The purpose of my equipment is three fold.
1. Home hi fi (I want it to sound louder and better than my desktop
Sony). Noise free to my ears and good speakers.
2. As a "home PA". I sing and play my acoustic/electric through it.
3. As a "studio monitor" when I add a recording outfit to it.
This is my first venture into PA gear and I want to use it to play my
CD collection as well. I have not purchased equipment yet but this is
what I am thinking. I put the Musicians Friend number so you can look
at specs, but I don't care where I buy the stuff, though I like their
45 day return policy.
1. Alesis RS300 Reference Series power amp. Musicians friend #485525
(90 watts into 8 ohms per channel, no fan)
No, Alesis does not make good amps. Look into Hafler, go used to save coin,
they've always been good value.
2. Behringer Eurorack UB1222FX-PRO mixer (also serves a preamp for CD
player) MF #631229
A suitable mixer for basic PA use, a rough start for recording.
3. Sony RCD-W500C CD recorder/player MF #244679
Any CD recorder is a bad choice - nothing special for sound quality, no
editing capabilities, and it requires expensive audio-only media, unless you
spend about $800 on a pro model. Get into a PC-based DAW even if you just
use on-board sound i/o at first.
4. Speakers. I need two 8 ohm, non-powered, near field 100 watt
speakers that will sound as good as possible with this equipment. I am
thinking something like Behringer Truths, but non-powered.
If you get entry-level studio monitors get powered ones. They typically use
4 Ohm or even 2 Ohm drivers and work best with matching amps. Behringer
Truths use 4 Ohm woofers and tweeters. Other amps will work, but no better
than optional built-in amps unless you spend a fair bit. Either way they
won't be adequate for PA.
I am
stumped on this one. Any suggestions? An important choice. Something
with a silk dome tweeter? I think NOT a horn?
You're kind of screwed here. You'll need horns to get adequate PA power for
that room, but they certainly won't be studio reference quality. Very few
metallic domes sound decent, cloth/silk ones generally sound best.
Something designed for a
studio monitor, near field or maybe medium field. Room is 20 x 30, 8'
ceiling to 16' ceiling sheetrock walls carpet floor.
You'll be hard-pressed to get adequate PA power to that amount of airspace
with anything approaching studio caliber precision for under $2k.
My other quandry is I do not know how a sub-woofer would fit into
this. If I get a sub do I just plug it into an output of the mixer?
You should read a lot more into subwoofers before buying one, it's easy to
do more harm than good.
Anyway, that is my mission. I would appreciate any suggestions. Yes I
can spend more, but this is the sort of range I think I can buy and
learn with and should get ok sound.
If I were you I'd get something like the Truths for entry-level nearfield
monitoring and hi-fi use, and also a pair of powered PA speakers for PA and
higher volume hi-fi.
You're going to need to treat that room too.
|