Well, it's not free if you want to be conscientious. He's asking for donations and if you use it you should donate.

droddey


Well, it's not free if you want to be conscientious. He's asking for donations and if you use it you should donate.

Is that not the case with pretty much all freeware? They all give you the option to donate if you wish. But it's not a requirement. Thus it's free. As a side note, you may wish to make a donation. This is purely optional. Regardless, it's still free..

wow, it's great to see all this in-depth discussion on monitor technology - some of the above went way over my head and I'm not sure the room I'm forced to use right now is even going to be worth such analysis - cause I'm hoping in a year I'll take over another room in the house where I'll have much more control.   However, last night I put up my pair of Alesis Monitor One near-field reference monitors with 100w amp;  I placed them like bookshelf speakers on my main studio desk, about 3 1/2 ft apart and slightly lower than head level.   My listening space is about 3 ft back from the desk.   

The difference it made was instant - I played back 3 song mixes in a row and could hear the imbalances in the mix and made the adjustments, much of it minor but made a lot of difference.    The other main thing, was that I ignored the headphone jack in my Edirol USB interface box and plugged my phones into the back output - again, it checked perfectly with the Alesis monitors and I did not have to adjust anything further.

HOWEVER......   lol     NEXT issue for me is -->    NOW I can't hardly hear when using my phones to mix or monitor, because there's no amplification on the back outputs of the Edirol box.   So...  is there a separate headphone amp that I'm supposed to be using?  Or am I needing some kind of amplified phones now?    

That's great news John!!!

It seems like you should use the headphone jack for your headphones and your rear outputs for your speaker system.

That is how everything was engineered to be hooked up and that will offer the best match for each.

Thanks for sharing the info.

best regards,
mike

Thanks Mike!  and it was actually fun last night getting a true picture of the mix finally, after stumbling for so long with hit-or-miss output.  I should also add that I made a test mix of a new collab with my friend Mikael/Equality, down to an MP3, and this morning in the car stereo - it sounded pretty awesome, and very well balanced.  Getting a mix to sound balanced everywhere I play it - was the entire goal here and it's happening now.

 I think there's so much stuff packed in my room (boxes, lots of furniture, tons of stuff on the walls) that I sure don't have any sound bouncing off the walls...  when I'm able to gain some control with a dedicated small room, I'll go the software analysis route and maybe even the full acoustic treatment if I'm lucky; but  I actually think one of the big mistakes I made was not realizing that the headphone front-end input on my Edirol box was getting all of its built-in presets which are  LOT of combinations of EQ, FX, and such.  Herb hit it square when he tipped me off to NOT be using that input for mixing with phones.  I see now that small headphone amps are everywhere and shouldn't take much to give me a signal boost when I do want to check my mix on phones (i.e., 2am when I can't use the Alesis monitors),  when I have to input the phones into the back end of the Edirol box, I'll just rig up a small headphone amp unit for that.  it's easy to plug/unplug the monitors input --

Oh, one techie question tho, for anyone --   and this is an area I am very ignorant about also --   the cabling I had to use from the Monitors into the Edirol box, was 1/4" (from the Alesis amp)  to RCA (on the Edirol).   I am fairly sure that it's this cabling that introduces some annoying hum over the monitors.  I used cheap radio shack cables cause they actually had ones that went from 1/4" mono, to RCA at the other end.   Should I be looking for like gold-tipped or specially-shielded cabling to try to get that hum under control?   Should I be looking at brands like monster cables for this connection?   It would be nice to get rid of that hum, although it definitely did not stop me from getting a really good monitor of the mix.   I don't notice the hum at all when it's playing; only during pauses or when it's stopped, do I hear that bad hum.   I can find no other electrical interference nearby to account for it.   That's why I suspect the cables.  

Headroom..... it's all about having headroom. This has been something I have been aware of for decades now when it relates to amps and speakers no matter where they are used. It was important in our band PA, it was important in car stereo sound, and even more so now in a studio situation. 

Mike's post #31 above said it well.  Not much needs to be added to that statement.  You want that power, not for the sake of power and volume, but the ability to have that power control the speaker cones effectively.  Head room. 

Insufficient power to the speakers results in cones not being moved properly and the result is distortion and clipping when the amp tries to reproduce those notes. Mostly the bass and kick. If you are having to run the volume knobs on the monitors up above 75% to get listening levels right, you are either deaf or your amps are under powered. 

On my MR-5's and my sub, there are level controls. On the MR-5's I have them set to the 50% detente point. Then, in the DAW, I link the masters and pull my master faders down to about 50% while working.  It's only when I hit the last few run listens to the mix before export and calling it done, that I slide the master faders up to "0"  


A side note on headphone monitoring. There are times when I have to monitor with headphones. Later at night, when my wife is watching TV or taking a nap, and of course, when recording with mics.  My saffire has plenty of outputs on the back .... but I'm thinking you can use a signal splitter to do the same if you don't have enough outputs. I plug my stereo system into the saffire outputs (7&8) and I can listen through the stereo if I choose..... which I never do..... or I can use the stereo as a nice headphone amp.....which I used to do all the time. I have since purchased a headphone amp to allow for 4 sets of headphones to be used when I record singers here in the studio. 

