Active studio monitors for under $400?

[creature.of.habit]

im very happy with my ESI Near 05's...not the new ones, but the ones that are exactly the 05 model that M-audio ridiculously discontinued some time ago!

im also glad i just bought the damned things..couldnt make up my mind for anything! exauxting..anyway, these go for 300 maybe less...it's not something definitive so im not really worried about it...but i think do really sound great, really! very balanced and faithful to the source in my opinion.

[Mr PC]

I have Alesis M1 actives. They go for under $400 these days. I think they do a nice job. Nothing out of whack or hyped as far as I can tell. Took a Stones record to the audio store and it sounded like the Stones to me.

Getting used to the monitors is key. My recording rig is my personal computer (iMac), and I jam iTunes through the Digi 002r into the monitors all the time, so I've heard all different styles of music through the monitors I mix with.

PC

[thebookofkevin]

I say this all the time... don't buy active monitors at that price range.
If you're like most musicians or most people for that matter, there is probably already an old home stereo sitting around the house somewhere, that may not even be in use.
If not, then go visit a pawn shop, thrift store, or other place where you can find similar old stereo gear and spend about $25-50 buying a 2-channel home stereo receiver or amp from the 80s or 90s. Even an old Pro-Logic receiver will be fine. Just look for something that's a respectable company like a Sony, Denon, Pioneer, Onkyo, etc. and delivers maybe 80-100 watts into 8-Ohms. Or something like this on eBay.
Then you have $350 left in the budget to get some nice entry-level home hi-fi speakers like B & W Speakers or perhaps Dynaudio or Tannoy. Find a dealer for any one of those in your area, and that will likely be a place that sells other, similar hi-fi products.
I really like B&W speakers, and while their flagship 'Nautilus' speakers run about $50,000 a pair, they still have entry-level models in the $300 range. Same for Dynaudio which runs up to an $85,000 flagship but still enters the market in the low hundreds. Maybe something like this from eBay.
When you're buying products like that, your getting a company that does lots of R&D and has some really spectacular engineering & design skills that 'trickle down' to their lower-line products.

Plus the best thing about having passive speakers at that price point is that when you're ready to upgrade, you can upgrade your speakers without needing to buy a new amp at the same time, or you can upgrade your amp without blowing half your money on new speakers. In the end, it's far more cost effective and will get you a significantly better product right out of the gate.

-Jeremy

I will be in the market for some monitors in this pricerange as well, and you're ideas about getting a cheap reciever and the low end of say, some Tannoys, make a lot of sense to me. I do have some questions though, that may be too specific to aid anyone else and show my naivete wholeheartedly, but they need to be asked nevertheless.

When running out of your board/console (say, Tascam FW-1884 in my case), do you just run the balanced outs into the in of the power amp / stereo reciever? I suppose I could answer my own question, but confirming it would help. Do the active monitors just take line level signal and amplify them to speaker level internally? Furthermore, will a standalone power amp be ok with the signal coming out of my board?

How likely is it to find balanced in's on a stereo reciever anyways? My board has balanced TRS outs (no xlr ), and from what I've seen briefly on ebay, most stereo amps just have RCA in. I know that some (studio grade?) power amps have got TRS and XLR balanced in's, but those can be rather expensive and out of this budget.

Is unbalanced just something I'm going to have to settle for at this price range of power amps?

Also, have/would any of you ever bought/buy monitors from ebay? It seems like they could be damaged in shipping, but they're SO much cheaper!

