Do not dismiss the Ceiling Speaker
Once upon a time ceiling speakers were frowned at if used for any other purpose than low level background music or paging. These days however there are many higher powered models on the market from many different manufacturers that can be run at high volume levels if required. Add a few ceiling mount subwoofers and you can have a sound system that is capable of producing a good quality sound of over a wide frequency response. Whilst I normally wouldn’t recommend ceiling speakers for the main dance floor of a Night Club I would recommend them for most other purposes in a venue.
There are two main advantages when using ceiling speakers over conventional wall mount speakers:-
- Aesthetically pleasing. As many of them can be painted to suit the ceilings colour, the speakers can basically “disappear”.
- Easier to obtain an even coverage of sound. In some cases it may be hard to mount enough “box” style speakers to get the sound to the centre of the room. Providing the venue has a ceiling this isn’t a problem with ceiling speakers.
The only real disadvantage of using ceiling speakers is if you are going to use microphones directly under them as this can cause feedback issues. This becomes even more of a problem if you attempt to use lapel type microphones which can be very prone to feedback
One of the more recent innovations in speaker technology is the use of “wide dispersion” ceiling speakers. Put simply, these are capable of spreading the sound over a wider area than conventional ceiling speakers. One of the main advantages of this is that fewer speakers are required!
As mentioned earlier, there are many respected manufacturers of ceiling speakers. These include Atlas, Australian Monitor, Bose, Electrovoice, JBL, Martin, QSC, Toa & Turbosound.
To sum up, the humble ceiling speaker has come a long way and shouldn’t be dismissed when considering speakers for your venue.
Stephen Askins
Customer Service Manager
Saltec Pty Ltd
Email: stephen@saltec.com.au
Saltec
|
