When it comes to designing a sound system for a gymnasium, you don’t want a system that produces wimpy sound and barely covers the first few rows of bleachers. Nope. You want a gym PA system that gives you rocking high-output music with clear, easily-understood announcements that evenly cover the entire gym. Your gym sound system should produce energy and enthusiasm to create a winning home-court atmosphere for your teams and the audience cheering them on.

For someone who doesn’t know much about audio, it may be difficult to understand the importance of a quality sound system for a gym. A strict budget may also place limits on sound equipment that is purchased. But for the sake of your student, spectator, and visitor experience, getting the right equipment is crucial. It is possible to affordably upgrade your system to build an advantage for your teams that creates excitement and clear announcements while minimizing echo.

As you are thinking through how to set up a sound system in a gym that is durable, easy to operate, and delivers powerful, full-coverage sound, we’ve got 3 must-have components that are crucial for a quality experience.

  1. Quality Microphone Built Tough to Withstand the Conditions of a Gymnasium

    Your microphone is the first link in the audio chain. If you make a mistake with your mic, there is no way to make up for it on the back end of the system. You need a microphone that is built tough for the rigors of commercial audio use that come with a gym speaker system.

    • Decide if you need a wireless or wired microphone. Do you need to move around with your mic, or will you have an announcer seated in one location that a wired microphone would work best for? If there is a chance the announcer might need to move around quite a bit then you’ll want a wireless microphone so they’re not dragging a mic cable around the gym with them.

    • Some great brands to consider for your gym’s microphone are Audix, Avlex, Electro-Voice, and Audio-Technica.

  2. Commercial-Grade Durable High Powered Loudspeakers

    This is an area that you don’t want to breeze past. If you want booming robust music and good coverage you have to step it up with the quality and power of your speakers. If you want deep bass, you will need speakers with the right size drivers. A substantial speaker is necessary for challenging commercial gymnasium environments.

  3. Reliable High-Performance Power Amplifier

    Once your speakers are dialed in, you’ll need the appropriate power amplification. Implementation of the correct amplifier is critical and often overlooked. An audio power amplifier is an electronic amplifier required to amplify the power of an input signal to a high enough level to drive your loudspeakers. Your amplifier needs to be powerful enough to deliver the high-quality sound of your speakers with the appropriate amount of headroom*.

    • Your old gym audio systems may have worked with an existing 100-200 watt amplifier, but more modern speakers, while more efficient, will need plenty of wattage to reproduce full-range music. Make sure to get a power amp with enough wattage.

    • Yamaha, Crown, QSC, and Dynacord all have great options for quality commercial powered amplifiers that work great in gymnasium environments

*Headroom is the total combined speaker wattage that should not exceed the total wattage output of the amplifier minus a minimum of 20% headroom buffer space. This allows the speakers to perform at full peak wattage without overdriving the amp and having loss of audio as a result.

Build a Solid Design Plan to Get the Most Out Of Your Equipment

A solid system design plan is also a must. At the end of the day, if you have great equipment with no plan, you could still end up with a sound system that doesn’t live up to your standards.

Here are some questions to ask as you plan your gym sound system design:

  1. Where are the speakers going to be placed?

  2. Where and how will the microphones be used?

  3. How will you avoid feedback while still maximizing volume?

  4. Will the chosen speakers be robust enough for your needs?

  5. What is the acoustical environment like, and how can the system address any acoustical problems that may exist?

Gymnasium Sound Systems Designed by Pro Acoustics Experienced System Designers

If you are looking for a tailored sound system for a gymnasium, we have a large variety of turn-key gym sound systems that have been carefully designed by our system engineers and can be easily customized for the perfect solution. All of these gymnasium speaker systems are designed for high powered music, superb play-by-play vocal clarity, and amazing spectator coverage in gyms, basketball courts, volleyball courts, indoor sports arenas, and all types of school gyms and athletic facilities.

Check out 3 of our favorite commercial sound systems for gyms here.

Or shop all of our gym sound systems here.

We also have Bluetooth speaker systems for gyms that make it easy for you to stream audio from any Bluetooth-enabled device directly to your Bluetooth gym sound system.

Once you have addressed your 3 must-have components and have thought through a design plan, and maybe even chosen your audio solution, you may find that you still need some help to guarantee that you get the system that will work exactly as you need it to. That’s where we come in. Request a quote on any of our systems, give us a call at (888) 256-4112, or email us at [email protected], and we will happily guide you in designing the perfect commercial gymnasium PA sound system for all of your needs, application, and budget.