[creature.of.habit]

i think it's hard to find balanced receivers at the given price point yes...i dont have any, and i have quite a few...

it should be ok though, rca's aint bad for monitoring in my opinion, just make sure there ain't any dust back there when you connect the rca's for the first time...blow it off.

at the price point, and unless you're set on the receiver thing, for what you're gonna spend, idd get actives, although the other aproach has a number of advantages as well, namely not getting up and turning up the volume, wich is usually on the back of the monitors :/

[Professor]

An "active" speaker is simply a speaker with an amplifier built into it. Connecting to a separate amp and then speaker is really no different except for the easier upgrade path I mentioned earlier.
I see that the FW-1884 has 8 TRS outputs that are listed as "surround monitor" outputs and it seems the 1/L & 2/R would be your outputs. There shouldn't be anything too terribly wrong with just running them on a TRS-to-RCA cable into an old receiver or home hi-fi amplifier. You can fret about balanced inputs on the amplifier down the road when you are upgrading to a nicer amp. It's definitely not worth picking some really cheap actives just because it has balanced inputs running into little single-device chip-amps with weak power supplies.
So yeah, I think you'd be perfectly safe (even wise) to get a nice used receiver or amp.
Speakers are trickier. Generally I would prefer new speakers unless you know enough about the models you might be getting from a used source. I mean, buying used will always be a crap shoot, but you want to at least know what speakers you are chasing after in on-line auctions.
I've bought and sold monitors on eBay. I sold a pair series-1 B&W DM-602 speakers which were in perfect health, and a couple years later I bought a pair of Tannoy System-8 passives which have been serving me well for years. As it happens, I got a screaming deal on those System-8s and landed them at around $350-400 (I don't remember exactly) where they list at $1,000. So if you really like Tannoy Reveals or something like that, and you see a deal on the eBeast then go for it. But if you've never heard a set Reveals, don't just buy 'em because of their reputation. Speakers in general should be a more personal choice, and I always encourage guys to look in the phonebook, find the local snooty hifi shop, and go learn what good speakers sound like... then go searching for a nice set.
And while some might think this price range is where you should go active, I think this is where you shouldn't. But I say that with the caveat of you either owning an amp or purchasing one for cheap. Take $400 and spend less than $50 on the amp and you can spend $350 on nice passives. If the original price on that amp was $400-500 then you're getting a $700-800 system while staying in your budget. Take $400 and try to find a new amp & speaker separate and you're looking for an under $200 new amp and that's tough. Take the $400 and buy actives, and you're basically doing exactly the same thing - getting $200 worth of speaker and $200 worth of amp.

-Jeremy

[seaneldon]

i happen to think that the KRK RP5s ($300/pr brand new) are the "best" monitors in the $300-400 pricerange.

[Radioaction]

I second that! Also, you may call around guitar centers to see if they have any deals going on. I bought my RP5s at guitar center brand new for $100.00 each because they had a special going on that week.

Scott

[swishniak]

no one has mentioned samson - ive had a pair of these

http://www.samsontech.com/products/prod ... ?prodID=86

for almost a year and am still quite happy with them.

[jkretz]

event 20/20s are in your price range new as far as passives are concerned. i've got a friend with a pair of these and an alesis ra-100 amp that he picked up on quite for quite cheap. they sound pretty good to my horribly untrained ear....

but...

i've got a pair of krk rockit 5 inchers that in my opinion kick the event's ass. repeatedly. the rockits just sound much 'tighter' if that makes any sense. a pair of these would set you back about 300 at guitar center (shudder).


on the other hand, check thrift shops. you'd actually be surprised how good some of those late 70s home speakers sound. i grabbed a pair of fisher st-100s and hooked them up to an amp i've got laying around. i often use them to check my mixes, but honestly i would feel fairly confident using them as my primary monitors if need be.

then again, i just record myself and friends and am certainly far from professional.

[Garthplinko]

As an owner of a pair of those Diamond Pro Wharfedales, I'd say for the money, they're very good, although they have a built in compressor that really blows if you like to mix loud.

I advise against the MAudio speakers - I worked at Guitar Center and had so many of those things get returned or not work right out of the box. Many of the ones we used for display had frequent problems as well.

If I were you, I'd listen to the educated man - sounds like he's on the right track as far as being able to buy something that works well now and is upgradeable down the road. I'm actually considering going that route just to have a second set of monitors to reference on.

