A complete professional sound rig on the stone courtyard of a Mallorcan possessio at blue hour, with two stacks flanking a low stage, subwoofers on the ground and a digital console at the control position

Technical guide

Event Sound
Equipment

What is actually inside a professional sound rig, piece by piece: loudspeakers, subwoofers, amplification, processing, console, microphones and monitors. What each element does, when you need it, and how much equipment your event really takes.

Updated August 2026 · 18 min read · FØNØY Sound

"I need a sound system for 200 people" is how half the quotes we write begin. It is a perfectly reasonable sentence and yet it is not enough to choose a single item on the truck. A sound system is not a product: it is a chain of seven or eight different elements, each with its own job, and what decides whether an event sounds good is not the size of the loudspeaker but whether that chain is complete and correctly sized.

This guide takes the chain apart, piece by piece. It is not a catalogue: it is what we have learned rigging sound in Mallorca since 2014 about what each element does, how the options you will be offered actually differ, and which of those differences matter at a real event. It is written so that you can read a sound quote and understand what you are comparing — whether you hire us or not.

The order follows the signal: it starts at the microphone and ends at the guest's ear. If your event is outdoors — which on this island it usually is — the guide to outdoor event sound is the direct companion to this one: here we explain the equipment, there what wind, neighbours and Balearic noise rules do to it.

In this guide

01 · The complete signal chain
02 · PA system types
03 · Subwoofers
04 · Amplification: active and passive
05 · Processing: EQ, compression, DSP
06 · Analogue and digital consoles
07 · Microphones
08 · Floor monitors and in-ears
09 · How to read a technical rider
10 · Choosing a supplier in Mallorca
→ What each guest count takes
→ Frequently asked questions

01 — The starting point

The complete signal chain

Signal chain laid out on a flight case at a night-time event: a stagebox full of XLR connectors, coiled microphone cables, a multicore snake and a rack of electronics with small amber indicator lights

Every sound rig, from a thirty-guest ceremony to a festival, is the same chain at a different scale. The signal starts at a source — a voice in a microphone, a player, the output of a DJ controller, the pickup on a bass — enters the mixing console, is split and processed, passes through amplification and finally moves the cone of a loudspeaker. Between the beginning and the end there is cable, there are connectors and there is mains power, and all three are as much part of the rig as the boxes are.

This matters for one practical reason: the result is set by the weakest link, not the most expensive one. An excellent loudspeaker system fed by the wrong microphone and a console driven into clip sounds worse than a modest system properly aligned. And the usual split of the budget runs exactly opposite to where the problems live: most of the money goes on PA and amplification, while the majority of the incidents we have dealt with in twelve years come from microphones, cabling, mains and alignment.

What you see

The boxes, the subs and the towers. This is the part of the rig a client recognises as "the system" and the part quotes get compared on, and it is also the part that fails least often.

What decides the result

The microphones chosen, the console and its channel count, the processing, the electrical distribution and the engineer who aligns it all. None of it shows up in a photograph, and it is where the event is won or lost.

It is worth fixing the vocabulary, because it is the one you will meet in any quote. Sources are the inputs: microphones, lines, instruments. FOH — front of house — is the control position from which the audience mix is made. PA is the system that covers the audience. Monitors, or wedges, are what the people on stage hear. Backline is the musicians' own instruments and amplifiers. And the stagebox is the connection panel on stage that gathers every input and carries it to the console over a single multicore or a single network cable.

One item never gets quoted and is always needed: margin. At every link it pays to have more than the calculated minimum — a couple of spare console channels, one more wireless microphone than the running order needs, twenty per cent more cable than the plan measures, an amplifier with capacity to spare. That is not luxury: it is what lets you solve in five minutes the thing that always goes wrong, once the event has started and nothing is open.

Mallorca tip

On an island, margin is worth double. If a wireless receiver dies at seven in the evening on an August Saturday at a finca near Artà, there is no supplier, no service centre and no courier that will fix it that night. So we always leave with duplicates of everything critical — ceremony microphones, network cables, a fill box, batteries — whether or not it appears on the quote. A rig that arrives with nothing spare is a rig that has not arrived.

02 — The loudspeaker

PA system types

The PA is what covers the audience, and there are only three genuinely different architectures. Choosing between them is not about price bracket or prestige: each one solves a different geometry, and it is the geometry of the site — how much depth has to be covered and over what spread — that decides.

Point source

The familiar trapezoidal two-way box, in ten, twelve or fifteen inch, on a tripod, a pole or stacked. It radiates in a cone defined by its horn — typically something like 90° horizontal by 60° vertical — and loses around 6 dB every time the distance doubles. It covers well out to twenty or twenty-five metres, rigs in minutes, and is the system on ninety per cent of private events on the island.

