gill tunnel

I bought two 200 watt PA speakers (Yorkville YX12) and a 235 watt amp/mixer (Yorkville MP6D2). The volume did not go as loud as a drum set. The volume was not too far from reaching that point but is wasn’t there. so I returned the amp/mixer and got an 800 watt (2x 400watt) amp/mixer (Yorkville M810). The volume STILL did not go as loud as a drum set so I returned the 200 watt speakers for 400 watt speakers. It STILL wasn’t loud enough.
What is the deal-e-o?
The speakers are almost as big as my drum set, all together it was almost $2000, my 75 watt guitar amp goes louder than a drum set when distortion is turned on, why won’t a 2x400 watt amp/mixer going to two 400 watt speakers go as loud as a drum set?
Why would someone spend the $350 I spent to upgrade ($350 is the difference) from two 200 watt speakers to two 400 watt speakers if they don’t go any louder?
Likewise, going from a 235 watt amp to a 2x400 didn’t seem to make much of a difference in volume.
Have I been under a false impression that watts and volume are related in any way?

And one more question: what would you recommend I get that goes louder than a drum set, is less than $2000, can play many instruments at the same time, has a bunch of inputs, pan, and can play any type of instrument?


Any help is appreciated, thanks.

GuitarBizarre

The wattage on a speaker isn't an indication of loudness. It is a rating of how much power you can safely feed into those speakers for an extended period of time before you blow them up. The specification that a speaker needs to be judged on is impedance and sensitivity. Sensitivity is measured in Db and as a baseline, 85 is very low and hard to get volume out of, and the higher you go, the easier it is to drive a speaker. Impedance should also be looked at. Ideally, the higher the impedance, the easier a speaker is to drive and the easier time an amp will have.

The wattage on an amp DOES have some indication of volume, in as much as it determines how much power it puts out, but there are several different systems of measuring this. The one you should be concerned with is Watts RMS, which is a measure of the amount of power an amp can continuously supply without overheating or blowing up.

There is also a measure called watts PMPO. This specification is useless, since it refers to the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM amount of power an amp can supply for any amount of time (IE less than a millisecond) before it blows up. This figure is often in excess of 4 times the RMS rating, and should never be used as a guideline.



Ideally for volume, you want high sensitivity speakers, with a high impedance, coupled with an amp capable of producing a good amount of RMS wattage. 2 ohms is low impedance, 16 is high. Coupling speakers in parallel (2 sets of speakers sharing one set of terminals for example) reduces impedance by half, so avoid doing it, you can blow amps doing that.


Post the models and specifications of the equipment you are using for us (I.E. direct links to the product pages of the manufacturers.), and we may be able to help specifically.

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gill tunnel

Thanks for responding.
It’s good to finally get some understanding on watts and volume and the like.

I tried posting the URLs but it says I can only post urls to other sites if I have made at least 15 posts. I guess I will cheat and leave out the Ws and the com. (Hopefully if forum administrators see this they will understand that I’m not spamming or something so it’s ok.)


Here are the links to the amp/mixer (M810) and the speakers (YX150) there is a chart on these pages that shows the specifications.


Fill in the gaps, coppy and paste
_ _ _ .yorkville._ _ _/products.asp?type=29&cat=58&id=372

_ _ _.yorkville._ _ _/products.asp?type=31&cat=13&id=266


in the specifications for the speaker sensitivity is described as follows:
Sensitivity (dB @1Watt/1m)………………...98
But I do not see impedance.
It also doesn’t look like they list the watts RMS for the amp.

GuitarBizarre

found the specs I needed to on that page. the speakers are 8 ohm, which is an easy load. sensitivity is super high too, they should be very very loud indeed.

Get the setup checked out by somebody familiar with the equipment and demonstrated to you so you're 100% on how it works. Sounds like theres a fader or gain stage on the mixer that is set way too low and is screwing things up. That or you're using low level signals not line level in the inputs.

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gill tunnel

Yes it looks like the amp and speakers do have it in them to go loud after all because when I plug my computer in and play either mp3s or music from a midi program (guitar pro) I only have to turn the volume up to half way to get it as loud as drums. However, when I plug my electric guitar or electric bass in, it’s not nearly as loud. Two of the inputs are specifically for these types of instruments and these are the inputs I use. Do you know how I could get the electric guitar and bass to go as loud as the computer?

GuitarBizarre

Guitar and bass signals will be considerably below line level. Look for a gain control on that channel, just run up and down the small circular controls changing each one until you discover one OTHER THAN THE MAIN FADER that affects the volume. I'm betting that you've got your gain stage set low.

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