Speakers/PA

CrystalMethodist

Hey guys-- I'm living in a house on my college campus and we're going to buy speakers to host medium-sized parties. I'm bad at guestimating, so I can't give you the size of the room, but we don't need anything insane. We're currently powering our mini-parties with a set of computer speakers, which reach maybe 1/4 of the way across the room at their max when people are packed and dancing. It's barely doable, but I feel like even a smallish actual PA speaker would do the trick for us.

What should I look for in a PA? Powered? Unpowered? Do I need an amp? The input will be coming from a 1/8" cable (which I can convert into 1/4" obviously). I'd go over to Guitar Center and ask around, but due to a convoluted process (just trust me on this) I need to price everything out online and take one trip over to buy it, so I need to know exactly what we want.

Our budget is like $300 or $350, but we can be flexible if we have to be.

Thanks!

PeregrineFalcon

Sounds like a bigger set of computer speakers would probably do the trick, unless you've got a really big room.

Do the stretch-the-arms-out to measure (arms stretched ~= your height) and check it out, but I'd wager you don't have anything big enough to require really heavy DJ-style artillery, unless you're after a noise complaint.

CrystalMethodist

Nah, we need a real speaker, but we need a small real speaker . This is for a sizeable common room, it can probably hold 60+ people in it.

No noise complaints, since we're part of student housing and I'm on staff. We're actually buying this with university funds.

CrystalMethodist

So, what's the difference between a powered and unpowered speaker? Does one mean that I don't need to amplify my signal?