Line array

Several identical modules coupled vertically into a line source. Its virtue is not power, it is control. Level falls off far more gently with distance, and the curvature of the array is set module by module so the energy goes to the audience and not to the façades or the sky. Above 250 or 300 people, or beyond thirty metres of depth, it is the only sensible option. It requires a lifting tower or truss, calculation and ballast, and it multiplies rigging time.

Column array

A short, narrow vertical array, often with the subwoofer built into the base. Very wide horizontal coverage — up to 120° or 150° — and tightly controlled vertical, which is precisely what a ceremony or a drinks reception asks for: broad spread, little energy thrown at the sky and almost no visual presence. Its limit is maximum level and low end: the moment a dance floor appears it runs out.

Fills and delay lines

Not a separate architecture but the way to stretch any of the above. Two small boxes halfway down the site, delayed by around 3 milliseconds per metre relative to the main system, even out the level at the back without punishing the front row. In the long, narrow gardens common here, that does more than any power upgrade.

There is a question that always comes up and is worth defusing: watts. Power describes what the electronics consume, not what is audible at thirty metres. Two systems of identical rated power can differ by ten decibels at the audience depending on their sensitivity, their directivity and where they are placed. The figures that actually describe a loudspeaker are its maximum SPL, its frequency response and its coverage pattern — and even then, placement outweighs all three.

The other criterion is less technical and just as real: how it looks. At a finca wedding, a line array flown from a ballasted tower is an imposing object in the middle of the scene, and that is not always what the client wants. Often the right conversation is not "how much system fits" but "how much system can be seen": four discreet boxes spread around the area usually work better — and disturb less, inside and outside the property — than two large boxes shouting from one end.

Mallorca tip

Paved possessió courtyards and cloisters are hard surfaces that return a lot of sound: in them a well-aimed point-source box performs beyond expectations, and the right move is to drop the level and spread the coverage. In an olive grove in the Pla, with loose soil, dry grass and no reflecting surface at all, the same system falls short in the midrange, which is where the voice lives. Before choosing an architecture we look at the ground surface as carefully as at the guest count.

How each type of space on the island behaves is broken down venue by venue in the guide to event venues in Mallorca.

03 — The low end

Subwoofers

The subwoofer handles roughly 30 to 100 Hz: kick drum, bass line and the body of dance music. It contributes nothing to speech intelligibility — a ceremony does not need subs — and it is responsible for most of the physical impact of a party. So the first decision is not how many but whether you need them at all: at a reception, a dinner or a ceremony they get in the way; on a dance floor they are endlessly debated and absolutely necessary.

The practical reference we use is one subwoofer per main box in the dance floor area, crossed over between 80 and 120 Hz. A system with two tops and two subs covers a dance floor up to around twenty metres deep. Doubling the number of subs does not double the level: each doubling gives around 6 dB on axis, and past a certain point what you gain is no longer level but uniformity and directional control.

Stacked under the top

One sub each side of the stage with the top on it. The standard configuration and the fastest to rig. Correct coverage, zero directivity control: it radiates almost as much backwards as forwards. Reasonable on isolated fincas with no close neighbours.

Centre array

All the subs together in the centre, in front of the stage. It greatly improves low-end uniformity across the floor — the spots where the bass cancels as you walk disappear — at the cost of narrowing coverage to the sides. The default on compact dance floors.

Cardioid

Two subs facing forward and one turned 180°, with reversed polarity and a tuned delay. The waves add forwards and cancel backwards: 12 to 15 dB less energy to the rear. Half an hour more rigging and the best tool that exists when there is a house behind the stage.

Ground coupling

A subwoofer sitting directly on firm ground gains around 6 dB for free compared with a raised one. What you must never do is put it on a hollow deck: the structure resonates, transmits vibration through the whole stage and the low end turns muddy.

The adjustment most often skipped on a quick rig is time alignment between subs and tops. If the sub is on the ground and the top is two and a half metres up on a pole, their sound does not reach the audience at the same instant, and around the crossover you get cancellations that read as weak bass exactly where the punch should be. It is fixed with a few milliseconds of delay in the processor, it costs nothing, and it is the difference between a system that pushes and one that sounds hollow.

Mallorca tip

The three things that decide the subwoofer configuration at a Mallorcan finca are, in this order: where the nearest house is, what the dance floor surface is made of, and whether there is a dry-stone wall to use. A cardioid arrangement with its back to the neighbour and the stage rotated so the main axis points into the property has let us hold party level right up to the cut-off without a single phone call. What does not work is raising the question at half past midnight, when moving a sub means stopping the music.

