How do you control the volume of your Active studio monitors?

So how DO you control the volume of your Active monitors?

  • With a mixing board

    Votes: 97 49.2%

  • With a passive preamp

    Votes: 5 2.5%

  • With my computer's audio output faders

    Votes: 45 22.8%

  • other...

    Votes: 50 25.4%
  • Total voters
    197
Where did the idea come from that the 1010 is so much better than the Q10? "Quality vs Quantity" ?

Before making a decision based on one persons opinion based on 1 review he read... hmmm... Aardvarks are very good cards, you might look into it a little further. There is also the Direct Pro 24/96 that only has 4 Mic Pre's and about 2/3 as much in price, but the same hardware. Oh, & it has onboard DSP effects, Comp,EQ, Reverb, that are not too bad. Especially usefull for monitoring. The Q10 does not.

I installed my Direct Pro on my friends system who has a Delta 1010 (& a Mackie) and we did some tests... Vox and Accoustic guitar... neither of us felt that there was much difference in the sound quality. He has gone on to recommending the Aardvark to friends.

Alfalfa may still be right about the converters but... Reviews are great and all, but hands on experience has a little more unbiased truth.

Good Luck,
B.
 
Unlike the Q10... thre is no hardware knob on the unit. It has a controll panel w/ a Monitor slider, to controll the volume level. It does have a headphone out. I must say that this is the only thing I wish it had. But I still get by, one day at a time...
I switch between headphone and monitors quite a bit, so I reach around and just click off and on my Monitors. It's not that big of a deal but it would be nice to just turn down a knob.

http://www.aardvark-pro.com/aasd-v1/products/2496-main.html

B.
 
Booda said:
Where did the idea come from that the 1010 is so much better than the Q10? "Quality vs Quantity" ?
B.
Click to expand...
You have misinterpreted my comments. The quality vs quantity point was regarding having a setup with RNP or grace 101 into a 2 input soundcard into a high quality volume control/preamp versus a q10 - NOT a q10 vs 1010. You should read the other threads between myself and ambi to understand the context.

Ambi brought up the subject of the q10 converters. Since Aardvark does not publish what converters are used, I disputed the claim they were better.

2 reviews (Prorec and sound on sound) have measured the noise floor of the q10 and found it to be significantly higher than its competitors. These are quantitative judgements, not subjective descriptions. I never said the q10 was a bad card ... I believe my words were "pretty good package" and "probably better than a delta 66".
 
This may be a little rich for most people's blood, but I use the Furman SRM-80. I posted a review of it here: https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26808 or the Furman web site http://www.furmansound.com/pdfdata/SRM-80pr.pdf

I'm using it right now, to dub off 4 copies of a worktape for a project in progress. It is a volume control, but much more: if you like to swap monitors while checking mixes, it is invaluable (you can use it to match the levels properly), and if you do a lot of dubbing it's even _better_. It's the single piece of gear I reach for the most often...

You don't need this for a small, entry-level rig. But once you get started doing bigger projects, it can make a lot of sense: the time savings pay for it pretty quickly...
 
I thought I'd dredge up this thread once again, because I picked up the Presonus HP4 the other day for my mobile rig.

Well, it does exactly what it's supposed to do. It has 4 headphone amps (that sound good, and get plenty loud with lower impedance headphones), a monitor level control (with mute), and a mono switch. I/O can be balanced or unbalanced, and it's overall build quality seems good, plus it's very small (1/3 rack). For $99, it's a great solution to having monitor control with 4 headphone amps to boot!

Presonus doesn't have much info about the HP4 on their site yet, but it is shipping. I bought mine from http://www.kraftmusic.com (but they don't have it listed yet either, but do have them in stock as of this posting - so you could call them to order it) - I would imagine any other Presonus dealer can get them as well.
 
So how is the HP4? Is it a potentiometer knob or?

I hear the SRM-80 is a vca? hmmm

anybody know of an budget stepped attenuator for monitoring?

Anyone have experience with Studio Technologies setups?

T
 
cool find. How's the sound quality? If you have it going direct out of your sound card, or through the presonus, is there an audible differnence in quality? Does the presonus put a "vail" over the sound?
 
