A Little Help With Amp And Speaker Set Up Requested

[Jonboy84 0]

Hi there I am running a studio master club 2000 old school mixing deck in to a Waudio Elite 1k8 amplifier running a pair of peavey pro 15 500w program 250w rms speakers 4ohm.

I slide the master outputs to the unity level and usually keep the channel volume just underneath it's own unity level whalst running the amp gains around three quarters and no more.

 

The issue I'd like to discuss is when I'm playing a venue (typical example, large working men's club concert room) typically 150 people or so, I like to push the channel volume up a little higher when the dance floor starts to fill.

Doing so susequantly causes the red clip lights to flash regularly despite the fact that the sound is clear and has zero noticeable distortion.

 

I was confused as I would have thought that these speakers were capable of more than they are giving. A good thing to point out is that on the mixer I have the inputs plugged in to a stereo channel with one slider as opposed to two monos, and the trouble with this is that on the stereo channels there is no channel gain.

Could me not using any gain and pushing the sliders up too far be the issue? Or is it simply the speakers are not powerful enough to be driven harder? If you need any more info I will provide, and all advice is appreciated : ) thank you