04 — The power

Amplification: active and passive

A touring amplifier rack on a pallet behind an outdoor stage in Mallorca, with four power amplifiers stacked, ventilation grilles and amber meters lit

The amplifier turns a line-level signal, which moves nothing, into the power that pushes a loudspeaker cone. It is the least visible link in the rig and one of the ones that most determines whether the system survives the night. On a quote it usually appears in one of two forms, and the difference is worth understanding because it changes the logistics of the whole event.

Active system

Each box carries its own amplifier and processing inside. Give it mains and signal and it runs. It wins on rigging speed and simplicity, and it is the natural choice on small and medium formats. In exchange you have to get mains power to every loudspeaker, and the electronics end up scattered around the site: if an amp fails, you have to reach that box.

Passive system

The loudspeakers hold no electronics and are driven from a rack of power amps with its processor. It concentrates the electronics in one accessible place, lets the whole system be trimmed from a single point, and avoids running mains across the garden. Standard on large rigs and on any line array.

The key parameter when sizing amplification is headroom, not the maximum figure. An amplifier should be able to deliver something like one and a half to two times the loudspeaker's programme power in order to reproduce transients without clipping. It sounds counter-intuitive — surely that breaks the speaker — but in practice what destroys the high frequency section of a system is not an oversized amplifier, it is a small one driven into clip, because a clipped signal delivers far more continuous energy to the HF driver than it was designed to dissipate.

What protects the whole thing is the limiter in the processor, set to the loudspeaker manufacturer's figures, not the engineer's ears. A properly configured professional system has a hard ceiling it will not pass, and that ceiling should be set before the event starts, not negotiated at two in the morning with a guest leaning into the booth.

The other half of the story is cable. The cross-section of the speaker cable and its length cause voltage drop and loss of damping in the low end: long runs of thin cable translate into soft bass and energy dissipated in the copper instead of in the cone. On outdoor rigs with long distances between amp rack and boxes, speaker cable gauge is a technical decision, not a warehouse detail. And power connectors are always the twist-lock kind, never push-fit: a connector that works loose mid-party can take the amplifier with it.

Mallorca tip

August heat is a real design factor. A closed amp rack pushed against a sandstone wall that has been in the sun all day, with no air circulation, goes into thermal protection exactly when the event peaks. Racks go in the shade, away from the wall, with the vents clear, and never inside the marquee where the caterers have their ovens. It is the most avoidable failure there is and one of the ones we have seen most often on other people's rigs.

05 — The alignment

Processing: EQ, compression, crossovers and DSP

A rack of audio processing at a night-time event: a graphic equaliser with many sliders, two compressors with meters and a digital loudspeaker processor, all with amber indicator lights

Processing is what turns a pile of boxes and microphones into a system. It is also the part that shows least on a quote and separates one supplier from another most, because the same equipment in two different pairs of hands gives results that bear no resemblance to each other. Four functions are worth telling apart, because they routinely get confused.

Crossover

Splits the spectrum between the ways of the system: below the crossover point to the subwoofer, above it to the top. It is defined by a frequency — typically between 80 and 120 Hz — and a slope. A badly set crossover leaves an audible hole or, worse, has two boxes reproducing the same band and cancelling each other.

Equalisation

There are two distinct uses and mixing them up is the classic error. System EQ corrects the loudspeaker-space-placement combination and is set once, with measurement. Channel EQ shapes an individual source: taking body out of a close-miked voice, cleaning the boom out of an acoustic guitar. What EQ cannot do is paper over a placement problem: if the sound is not arriving, no filter will carry it.

Compression and limiting

A compressor reduces dynamic range: it lifts the quiet and holds back the loud. On spoken word outdoors it is the difference between catching every word and losing half a sentence when the speaker turns away from the microphone. At the end of the chain, the limiter is pure protection: it stops the system delivering more than it can without distorting. One is an artistic judgement; the other is equipment safety.

Loudspeaker processor (DSP)

The brain of the system. It holds the manufacturer's presets for each box model, applies the delays that align subs to tops and delay fills to the stage, and sets the protection limits. It is also where the cardioid subwoofer configuration lives. On a modern rig, most of what makes a system sound coherent happens inside this box.

A fifth tool turns up on band rigs: the noise gate, which mutes a channel when the signal falls below a threshold, so that the drum microphones are not permanently picking up everything else on stage. Like compressors, it does more harm than good when badly set: an over-aggressive gate eats the tail of each hit and the kit sounds clipped.

Serious alignment is done with measurement, not by ear. A dual-channel measurement system compares what is sent to the system with what a measurement microphone picks up at the audience position, and shows where there is a peak, a dip or a timing error. It is a twenty or thirty minute process done with the site empty, before anyone arrives, and it explains much of the difference between a rig that sounds clear from the first track and one that spends the night chasing the problem by turning up.

