[LAU] Advice for buying speakers

[Arnold Krille]

Hi,

Am Freitag, 7. September 2007 schrieb Leslie P. Polzer:
> The Alesis speakers mentioned by Arnold do already hit my budget hard,
> but I think 333 EUR is still pretty cheap for them, considering the
> exclusively positive reviews I found.
> So maybe I'll go for them, although I'm still unsure because an external
> amp seems more flexible to me.
> In any case, I'd still like to collect some more opinions.

Actually the internal amps are _way_ better:
 - With external amps you need the cross-over in the high-power path which 
needs far better (and pricier) parts than in the low-power path of the input 
signals.
 - You get (at least) two independent amps optimized for their frequency-range 
and not interfering with the other freqs.
 - Not another device played on your desk/cup-board.
 - Most active speakers in the studio-sense have XLR- (ie. symmetric) inputs 
which means no interference on the signal path. Normal speaker cable from the 
external amp to the speakers is not shielded and picks up (and causes) noise 
and cross-talk.

> Do I really need an amp? Doesn't the signal level of the sound card
> suffice? Consider that I don't want to crank up the volume substantially.

"If" the soundcard has an amped output (I remember an old soundblaster16 with 
two switches on the board), the output is maximum 5W which is far to low to 
do any work. And normal line-level might be good to drive headphones but not 
any kind of speaker (in the meaning of _loud_ speaker)(*). Yes, you need some 
amping!

If you want something cheaper than the Alesis (which are pretty good and even 
superb in the price/benefit-scale), you can take a look at Edirols speakers. 
And even cheaper (and worse) is the stuff from behringer(.de/.com). But if 
you want quality you might be disappointed by behringers products. While our 
church has almost all its equipment from them for monetary reasons, I don't 
own anything behringer for quality reasons (well, currently I am thinking 
about getting their smallest midi-controller).

Back to programming neuronal networks, have fun,

Arnold

(*) Loud is here not defined as 
so-loud-the-neighbors-three-blocks-away-send-for-the-police but 
loud-enough-to-hear-something-in-the-whole-room.
-- 
visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/
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