Hooking up active monitors to computer

[milhouse88]

Hey fellas. I'm currently doing a little scoring and mixing on my computer (soon to be more 'live' recording) and the computer speakers aren't cutting it. I am wanting to hook up some active monitors, but I'm not sure if the 1/8 line out will be compatable. Will it? How easy is it to find 1/8 to XLR (or TRS) adapters?

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Well, sure you can just get adapters.....

But you really need something between the soundcard and the monitors to control volume. Either a line preamp or mixer of some sort. You don't want to control volume in your soundcard mixer because a) it's a digital pre-converter operation and b) sometimes programs will hijack your soundcard settings and reset them, if this happens at the wrong time you could blow your monitors.

Slackmaster 2000

 

[milhouse88]

I'm trying not to be a total moron here, but do you have any suggestions as to makes and models? I don't need anything fancy, just something to control the volume like you mentioned. All this computer recording stuff is pretty new to me. I'm a rock 'n' roll bass player!