Monitors for practise

I decided to join this forum as it seems to be fairly active 🙂

Sigh … 2-3 hours a day of hard labor answering and/or moderating all postings and it only seems “fairly active” pffff 😀

On point though:

1) Second hand can be tricky with monitors. Be sure to check them thoroughly before you buy. Use the fact that they are used to get better quality monitors, not lesser quality for even less money. In other words, if you could buy a pair of Behringer (don’t imho) for 255 USD new, don’t go an buy that same pair used for half, but buy a pair of monitors that were 500 new and get those for 255 used.

2) You may end up waiting a long time. There isn’t much to refurbish on monitors and frankly I don’t know of too many brands that offer that service for monitor speakers.

3) Don’t get cheaper brands!!! In speakers especially you “get what you pay for”. Less spent is less quality.

In general, the nr. 1 choice is the KRK Rokit 5s or 6s (depending on how much bass you want/need and the size of your room). Sweetwater.com has a pair of 5s for 300 USD and a pair of 6s for 400 USD.

Also be sure to go to the blog and use the search function in the reviews section to look for monitor speakers. There are several that have been recently reviewed in various price ranges. You can do the same search here on the forums of course. Much has been said/written on the subject.

Exampl: On the lower end you could look at M-Audio AV40s for example. A pair come to 150 USD.

The quality difference is reflected in the price. They are however suitable for beginners practice and most likely be better than your current 15yr old setup (if only because they won’t drop out 😛 ). Just calculate that once you want to step up in quality and/or start producing too, you will be upgrading to something like the KRKs. So, if you are serious about your hobby, I’d probably look out for a sale on KRK 5s or 6s (6s are really better for their bass performance).

@Markus: Like to say a few things about your post.

The KRKs are not designed as DJ monitor speakers, they were designed as STUDIO monitor speakers. A lot of typical studio monitor speakers get abused for DJ monitoring purposes 😀

No speaker is ever too loud for any environment, it’s the hand that sets the volume knob! There is no law/rule that says you have to play monitors at full volume. Typically studio engineers will have the monitors playing at a really decent volume level, not loud at all. Obviously if you practice DJ=ing you do want a bit more volume.

KRKs don’t have an extremely strong bass. They are not designed for EDM at all. As studio monitors they are designed to have a (nearly) flat frequency response. Meaning that you hear all that is there in the source and all that isn’t and you can then change accordingly. You don’t want your monitors to color your sound. Matter of fact, the KRK 5s (specially G2 but true for G3 as well) are a bit limited in bass response, not as part of the entire frequency response, but just because at higher volumes the 5″ speakers just can’t move enough air to make the bass end sound strong enough.

You can put as much absorbtion on your walls as you like, this will do nothing to lower the volume penetrating outwards. All absorbtion will do is limit (some of) the reflection of sound waves back from the walls. Don’t ever buy any of those advertised “sound proofing” wonder products. The only thing that helps is either decoupling (box in a box concept – perhaps a tad much for at home lol) or mass (like really heavy walls), if you have 30cm concrete already you are actually doing good. Unfortunately long wave sound (i.e. low frequencies) carries the furthest so you’ll neighbour is bound to hear the low end rumbling even with the thick concrete walls. I bet she can’t hear a single higher frequency.

Yep, that should work. Keep in mind that RCA has a lower output level than balanced (XLR/TRS), so you might have to turn the master on your controller up a bit.

Good practice with active speakers is to set the volume on the speaker to 0dB (either marked on the dial or 12 o’clock position usually) and control the actual volume with your mixer/controller master volume knob.

Haven’t heard these, but they look like pretty decent speakers. Good luck with them!