Mallorca tip

An alignment done in an empty site at five in the afternoon is not the same event as eleven at night with two hundred people in it. The audience absorbs, particularly in the mids and highs, and temperature and humidity change how the air behaves. So we always store two scenes on the console — empty and full — and the engineer goes back over the system once the floor has people on it. Aligning and leaving is the quickest way to make the second half of the night sound worse than the first.

06 — The control point

Mixing consoles: analogue and digital

A mixing console does four things: it sets the input gain of every source, equalises and processes it, routes it to whichever outputs are needed — main system, monitors, zones, recording — and sums all of it into the mix the audience hears. It is the point every signal at the event passes through, which is why the choice shapes the rest of the rig more than any other single item.

Analogue

One function, one control. You read it at a glance, it never boots because it is never off, and it depends on no network and no firmware. Its two limits at an event are simple: it stores nothing, so every change of block — ceremony, reception, dinner, party — has to be redone by hand; and any processing it needs has to arrive in outboard racks with their own cabling.

Digital

It stores complete scenes and recalls them in a second, carries a compressor and EQ on every channel with no extra racks, is controlled from a tablet over wifi, and connects to the stage with a digital stagebox and a single network cable instead of a thirty-kilo multicore. For an event with several blocks and several areas, that is a difference of category, not of degree.

For events, the honest answer is digital in almost every case, and the main reason is not sound quality but recall. A wedding has four distinct sonic scenarios inside six hours; a console that stores and recalls them turns every transition into a gesture, and one that does not turns every transition into two minutes of blind adjustment with the guests watching. The second reason is remote control: being able to mix from the dance floor, from the far end of the garden or beside the top table — rather than from the corner where FOH physically fitted — changes the result measurably.

Channel counts are almost always miscounted. It is not the number of musicians: it is the sum of every source plus the sends you have to feed. A five-piece band with a miked kit runs easily to sixteen or twenty inputs — kick, snare, two overheads, bass via DI, two guitars, keys in stereo, three vocals — and needs four to six independent monitor sends on top. A DJ takes two channels. A ceremony, three. Which is why an event with ceremony, reception, dinner, band and DJ is not covered by an eight-channel desk even though few things sound at once: what decides it is the total number of sources connected simultaneously, so that nothing has to be re-patched mid-event.

The two real risks of going digital deserve naming. The first is network dependency: if the stagebox talks to the console over a network cable, that cable is a single point of failure, which is why band rigs run redundancy or at the very least have a spare already laid. The second is tablet control: in a finca full of people holding phones, a shared domestic network will not hold up, so the system's access point has to be its own, on a clear band, and the console must remain fully operable from its physical surface if the tablet drops out.

Mallorca tip

At many Mallorcan fincas the only available control position is precisely the worst one: a corner behind a column, against a wall, or at the end of a passage. With a digital console and a tablet that stops being a problem, because the engineer mixes from where the audience is. Of all the advantages of digital, that is the one that shows most on this island, where the geometry of the site almost never lets you put FOH where it belongs.

07 — The input

Microphones: dynamic, condenser and wireless

The microphone is the first link, and what is lost there cannot be recovered later. It is also the part of the rig where the wrong choice shows immediately and where budgets tend to be squeezed first, which is exactly backwards. There are two families and a layer of radio on top.

Dynamic

No power required, they handle very high sound pressure and they are practically indestructible. The default for live vocals, kick, snare and guitar amplifiers. Their response is less detailed than a condenser's, but at an event that is rarely a problem: what they give you is better rejection of everything that is not pointed at the capsule.

Condenser

More sensitive and far more detailed in the top end, they need 48 V phantom power. They are the right choice for acoustic instruments, choirs, drum overheads and anything with nuance. In exchange they pick up the whole environment, they do not get on with wind, and they suffer with humidity and small-hours dew — which at a Mallorcan outdoor event is a first-order consideration, not a footnote.

Polar pattern

As important as the type. A cardioid picks up in front and rejects behind; a supercardioid is tighter at the front but picks up again in a rear lobe — exactly where many people put the monitor; an omnidirectional picks up equally in all directions and only makes sense on a lavalier or for measurement. Most feedback at a ceremony traces back to a badly chosen pattern or a badly placed monitor.

Wireless

They work in UHF, with diversity receivers using two antennas to avoid dropouts. Digital systems occupy less bandwidth and allow more simultaneous channels in the same spectrum. What matters is not the model but three things: frequency coordination done on site, antennas with line of sight to the transmitter — a sixty-centimetre sandstone wall is opaque to the link — and fresh batteries at every event.

