speaker-level switch?

T

toobalicious

New member
hiya. this is something i have been considering for a while, but the "real monitor" thread makes me want to go through with it.

my monitors are a modest pair of older JBL 's. however, as a closet audio-phool and 2 channel enthusiast, i have amassed a small collection of decent to really nice "hi-fi" speakers. i have seen the ubiquitous shots of control rooms with 3 or 4 pairs of speaks, and it seems like a good idea.

question: how do i switch them safely? i figure i will power them with a mackie FR-M800 ampsince i have one sitting otherwise unused. radio shack sells a switcher, but it is rated at 100W max, as seems typical of home-type switchers. how do you think it will work? rather, if it did fail, what would be the likely result? open circuit? dead short? some other kind of weirdness?

the speaks i will likely use (to get a nice cross section of speaker design): polk monitor 5 jr (really nice sounding speakers, full and warm but nice treble), jbl j2060 (2 way bookshelf with titanium tweet, bright and present but mild low end), and a pair of JVC 6x9 car speaks in carpet-covered truck boxes (ummm... sounded great in the back of my old K-5 blazer, but the jury is out on "inside" use). i also have a crappo pair of bose 141 (4 1/2" full-range driver similar in application to the 901 driver, has the warmth that 901's have by virtue of the famously attenuated treble, and also a pretty weak bass response--- hopefully, similar to the theory behind auratones, etc). i also have about 10 pairs of various floor-standers that i could use, including polk monitor 10's (old ones with the "silver-dome" tweeter that people love to hate). i was thinking that this selection would give some good counterpoint listening to supplement my monitors, with the theory that it will help point out weak spots in my mixes. i would like to try them all, then maybe narrow to a couple or 3 pairs, as i decide upon their usefulness.

opinions, suggestions, criticisms? am i way off-base?

TIA,
a

was thinking about something like this:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...=18&x=9&numProdsPerPage=100&parentPage=search

rated at 50W RMS per channel, lol, but really, i doubt it would ever see much more than that. also, since i wouldnt run more than 1 pair at a time, i imagine that the safety margin would be increased.
 
toobalicious said:
hiya. this is something i have been considering for a while, but the "real monitor" thread makes me want to go through with it.

my monitors are a modest pair of older JBL 's. however, as a closet audio-phool and 2 channel enthusiast, i have amassed a small collection of decent to really nice "hi-fi" speakers. i have seen the ubiquitous shots of control rooms with 3 or 4 pairs of speaks, and it seems like a good idea.

question: how do i switch them safely? i figure i will power them with a mackie FR-M800 ampsince i have one sitting otherwise unused. radio shack sells a switcher, but it is rated at 100W max, as seems typical of home-type switchers. how do you think it will work? rather, if it did fail, what would be the likely result? open circuit? dead short? some other kind of weirdness?

the speaks i will likely use (to get a nice cross section of speaker design): polk monitor 5 jr (really nice sounding speakers, full and warm but nice treble), jbl j2060 (2 way bookshelf with titanium tweet, bright and present but mild low end), and a pair of JVC 6x9 car speaks in carpet-covered truck boxes (ummm... sounded great in the back of my old K-5 blazer, but the jury is out on "inside" use). i also have a crappo pair of bose 141 (4 1/2" full-range driver similar in application to the 901 driver, has the warmth that 901's have by virtue of the famously attenuated treble, and also a pretty weak bass response--- hopefully, similar to the theory behind auratones, etc). i also have about 10 pairs of various floor-standers that i could use, including polk monitor 10's (old ones with the "silver-dome" tweeter that people love to hate). i was thinking that this selection would give some good counterpoint listening to supplement my monitors, with the theory that it will help point out weak spots in my mixes. i would like to try them all, then maybe narrow to a couple or 3 pairs, as i decide upon their usefulness.

opinions, suggestions, criticisms? am i way off-base?

TIA,
a

was thinking about something like this:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...=18&x=9&numProdsPerPage=100&parentPage=search

rated at 50W RMS per channel, lol, but really, i doubt it would ever see much more than that. also, since i wouldnt run more than 1 pair at a time, i imagine that the safety margin would be increased.
Click to expand...
I've used that radioshack switcher with 250 watts per channel with no problems. If it really failed, it would start on fire and create an open circuit. It didn't happen to me in the 4 years I used it.
 
thanks for that. i think ill pick one up this evening if the local store has one. i try to exercise a little caution when dealing with inexpensive but critical items.

incidentally, do you use it for this purpose? do you think it has helped your mixing, or has it hindered it? or did it make you realize how much your "real" monitors suck (i am a little concerned about that, lol)?

a
 
I had several pairs of passive monitors (urei 813, ns-10, alesis monitor 2) that I needed to run off of the same amp, because the monitor switch on my board would switch between that amplifier and my powered monitors.


I don't have any idea if it will help you. All of those speakers are so different that you might just get confused.

Those Bose speakers were meant to be used with an active EQ (if I'm remembering right) and won't even do what they were designed to do without it.

The 6x9 car speakers are made to push air in a car, not a room 10 times the size, they will sound really weak.

The rest of them are a crap shoot. The thing with home speakers is that they are designed to sound good. That's not very useful for mixing, because if you are making something sound bad, you need to know it.

This is why something like a bose speaker is completely useless for mixing. Bose is designed to make everything sound 'good' no matter what it really sounds like. Those active EQ boxes take the signal and manipulate it into a predetermined frequency response curve that the people at Bose thought sounded good. It doesn't matter what you feed it (within reason), that active EQ will fix it up.
 
thanks for the consideration. actually, the bose do not require the active eq that the 901's do. actually, they are pretty apples and oranges, but it is still a single 4 1/2" full-range.

All of those speakers are so different that you might just get confused.
Click to expand...
yeah, i was wondering about that (implied in my second post). these are the speakers i thought about using *because* they are so different, but i could easily be persuaded by the "confusion" part---it makes sense. i saw in another thread about someone else who uses a pair of car speakers to apparent success ("good mixes" were noted upon). and indeed, i didnt expect them to sound like they did in the back of an SUV.

just so you know, i never intended to do this sort of thing to *replace* my existing monitors.

i was kind of interested in trying the polk monitor 5 jr and RTi4, in particular. they are both nice sounding speakers in their own right, but quite different in character. i should probably just put the lot of them on craigslist and open up the closet space, lol. combining hobbies is often a bit treacherous.

a

p.s. and dont get me started on BOSE, their advertising, or their devotees! i picked these up at a yard sale for $20, so they dont quite count. even these pieces of crap sound better than that acoustimass crap, and probably have tighter bass (and saved me $1200). again, their inadequacies are what made me consider stacking them alongside some others, not the fact that they particularly sound "good", which they really dont.
 
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