this year marks my first real foray into the realm of live electronic music.
i’m totally familiar with guitar/amp/etc stuff, but i’m over that for the time being.
i’m wondering what cheap-yet-decent-sounding setups you folks have gotten yourselves into. i really don’t want to hear my entire setup running through my Rokit 5’s here at home as it is; and that clearly won’t cut the mustard live.
i have a cheap little Vox Pathfinder now after years of having half stacks and Fender Twins taking up space. i actually love it for my purposes and wonder sometimes if i should simply get another to run things in stereo (they avg around $100 USD). figured they could always be mic’d live, but then again i’d just use the house PA.
still i know many of you would insist that such a setup is terrible for the frequency range that synths/drum machines can fill.
i have a little Behringer 8-channel mixer i use to mix my hardware… should i just run that into some cheap monitor wedges from Craigslist or something ?
i’d be hard pressed to spend more than $150 considering that i’m nobody at the moment and months away from doing anything live. all the same i want to HEAR and FEEL the music i’m making.
Perhaps look into getting a half decent powered subwoofer with built in crossover to go with your Rokit 5’s. A sub can help make even small speakers seem a lot bigger.
cool - haven’t thought about that for home use, but i’m still more concerned with replicating a “live” sound in my home studio… that way i won’t be taken by surprise w/ levels, etc in a live capacity.
that and if i end up collaborating with a friend or 2 in a practice space we’ll have a PA to go through
For home jamming I use krk 5 x 2 and a krk 10sub. The sub is ridiculously loud for the price and size. It definitely fills out the low end. This won’t give you the “live” feeling that you want, but it will get you close In a small room setting. Aside from getting a good power amp, mixer, and pa speakers with subs, I would recommend sticking with monitors and a sub in your room. The pa route can get rather costly rather quick, and of course having extreme levels in a small practice room is not always the best thing for your ears.
All that said, I’m moving into a bigger house this weekend and plan to buy a sizable PA system to accomplish extreme levels of volume. Haha. I will keep you posted on what I get and how it works out. This will be my 5th-6th PA system since I was about 14-15 so I’ve had my experience with various setups.
This is quite dependent on expectations and use. If you are into meticulously mixing and mastering your work, the sub placement will depend strongly on your room and room treatments. If you just want to feel it, then at your feet is fine. My current set up is in a room with lots of weird corners and no adjacent straight walls and I have treated the room to a fairly heavy extent with absorbers and diffusers. This was done when my work was much more production based and I was doing a lot of mixing and stuff in the room. With this set up, I had the monitors at perfect near field range at the best angle in my opinion, And the sub under my desk dead center of the monitors. As of late, I’m more into jamming and recording live so I don’t stress too much on placement as I do no post editing or mixing, I just trust my knowledge of my gear. Also keep in mind, that using a sub while mixing is kind of a nono for most as it can color your audio making you think it has more low end than it may actually have. The krk 10s has a decent crossover and a kill switch for this purpose.
To sum up: if you aren’t looking to pump out pro quality mixes, it doesn’t matter. Put the sub in a spot that is not in he way and you will hear it regardless. If you are doing lots of post editing and mixing, take the time to find the sweet spot in your room and then use it as a reference rather than always having it on.