In my modest home recording setup I've been using an ordinary stereo tuner to drive a set of 30 year old Pioneer stereo speakers.(Don't laugh) These are the ones that weigh about 50 lbs. They have served me well but I'm tired of looking at the big clunkers. Anyway, I thought about purchasing some studio monitors. I noticed on the specs for some of the ones that I looked at that it said impedance was a nominal 4 ohms. I also looked up home stereo speakers and they were all 8 ohms. I assume that the Pioneer speakers I have are 8 ohm. Will the 4 ohm monitors work with my power source or would I need another power amp to run them. Question 2...I noticed some of monitors are active. Is there any advantage to that other just being powered?
3rd question...I noticed some of the monitors were biamped. What does the term biamped mean, in technical terms and in practical usage terms?
Last question....What are best monitors in the 200-300 range? That's about all I have to spend.
Well I guess that was 4 questions not a couple.
Ken
Couple of speaker questions
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Ken Williams
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Okay, Ken, four questions:
1) Most solid state amps will handle four ohms, just be certain that you are not using any "extension" speakers at the same time.
2) Active monitors have the advantage of close-coupling the speakers to the amp, increasing the damping factor (essentially how well the amp controls the excursion of the speaker), also some of them have filters or other processing to ensure a certain frequency response.
3) "Biamped" means that there are separate amps for lows and highs, which can help to reduce inter-modulation distortion and phase issues between the lows and highs.
4) Try to get your hands on a pair of Event 20/20 monitors, very, VERY nice sounding and a lot of bang for the buck.
That's four answers, good luck with your quest - dg<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Dave Grafe on 13 July 2005 at 12:26 AM.]</p></FONT>
1) Most solid state amps will handle four ohms, just be certain that you are not using any "extension" speakers at the same time.
2) Active monitors have the advantage of close-coupling the speakers to the amp, increasing the damping factor (essentially how well the amp controls the excursion of the speaker), also some of them have filters or other processing to ensure a certain frequency response.
3) "Biamped" means that there are separate amps for lows and highs, which can help to reduce inter-modulation distortion and phase issues between the lows and highs.
4) Try to get your hands on a pair of Event 20/20 monitors, very, VERY nice sounding and a lot of bang for the buck.
That's four answers, good luck with your quest - dg<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Dave Grafe on 13 July 2005 at 12:26 AM.]</p></FONT>