Monitor Volume Control

S

spindrummer82

New member
I was wondering what everyone uses to control the volume of their monitors. I have some powered monitors on their way and I can use my mixer to control the volume at home but I head back to school in a month and I really dont want to bring the mixer (its a decent sized 20 channel board) because I dont have room for it. Originally I was thinking about getting a headphone amp (I could use the extra headphone outputs as well), and go from my soundcard into that, main outs of the headphone amp to my monitors and use the main volume on the headphone amp to control the monitors. I've heard though that the main volume control doesnt effect the main outputs, only the headphones which defeats the whole purpose for me. Can anyone tell me if this is true on models like the behringer ha4700 and similar? Any other suggestions would be great as well. Thanks in advance.
 
One of the greatest and most budget-friendly bang-for-the-buck pieces out there for the purpose is the PreSonus Central Station. Passive, transparent circuitry, excellent switching options and a solid dedicated monitoring DA. Can't beat it with a stick.
 
the presonus hp4 has been working well for me. it has a dedicated monitor volume control that's separate from the 4 headphone amp volume controls. i have absolutely zero compaints with the hp4. if you knew me then you'd know i tend to bitch about a lot of gear.
 
I was looking for something rack mounted and around $100. If I could afford a central station I'd be all over it but thats way out of the budget. I may just have to grab the presonus hp4 and make a rack mount for it or something. Thanks for the suggestions, anyone else?
 
Someone can shoot me for recommending it, but the Behringer mini-mon (not rackmountable) does my monitor volume, talkback, and monitor switching and it was less then $30 from fullcompass. In fact I just added a foot switch to it to control the talkback mic, so I don't have to reach over and push a button, I just have to tap my foot (I am so lazy). If you look closely at it, Samson has the same unit with slightly different layout, yes this is another of the berries that ripped off someone else, if you want the orginal design get the Samson, its $100.

BTW, I have a passive switcher that allowed me to test if the behringer was messing with the sound very much, and I couldn't tell the difference between straight to the monitors thru the passive switcher VS. thru the passive switcher on to the mini-mon on to the monitors. Now I only have Wharfedale 8.2s, but to my ears I really couldn't tell the difference in my little test. I was orignally just gonna use it for talk back purposes, but it now does everything it was designed to do.

Another unit above your price threshold would be the mackie big knob, but again that isn't rackmountable either.

From what I remember when I bought it, it was cheaper at fullcompass then ebay or anywhere else for that matter, so if you bought it and found it to be lacking, you might be able to make a buck on it if you sell it on ebay. YMWV
 
I almost got one of those mini mon's. I let myself get talked out of it after hearing some pitfalls of some of the cheap headphone amps.
 
Rolls makes some great little boxes that might suit your needs depending on how many features you want. (if you want digital displays, talkback, or buttons anything like that this isn't for you).

But anyway, I picked up a Rolls MX-42 Stereo Mini Mixer. It's a tiny (will sit in the palm of your hand) little passive box (no power required) with 4 stereo RCA inputs and 1 stereo RCA output. Each input has a round volume dial, and that's it. I use it as my home stereo system: I have a record player, CD player, and iPod plugged into 3 of the inputs, and my outputs going to my KRK RP8 powered monitors. Works wonderfully. It also works as a splitter if you turn all the volume knobs up all the way, then the 1 output becomes an input, and the 4 inputs become outputs.

Anyway they make other boxes with slightly different I/O features. Might want to check it out.

http://rolls.com/rollsproducts/
 
SMPro makes a passive box with switching for around $100... I would imagine it would leave much less of a sonic footprint than other options in that range.
 
the mackie big knob is an amazing bit of kit i got one of those in the house and its amazing has all your transport buttons there work with pritty much all digital sequancers ( well evrything iv used it with )
 
the mackie big knob is an amazing bit of kit i got one of those in the house and its amazing has all your transport buttons there work with pritty much all digital sequancers ( well evrything iv used it with )
Click to expand...
The Big Knob has no transport buttons... It's only a monitoring section... A good one for the money at that....!! :D
The MCU has transport buttons...
 
TravisinFlorida said:
I almost got one of those mini mon's. I let myself get talked out of it after hearing some pitfalls of some of the cheap headphone amps.
Click to expand...

Ok that is the one feature on it I don't use, the headphone amp built in is kind'a cruddy. But I feed the line level headphone outs to a berry 4700 for the tracking rooms, and I run one of the three monitor outs to a NAD 3020 (home stereo integrated amp) for when I need/want control room headphone monitoring the NAD is much better sounding and I think it was built in the early 80's....
 
Well I have my monitors hooked up for playback through my computer, not a mixer. I lucked out because I use a guitarport for recording and I hooked up my monitors to the speaker outs on the guitarport. Now the big volume knob on there controls my monitors. It was only 100 dollars too.
 
I use a Presonus Central Station. Great box, I really love it.

It has some features that come in handy:

Speaker trims on the front panel. Cue and Main input select on the front panel. Select digital source between SPDIF and TOSlink on the front panel. Plus a couple of phones jacks and a talkback button and mic. Two other features that I use all the time are the dim and mono buttons.
 
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