Herb:  awesome,  thanks!    By the way,  I was getting all the output I could want with the Alesis amp up to 4 out of 10 clicks, and that was with the Edirol volume only at it's normal 60% or so,  of volume.  It seems this Alesis 100w/channel amp could probably put a hole in the back wall of my room if I cranked it.   But I do get what everyone up above is saying about needing the power in order to faithfully reproduce the sounds accurately.

I thought about using a RCA splitter for the monitors & headphone jack at the Edirol.   I have all the connectors to do that with, I just did not want to introduce any interference into the lines going to the monitors; but sounds like I'm safe to try that next.  Leaving that kind of connection in place would of course, make it easiest for me to switch back & forth quickly.  Gonna try that out tonight!    Can't wait to get back to the studio now!  (wasn't that the subject of another post on here?)   Motivation to get back to record now!     Can't thank everyone enough for all their inputs on this thread!!!!    

Using a splitter cord might work. You can try it. It should not hurt anything.....The only downside issue would be that when you plug in the second device that gets fed from that splitter... it might end up loading the output a bit more and will cause a signal loss of some amount. 

Nothing is free.  

In my case...I mentioned that I have a 4 output headphone amp...... here's why.... I needed to use 2 different model headphones in a session a while back.  Knowing the stereo, which I used at the time for the headphone amp had plenty of power, I employed a "y-cord" splitter.  The original headphone level dropped when I plugging in the second set, and the new set I plugged in had a difference impedance and the levels were much lower in it. turning the volume up on the stereo amp, simply introduced distortion. either set alone was good, and clean. together, they did not share the split signal very well. Together, they ended up loading the headphone amp outputs too much. 

Best case... it works fine and life goes on. Worst case it has some sort of issue which has no reasonable work around. If the second situation ends up being the case..... I would simply swap cables when you need to..... Label them and let them lay behind the interface. What's it take.... 5 seconds to swap a pair of cables? 



add: or buy an interface with more outputs on the back.

Guitarhacker


Using a splitter cord might work. You can try it. It should not hurt anything.....The only downside issue would be that when you plug in the second device that gets fed from that splitter... it might end up loading the output a bit more and will cause a signal loss of some amount. 

Nothing is free.  

In my case...I mentioned that I have a 4 output headphone amp...... here's why.... I needed to use 2 different model headphones in a session a while back.  Knowing the stereo, which I used at the time for the headphone amp had plenty of power, I employed a "y-cord" splitter.  The original headphone level dropped when I plugging in the second set, and the new set I plugged in had a difference impedance and the levels were much lower in it. turning the volume up on the stereo amp, simply introduced distortion. either set alone was good, and clean. together, they did not share the split signal very well. Together, they ended up loading the headphone amp outputs too much. 

Best case... it works fine and life goes on. Worst case it has some sort of issue which has no reasonable work around. If the second situation ends up being the case..... I would simply swap cables when you need to..... Label them and let them lay behind the interface. What's it take.... 5 seconds to swap a pair of cables? 



add: or buy an interface with more outputs on the back.

*lol*   In fact,  last night one of the last steps I did was in fact, to tape a label on the L & R cables at the Edirol box that go to the monitors, and I put in a screw hook at the edge of my shelf, to lay those 2 cables in, and yep, it's just a couple seconds to swap them out and plug the headset in....  but I do like your point about being able to use several models of headsets easily with a multi-input amp,  and I most definitely have also seen the signal drop when using a Y-splitter cable so I don't wanna go that route.  I am looking at a pretty nice 4-output headphone amp unit right now that I think will do nicely.          thanks again!

monitors:

i personally prefer passive speakers, with a separate amplifier.

but i'm just that way..
my guitar rig is the same, tube head, separate cabinets, no combos.

reason:

if the amp goes bad in one channel, you'r down on your entire rig.

if a separate system amplifier goes down, you can always rent beg or borrow another amp until you get the broken one fixed.

also, it's cheaper to ship an amp to get fixed, than it is to ship an entire speaker cabinet with the amp built into it.


also, suppose you really like your amp, but decide you're ready to upgrade to another set of monitors?

also, no matter how well they say things are shielded inside the cabinet, any scientist can tell you that  proximity to electric and magnetic fields are going to have SOME kind of effect.


to me, it's just easier to keep them all separated.

the problem with that, most recently, is that there just aren't that many really good passive systems anymore, most manufacturers have moved to a powered setup, because they know they've got you by the short hairs.