A hotel ballroom is the most common room we play for corporate events and the one with the most rules attached to sound. Almost every full-service hotel in Manhattan and a growing number in New Jersey has an in-house audiovisual company, and that company has opinions about what plugs into what. Sometimes those rules make the event better. Sometimes they add a line to your invoice that nobody warned you about. This post explains how house AV, patch points, ceiling speakers and the microphone feed actually work in a ballroom, so you can ask the right questions before you sign the banquet event order.
What in-house AV means and when it is mandatory
Most hotels contract their audiovisual services to an outside company that lives in the building: a production firm with an office off the loading dock, a rental inventory, and technicians on shift. The hotel's contract with that company usually gives it exclusivity over certain things. Three patterns cover almost every hotel we have played:
- House sound is required for anything amplified in the ballroom. Outside vendors may bring their source, meaning our controller and mixer, but must feed the house speakers rather than set up their own.
- House sound is optional, but an outside vendor pays a fee to bring their own. Sometimes framed as a power drop, a patch fee, or an outside AV fee. The hotel will tell you if you ask; it is often on the BEO in small print.
- House AV is only mandatory for the program, meaning the podium microphone, the projector and screens, and any recording feed, while the DJ is free to bring their own sound for the party portion.
Which pattern applies is a question for the hotel's catering or convention services manager, and it should be asked before you sign, because it changes what the DJ brings and what the AV company bills. None of the three is a problem. The second and third can produce charges the client did not expect if nobody asked.
Patch points, ceiling speakers, and what they are good for
A ballroom's built-in sound system is a set of speakers in the ceiling, spread evenly across the room so that a voice at the podium reaches every table at the same level. That is what it was designed for: speech. It is excellent at it. A ballroom ceiling system will carry a CEO's remarks to the back table with no hot spots, and for dinner music at conversation level it is fine, because even coverage at low volume is exactly what dinner wants.
What ceiling speakers are not designed for is dancing. Dance music needs low frequencies, and a small ceiling speaker mounted well above the floor cannot produce them. Play a dance set through a house ceiling system and the room hears the melody and none of the weight. People can tell, even if they cannot say why. The floor feels thin and they drift back to the bar.
So the arrangement we ask for in a ballroom, when the hotel allows it, is a split: our music goes to the house ceiling system for arrival and dinner, and to our own speakers at the dance area for the floor. Where the hotel requires house sound only, we ask whether the AV company can add ground-stacked speakers near the floor and feed them from our mixer; most can, at a rental charge. The patch itself is simple. The house system has an input somewhere, usually a wall plate near the stage or a rack in a closet at the back of the room, and we run a balanced line from our mixer to it. What we confirm in advance is the connector on that plate, because there is a difference between arriving with the right cable and discovering at 4:00 that the plate takes something we did not bring.
A detail that improves an event: in many ballrooms the house system is zoned, and the AV tech can mute the ceiling speakers over the dance floor so they do not fight our speakers, while leaving the rest of the room on. Ask whether the system is zoned. If the tech says yes, the room will sound noticeably better after dinner, because the ceiling speakers over the floor are no longer smearing a second, slightly delayed copy of the music over the top of ours.
Who owns the microphone feed
The single most important logistics question in a ballroom program is: whose microphone is the speaker holding, and whose mixer is it going through. There are two workable answers and one bad one.
Workable answer one: the house AV company supplies and runs the podium and handheld microphones through their console, and the DJ's music also goes through that console, so that one technician controls the balance between speech and music. This is the norm for a formal program with a projector and video, and we are glad to work inside it. We send our music to the house tech on one channel; they ride the fader.
Workable answer two: there is no house AV in the room, or house AV is only running video, and the DJ supplies wireless microphones through our own mixer. We bring the microphones, check them before doors, and bring the music down and up around each speaker ourselves. This is the norm for a holiday party or company celebration with a short program.
The bad answer is both at once with nobody deciding. Two mixers, two sets of microphones, and a moment where the CEO picks up a handheld that is on the DJ's system while the AV tech is watching their own console for a level that never appears. We settle this on the planning call and again at sound check: which microphones are live, who is on the fader, and what the cue is for handing off. The DJ and AV team post lays out the whole division of responsibility.
House AV cost versus ours
We cannot quote a hotel's AV pricing and would not guess at it. What we can describe is the shape of it. In-house AV typically bills per item per day (each speaker, each wireless microphone, each mixer channel), plus technician labor by the hour with a minimum call, plus a service charge on the total. Some hotels add a fee for any outside vendor who brings their own equipment. The bill can be modest for a podium microphone and a laptop connection, and it can be substantial for a full dance-floor system with a technician on shift until midnight.
Our packages include sound scaled to the room and wireless microphones, confirmed against what the venue allows. When the hotel requires house sound, we bring the source and patch in, and the package price does not change; what changes is what the hotel bills you for the house system and technician. When the hotel allows our own sound, there is no AV rental line for the party portion at all. The way to compare is to ask the hotel for the AV estimate with and without the DJ's sound, and to send us the BEO so we can tell you which line items our package makes unnecessary. Full package details are on the pricing page.
Questions to ask the hotel before you sign
- Is house AV required for sound in the ballroom, or only for the program?
- Is there a fee for an outside vendor bringing their own sound?
- Is the ceiling system zoned, and can the AV tech mute the zone over the dance floor?
- Where is the patch point and what connector does it use?
- Who supplies the microphones for speakers, and who runs the console during the program?
- What is the AV technician's shift, and what does labor cost past it?
- What is the freight and dock schedule for vendor load-in? Our Manhattan load-in post covers this.
- Is a certificate of insurance required, naming which entities?
Once we have the hotel's name and the date, we ask these ourselves and confirm directly with the hotel's AV company, so you are not passing messages between two vendors who should be talking to each other. Send the date, the hotel and a rough headcount through the contact page or call (201) 705-3139. We reply within 24 hours.