I have my old pair of Aleisis Monitor ones and the Alesis amp that goes with it that I'd sell you except my conscience won't allow me to do it. Those things were the worst pieces of crap - my mixes always ended up sounding like ass because they didn't reveal any low end and threw out too much on the top so my mixes always sounded overly dark and muddy. I had to work around this for years by referencing other material and taking my mixes everywhere to listen to and take notes.

[;ivlunsdystf]

That recent Bob Clearmountain thread, which I will admit I helped kill, led to an interesting fact about Clearmountain: He seems to indicate that he favors a $30 pair of Apple speakers for final checking of mixes.

Dedicated active monitors are the thing that I have coveted the longest but I have never actually taken the plunge (except for some Tascam freebies which make everything sound like classic rock FM radio)

For the kind of weirdness I record, I have been very happy with my late 1970s hi fi and a couple sets of early 1980s hifi speakers with various torn cones, dead tweeters, mysterious rattles in the cabinets, whatever. Nothing can replace the effect of waiting 2 or 3 days after doing a mix and then revisiting it with fresh perspective. I suppose if I were running a real studio and recording real teen metal bands and such, I'd have to get something more convincing-looking to use in the 'monitor' position.

The coolest-sounding thing in the world is an old rusty Caprice hooptie with big subwoofers and all the windows closed. All the rattling of loose car parts in response to "Whoomp! There it is" type music is still my ultimate favorite. There are a few such vehicles around my neighborhood every summer and I revel in it. Sorry, off topic.

[inverseroom]

I'm digging the Tapco S5's, $350 new. Very nice. Lots of bass for such small speakers.

[8th_note]

I use stereo bookshelf speakers plus an integrated amp, along the lines of what Jeremy recommends. I bought an Onkyo amp and Polk speakers on ebay for a total of about $500. I agree with everything the Prof says and I would like to note a couple of advantages to this setup.

You have a volume control on your recever/amp and this allows you to limit the loudest volume your monitors will produce. That's a nice feature if somebody accidently bumps the slider.

If you want to add a self powered subwoofer you can go with a basic model that only has speaker inputs (no line inputs). I have a pair of Polk Rti28s and I added a really nice souding Mirage subwoofer for just $200 that I found on sale.

I have a CD player hooked up to my integrated amp along with my DAW. This allows me to play reference CDs while I'm mixing and A/B the sound in real time. I'm a shameless audio thief and if I hear a sound I like on another recording this allows me to zero in and compare it to my mix-in-progress. I also use reference CDs while I mix because it keeps me from straying too far afield during a long mixing session.

I got the Polk speakers because they received an excellent review in Stereophile magazine. I've now had 3 different people who also have recording setups comment favorably on the sound of my monitors. The last time was a guy I recorded who also has a DAW at home with M-Audio monitors. He wanted some raw tracks from a project we recorded so he could do a remix. We played a couple songs he had mixed at home and he mentioned two or three times how much clearer and detailed my speakers were than his. I also have a full blown audiophile system in a dedicated listening room and these little Polk speakers and subwoofer running off a mid-grade integrated amp acquit themselves better than you would think possible.

[vvv]

In accord with a number of the prior posters, I run some older Tannoys (PBM 6.5 II'z) from a 15 or 20 year old Mitsubishi 50 w./ch. integrated amp, to which I have also hooked up a pair of 20 yera old Advent 5" two-ways, a CD player, and two separate soundcards.

The "built-in patch-bay" the integrated amp offers is way usefull.

And having the CD player available for reference, or surfing (I sin greatest by having my audio computer DSL'd) is invaluable.

[spankenstein]

And having the CD player available for reference, or surfing (I sin greatest by having my audio computer DSL'd) is invaluable.

Guilty here as well It's firewalled and (mostly) backed up and I have no cr4ked war3z that I have to track down. It get really boring when people are smoking or arguing and my ears need a break.