Studio monitors: help needed

Well, trusting your ears is important of course. So good start there.

The thing is that DJs are abusing studio monitors for DJ mixing practice, where they are really made for (what’s in a name) studio work, including mixdowns, mastering and producing. The two are, imho, mutually exclusive in that the flat and somewhat tiring frequency response needed for studio work, playing music at low volumes is totally different from the more PA feel at higher volumes you want to practice DJ-ing.

Having said that, the KRK isn’t 100% flat, but close enough to be very useful for studio work while at the same time being a bit more forgiving when played louder for practice purposes. However, the 5s (which I have 2nd gen) are a tad light on the bass end. So unless you are considering a subwoofer with them (not likely on your budget), I’d try to go for the 6s. The Presonus I think is truly geared towards studio use, the Pioneer probably a bit more towards DJ/Producer use. So I’d probably end up chosing between the Pioneer and the KRK (6s).

But again, trust your ears.

I am a Mackie fan and have fallen out of love with JBL a few years ago (loved them back in the day, but their later stuff I wasn’t too impressed with). I haven’t heard either, well the Mackies briefly at the show, but that doesn’t qualify, so can’t give an unbiased and informed desicion.

I’ll stand by my 6″ over 5″ advice though. Bass response is really noticeably better on 6s compared to 5s. My next set will be 6s for sure (moving up to VXT-series as well).

Well, the JBLs hopefully have TRS and XLR INputs, not OUTs 😀

Ok. Here goes.

Easiest thing to do is to get a decent RCA cable, don’t go cheap on this. The thing to watch for is that you can “split” one end. Some cables have an extra block of plastic cast a couple of inches from the end to prevent the cable from splitting accidentally. This is normally a good feature, but in this case you want one end to split. After all you are going from two RCA close together (Mixtrack outputs) to one speaker on each side. As for length, measure the distance from Mixtrack to speaker and then get a cable that is slightly longer. Don’t get it much longer as extra length means extra risk of getting unwanted sounds (like humm).

Monitor speakers should be positioned in an equilateral triangle (all legs of the triangle same length) with your head being the front corner of the triangle and the monitors on the back corners. They should be a bit above your ear level with the high end driver pointed slightly downward, directed at your ear. Use some kind of acoustic dampening pad (Auralex) between the stands/shelves and the speakers. The pads come with a slope, so they automatically sit facing downward a bit. Brilliant!

THIS is an example of what you DON’T want!

There is also really no need to go for gold-plated monster cable, imho. But get something like THIS. It has relatively thick cable and solid connectors. In fact, I find for RCA those cast-on plastic connectors are sturdier than the metal ones, because of the resistance to pulling the cable out from the connector (near impossible on the plastic ones, pretty common on metals). Then again, I look at things with an eye on playing out, live gigs, but for a one-time install-and-forget in a home practice room, this is less of an issue. In which case I’d still say go for the plastic ones from a cost perspective.

Next you need two of THESE. Pretty clear what these do, right? You stick one on each (split) end of the RCA cable and run it into the jack input of your JBLs.

Final things to watch. There are both a low and high filter switch on the monitors. My advice is to start with both at zero and once you are used to the sound in neutral, to play around with it (by trying to change ONE setting at the time) to find which setting(s) work best for you. Also there is a switch marked input sensitivity, this is used to tell the monitor how “hot” your incoming signal is. Balanced outputs (XLR/Jack) usually run at +4dB. Unbalanced (RCA) usually at -10dB. And those are the exact two option for the sensitivy switch. So setting it to -10dB should work. If you find that they are very loud, you can always set them to +4dB, some DJ controllers do push their RCA outputs above the official limit.

There is a very slight chance you might still pick up unwanted sounds, you are running unbalanced cable, but if you keep it under 6-8 feet you should be ok. There are solutions (which you might want to invest in by the time you start playing out), but come back to us with that question if you either get unwanted sound or are ready to play out.