Speakers?

I am just starting out and I got a set of Gemini starters. . . not the best I know, but couldn't wait any longer. I am upgrading soon so don't get your knickers in a twist. Anyhoo. . . speakers!!! I am not wanting to shell out $600+ for good monitors especially not with my current tables. When I get 1200's we'll talk but I was in best buy I found some crappy Sony speakers that I can devide with a splitter. So do they go into the Master outlet and would this work? Thanks.

... but it may sound like crap or only come out of one channel, in fact... I bet you will only get the right side. Depends really on the speakers and how you do it.

[Adam D]

I think I've made this recommendation before, but I'll go ahead and do it again. This is the way my studio is set up, and I know alot of artists who have very similar set ups, so I'm sure this would fit your needs too.

Guitar Center sells a pair of powered (so no need to buy an amp) monitors by Roland, the MA-88. They kick out a pretty nice amount of sound, but with all monitors, you need a sub with them. Now, I'm not at home now, so I couldn't tell you if there is a way to pipe the feed from the monitors into the sub, because I have the monitors and the sub feeding off of two outs on my soundcard. Now, they won't kick out as much sound as a $500 pair of monitors, but the sound quality is really nice and professional. They run about $90 for the pair. For the sub, I went to Best Buy (although I hate shopping there) and bought a powered Sony sub (buy whatever loudness you want) with a cutoff on it. The reason why it's important to buy a sub with a cutoff is so you can tune the sub and the monitors together so you don't have (a) lost frequencies between the two and (b) two much signal in the midbass range. If there isn't a seperate output for both, you will need a line splitter, and you can turn the output of your mixer up or the monitor and sub volume up to counteract the loss of signal power from splitting the line. Or you could run it through your computer if you have a decent sound card and run the monitors and sub out of two outs, but I wouldn't recommend doing that if you don't have to. I spent another $100 on the sub, so I burned out a couple hundred for the setup. That's cheaper than what you are considering doing.

I wouldn't go with the sony speakers for a few of reasons. One, those speakers are made for home theater use, so they lack the flat sound of studio monitors and tend to cut out or cover up frequencies which might sound good on the Sony's but bad on a pro sound system. You might mix and think two records sound really good together, and then spin somewhere and find that some of the sounds in the records sound jacked up together. Two, you'll still need a sub, because I'm guessing those Sony's won't push enough bass to mix well off of. And third, unless you want to crank your mixer up, you'll still need an amplifier to power the speakers or the sound coming out will be pretty weak. Unless your mixer has some kind of built in amplifier. If it doesn't, doing this is bad for your mixer and makes buying decent sized speakers pointless. And amplifiers alone are fairly costly. Those speakers are for home theater use, and those home theater systems have a built in amp in the main unit.

I learned from expirience as a producer it doesn't cut it to go the cheap route. Cutting corners you think you can get away with will kick you in the nuts down the road. $200 isn't too bad of a price to get a professional sound, and alot of it.