Corporate Audio and Sound System Rental
Column-array and line-array PA, wireless microphones and a sound engineer who makes your speakers sound good in a room that was not built for speaking.
Most corporate audio fails in the same two ways
The first is intelligibility. A ballroom is a box of hard surfaces, and a PA aimed at the middle of it will bounce off the back wall and come back a beat late. The room gets louder without getting clearer, and by the second speaker half the audience has quietly given up on following along.
The second is the human factor. A lavalier taped badly, a handheld held at the chest, a lectern mic at the wrong height, a presenter who turns their head away mid-sentence. None of those are gear problems, and none of them get fixed by turning it up.
We came out of the wedding and DJ world, where you get exactly one take and the room is usually worse than a ballroom. That is the background we bring to a general session: obsessive about coverage, obsessive about gain before feedback, and used to making someone who has never held a microphone sound like they know what they are doing.
What we deploy
Column array PA
Our default for most corporate rooms. Column arrays throw long and narrow with very even vertical coverage, which is exactly what a ballroom full of seated people needs. They are also physically discreet, so the stage picture stays clean rather than having a pair of large boxes on sticks framing your CEO.
Line array PA
When the room gets big or the audience gets deep, we fly line array. More output, more control over where the sound lands and where it does not, and the ability to keep the back row at the same level as row five without deafening the front. This is what goes in for large general sessions, galas in big ballrooms and anything outdoors with real headcount.
Fills and delays
Long rooms, L-shaped rooms and rooms with a structural column in the wrong place need more than a main PA. We add front fills for the first rows, side fills for seats off-axis, and time-aligned delay speakers down a long room so the back of the house hears the same show as the front.
Stage monitoring
Presenters and performers need to hear themselves. We provide wedge monitors or in-ears depending on what is happening on stage, and we mix them separately from the room so a panel can hear each other without the audience hearing feedback.
Microphones and the people holding them
We carry wireless handhelds, lavaliers and headsets, plus lectern gooseneck mics and table mics for panels. What matters more than the model is how they get used, so here is how we handle it.
- Every wireless channel is coordinated for frequency before doors, so your mics do not fight the hotel’s or each other
- Lavaliers get placed by someone who does it for a living, because placement is the whole game with a lav
- Backup on every critical position, so a dead handheld in the middle of an award presentation is a swap and not a stop
- A headset for anyone who gestures, presents hands-free or moves around the stage
- Panels get a mic per seat rather than one passed down the table
Our engineer rides the mix live for the whole show. Corporate audio is not set-and-forget: a soft speaker follows a loud one, someone steps off-mic to point at the screen, the room gets fuller and absorbs more. Somebody has to be at the desk.
Playback, walk-up music and no dead air
This is where our DJ roots show, and it is one of the real differences between us and a straight AV vendor.
Rooms have energy or they do not. Silence while 400 people find their seats sets a tone, and so does a well-chosen track under the walk-up. We build music into the show: something playing as doors open, a walk-up cue for each award recipient, a sting when a number lands on screen, a bed under the video package, and something with life in it the moment the session breaks.
We also run the playback cleanly. Video audio routed properly so it does not blast at twice the level of the speaker before it. Cues pre-loaded and rehearsed. No laptop chimes, no notification sounds, no scrambling for the right track while a presenter stands there waiting.
Recording, streaming and the feed nobody plans for
Almost every corporate client eventually asks for a recording, and it is always easier to plan for it than to retrofit it. We can provide a clean board feed for recording or streaming, separate from the room mix, so what gets captured is the actual program audio rather than a camera microphone picking up the room.
Our in-house video production team handles the capture and the live stream when you want it, which means the audio and video sides are the same company talking to each other rather than two vendors pointing fingers. More on that on the event production page.
Rooms we know inside and out
We are the in-house AV company at Legacy Stables & Events in Winston-Salem and The Merrimon-Wynne House in Raleigh. In those rooms we know the acoustics, the power, where the PA needs to go and what makes a presenter sound good without a fight. Everywhere else in the Triad, the Triangle, Charlotte and up and down the East Coast including Virginia and South Carolina, we walk the room ahead of the show whenever we can.
Questions we get about corporate audio
Why column array instead of the usual speakers on sticks?
Because a ballroom full of seated people is a long, shallow target and column arrays cover that shape far better. Even level from row two to the back wall, less energy thrown at the ceiling and the side walls, and a much cleaner stage picture. When the room is big enough to need more, we fly line array instead.
Can you make a quiet speaker sound good?
That is most of the job. Proper mic choice and placement, gain structure set with headroom, compression used lightly, and an engineer riding the fader through the session. We cannot make a mumbling presenter into an orator, but we can make them clearly intelligible in the back row, which is what people actually mean when they say the audio was good.
Do you handle the hotel’s house sound?
Usually we bring our own. House systems in hotels and conference centers are typically designed for background music and paging, not for a two-hour general session with panels and video. When a venue’s system is genuinely good we will use it and tell you so, because that saves you money.
How many wireless mics can you run?
Enough for a full panel plus presenters plus backups, and we coordinate frequencies so they are all stable. If you are planning something unusually mic-heavy, tell us early: the constraint is available RF spectrum in that building, not our inventory, and it is worth checking before the day.
Can you provide music as well as speech reinforcement?
Yes, and we plan it as part of the show rather than as an afterthought. Walk-in, walk-up cues, stings, beds under video, break music and a set to close the night. We are a DJ company at our roots, so this is home turf.
Do you provide a feed for our videographer or streaming platform?
Yes. A clean board feed, separate from the room mix, at line level or however your team needs it. We can also handle the capture and the stream ourselves with our in-house video team so there is one company responsible for the whole chain.
What does corporate audio cost?
Entry-level corporate production starts around $4,000 for a straightforward single-day event with PA, mics, playback and an engineer. A typical 100 to 500 person single-day event runs from there up to around $50,000 depending on rooms, screens, lighting and video. Multi-day events are priced roughly per day. Quotes come in simple line items.
Can you provide power for an outdoor event?
Yes. We carry distribution on every job, and we can provide quiet generators when a site has no usable power. For smaller or noise-sensitive setups we sometimes use solar and battery solutions instead, which is worth asking about if your ceremony or general session cannot tolerate generator hum.
Are you insured, and can you send a certificate?
Yes. We carry general liability, commercial auto and workers’ compensation insurance, and we issue certificates of insurance naming your venue or client as additional insured, usually the same day you ask. Most hotels, convention centres, hospitals and campus buildings require one before load-in. Send us the venue’s requirements and we will deal with their risk department directly.
Tell us about the room and the run of show
Send us the venue, the headcount, how many people are speaking and whether you need it recorded. We will come back with a proposal in simple line items.