Do I want single or Multi-speaker monitors?

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Jedman

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Man, talk about a learning curve. Before 2 days ago, I thought a speaker was a speaker!
I can't figure this out, though - do I want seperate speakers (like tweeter, mid, woofer, etc.) in the monitors I get, or do I want monitors with one big speaker?
I'm going to have to get budget ones, as I'm already over the "budget" :D anyway!

Thanks for info on this one,
Jed
 
Yo Jedi:

You are in Davenport, Iowa -- I used to teach at Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Mi. Small world.

You want, as "dey says on da Sopranos....One-a speak on day lefta and one-a speak on da right."

Most monitors come with a large cone and a smaller cone. Tweeter and bass or fat sounds. Some monitors have holes in them called bass ports but, maybe I'm wrong there -- I've not seen any "monitors" with bass ports, only commercial hi-fi speakers go that way. {I think}

There are many good monitors out there -- check this site via the search -- but, for the money, Yorkville passives will get you started in a good direction. You can always upgrade when you win the lotto.

Green Hornet :D :p :cool: :cool: :cool:
 
Not to be picky... but the yorkvilles have a bass port :)
 
Events are ported... so are my KRK V8s... many monitors are....

With the exception of an Auratone, I have not seen a monitor with only a single driver... some have the tweeter mounted over the woofer so it sort of *looks* like one driver, but there are always at least 2 drivers in the design.
 
Jedman said:
Man, talk about a learning curve. Before 2 days ago, I thought a speaker was a speaker!
I can't figure this out, though - do I want seperate speakers (like tweeter, mid, woofer, etc.) in the monitors I get, or do I want monitors with one big speaker?
I'm going to have to get budget ones, as I'm already over the "budget" :D anyway!

Thanks for info on this one,
Jed

To respond to your question, I would go for a 2-way. I don't think a 1-driver design can get the frequency response needed and a good 3-way would be out of your (and mine) price range.

It seems like most of these new small 2-ways are ported designs. Probably because you can get lower bass extension out of a driver that way.
 
It’s probably worth mentioning that there are 2 types of monitors used in the music world. One type is the stage monitor, which is used to allow a musician to hear himself over the rest of the band. So the singer would have a stage monitor pointed at him (not the crowd) blaring the vocals (but not the rest of the band) at him. You can commonly find single driver stage monitors, I am guessing that is what you were referring to above… but for mixing, that is completely the wrong thing to be looking at.

Studio monitors are a totally different thing… and for home recording we usually use near field monitors. These are smallish very clean and accurate speakers designed to reveal every detail and show us exactly how our mix sounds.

I think the questions you need to ask are this…

Question 1...
Do you need monitors with a built in amp (powered monitors), or do want to use an external amp. Unless you have a decent CLEAN amp designed to be used for monitoring already, buying powered monitors probably make the most sense.

Question 2…
How much do you have to spend?

People on this board will give you suggestions for any budget from $200 – $20,000. IMO you want to dedicate at least $400 - $500 on this, that’s where the monitors start to become really pretty decent. They start to get very decent in the $800 - $1000 range…
 
Yeah - that made it all clear. I was looking at Ebay and there were all kinds of "monitor" speakers...I now see some people were probably trying to sell regular speakers as Monitors!

So I want studio monitors, probably powered, since I don't have a dedicated amp -- the regular amp (reciever) from a HiFi system won't work, huh?
Does any place like Best Buy or something sell monitors? Looks like shipping would be a bit...

Well, thanks for the info, and we'll see what I can come up with.
Jed
 
A decent stereo amp will work, yeah. Not ideal, but chances are you wont be able to tell the difference (unless you have real crap). It is best if your amp has a bypass button, which bypasses the EQ, loudness, DSP and any other 'features.' You dont want to use any of that crap when monitoring, they degrade the sound quality and confuse you. Hell, you dont want to use any of that crap when listining either... but thats another topic.

Event has a monitor that can be had at guitar center for $299, I think these are great speakers. Is there a guitar center near you? If not, a lot of places online offer free shipping on gear (provided you spend enough $$$) but your not going to find what your looking for at best buy. They only sell Crap.

So Look at (or better, listen to) the event 20/20s passives, or the Yorkville YSM1i (Which go for $200 I think). If you got more $$$ we can talk bigger / better... but the 2 I mentioned will do the job. (actually I never heard the yorkies... but they get praised a lot on this forum, and are cheap)

I use a $400 pair of B&W audiophile bookshelf speakers. Some guys will knock me for that, but I think they are awesome... flat, neutral, accurate and they sound good too... A lot of people seem to imply a monitor has to sound like crap to be any good (I think thats BS, just needs to sound neutral).
thank god we all have a right to our opinion.
 
Just to clarify, by far most stage wedges will also be two-way. The tweeters may be cheap piezo's, or sometimes they have a coaxial design (so it looks like only one driver) but you'd be hard pressed to find any stage monitors with only one driver.
 
I can't find a Guitar Center or anything like that around here... Quad Cities (Davenport, Iowa) there's almost 400,000 people here between the 4 cities - I'd thought there'd be something like that around. We have two music stores, but the selection is pretty limited as far as electronic stuff... mostly they sell pianos and acoustic/elec. guitars.

I'll keep my eyes open, though.
Jed
 
littledog said:
Just to clarify, by far most stage wedges will also be two-way. The tweeters may be cheap piezo's, or sometimes they have a coaxial design (so it looks like only one driver) but you'd be hard pressed to find any stage monitors with only one driver.

I think they're talking about those little "hot spot" monitors.
 
Jedman said:
I can't find a Guitar Center or anything like that around here... Quad Cities (Davenport, Iowa) there's almost 400,000 people here between the 4 cities - I'd thought there'd be something like that around. We have two music stores, but the selection is pretty limited as far as electronic stuff... mostly they sell pianos and acoustic/elec. guitars.

Sounds like you need to learn how to use the internet to buy your gear. I live in a large city with many music stores to choose from, but I find that researching items at multiple online stores results in the best deals.
 
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