Speaker cable

frosty55

Member
I have bought a pair of Mackie CR3 Monitors, but without the speaker cable that joins the two speakers. Any suggestions which cable to buy and how far apart would they be best positioned in a home studio?
Thanks.
 
Mike, I came up with this....
 

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The monitors have RCA jack inputs and a 50w amp from what I read. You probably want a “phono” type cable but what are you connecting them to?

CR Series Multimedia Monitors - Mackie

I have bought a pair of Mackie CR3 Monitors, but without the speaker cable that joins the two speakers. Any suggestions which cable to buy and how far apart would they be best positioned in a home studio?
Thanks.
Speaker wire to interconnect the speakers
 
Lamp wire or lamp cord at a hardware store.
Or really any two wires. If you have a broken lamp or appliance or spare extension cord or... For these you could probably get away hacking any audio cable too. They say it's not a good idea to use single conductor plus shield (typical instrument) cable for speaker connections, but that's only really a concern at much higher wattage. Just hack em, strip em, and jam em in there.

Put the speakers as far from each other as either is from your head.
 
I think people forget these speakers have the amps only in one of them - hence needing speaker cable not coax. Easy to make the mistake because most speakers are simply identical, with an internal single channel amp. I had three pairs of powered speakers left from a project and sold two of them on Ebay. Keeping one pair for myself. Somehow I ended up with two passive units, meaning one of the people I sent them to got two amplified ones! idiot!
 
Mike, I came up with this....

Yes Mark, that's what I found...Eventually! The Mackie site is long winded and unhelpful.
Re cable: I noticed some decent looking red&black in Halfords a week or so ago so try car parts places or ICE shops. Do NOT however be seduced into buying highly expensive "audiophool" cable! $1.00 per mtr is still a bit much IMO.

Setup? Assuming for "serious" music recording/mixing they need to be close to you, around 1mtr and about the same distance apart and at ear level and "toed in" so that the speaker is firing directly at you. Ideally NOT on a desk but on stands or wall brackets. I suspect though they WILL go on a desk and so buy a chunk of foam, at least 50mm thick and stand the speakers on that to isolate them from the desk.

If you Google for the manuals of "better" monitors, Tannoy, PMC, Neumann etc, you will garner much useful information.

Dave.
 
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