA stuff but it's a learning curve and there's more to it than meets the eye. I'm in no way an expert but I do enjoy it.