Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Got my MP8... now need monitors and soundcard

Its funny how many different opinons there are out there. In my experience, a 10" woofer is barely adequate and a compromise without a subwoofer at producing lows. Then consider the modern approach, 2-way speakers which require the woofer (which really isn't a woofer) to accurately produce the lows and the mids...

Geez. We had 10" 3-ways in the days of LP music with incredible amounts of power gobbling subsonic rumble that made the woofers flutter. Now we have crystal clear, low noise digital source and its suddenly ok to use 6" and 8" woofers, not to mention no mid range speaker?

I think these smart, marketing-adept speaker vendors have people confusing extra clear loudness in place of accurate sound reproduction. The 35Hz to 85Hz critical bass range is just simply missing or lacking from many of these near field monitors, which make up for it by providing high power built-in amps to compensate for the missing low end. Yes, they are incredibly clear and sound good, but they aren't playing all the signal being sent to them from a digital instrument, especially a digital piano.

I don't want to bad mouth anyone's monitors which are fine sounding in many situations (and to most people), but if you are really trying to reproduce the sound of what your digital instrument is sending to the amplifier you need to have better understanding of sound reproduction, and know that you can't squeeze out lows from a 6" to 8" woofer that's also busy being a mid-range speaker no matter how much power you put beind it.

Hi OnTheWeb,

your post is extremely interesting. It stirs up the whole debate between large vs small diameter woofers. In the days of 15" triaxial speakers, I remember one of my tech-oriented friends who used to say, "Smaller speakers and cabinets are B.S. Who the heck is gonna invent a miniature thirty-two foot wave, tell me?"

But suddenly, woofer diameters started to shrink dramatically, along with their cabinet's cubic feet. I have two pairs of canadian-engineered speaker systems at home, Energy22 Reference. They date from the 80's and are awesome. They give you a 200-watt handling capacity in a two-way system whose woofer is seven inches in diameter, and their measured response ±2db at 30° off-axis is 28Hz - 20 KHz!! I don't even dare keep their fabric grilles off because the movement of their cones is fricking scary when they're busy reproducing sub-bass...

So this is a most interesting debate!

Hoping to hear some more from you engineers, this is cool!

Claude

I have played around with a number of sound cards, and the absolute best (at least for a reasonable price ... ~$200) for music is m-audio's Delta 1010LT. It works pretty well out of the box, and is quiet (noise seems to be the biggest problem with cards).

I'm beginning to wonder about subwoofers in general. I have a pair of KRK RP8's and they sound pretty great. Definitely more even and less boomy than the computer speakers I used to run my piano sounds through, and that's exactly what I wanted. I like how the lows are not unnaturally brought out, but I wonder if I am missing some very low frequency goodness.

KRK makes a subwoofer to go with the speakers (the RP-10), but it's only two inches larger in diameter than the woofers on my current speakers, so I wonder if it would really do anything for me. Does anyone know if the addition of the RP-10 would add much to my current setup (for example).

"but it's only two inches larger" in diameter means 28 more square inches of cone, which is more than a 50% increase in size compared to an 8" cone. That's not trival in terms of sound producing area.

The subwoofer box is also designed, tuned, and probably ported to dramatically enhance frequencies soley in the 30Hz to 150Hz range, letting the monitors handle the less dramatic stuff . It can make a big difference to the low end of your system.

The RP10S was specifically designed for the KRK monitors, and does't appear to be a generic sub. You'll have to let your ears decide for you and consider room size and things like are you on cement or a wood floor that will vibrate, too.

I'm not too concerned about the sound quality difference between 8" and 10", but I am concerned about how "boomy" it'll sound and how much it'll disturb neighbors. However, it looks like which one would be better hasn't been agreed upon here.

Hey, I thought I'd mention that someone is offering a pair of the KRK RP 8s for $400 (or best offer) on Ebay. Shipping is free. This sounds like quite a deal. I paid $400 (also with free shipping) with my KRK 6s from zzsounds. Here's the Ebay link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/KRK-RP-8-Rokit-...093QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I haven't auditioned any KRK monitors so I really can't offer the most useful advice. But I can tell you how I would think about such a decision, regardless of the manufacturer.

First, comparing today's monitors to speakers from 20 or 30 years ago is pointless. Current materials and engineering allows manufacturers to do a lot more with smaller speakers than could be done in the past.

And it is equally useless to worry about 3-way designs. If you want a small near-field monitor today, 2-way designs are the state-of-the-art in the market. If you want 3-way designs, move up to some big mid-field or main room monitors (and get ready to cash in your trust fund) or look for some consumer hifi speakers.

ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, I find it hard not to prefer the larger woofer. Just as an example, the Mackie HR824 (8.7" woofer) quotes a +/- 1.5db frequency response of 39-20kHz. The HR624 (6.7" woofer) drops that down to 52-20kHz. That lower 15-20Hz may not be significant to everyone's ears, but I think it is important. Since you are not comparing KRK speakers where everything else is equal, you've got a little harder decision. But my bias would still be to the larger woofer until I heard something different.

Finally, the standard answer for more bass in small monitors is the subwoofer. I don't like them. Near-field monitors are designed to be heard in a single optimum listening position with your ears fairly close to the speakers. They are deliberately designed to take some of the room's acoustic characteristics out of play (although that can't succeed 100% of course, which is why most of these monitors offer some EQ adjustments). I just find that balancing a sub with near-fields is hard to do and the resulting sound field doesn't sound "integrated" to my ears.

But all of this depends on what you are looking for sound-wise. The big bass that seems so important in home theater is a positive detriment in my opinion to critical monitoring of most music.