It's a potentiometer knob - probably going through a VCA (haven't ripped it open yet to look), but seems pretty clean (no vail that I percieve).
 
I'm currently building a 'passive preamp' for attenuating the signal from my DAW to my amp. I did a pretty significant amount of research on the net and found a design that is 1) cheap, 2) should sound good and 3) easy to build. I just got all my components yesterday except for a box to put it in. I decided to do a little more than just single input/output with volume. Instead I'll have switchable inputs from DAW to CD changer and separate mutable outputs for the power amp and headphone amp. All told, this is going to cost me about $30 plus some sort of box to put it in. If you go with cheaper components and/or less frills, you could do this for under $20 easily. I bought good stuff with the exception of a cheaper potentiometer. The potentiometer in this design isn't used to directly attentuate the signal as in the diagram posted previously in this thread, but instead it shunts some of the signal to ground. You connect both the input and output to the wiper and connect one side of the pot to ground. I'll try to post a diagram later today. Its really a pretty slick and simple design.
 
I built my own 3-way monitors. The system has a rack mount preamp/x-over unit to distribute signals to the individual amps and drivers. It has a single buffered stereo input level knob. This dual ganged stepped attenuator can adjust the input level from +6dB to -14dB and maintain near perfect level matching between the two channels.

Like Steve, however, I also mix using the 85 dB SMPTE standard. So, I never touch the level unless I'm just turning it up for fun.:)

Thomas
 
ebeam,
Good luck with your design!! I'm not much of an DIY'r, but could'nt you include a "better" potentiometer? I mean isn't that the main purpose, or is it to include the other stuff?


ebeam said:
I'm currently building a 'passive preamp' for attenuating the signal from my DAW to my amp
SNip
I bought good stuff with the exception of a cheaper potentiometer.Its really a pretty slick and simple design.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, I could use a better pot, but the cool thing about this design is that the signal you listen to never passes through the pot. At least thats the argument people were making on the diy audio site. If this doesn't sound good, I'm going to try a law-faking design with a linear taper pot or maybe the same design with a better log pot.

Here's a link to the basic design I'm using:
http://homepage.mac.com/tlinespeakers/hhaller-passivepre.gif

As you can see, the only component that's truly in the signal path is the resistor (and any switches of course).
 
ebeam said:
Yeah, I could use a better pot, but the cool thing about this design is that the signal you listen to never passes through the pot.
Click to expand...
Of course the signal passes through the pot. The output is simply a voltage determined by the input voltage and the divider setup by the resistor and pot. When the signal is positive current flows from the input, through both components, and then to ground. When the signal is negative current flows from ground, through both components, and then to the input. In both case the current flows through the pot. And that flowing current determines the output voltage. So, if the pot is noisy or the L and R channels are mismatched, that's going to show up in your output signal. There's no getting around it.

Thomas

http://barefootsound.com
 
Barefoot - You're right, its still a voltage divider and at low levels will probably have some mistracking and other problems. I was under the impression that using the pot as a shunt instead of passing the signal straight through (input to pot input and output to wiper) would offer some benefit. Do you think that has any merit?

The pot I'm using is an alps audio taper 100K from Radio Shack - they're not supposed to be that bad. Linear taper stereo pots have much better tracking, so I might try the law-faking design if this sounds crappy.

This is my first electronics diy project, so I appreciate the input.
 
Everything I have read suggests that a stepped attenuator is the way to go for the best sound quality. Are they a lot harder or more expensive to build?
 
Last edited:
ebeam said:
Barefoot - You're right, its still a voltage divider and at low levels will probably have some mistracking and other problems. I was under the impression that using the pot as a shunt instead of passing the signal straight through (input to pot input and output to wiper) would offer some benefit. Do you think that has any merit?.....
Click to expand...
Nope.

I see this series versus parallel argument all over the place, but it just isn't right. The output signal is a resultant of the whole circuit, not just the series components. If you happen to write out the circuit transfer function and find that certain components have less influence on the output than others, then those are the ones you can say matter less. But this is not the case with a voltage divider.

The RS pots are decent. But yeah, the main concern is taking. Don't be at all surprised to find the channels mismatched by 1dB or 2dB with most stereo pots.

Thomas

http://barefootsound.com
 
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