Hey guys, my dad has a cottage that I like to visit. I wanted to leave a instrument there that was hooked up to speakers so I could play piano and stuff while I’m up there without having to bring lots of things. I have been looking at the yamaha modx a lot because it has a lot of sounds and it doesn’t weigh too much.
What would be good powered speakers to get for a medium sized room? Do I need a mixer or can I just plug an instrument right in? Thanks for the help and sorry if I sound naive but I know you guys would know better than me : )
Hi! The Krk Rokits are pretty decent. I have the 5’s for using when djing. Worth a look to see if you can find a second hand set of mk2s knocking about for cheap!
And nope, def don’t need a mixer to plug straight in, although would maybe need a stereo splitting cable to feed each speaker from the headphone/line out of he synth
If you were leaving something at an occasional place you visit wouldn’t it be more prudent to have a basic controller keyboard driving an iPad (or cheap poly module) - that seems like a lot of synth (and $) for something to leave there plus it doesn’t facilitate learning it - but maybe the comment about weight implies it’d be travelling
I think you’d be surprised at how much fun you can still have with modest speakers that may not be what you’d choose in your home setup - so even a half decent small hifi to plug into could fit the bill - probably depends on what level of listening you envisage and how often it’d be used - don’t get me wrong, the quality of sound can really enhance the moment in terms of inspiration etc, so if money’s no object get something decent as suggested above, they seem well priced and well regarded or maybe look at a Behringer offering for about half that (or less)
Yeah I pretty much wanted a space at the cottage that would always have speakers. I’m used to when I was little always having a room with a piano in it, so this is sort of the modern version of it. My little brothers really like music and they get blown away when you’re playing a workstation like synth because they have no idea what’s going on. I wanted something with nice big sound because I can really play the piano and I don’t want to blow normal speakers (which I have done with normal speakers) lols
Is something like this good as well? I like that it has a couple of inputs, incase there was a time my little brothers wanted to plug right into it with something while I was playing.
Should be fine, but looks like a bit overkill maybe depending on the size of the room? That really looks more like a PA you’d use for small live performances.
You can add a tiny mixer easily to any set of powered speakers if you want to mix a few sources and end up paying less for what’s probably better sound.
Given that you want to play the piano and assuming that the room is big enough (you mention it‘s mid-sized), I would suggest you go with 8“ speakers to capture those lower frequencies that a good piano sound produces. It‘ll give you more of a feel that you are sitting at an actual piano.
Here I suggest a pair of the JBL LSR308; they are cheap, powerful, active (so you can plug them right into eg the MODX) and sound very good, even beyond their price range.
Since it looks like you want them for listening pleasure… DEF not get studio monitors, as they are not designed for this purpose… Getting a pair of second hand hifi speakers (active or passive) would be a lot more pleasurable to listen to. What would you like to spend?
That used to be the case, but it’s really no longer true. There are a lot of modern monitor speakers that are perfectly pleasant for more casual listening.
These ones look interesting because I could plug in, or my brothers, and bluetooth can be used I believe. They seem pretty cool. Thanks for all the help. I think I know what I should go for, I’m going to plug my octatrack into it too! : )
To my understanding that’s not quite right. Hi-Fi Speakers are designed to make your music “sound good” by the subjective standards of their target market - so they are usually EQed to e.g. emphasise bass response or hype the upper mids etc. Studio Monitors are designed to give you the most “unadulterated sound” possible, in other words they are designed to be as “flat” as possible (ideal is a straight line across the frequency spectrum…which is difficult to pull off even just because of the way our hearing works). So a Studio Monitor is designed to make your mix sound the “way it sounds”, i.e. if a mix is poorly mixed it will sound poor…in that sense, studio monitors are more “honest” or “neutral” in their representation of a recorded sound than hifi speakers are designed to be.
Modern monitors are often still pleasant to listen to (or MORE pleasant actually due to great resolution and frequency separation), even “despite” their flatter response curves. But whether a speaker is considered pleasant or not really also depends on the physiology and psycho-acoustic makeup of the listener, not just on the speaker. For example, many people love Adams speakers for their representation of their highs (ribbon-based technology) and people buy em just for that…I find their highs way too overpowering, shrill, borderline unbearable… that’s just the interplay between my hearing and those speakers.
400W is A LOT of power for what you want it to do…you may be paying for features that are irrelevant to your use case. That said, if you are excited about those then by all means go for them and enjoy!!!
Hi-Fi speakers are designed to accurately reproduce the source music, which is exactly what audiophiles expect.
Unfortunately all audio components are subject to design compromises and this is most apparent in lower priced products. At a specific price point one brand may reproduce low frequencies but with poor accuracy whereas another brand may choose to cut-off the lower frequencies totally.
These compromises will be made regardless of whether a speaker is marketed as Hi-Fi or Studio Monitor, and for both products the compromise could be swayed to the audio preference of a target market. You can definitely find so called Studio Monitors which over emphasise the bass.
Many top studios use speakers which are marketed as Hi-Fi speakers, one example being the B&W 800 Series. Also if you look at manufactures who market both, e.g Genelec, you will find that the only differences between their Hi-Fi speaker and Studio Monitor are aesthetics and connections.
Plus of course the Yamaha NS10M was marketed as a Hi-Fi speaker, but became popular with producers of the day. The NS10M did not have a particularly flat frequency response and had a restricted low frequency bandwidth, but it was portable and had excellent time-domain response and low harmonic distortion.
Of course when Yamaha noticed that the NS10M was being used in major studios they started producing the NS10M Studio.
