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Which do you prefer for a PA set up, and why? Looking to finally get one for my band.

Powered speakers, that way your guaranteed to have a power section matched to you speakers, the likely hood of blowing them out will be greatly reduced.

Ancient Astronaught wrote:Powered speakers, that way your guaranteed to have a power section matched to you speakers, the likely hood of blowing them out will be greatly reduced.

plus one less thing to carry, more compact setup.

powered speakers are more convenient but can be quite heavy. speakers are heavy enough as it is.

Powered mixer + passive spekers seems to be the cheaper option;

Powered speakers may be quite expensive depending on size / brand; the benefits as outlined above means you won't always need a mixer, depending on what you plan on doing with your PA.

i've been debating this myself lately. What kind of application? What do you need mic'd?

Powered speakers and a regular mixer is better, than a powered mixer and passive speakers. The advantage to powered speakers is that you can plug a mic right into them, as well as daisy chain powered speakers to one another, so if you only had one singer, you wouldn't even need a mixer, just a powered speaker would do. I've never met anyone who uses a powered mixer, in clubs they ave separate power amp to run their speakers, the downside to a powered mixer is that then you are stuck with that amount of power, no matter what type of speakers you buy. The same holds true about heads and cabs, as well as power amps/powered mixers and speakers. The advantage to powered speakers and a passive mixer is that you can always buy a larger mixer to suit your band needs, for a practice space, no more than a twelve channel mixer would do the trick, since it would have six mic inputs and 6 line/aux inputs. If you need alot of power for a full band setup then buy powered 15in speakers and stands, if it's just acoustic guitar and vox, then a powered 10 would be fine. It all depends.

For reference, two powere 15 in speakers can fill a space that can hold about 150 people, or about 25ft. wide by 50ft. deep area (which is the sound system at a local church that I run shows at.)

Ask as many questions as you like, but I strongly recommend powered speakers (with stands) and a regular mixer.

Have you checked the used prices on normal mixer, power amp and passive speakers? They shouldn't cost much in craiglist. I'd use separate power amp and passive speakers because it's the most flexible way. Having it modular also makes it cheaper to repair/replace stuff when something breaks, too.

Yeah, my band uses a standard mixer, passive speakers and power amps. I like the modular setup because:

1.) Easier to troubleshoot if there is a problem
2.) If something breaks, you can just replace that one part
3.) If someday you want to upgrade your shit, you can upgrade it one piece at a time, which is easier on the wallet.

Downsides:
1.) A lot of shit to carry and wire up
2.) Number 1 will mean that you'll eventually just get sick of having it all loose and you'll spend even more money putting all in a rack

bigchiefbc wrote:Yeah, my band uses a standard mixer, passive speakers and power amps. I like the modular setup because:

1.) Easier to troubleshoot if there is a problem
2.) If something breaks, you can just replace that one part
3.) If someday you want to upgrade your shit, you can upgrade it one piece at a time, which is easier on the wallet.

Downsides:
1.) A lot of shit to carry and wire up
2.) Number 1 will mean that you'll eventually just get sick of having it all loose and you'll spend even more money putting all in a rack

This.

It's also the most flexible option soundwise (if you care about such things).

Ok, another thought how we did it:
everybody bought a powered box.
After the band split there was not debating how to split the gear/money.
Since that time i always bring my powered monitor (dB) into the bands rehearsal space.