Good Pair of bookshelf speakers

cdbob

cdbob

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I am looking for a good quality of powered bookshelf speakers for use with my laptop, for uses I am using these are music creation purposes so i am looking for quality stuff rather cheap stuff.
 
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For Music creation, you want to look at reference monitors for sure. They are designed to give perfectly even full range and acurate sound reproduction. There is nothing better for making sure your mixes are the best, beyond maybe a reference quality headphone. Most of them are self powered, so all you would have to do is give it a signal from your computer, just like normal computer speakers.

Give www.sweetwater.com a look. They are one of the top brands when it comes to music and professional audio equipment, and have decent prices too. You could find stuff cheaper, but you won't get the customer service they are known for. Plus, they put candy in with your order:D .

There are plenty of high quality units out there for not too expensive. You can also spend a ton of money on them, but you shouldn't need to. Guitar Center or any music store with recording equipment will have these to check out and listen to.

JH
 
Genelec! (gotta support the domestic brand :p)

No, but seriously they are very good and neutral monitors, even the cheapest ones. Our acoustics department uses them for instance.
 
Music creation?

Throw all the computer speaker brands out the window.

Don't get M-Audio monitors, they make good, cheap MIDI devices, but their monitors are rubbish (in my opinion).

Behringer make a couple of good passive montors, but they are expensive, and you don't want passive anyways, so that's redundant.

My personal choice, what I'm using at the moment are a pair of KRK V6's and they are effing brilliant. If you can get your tracks sounding good on those, they are guaranteed (in my opinion, again), to sound good on anything! I personally had a ground looping issue with my audio interface, computer case, and studio monitors, but when I eventually sorted that out, I was basically in la-la-land. They are absolutely wonderful units and I would not exchange them for anything. Back when I got them, they were kinda steep, I believe 320 apiece, but they should be less now. They have the smaller V4 series, in fact they even have a newer series out now (I haven't done much research on reference monitors of late so I'm just going by my experience here), so you might wanna give those a look.

KRK makes 10 inch and 12 inch subs for their monitor series, so you can always look to add in a sub channel to your studio in the future, and they will be consistent sounding.

Hope the advice helps :), happy hunting.

Btw, Sweetwater is a fantastic place to shop!
 
Thanks for all the help so far I would be lost without this help, I was actually looking at Alesis for a pair of moniters, just because it seemed they made good sounding stuff for cheap. And since these are my first pair, I was thinking of working my way up over time. Does anyone have anything bad to say about these? Are they worth getting?
 
Alesis manufactured Logitech's old 2.1, 4.1 and 5.1 systems. I had a set of each and the subs crapped out on each one of them, however, I stuck with them because they were the best bang for the buck anyway.

I have no experience with them in the studio monitor field. After I heard the KRKs, I wanted nothing else hehe. The only ones I heard were the Behringers, M-Audios, KRKs, and Mackies. The call was between the Mackies and KRKs, honestly though, I would go and give them a listen before choosing. You might find something to your liking that may just be a personal preference.
 
OOH! very 21st century. Can't say I'm a fan of the 'you can see the wiring' design though. Old style iMacs put me off it.
 
i've heard good things about the audioengine a2's might want to check em out (never heard them myself)
 
I've got what was a really average priced pair of creatives from years ago that sound fantastic (another set of identical ones on my mums compy don't sound anywhere near as good) Paradigm makes some good stuff but i'm not sure if it falls within budget.
 
Look at Paradigms, H/Ks, and B&O. I don't keep up with the current models and all that, but those are generally good brands, I'd personally take the B&O or Paradigm stuff over the H/K though.
 
Can we please stop mixing up real monitor speakers with measly computer fartcans? I accept that this Logitech and Harman Kardon stuff sounds good for what it is, but we're talking real speakers here.

I'd also recommend a Genelec if you can afford them (maybe used?). Otherwise, check the shops for not-supercheap active monitors from known brands. Adam Audio has come up with some cheap, yet good small monitors lately: http://home.snafu.de/adam-audio/studio/
 
I think I am going to take a trip down to L & M at some point and listen to all the active monitors and see which one I find to sound the best. Are active monitors built to be fairly rugged?
 
Yeah, in my experience, they are. They are heavy and chunky, much like the subwoofers in multimedia speaker systems (at least the logitech ones). I do baby my speakers, so I haven't had much experience with.. potential damage. I also have a cat, and he stays the fuck away from my speakers.

Take into account where you are sitting also, because the monitors will sound vastly different if you have, say, one close to a wall and one not close to a wall. Ideally you want them to be on the same level as your ears, about 2-5 feet away from you, and pointed in your direction.

Good luck! Tell us how it goes :)
 
For the most part, I am leaning on Mackie MR-5 Speakers. For the size they look to be very good. The biggest reason I am looking into Mackie is that I have a little mixing board made by them, and it has been great. Over 10 years of use and no problems. How is the quality of new mackie stuff, does it match the quality of the old stuff? I will probably buy them from my local Tom and Lee since they have a very good price (161) per speaker, and I have used them for various other things with great success. However I will compare them to KRKs and other stuff when I go to look at them.
 
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