For spoken word, a headset almost always beats a lavalier. The lavalier sits thirty centimetres from the mouth, catches wind directly, rustles against clothing and forces so much gain that the whole environment comes with it; the headset keeps a constant distance and lets you work with far less gain, which is what keeps feedback away. For readings and turns at the lectern, a handheld on a stand is still the most robust solution and the one that produces fewest surprises.

One element is missing that is not a microphone and without which half the connections do not work: the DI box. It converts the unbalanced output of a keyboard, a bass, a DJ controller or a laptop into a balanced signal that can travel thirty metres of cable without picking up noise. Connecting a laptop to the system on a long minijack lead is the most common way of introducing hum at an event, and it is solved by a box the size of a cigarette packet.

Mallorca tip

In high season the island's UHF spectrum is loaded: within a two-kilometre radius there may be three other events running their own wireless, on top of digital television. The scan and coordination are done at the venue on rig day, never in the warehouse the week before, and a couple of already-coordinated reserve frequencies are kept aside. On the coast we add another routine: salt attacks contacts and grilles, so everything that has worked by the sea is checked and cleaned on return.

08 — The stage

Floor monitors and in-ears

An empty outdoor stage at night at a Mallorcan finca with three wedge monitors angled towards the performer positions and, on a side table, two in-ear receivers with moulded earpieces

Monitors are what the people on stage hear, and it is the line item most often cut and most often responsible for ruining a set. The logic is simple: if the musicians cannot hear each other, the tempo drifts, the singer pushes, stage level climbs on its own, and that stage level ends up contaminating the mix the audience gets. The guest reads it as "the band sounds messy", but the cause is behind them.

Floor monitors (wedges)

Wedge-shaped boxes angled at each musician's actual position. Standard and fastest: one send per musician or per pair. Each send needs an independent output from the console and its own tuning. Their hidden cost is that everything that sounds on stage also leaves towards the audience and beyond the property.

In-ear systems (IEM)

The musician gets their own mix through an earpiece, via a wireless transmitter and a bodypack. It solves the problem at source: nobody adds a decibel to the site. It is the best option wherever there is a noise limiter or a strict cut-off. In exchange it isolates the performer from the room — some musicians find that hard — and it needs frequency coordination just like the microphones.

The number of sends is what has to be fixed before quoting, because it determines the size of the console. A five-piece band rarely manages on fewer than four independent sends: lead vocal, backing vocals and guitars, bass and drums, keys. Grouping two musicians onto one send works if they stand together and want to hear the same thing; pushing it further produces the circular soundcheck conversation in which everybody asks for more of themselves and the stage ends up at an absurd level.

At an event with a noise limit, moving the band to in-ears is the measure that recovers the most headroom without touching the mix the audience hears. Monitor decibels appear on nobody's quote and count exactly the same on the meter: we have seen limiters trip with the house at a moderate level, simply because the stage was shouting from behind. It is a decision taken weeks ahead, because it involves equipment, coordination and, above all, musicians who are used to it.

One coordination note that is not audio but belongs in this chapter: outdoors, the control position can end up thirty or forty metres from the stage with audience, tables and catering in between. Shouting is not an option and hand signals are not either. Any rig with a band needs a communication channel between stage and control — intercom, or at the very least talkback and an agreed set of signals — because the moment you need it is always the worst possible moment.

Mallorca tip

Outdoors a musician hears themselves worse than in any rehearsal room, because there are no walls returning sound. A singer who copes with a quiet wedge in their own room cannot hear a thing on an open-air stage at a finca, and instinctively pushes. We always allow for more monitoring than the band thinks it needs and, if there is a cut-off or a limiter, we propose in-ears in the quote rather than as a last-minute upgrade.

What each musical format demands in channels, sends and stage space is broken down format by format in the guide to event entertainment types.

09 — The document

How to read a technical rider

A front-of-house control position at a night-time outdoor event with a digital console on a flight case under a canopy, a tablet, a notebook and an engineer seen from behind adjusting a fader

The technical rider is the document with which an artist, a band or a DJ specifies what they need in order to perform. It is the bridge between what the client has booked and what has to go on the truck, and a good share of production emergencies come from reading it late or not at all. It always has the same parts.

Input list

The numbered list of inputs: which source is on which channel and with which microphone or DI box. It determines the size of the console and the microphones required, and it is the one part of a rider that is not open to interpretation.

Stage plot

The stage drawing with each musician's position, their backline, their monitors and the power outlets. It defines the minimum deck dimensions and the cable routing. A stage plot asking for six metres of frontage does not fit on the three-by-two deck the finca owns, and that has to be known weeks in advance.

PA and monitor requirements

The minimum system the artist considers acceptable for the guest count, and the number of monitor sends or in-ear systems. This is where brand names appear, and where the phrase "or similar" almost always sits: what has to be respected is the category and the performance, not the manufacturer.

