PA speakers
Audiopoli's PA speakers were built in 2021–2022 together with AaltoDJ. The goal was a professional-grade system that is still light enough to haul from one event to the next. The set has been the sound of both associations' outdoor events and parties ever since.
Specifications
- Tops: 2 ×, a 12-inch B&C woofer in a paraflex enclosure and an SB Audience Bianco-44CD-PK compression driver on a horn
- Subwoofers: 2 ×, a 15-inch B&C 15DS115 in a paraflex enclosure
- All speakers passive
- A rack of their own: a DSP handles the crossovers and every driver has its own power amplifier channel
Background
In the summer of 2021 the association had been trying paraflex enclosures in a couple of bass projects. Paraflex is a horn-loaded enclosure type that gets more out of a given driver than an ordinary box. The experiments showed the enclosures worked exactly as well as the calculations suggested, so they were chosen for the PA set too.
Building
The drivers chosen were 15-inch, even though 18-inch ones would have produced more bass. With constant hauling in mind the bigger enclosures would have been too heavy and too bulky, and the whole point of the set was that it travels.
The speakers were built passive and the crossovers moved into a separate rack, where a DSP handles the splits and each driver gets its own amplifier channel. That keeps the speakers simple and light, and the tuning of the whole set can be changed from the rack.
The speakers were built and test-run during 2021, but the surface treatment was left for the following year. The set was finally finished in 2022.
In use
The first big outing was the inaugural Ylikulku rave held with AaltoDJ in the autumn of 2022. Since then the speakers have been along at orientation weeks, checkpoint tours, sitsit and other events, and they are also rented out. The set has brought the association visibility: Large speakers are easy to notice.
The speakers are owned jointly with AaltoDJ. The project was supported by the Teekkaritoiminnan edistämisrahasto fund.