You consider buying a powered mixer, yet you allready have a mixer, eq and effects.
Why not use the equipment you have and build from that? That is, if the gear is of good quality, otherwise you would indeed be better off in starting again.

For these small venues you have several options:

1: Powered mixer with onboard effects combined with passive speakers.
+ small, easy to set up
- hard to upgrade (fixed output wattage on mixer)

2: Passive mixer with onboard fx combined with active speakers
+ easy to upgrade by just adding more active speakers
- active speakers are quite heavy to lift
- active speakers require power supply (more cables)
3: Passive mixer with onboard fx combined with seperate amp and passive speakers
+ Passive speakers are less heavy to lift
+ possible to upgrade by adding amps and speakers or active speakers
- More work to set-up unless mounted and prewired in a rack/flightcase

Offcourse you can allways choose for outboard fx-gear. If you mount everything in a 19" rack setting up will be quick and easy. Remember to mount wheels under your fx-rack for more convenience

As for wattage of the system: don't undershoot. A powerfull system can be turned down to have a good sound in a small venue with a small amount of people. An underpowered system in a venue packed with people will have to shout out at it's loudest, giving a terrible sound and the impression that the soundlevel is way too loud. A powerfull system in the same venue with the same soundlevel will sound much better and will leave no impression of being too loud.

I work with a passive mixer (Soundcraft M8), outboard fx (TC Electronic M-one XL, DBX compressor/limmiters, DBX eq), amp: Peavey PV2600. For a speakersystem I use EV Gladiators (2* 18" subs (400 Watt RMS each) + 2* 15" tops (400W RMS each)).
I find that this system performs perfectly up to venues with 250-300 people. I can unload and setup the entire set on my own in 15 minutes. Plug and play.

Here's my rack

Last edited by Mike sings; 05/28/09 03:07 AM.
Mike
www.mikewever.nl