Crew, timings and power

How many people are needed to unload and rig, what time the stage must be clear for soundcheck, how long that check takes and how much electrical power the backline draws. This is the part that collides with the caterer's and everyone else's schedule, and the part to cross-check against the event timeline.

Reading a rider is mostly about separating requirement from preference. The numbers — channels, sends, metres of deck, kilowatts, soundcheck hours — are requirements and cannot be trimmed without consequences. Specific brands of console, microphone or system are almost always preference, and a serious supplier will tell you what equivalent they propose and why. The warning sign is the generic rider, copied from another act, asking for a festival system to play acoustically to eighty guests: it does not describe the actual performance, and it needs bringing back to earth in a conversation with the artist's engineer.

The moment to ask for it is when the artist is booked, not the week before. A rider that arrives ten days out usually means reopening the sound budget, because it changes channels, sends and sometimes the deck. And if the artist has no rider — normal for solo acts, duos and many DJs — three written answers are enough: what instruments make sound, what they bring, and what they need to hear. From that we build the input list ourselves and avoid the surprise DI box nobody had allowed for.

Mallorca tip

With international artists coming to play on the island a specific problem appears: riders written for a market with a different equipment pool, asking for particular models that do not exist here or that are already committed that weekend in peak season. That conversation has to happen the moment the booking is signed, not in July: in August the island's high-end stock is reserved months ahead, and the alternative stops being a reasonable equivalent and becomes whatever is left.

10 — The decision

Choosing a supplier in Mallorca

Inside a sound rental warehouse in Mallorca in the late afternoon, with shelves of loudspeaker cabinets, stacked flight cases, coiled cables on the wall and a van being loaded

The sound market in Mallorca is small and heavily seasonal, and that produces a particular mix: companies with their own stock and engineers on the payroll alongside brokers who subcontract everything and appear only in summer. Since the equipment on offer looks fairly similar from the outside, the real difference sits in things that do not appear on the first line of a quote.

Own stock or subcontracted

This is the first question and it should be asked directly. A supplier with its own equipment knows the condition of every box, holds spares and can react the same day. A broker depends on a third party's availability, which in August is precisely what does not exist. Subcontracting is not wrong in itself — everyone does it at peak — but it is worth knowing who answers if something fails.

Engineer on site

Check whether one is included, for how many hours, and what happens if the event overruns. A rig that is delivered and abandoned works until the first surprise: a microphone that goes down, feedback, a level that has to come down when the neighbour's message arrives. Any event with more than four channels, or with a band, should have an engineer from start to finish.

Site visit beforehand

Outdoors this is what separates a real quote from a guess. It establishes the power genuinely available, the access and unloading route, the ground surface, where the nearest house is and which way the wind comes in at event time. A supplier quoting an outdoor event without having seen the site is guessing.

Insurance and paperwork

Current public liability, and for anything flown or elevated — towers, truss, line array — the corresponding certificates and load calculations. Plenty of venues and town halls ask for them, and they always come up at the worst moment: forty-eight hours out, when they cannot be obtained.

A quote you can actually compare has to be itemised: equipment by unit and type, console channels, number of wireless systems, whether there are subwoofers and how many, monitors or in-ears and how many sends, transport, rig and de-rig, engineer hours and the expected collection time. A document that says "sound system for 200 people" and a number lets you compare nothing, and it usually hides the differences exactly where they matter: the engineer, the microphones and the number of sends.

The warning signs are fairly consistent. Quoting in watts rather than in equipment and coverage. Never asking how many sources there are or whether there is a band. Never mentioning the cut-off time or the venue's limiter. Not including an engineer, or including one "until 2:00" at an event that ends at 3:00. And the island classic: committing high-end equipment on an August Saturday without mentioning it is subject to confirmation from a third party.

Mallorca tip

Coordination with the other suppliers is the value that shows most and appears least on a quote. At a finca, caterers, lighting, florists, photographers and the wedding planner all share the same space, the same hours and the same electrical supply. Having a single point of contact for sound, light and power — someone who talks to the caterer before splitting the distribution board and to the planner before fixing the soundcheck — avoids most of the conflicts on rig day. It is why we work as a full technical production and not simply as a box rental.

Our full catalogue is at sound and lighting rental in Mallorca, which is also where the design, rigging and operation service lives.

The decision

What each guest count takes

An indicative starting point for an event in Mallorca with dinner and a dance floor. The geometry of the space and the musical format can move any of these rows a step up or down.

