Active monitors vs reciever & bookshelfs

H

henz0

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 14, 2009
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Pros and cons for a very small bedroom? Gonna be used for 70% music, 20% movies, and 10% gaming. source is an audigy 2 zs

From what i've read online i've put these 2 setups together.

KRK RP8G2
+
bic h100, pa 120, or whatever else in the <$275 price range.

Including stands and shipping this comes out to around 770.

OR


av123 ELT525M
+
onkyo 606
+
bic h100, pa 120, or whatever else in the <$275 price range.

This comes out to around 820 shipped

Budget is 820 shipped.

thoughts?
 
Both systems will sound excellent. If space is severely limited, I'd choose the first package. Otherwise, I'd take the second since it offers lots of options for expansion in the future.
 
if its a small room I would personally go for the smaller ones (KRK RP5 ROKIT G2) those RP8 are huge :D

imo, active monitors >>>> receiver + bookshelf
 
Hmm... yeah that's hard to beat then. I think the newest HSU bookshelves might be able to put these to shame and they are only $100 more.
 
would be better than the rokit's?

i was thinking of takin' inuZ suggestion and rollin' with the rp5 instead of rp8 and use the extra funds to get a SVS pb12-nsd

what do you think?

Most importantly in this setup i want BIG car like bass.

If i didn't live in an apartment i would build an 8 cube ported box for this spare 12" fi q i have here...
 
Er... You live in an apartment but you want big boomy bass?

Well, if that's the case, just do what you just said. It should make you happy. Personally, I hate boomy bass because it drowns out the rest of my music, but to each his own. I am pretty sure that SVS sub will do the job for you.
 
Well not really boomy bass but tight accurate bass that can fill the room and shake things.
 
Either way, that setup will do a fine job. Hopefully, you will upgrade your main speakers to the same level of your subwoofer in the future because, if you follow this setup, your subwoofer will outperform your mains, easily. But, out of curiosity, why SVS? HSU makes better all-round subs and you mostly listen to music. SVS is good, but they are better with movies than music.

EDIT: Outlaw Audio LFM-1 PLUS or EX are great choices too. They were basically developed by Dr. Hsu and branded and sold by Outlaw Audio.

Btw, are you ok with buying used?
 
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I read alot of reviews of the svs and they seem pretty good..i also like the way they look.

I looked into other subs but most were down firing(i like front firing)

For the money i plan to spend i'm tryin' to stick with new instead of used.
 
henz0 said:
For the money i plan to spend i'm tryin' to stick with new instead of used.
Click to expand...

Good thought for cars and underwear, but not a great one for audio equipment. If it still works properly, the only real difference is that it's cheaper.
 
Buy a high quality pair of passives and something like this:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/sho...io+DTA1+T-Amp+030509&utm_campaign=email030509

Then buy a receiver when you decide you want to go to surround.

Get an Asus Xonar soundcard and use that to set the cutoff between the mains and the sub. You can set it to "2 channel" with "analogue 5.1 output" to output cleanly in 2.1 mode.

If you're talking $820 for speakers there is no way I would recommend getting actives unless you're considering something like a Nuforce setup: http://amazon.nuforce-icon.com/
S-1, W-1, and icon amp are supposed to be a pretty good combo and would be within the pricerange, although a word of caution. The speakers are themselves about the size of a sub.

http://techgage.com/article/nuforce_icon-1_amplifier_and_s-1_speakers/

That will run you about $700 for a very admirable 2.1 setup.
 
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2 x 15 watts RMS (into 4 ohms @ 10% THD)

isn't that distortion kinda high?
 
oops, that review was before they came out with the sub for it:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/nuforce9/sub.html

also more reviews listed on their site: http://www.nuforce-icon.com/Review-Icon.htm


Although I might still recommend getting a nice pair of passives and that cheap amp I listed. Distortion shouldn't be a big issue as long as you aren't trying to blast them. If you notice, it's only 1% at 10W so as long as you didn't blast them you'd be alright. I know that may be a little underpowered, but if you're thinking of expanding outward to a full surround setup eventually, it doesn't pay to buy an expensive amp just to have to replace it with an expensive sub.... although I guess you could buy a better one and sell it later, but you'd be losing more money.

I mean honestly, to me it makes sense to buy the best pair of speakers you can, the cheap amp and then a little down the line in a year or two get a cheap receiver, which you should be able to get a better quality one of for less $$$.

Another option is that you could get a cheap stereo receiver to go along with your speakers to tide you over until you decide you want surround and then upgrade to a full receiver at that point.
 
your best bet then is to buy a cheap stereo receiver and upgrade later. check out the harmon kardon stuff on their ebay store. You can probably get a good one for $100-150 and then you still have something like $650 to spend on a get set of speakers.
 
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