Just MHO. As far as I can tell, most of the other posters here have equally valid opinions based on their ears and their experiences.

Not surprisingly, the KRK 8s that I recommended above through Ebay have already been sold.

Short of getting out a high quality microphone, white noise generator and spectrum analyzer with EQ to adjust the sound room, it boils down to preference.

Some monitors come with a microphone and eQ setup to help adjust them to the environment, which is a good idea.

Okay, thanks for the help with monitors - I think I have a good enough feel to get something. I'll probably go with either the 6" or 8" KRKs.

I still am a bit confused about audio interfaces though. So if I get something like the Tascam US122 or EMU 0404 USB, I don't need a soundcard, right? Would either of these models be sufficient for use with external sounds (Ivory/Pianoteq/Akoustik)? I'd like to connect it to my computer so I can both record and play music on my computer. Would the latency on such a USB interface be too much for external sounds?

I've just been through the interface issue, and can wholeheartedly recommend firewire over USB (at least at the low-cost end of the spectrum). The Echo AudioFire2 is about $200 and absolutely quiet. I almost got the very geeky Mackie Satellite (to go with my Mackie mixer), but after reading lots of forums (including those over at Mackie) it seems there are LOTS of issues with that product. The little Echo is simple and does exactly one thing perfectly.

Also, I'm upgrading my KRK 5s to 8s... the 5s are just too thin and even a little scratchy on hearty notes. For a while I was afraid there was something afoot with the RD-700SX, but it was clean through the headphones. I agree with packa about avoiding the subwoofer; those seem to be best suited to dance mixes and other bass-heavy sound, but they don't contribute to clarity in the near-field environment.

Cheers,
Steve

Yes, these external interfaces completely replace your internal soundcard. To use a software piano, you need midi on your interface; to record your piano itself, you need stereo mic/line inputs. All of the devices we are talking about have both of these capabilities.

For software pianos (and for overdubbing analog recordings) the latency of the interface is a major issue. The first generation of USB interfaces often had latency issues because USB itself is so slow. Now, with USB2.0 you have real high-speed options over USB. Or you can just go firewire which is also a very fast connection. Part of the decision may hinge on what connections you have available on your PC; if you don't have firewire, for instance, you would also need to add a firewire adapter to connect a firewire external audio interface. And some older computers don't have USB2.0, of course. Also note that latency is sometimes related to the quality of the software driver supplied by the device manufacturer although USB drivers seem more prone to problems than firewire (at least that's my sense from reading a number of forum discussions).

Firewire interfaces often support a lot more channels of I/O which, for me, is overkill as I just want stereo (I have other options for dealing with multitrack stuff). I haven't tried the Echo interface Steve mentions but it looks like it would be fine for your purposes if you have firewire capability (or want to add it) and it doesn't have a lot of extra I/O that you might not use. The price is comparable to the EMU USB2.0 interface I use.

I should mention that the AudioFire2 does have other I/O - balanced line in and out (1/4" jacks for each channel), separately addressable headphones, S/PDIF, and MIDI. It also has a nice little software console with level controls and bar graph meters. The product website is over yonder at:

http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/FireWire/AudioFire2/index.php

Some other interfaces on the market have mic preamps with phantom power as well as a collection of other add-ons, but I like my hardware the way I like my software: clear, well-defined and optimized modules that don't require mode-changes or the twiddling of "knobs on the back of the set." I was very tempted for price reasons to go for a mixer with built-in audio interface, an FX section, and the bread-slicing add-on, but word on the street was that the downside of all this is a reduction in product quality unless you go for one of the high-end units that cost as much as the a la carte approach (and besides, if one thing breaks or is rendered obsolete by new tech, you're toast... so to speak).

Cheers,
Steve

So I finally found a place locally that has RP6s! Now I'm trying to decide between the RP6 and the RP8. I guess I'm still stuck on the size issue. If I'm really worried about the low end bass bothering my neighbors, should I go with the RP6, or would the RP8 be only marginally worse? For the life of me I can't find any good information about this... ideally I'd get both and try them and return what I like, but I can't do that.

Update: I finally bought monitors! I picked up a pair of KRK RP-8s... and they only charged me $400 new! (Usually they're $500, I'm not sure why it was only $400, but they said that was the price). They sound pretty good, but a bit muddy - I need to work on setting them up.

I also bought this mixer . I was hoping it would let me independently control the main and headphone outputs so I could easily turn one or the other off. Unfortunately the main output volume also controls the headphone volume. Is there some way around this? Maybe I could just put the monitors on a separate power strip and turn them when I'm using headphones. Are there cheap, small mixers that allow independent control?

It's a shame this thread died.
Ontheweb, please do continue.

Bachmaniac, Did you end up going back to the M-Audio's, or are you still on your B2031a's?
I'm pretty green to reference monitors, but 50hz:21Khz sounds pretty good @ $300 (less if on the bay)

Is there any word of spec's for the B3031A/B3030A's? I googled model numbers + "frequency response" and came up with jack.

So I haven't bought a soundcard yet. Does anyone think the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 will eventually get Vista drivers?

I think the better question is, why you have decided to make practicing your newly acquired MP8 dependent upon, yet alone invest in, Millennium Edition II, I mean Vista.

What's wrong with xpsp2?
Does it not hog enough resources?
No universal driver support?
Is it not bloated with enough digital rights management for you?
(see http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?page=2 search keyword "vista")

Regardless, you may find some solutions over here.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=m-audio+2496+%22vista%22&btnG=Search

Good luck with it.

*please delete me* (since this forum does not allow deletion of recent accidental posts intended as edits.)