Elevated view of a Mallorcan finca courtyard at night set up for around two hundred guests, with the main stacks beside the stage and two fill boxes towards the dining area

Guests	Main system	Subs and amplification	Console and microphones
Up to 50 · reception or ceremony	Two columns or compact active boxes, spread out	No subwoofers · amplification built in	8-channel console · wireless headset and handheld
50–120 · private party	Two twelve-inch boxes on poles	Two stacked subwoofers · active system	16-channel digital console · 2 wireless · 2 DI
120–250 · finca wedding	Two fifteen-inch boxes + fills for reception and dinner	Two to four subs · cardioid if there is a house behind	32-channel digital console · 4 wireless · 2–4 monitor sends
250–500 · corporate or gala	Short line array or extended system with delay lines	Centre array of four to six subs · passive amp rack	32–48 channel console · 6–8 wireless · in-ears recommended
500+ · concert or festival	Line array with towers and delay lines	Sub array with designed directivity · dedicated racks	Separate FOH and monitor consoles · in-ears and wedges

Up to 50 · reception or ceremony

System: two columns or compact active boxes

Low end: no subwoofers, amplification built in

Console: 8 channels, headset and handheld

50–120 · private party

System: two twelve-inch boxes on poles

Low end: two stacked subwoofers, active system

Console: 16-channel digital, 2 wireless and 2 DI

120–250 · finca wedding

System: fifteen-inch boxes plus fills for reception and dinner

Low end: two to four subs, cardioid if a house sits behind

Console: 32-channel digital, 4 wireless, 2–4 monitor sends

250–500 · corporate or gala

System: short line array or delay lines

Low end: centre array of four to six subs, passive rack

Console: 32–48 channels, 6–8 wireless, in-ears

500+ · concert or festival

System: line array with towers and delay lines

Low end: sub array with designed directivity

Console: separate FOH and monitors, in-ears and wedges

The source count decides the console; the geometry decides the system

Our angle

The right rig is the one with something to spare

If there is one conclusion running through this whole guide, it is that the important decisions about a sound rig are not made in a catalogue. They are made by counting sources, measuring distances, looking at where the neighbour's house is and asking what time the venue's licence stops the music. The same equipment that is more than enough in a paved courtyard in Sencelles falls short in an olive grove in Alaró, and gets you into trouble at half past eleven on a terrace in Deià.

The other conclusion is that margin is not an extra: it is what makes the event work. A system with headroom sounds clean; a console with free channels absorbs the unexpected; a spares kit turns a failure into a two-minute anecdote. On an island, where nothing arrives the same day, that margin is the difference between fixing it and explaining why it could not be fixed.

That is why since 2014 we work with our own stock, an engineer on site at every event with a band or several blocks, a site visit whenever it is outdoors, and one point of contact for sound, lighting and power. You can see the equipment at sound and lighting rental and how we apply it at weddings, corporate events and concerts and festivals.

Frequently asked questions

About sound equipment

What sound equipment do I need for 150 people?

For 150 guests with dinner and a dance floor, the usual starting point is a two-way twelve or fifteen inch box per side, on a pole or stacked, with two subwoofers, a 16 to 32 channel digital console, two or three wireless microphones and a pair of fill boxes for the drinks reception and dining area. Watts are not the criterion. What you dimension is the level you need at the furthest point of the audience, the area to be covered and 6 to 10 dB of headroom above the intended average. A system that only just reaches the target level is already compressing on peaks, and that reads as fatigue long before it reads as volume.

What is the real difference between a line array and conventional boxes?

A point-source system — a trapezoidal two-way box — radiates in a cone and loses around 6 dB every time the distance doubles, so beyond twenty or twenty-five metres the back of the audience runs short. A line array couples several modules vertically to form a line source: level falls off far more gently and, above all, you can steer where the energy goes by curving the array module by module, covering the audience rather than the façades or the sky. What it buys you is control, not raw power. In exchange it needs a lifting tower or truss, load calculations, ballast and considerably more rigging time, so below about 250 people it rarely pays off.

Analogue or digital mixing console?

For events, digital in almost every case. The main reason is not sound quality — a decent analogue desk sounds perfectly good — it is recall. A digital console stores the complete setup for the ceremony, the reception and the party and brings each one back in a second, whereas an analogue desk has to be reset by hand every time. It also puts a compressor and EQ on every channel without extra racks, is controlled from a tablet, and connects to the stage with a digital stagebox and a single network cable instead of a heavy multicore. Analogue keeps two genuine advantages: it never boots, and it does not depend on a network or on firmware. That still makes sense on very small, very repetitive rigs.

How many wireless microphones can be used at once?

It depends on the spectrum that is free at that place on that date, not on how many receivers you own. At a normal event in Mallorca we work comfortably with up to six or eight coordinated wireless channels; beyond that you need frequency coordination done in software, distributed antennas and, almost always, digital systems that occupy less bandwidth. In high season the island's UHF band is congested: within a two-kilometre radius there may be three other events running. That is why the scan is done at the venue on rig day, never in the warehouse the week before.

