Studio Monitors

1 en 2: if you re breaking pro monitors, you ll propably be breaking your ears, not a good idea. 3: you ve got to order cables too 4: you can use jack or xlr (the round thing with 3 pins). you ve got to choose between balanced or unbalanced. you won t benefit from balanced if your sound card doesnt support it. if you can use balanced you ve got to use balanced jacks or xlr. xlr had better noise performance. 5: go to friends with monitors, bring some cds you know good and decide for yourself what you like best. 6: the pricier the better but in the 200 euro area there are some good monitors to start with.

the cable thing that strekie says only is so with active monitors, if you use passive monitors you'll need an extra amp ( best a special one for that, like the alesis ra series )....

breaking them is not easy and will indeed result in serious ear damage...

for affordable ones : KRK / Tapco ( budget line from Mackie ) / Alesis and even Behringer are good options, KRK and Tapco would be the best choices, in that budget range I'd choose KRK.... 

Originally posted by : strekie

5: go to friends with monitors, bring some cds you know good and decide for yourself what you like best.

he should go to a shop wich stocks lots of mon,itors since not any studio setup/sound proofing is the same... i doubt this would be useful. if he can compare a lot of monitors at the same place yes, but different monitors in different conditions-places.... sorry no.

Thanks a lot for those quick replies. I will be looking into that balanced/unbalanced problem. 75% sure I will be going for the KRKs, can´t decide on RP-6 (+- 190 euro pp) or 8 (+-240 euro pp). Is the difference more power? from certain reviews it seems as if RP-8 is has a better price/quality rate. The only real competition for the KRKs (in my opinion) are the m-audio BX8A (199 euro pp) and the Yamaha HS50M (+- 150 euro pp). Have been reading great reviews of all these. Behringer appear to be prone to blowing their fuse and pick up radio interferance, samsons seem to cheap for comfort; rubicons have ribbons (fragile?), Alesis 620 certainly looks cool and I like the clipping light but I don´t think they have what it takes. Tapcos reviews arent all that great.

Going to friends who own monitors would indeed be a problem; different rooms + I do not know anyone who owns monitors :D Is there a shop near Gent or Beringen where they have a nice stock of monitors?

that s true, just go to musicstore in germany

Originally posted by : Swan

Originally posted by : strekie

5: go to friends with monitors, bring some cds you know good and decide for yourself what you like best. 

he should go to a shop wich stocks lots of mon,itors since not any studio setup/sound proofing is the same... i doubt this would be useful. if he can compare a lot of monitors at the same place yes, but different monitors in different conditions-places.... sorry no.

Ok been looking if my external sound thingie supports balanced or unbalanced, but it does not seem to feature either of those. Is this possible? it is an m-audio transit, quite small but really effective (asio) and cheap, thats why I bought it. Do I need to upgrade to another one? because a fast track by m-audio seems to feature these as it says so in its detail on the m-audio site. From what I can make of it my Transit is only good for Headphones. Am I wrong?

active monitors are preferrable since the built-in amp is designed for the speaker so you get no "coloration" of the sound. It also saves you money because you dont need an extra amp. As for wich ones, KRK are favoured alot, i have active alesis m620 i bought recently and a pair cost me 350€, so thats in your pricerange. they are a bit bass heavy though, but thats why i bought them :-)I was advised that the Yamaha's are a bit cheaper but not as good as alesis. you will indeed need cables to connect them to your mixer if you go for actives. About breaking them: you would have to play REALLY loud to blow them, for example the alesis i have can blow out 100watt rms, thats more than enough for nearfield monitors (even a bit too much). I have set them at 50% of their capacity and thats already very, very loud when i sit in front of them. Cool thing about mine is also that in case of clipping, the blue led's on top of the speakers turn red (says the manual, i didnt try it yet for obvious reasons) one bad thing i found out about the ones i have is that certain capacitors sometimes have a short lifespan or are prone to malfunctioning, but if it happens it usually happens in the guarantee period (or even from 1st time use) so you would get a replacement pair for free.

hope this helps 

Thanks Hecticcc, was going for actives anyway. I don´t own a mixer though. Quite a budget setup I have here which I use for fun, hence the cheap M-audio transit. Seems I will be needing a better audio interface and a mixer then?

you dont necessarily need a mixer, you can hook them up straight in your output on the soundcard but i would not advise that. If you accidentaly send out a very loud signal from your pc you might damage the speakers/amps (or really scare the neighbours) Any cheap mixer will do, behringer for example has small cheap line mixers. Or ask around for an old mixer from a dj'ing friend or something. As for soundcard i think the one you suggest is fine for a "having fun" setup.

Originally posted by : AstCfx

Thanks a lot for those quick replies. I will be looking into that balanced/unbalanced problem. 75% sure I will be going for the KRKs, can´t decide on RP-6 (+- 190 euro pp) or 8 (+-240 euro pp). Is the difference more power? from certain reviews it seems as if RP-8 is has a better price/quality rate. The only real competition for the KRKs (in my opinion) are the m-audio BX8A (199 euro pp) and the Yamaha HS50M (+- 150 euro pp). Have been reading great reviews of all these. Behringer appear to be prone to blowing their fuse and pick up radio interferance, samsons seem to cheap for comfort; rubicons have ribbons (fragile?), Alesis 620 certainly looks cool and I like the clipping light but I don´t think they have what it takes. Tapcos reviews arent all that great.

Going to friends who own monitors would indeed be a problem; different rooms + I do not know anyone who owns monitors :D Is there a shop near Gent or Beringen where they have a nice stock of monitors?

samsons are ok! got 2 pairs but blowed them both before i could sell them its small and not much db power (if you need it - i do)