P.A. Equipment

Not necessarily mixers or amps but, cabinets?

I invested in 24 15 inch woofers, 4 10's and couple square framed 12's for a subwoofer system, all rated for really high RMS wattage.
Intend to build 4 cabinets to start and hopefully, will build more as the demand for my music increases.

With the total build cost of say 12 full range cabinets and 2 subwoofers, I'll have saved thousands of dollars. going 2 15's per cabinet, 2x2x4 feet in dimension. With 5,000 watts and speakers that size, I should be able to cover an audience of say 10,000.

The standard is 1 watt per audience member but with cabinets of that size, I expect to easily get twice the coverage.

....still haven't quite gotten a band together yet though lol

I have built p.a. speaker cabs and if you are using very high SPL 5000 to 10,000 watts it is all about bracing, If you don't brace them properly they will rattle like hell. I used birch plywood it is relatively lite in weight yet has a lot of strength and you are going to want to leave a good air-port for the air so that the larger speakers can move back and forth. At that SPL they are really going to move. but you are correct the more power the better. I would highly advise a DBX Driverack P.A. instead of a crossover. The Driverack does that and way more. It is a total front of house sound management devise It will time align your drivers, EQ on the input and output, compression for the mains, limiter for the mains, pink noise generator and auto E.Q. and you can name and save those settings for the places you play regularly and feedback supression. It is best to have at least twice the amount of power that each cab is rated for. You are better off having fewer speakers that are properly powered over having a butt load of underpowered speakers that will distort. I hope this helps.

What speakers are they? Car stereo speakers are great for car stereos but you usually don't find many PA speakers without their respective cabinets, unless they were swapped out because they were starting to sound tired.

The primary specifications of a speaker that matter are the frequency curve, the SPL, RMS wattage, cone material and magnet size. If those all fall within the requirements of your application needs, the premise they are marketed under doesn't actually dictate it's application potential.

So if they label the speaker for guitar or for a ceiling speaker or for a subwoofer in your car, that's simply a matter of marketing.
I've seen a handful of guys use car audio subs in their bass amps and greatly improve the performance but, they were also wise in the sub they chose.

If the specs fall within the parameter's of other applications, they'll generally perform just fine. I've been working with speakers for 16 or 17 years now and have worked in all areas be it home speakers, P.A. speakers, car speakers and instrument speakers. A lot of people will stress SPL but, that's a specification that's measured based on 1 watt at 1 meter and as a standard, the speaker is "open air" rather than in an enclosure.
An enclosure will easily increase/decrease SPL based on design.

What I ultimately learned is, if the specs fit the bill, just make sure you're confident it can withstand the usage demands. In truth, paper speakers with accordion surrounds are truly the least durable speakers that exist and plenty of them will still outlive you and me...maybe even our kids if they're endeared enough by the owners.

And I couldn't agree more with cabinet design.
You want some large vents for both better and more sound projection and so at really high SPL levels, you're not beating the hell out of the speaker like a gorilla with a sledge hammer. Bracing is also important for large enclosures for altering frequency characteristics as well as strength and is a relatively easy task in the sense that something is better than nothing.
Pro Audio applications are where building an enclosure to specs is generally the least of concerns with the engineer designing the enclosure.

What speakers are they? Car stereo speakers are great for car stereos but you usually don't find many PA speakers without their respective cabinets, unless they were swapped out because they were starting to sound tired.

I buy loose pro audio speakers all the time, usually dozens at a time. While you are right, car audio speakers usually don't hold up in a pro audio situation, It's almost always because they didn't pay attention to the parameters of the drivers. If you hook 5.25 four way up to a QSC RMX-2450, I guarantee the lifespam will be measured in seconds. Likewise, I've been running four Pyramid Chrome Power Series 15" subs off that same amp regularily for five years.

Yes, I build my own cabinets, what do you need to know?

I am a concert loudspeaker manufacture that just moved to Mount Joy, PA 10 months ago and even wrote a book on building pro Audio loudspeaker enclosures. If you need to speak to someone with this background, please give me a call (919) 606-3443 Jeff.

I'll see if I can answer any question or keep you from makes expensive errors with your build.

Yep, I have built a few cabs in my day. Altec, EV, JBL, 130 db, bi-amped, tri-amped, Thiele aligned subs etc. They sounded great but they all took longer to build, cost more, and weighed more than I planned.

I got tired of dragging around the heavy duty stuff for every gig so I greatly simplified. Now when we play a large outdoor show and we need big sound I just hire a big sound company and add the cost to our performance fee. No more schlepping around 250 lb cabs