What is the difference between an active and a passive system?

In an active system each box carries its own amplifier and processing inside: give it mains and signal and it works. In a passive system the loudspeakers have no electronics and are driven from a rack of power amplifiers with its processor. Active wins on rigging speed and simplicity; passive wins once there are many boxes, because it concentrates the electronics in one accessible place, lets the whole system be adjusted from a single point and avoids running mains power to every loudspeaker — which across a large garden is no small thing. In practice most finca rigs are hybrid: active tops and subs on smaller formats, passive with an amp rack on the big ones.

Do I actually need subwoofers?

For a ceremony, a drinks reception or background music, no: subwoofers add nothing to speech intelligibility and a great deal to your neighbour problem. For anything with a dance floor, yes — not for volume but because dance music lives below 100 Hz, and without that band people read the system as weak even when the measured level is high. The practical reference is one subwoofer per main box on the dance floor, crossed over between 80 and 120 Hz. And if there is a house behind the stage, a cardioid subwoofer configuration gives you 12 to 15 dB less energy to the rear, which is the single best tool there is for not ending the night with a complaint.

What is a technical rider and who writes it?

The technical rider is the document an artist or band gives the organiser setting out what they need in order to perform: input list, stage plot, minimum PA, number of monitor sends, backline, electrical power, crew and load-in and soundcheck times. The artist or their engineer writes it, and the sound supplier translates it into actual equipment. The key skill in reading one is separating a real requirement — channels, sends, stage dimensions — from a brand preference, which almost always carries the words "or similar". Ask for it when you book the artist, not the week before: a rider that turns up ten days out usually means reopening the sound budget.

What should a sound hire quote include?

It should itemise the equipment by unit and type — not "sound system for 200 people" — the console and wireless channel counts, whether an engineer is included on site and for how many hours, transport, rig and de-rig, the collection time and what happens if the event overruns. A quote that only states watts and a price lets you compare nothing. And there are two questions worth asking in writing every time: whether the equipment is the supplier's own or subcontracted, and whether there is spare stock backup on the island on the day.

Keep reading

Cobbled courtyard of a Mallorcan finca at dusk with two sound stacks flanking a wooden stage

Outdoor sound

Sound for outdoor events

Why it sounds different outside, subwoofers and neighbours, generators, wind and the noise limits in the Balearics.

The terrace of a Mallorcan finca set up for an event at sunset, with tables laid and views towards the mountains

Venues

Event venues in Mallorca

Fincas, hotels, beach clubs and wineries, with what has to be solved technically at each one.

Courtyard of a Mallorcan finca mid-party at night, with a live band on a stage and the dance floor lit in amber

Music and entertainment

Event entertainment types

Twelve music formats and what each one demands in channels, staging and decibels.

Lighting

Event lighting types

Twelve types of light with what each one does well, what it does badly and what it takes to rig.

Mid-afternoon build at a Mallorcan possessio courtyard, with crew lifting a line array module onto a tower, open flight cases on the gravel and cables run under cable ramps

Production & setup

Event production and setup

The six phases of a build, schedules, plans, power, safety and supplier coordination.

Request a quote

Get a sound equipment quote

Tell us the date, the place and how many people. We send a detailed proposal in under 24h, with the equipment itemised piece by piece and the engineer included.

+34 600 073 515

Phone

+34 600 073 515

fonoysound@gmail.com

Full production

Event SoundEquipment

The complete signal chain

What you see

What decides the result

PA system types

Point source

Line array

Column array

Fills and delay lines

Subwoofers

Stacked under the top

Centre array

Cardioid

Ground coupling

Amplification: active and passive

Active system

Passive system

Processing: EQ, compression, crossovers and DSP

Crossover

Equalisation

Compression and limiting

Loudspeaker processor (DSP)

Mixing consoles: analogue and digital

Analogue

Digital

Microphones: dynamic, condenser and wireless

Dynamic

Condenser

Polar pattern

Wireless

Floor monitors and in-ears

Floor monitors (wedges)

In-ear systems (IEM)

How to read a technical rider

Input list

Stage plot

PA and monitor requirements

Crew, timings and power

Choosing a supplier in Mallorca

Own stock or subcontracted

Engineer on site

Site visit beforehand

Insurance and paperwork

What each guest count takes

The right rig is the one with something to spare

About sound equipment

Sound for outdoor events

Event venues in Mallorca

Event entertainment types

Event lighting types

Event production and setup

Get a sound equipment quote

Our services in Mallorca

Weddings

Private parties

Corporate events

Concerts & festivals

DJ Mallorca

Equipment rental

Technical production

Guides

Cookies

Preferences

Event Sound
Equipment