Studio Monitors

[Darius Boone]

I have a small project studio in the basement of my house and i'm considering Tannoy's Reveal studio monitors as my monitors of choice. These speakers require an amp to drive them and I was wondering if I could just use a household stereo receiver to drive them, instead of purchasing a dedicated amp. My question is whether or not this is a good idea or not. The receiver will put out a total of 100 watts which will be enough power to drive the monitors. I can also connect 2 sets of speakers to the receiver which I plan on doing. The other speakers are bose series 301 direct/reflecting bookshelve speakers. Has anyone tried this before?

 

[DeadPoet]

It'll work in a sense that you will get audio from your speakers, but remember that any chain is as weak as its weakest link... in your case the amplifier... 'reference' amps are made to reproduce sounds in a 'purer' way (less harmonic distortion, uncolored amplification,...).

But it works, and it's a way to first upgrade the speakers and eventually later the amp (and being able to hook up a second set of speakers is damn handy)

Be sure the speakers can handle the amp's wattage and impendance though!


Herwig

 

[grinder]

As Poet says, It will work but, you're better off with a matched system.

 

[Massive Master]

Remember also that most consumer tuner/amps tend to hype certain frequencies - If you have (or have a buddy with) an RTA, try to tune it reasonably flat so you're not hearing something completely different than what you think.

 

[DeadPoet]

try to tune it reasonably flat so you're not hearing something completely different than what you think.

I know this has been beaten to death, but I stronlgy suggest NOT touching any equalising... It's better to learn what the faults in your system are than trying to correct them...

Let me give an example: Imagine you have a room with a problem in the 60Hz-area, for instance a 6db bump in that frequency. If you use an eq to 'tune' your room you're gonna obviously cut that frequency by 6db on your eq.
Now imagine you're mixing a miced up drumset and the kick has actually a bump in the 60Hz-area as well, you're going to hear it as being a well-miced, well-tuned, normal kick, because you already applied eq to your monitoring set, but the 60Hz-bump will still appear on tape !!


Hope this helps,
Herwig