A friend of mine is having a party with appr. 50 persons, there will be music played by a DJ with professional equipment. The problem is that he does not have amplifiers or speakers available at the time. He said that he used Pentas for an other party with similar size and they delivered pretty good.

 Has anyone tried the Pentas in bigger rooms with a lot of people in? I can not imagine that they are powerful enough to deliver any good sound pressure. I would reckon that the treble will disappear in the chaos and the bass will just not be enough.

 
Any ideas or input?
 

I had a party at my home of approximately 50-75 persons with lab 5s and had absolutely NO problem. .

I realize there are differences in the two but I would think the Pentas will be adequate for a gathering of that size. .

A few years ago I bought DJ Brandon Blocks B&O system.

He had a set of penta 3's and an ouverture, I'm sure we would have had a few parties at his place.

 

I collected them one sunday morning. He looked like crap, as he'd been dj-ing earlier that morning.

Having been to quite a few parties with appr. 50 people I don't see any problem with the pentas.....

Go for it!

Ralf

 

I guess they'd work unless you're hoping for chest-thumping base.

Austin

Hopefully they will deliver, but perhaps "party" has a different meaning in the rest of the world compared to up here in the cold north of Sweden. Here it means serious amounts of alcohol and music on very high levels, with something that perhaps could be called dancing.

 
I am worried the Pentas will deliver the sound pressure needed only for a Tea party. I have not seen the premises yet so I do not know what to do to make it easier for the speakers. Placed in the corners and perhaps placed a bit higher than ground for the treble to spread better?

 
In my flat I have discovered that the treble is great sounding only when sitting down, from this I have understood that the treble just will not work with a lot of people standing around it seems to work best sitting directly in line with it.

Turbo:

A friend of mine is having a party with appr. 50 persons, there will be music played by a DJ with professional equipment. The problem is that he does not have amplifiers or speakers available at the time. He said that he used Pentas for an other party with similar size and they delivered pretty good.

 Has anyone tried the Pentas in bigger rooms with a lot of people in? I can not imagine that they are powerful enough to deliver any good sound pressure. I would reckon that the treble will disappear in the chaos and the bass will just not be enough.

 
Any ideas or input?
 

1. Hitta en annan Dj som kan förse festen med föstärkare o riktiga PA hötalare ist..

2. Beolab 5

3. 4x Beolab Penta MkIII plus 2x Beolab 2... 

I personally wouldn't. The Pentas have no form of speaker protection and I know from experience that professional speakers are designed to take sudden unpredictable noise and jumps in the sound level, whilst normal speakers can't. Even a pair of turntables can produce lots of unwanted low-frequencies which could potentially harm the Pentas.

I have been to a party with BeoLab 9s, and it worked very well, but it wasn't earth-shattering volume and I doubt they would handle a larger space that well.

If it's not going to be that loud, and it's a small space, then I'd say go for it. Otherwise, in the words of De La Soul I'm gonna say no go.

Turbo:

I can not imagine that they are powerful enough to deliver any good sound pressure.

 

Exactly! My (semi-professional) studio monitors allready have more sound pressure (SPL) than the Penta.

Any small decent PA-speaker will blow away a Penta.

 

The Pentas will produce 105dB - which is loud! Whether I would want to use them as party speakers is another matter as they don't have the ABL technology of the later speakers and will blow if abused. They actually have a upper bass hump so the bass is not bad but the treble is undoubtely designed for people sitting down and will be poor in a crowded room.

A small PA speaker is designed for parties but obviously will not match the Pentas for sound quality in a normal listening enviroment. Horses for courses. I have used Pentas as speakers at parties but this is for background music, a task they were more than up to! 

Interesting that B&O have stopped quoting sound pressure - they stopped on the introduction of the BL3 - it had a very poor sound pressure reading and the next year the figures were no longer quoted! (94dB if you are interested!) Not seen a figure for the Beolab 9 - the 5s are 108db and the Beolab 1 was the same as the Pentas at 105dB. The figure is really a function of the bass which explains the relatively low figure of the 3s.

I believe the 108 dB rating of the BeoLab 5s is at 10m instead of the standard 1m (a rather strange measurement).

If measured at 1m, as with most loudspeakers, I predict you'd get at least 115 dB out of them.

The figures are those quoted by B&O and there is no qualification - as they are comparing speakers and are clearly trying to get as high a value as possible, it would seem perverse to test one speaker at a different standard to the others. The Hi-Fi World test also quotes them at 108dB which is, as they say, very powerful! It is of course a log scale so 108 is considerably more than 105.

Of course, but bear in mind both service manuals don't state how it's measured (which is fair enough, maximum SPL is a mainly useless measurement once you get past 100 dB, which is plenty loud enough for any situation in a home or studio), but I distinctly remember reading in a B&O catalogue that the spec was measured at 10m. I think it was the catalogue two generations ago.

We ended up using the Pentas in the end, which was a little scary for me. Partly because I was afraid of damage them in transportation and partly because someone might become a little to close after 12+ beers and tipping them over

But everything went perfect and sound pressure was not a problem, sound quality was not satisfying in my opinion but most people (who cared at all) were very impressed by both the volume and quality. But those people have Pioneer stereos at home  They live in an different galaxy. In my opinion the bass was not strong enough and the treble really did not reach out (as expected...).

I would not recommend, also as expected, to use the Pentas in this kind of situations, but the crowd was happy and we had some really high volumes during the last hours of the party. It probably helpt that  everybody was so intoxicated then that anything would have been great!

One interesting thing I noticed is that now that the speakers are safely back home they actually sound different then before! When I bought them they had not been used for many years and sounded like crap when I first listened to them. They got better and better after after a couple months of "normal" use. But this was a really big lift. The midrange is no longer so sharp and the treble sounds more relaxed. I guess they needed to be "cleaned out" Love these speakers more and more every day!

Cheers