Can you connect your active monitors directly to your Elektron gear?

Elektron Gear
1

On most Elektron gear, the audio outputs seem to be specified as much higher (often +19 dBu or +15 dBu) than line level (which is +4 dBu). Furthermore, for many active monitors, it’s specified that you should feed them either -10 dBV or +4 dBu. Does this mean you can’t connect your active monitors directly to your Elektron box? Or is it okay as long as you keep the master volume down? But even if you do keep the master volume down, how do you know what dBu you’re outputting (meaning how do you know beyond which point that it’s unsafe to raise the volume further)?

I’ve been reading up on these questions quite a lot, but I still feel extremely uncertain about how to configure my speaker setup.

Edit 1:

And I guess the answer is that I need some kind of attenuator in between my Elektron box and my speakers (such as a mixer).

Edit 2:

What I’m presenting in the edit above is my preference for how I want this to work (regarding limiting the possible dB SPL no matter how hard I try to exceed it). It doesn’t have to be your preference (you do you), but I’m not interested in justifying why I want it to work this way. If you think it’s unnecessary, that’s fine, but I’m only interested in how to solve the problem, and I have zero interest in being convinced that my preference is wrong.

Edit 3:

I emailed the manufacturers of my speakers, and they seem to confirm my worries.

Edit 4:

Edit 5: I ended up buying and using the Electro-Harmonix Platform as a limiter before sending the output signal to my speakers. It works great.

2

Get a mixer

5 Likes
3

You can do it that way if you want.

Do you need to know? If its loud enough to damage your speakers, your ears will tell you pretty quickly.

You could also get a free decibel meter on your phone or what ever.

Or get a mixer.

1 Like
4

In this case, I guess the point of the mixer would be to serve as an attenuator guaranteeing that I never send more than, for example, +4 dBu to the speakers, right? In that case, I guess I would have to make sure that the output of the mixer wasn’t something like +19 dBu as well, right?

5

Im going to suggest that you’re over thinking it.

21 Likes
6

I’ve used my powered monitors with my DT standalone with no issues. Most of the Elektron boxes can be used as an audio interface, so I don’t see why it would be a problem.

2 Likes
7

Would you mind just explaining in what way a mixer would help?

8

Without knowing the rest of your set up, or use case, I have absolutely no idea.

If the question is "can I run my elektrons straight into my active speakers? " the answer is yes you can. There are set up diagrams in the manual demonstrating this. (Or at least there used to be)

1 Like
9

I have never ever had any idea how many db my monitors were receiving from all the various shit I’ve fed into them. There has never been a problem in the last 25 years. If you turn things up slowly you’ll be the first to know if you’re overdoing it. If that should happen turn stuff down.

3 Likes
10

A mixer will help you regulate the levels and character of all of your instruments in a more efficient way. Think of your mixer as the Marie kondo of audio signals, helping to organize your instrumental input signals before being presented to your monitors, your ears, and the rest of the world, and remember … only keep the sounds that sparkle for you.

7 Likes
11

Absolutely you can, don’t worry about it. I have a mixer, but lately I’ve just gone direct.

1 Like
12

I’m only using a single Elektron box though (which in turn might have some instruments hooked up to its external input), so if I got a mixer, I would only connect that single device to it. So in that case, only if the mixer would attenuate my input signal. no matter how high gain I used on the mixer itself, would it be of any use.

13

I think that my problem might be the following:

I want to set up my speaker so that they never, no matter how loud of an input signal I feed them, will play above a certain dB SPL. This is because while jamming away on my device, I don’t want to risk having one single mistake (turning the master volume rather than some other knob) blow my ears out. But if I turn up the volume to the max, I risk blowing my speakers because of the hot input signal (even if they wont play above the maximum dB SPL that I allow). So I guess I need to have some kind of device in between that attenuates the signal, and where I know that it’s not above a certain dBu (so that I, once again, don’t risk blowing the speakers).

14

Like a mixer?

8 Likes
15

This should be in a fortune cookie!

6 Likes
16

I think a mixer is probably the right answer for many reasons, but if you really don’t want to do that then look at a passive monitor controller:

Mackie Big Knob Series, Passive 2x2 Studio Monitor Controller (BIG KNOB PASSIVE) https://a.co/d/4WAaSC6

4 Likes
17

You’ve just described the function of a limiter.
A threshold is set, and no matter how high the incoming signal is, it gets squashed by the limiter so it does not exceed the threshold.

You dont need that.

You can connect your gear to your speakers directly. You wont damage them. And if you’re worried about damaging your ears, turn the level down. Simple.

1 Like
18

do your speakers have their own volume control?
surely if you have that set at a reasonable level it attenuates the output from amplifier–> speaker enough that no output level from the Elektron could damage the speakers?
I’m not an electronics engineer tho…

1 Like
19

Yes, a mixer could serve that purpose if I’m never touching it.

Yes, they have volume controls. However, since speakers can get fried from the input signal alone, even if no sound is played at all (they can be fully turned down), I can’t protect myself from destroying the speakers because of a hot input signal by lowering the volume on the speakers.

20

Yes, you can but if you have multiple devices then a good mixer is essential. I use a Kmix with my Elektrons.