Hooking up monitors to Pulsar

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:45 pm

Hey folks, my new Mackie HR624's will soon arrive, and now I was just wondering what's the best way to hook these up to my Pulsar? I do not even know what sorts of inputs are on monitors

Would it matter whether I hook them up to the audio outs of the pulsar or a stereo output of the Luna I/O? I think both have the same connectors (unbalanced RCA) right?
Should I get the cable at a hifi store?

soul-synthesis · Post by **soul-synthesis** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:58 pm

the mackies are indeed good. i'm running a pulsar 2 plus -> mackie 1402vlz pro -> mackie hr824. you can run rca leads from the pulsar direct to the mackies. the mackies accept rca, un/bal 1/4" and XLR.

you might wanna invest in a small mixer (perhaps a behringer model) to allow for external control of the levels. it *can* be quite "dangerous" to patch the card directly to monitors.

WayneSim · Post by **WayneSim** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 11:24 pm

I got the Mackie HR824's. I just plug them directly from the RCA outputs on the pulsar to the Mackie's (as stated before)... I didn't know the Mackie had rca inputs. I got cables one end rca and the other jack (TRS)... I can only find XLR and Jack plug's on the back of my Mackies???

[ This Message was edited by: WayneSim on 2003-03-10 23:25 ]

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 4:41 am

you might wanna invest in a small mixer (perhaps a behringer model) to allow for external control of the levels. it *can* be quite "dangerous" to patch the card directly to monitors.

Why would that be dangerous? I realy don't want to degrade the sound from my expensive and great sounding Pulsar, to the expensive and great sounding Mackies, by putting a cheap behringer in between

Sort of defeats the purpose of it all.

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 11:29 am

I'm sure a Behringer mixer is going to sound just fine. I've got an old Mackie MS1202 (pre-VLZ) between Pulsar and my Mackie HR824s. But it *is* necessary to have an external fader between Pulsar and your monitors -- Pulsar can sometimes freak out unexpectedly and send out 0db noise, and it's good to have an off switch other than the speaker power buttons (which otherwise you might have to be turning off and on constantly, especially when switching projects). If you don't want Behringer, then get a little Mackie mixer -- they make tiny, compact mixers like Behringer, only they're a little more expensive.

Anyway, have fun with your new Mackies -- they're going to sound AWESOME!!!

Shayne
http://www.shaynesworld.com

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 2:19 pm

Well, I've never had pulsar freak out "unexpectedly" before. There is a bunch of noise when loading a project of course, but I think it's general practice to power up your monitors after the rest of your studio anyway so I don't see how that's going to be much of a problem.
I'll keep it in mind though.

aMo · Post by **aMo** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 2:53 pm

Do you use ADAT?

Whenever I change samplerate or reload a project (when the ADAT re-initializes) there is a HORRIBLE high frequency noise..
I would not dare to think of what that would do to my ears if my pulsar sent the sound undisturbed to my amp..

[ This Message was edited by: aMo on 2003-03-11 14:53 ]

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 3:48 pm

No I don't use ADAT. But yeah there is noise when you open a new project (a short but loud *plop*), when the drivers are initialising, but it's not too hard to switch off the monitors when loading a different/new project. That's how I do it currently with the hifi as well so....

aMo · Post by **aMo** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 3:51 pm

Yeah, not usually a problem..

But you don't have to forget it more than once, and the damage is done...

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 4:24 pm

so...a *plop* like that, is it fatal to a monitor speaker? I know I've abuse my hifi's more than that and they still work.
I thought monitors has a limiter built in for stuff like that?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 6:20 pm

those limiters you mention are against overload by increased power, but can't really defeat the attacks (in the true sense of the word

) of rectangle pulses.
If that plop is a regular feature you might include one of the 'switch devices' in your projects and save with analog out disconnected.
Makes your speakers definetely live longer. If the plop was too hefty they'd start to sizzle at certain frequencies, totally annoying.

cheers, Tom

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 6:40 pm

well you can be sure I'll be very careful with these speakers

saving with the analog outs disconnected seems like a good idea, this should avoid any plops altogether.

djody · Post by **djody** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 6:42 pm

Hmmm strange, i only get a plop on start up and when i close sfp, but not if load a new or saved project. So i power up my humble behringer B2031's when sfp is finished loading.

A nice tip is to add a channel in your prject connect it to teh mix out of your mixer and to the analog dest. I have assigned a knop of my An1x to the slider to control the volume that goes to the monitors. I always have the mix out of my mixers connected to a wave dest and the spdif-dest and tha asio dest. so with this setup i only control the volume that goes out to the speakers and the rest of the signal stays at high level.

Succes en veel plezier met je nieuwe speakers....

Laterz

Post by **garyb** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 4:29 am

there is noise whenever clock is lost/initialized.it is speaker killing.(sound)

soul-synthesis · Post by **soul-synthesis** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 6:35 am

On 2003-03-10 23:24, WayneSim wrote:
I got the Mackie HR824's. I just plug them directly from the RCA outputs on the pulsar to the Mackie's (as stated before)... I didn't know the Mackie had rca inputs. I got cables one end rca and the other jack (TRS)... I can only find XLR and Jack plug's on the back of my Mackies???

[ This Message was edited by: WayneSim on 2003-03-10 23:25 ]

dunno about where you got your 824s...

mine clearly depicts three inputs on the back plate...had a look under the speakers, they do indeed have rca/trs/xlr...

anyway, shayne pretty summed up why it's generally a good idea to stick a ext. mixer between ya monitors and soundcard.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 9:56 am

so....something like this could do the job?

I'm just worried about losing soundquality by introducing a cheap-ass mixer like this into the chain.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 2:58 pm

I've had similiar one on the input for mixing a Kawai K4 and a Gem Realpiano.
It clearly screwed sound quality, specially transparency got almost completely lost.
The problem with the mixer is that the signal enters the preamps again where it gets messed up.
The output just needs to be attentuated so something like a stereo potentiometer (or the electronic variant) for level adjustment would do the job.

cheers, Tom

aMo · Post by **aMo** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 4:01 pm

On 2003-03-11 16:24, King of Snake wrote:
so...a *plop* like that, is it fatal to a monitor speaker? I know I've abuse my hifi's more than that and they still work.
I thought monitors has a limiter built in for stuff like that?

No, not that plop I was thinking about, but the init sound of my ADAT interfaces.. thats a sound that suddenly goes on for a coule of seconds (and sometimes repeats itself when initializing the adat of my sampler)

otter · Post by **otter** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 5:22 pm

Why not just add a simple switch to turn off/on the signal running to the monitors.
I use this in my setup so i don´t have to power on/off the amp of my monitors.
There are several switches available even in HiFi stores. Most of them only contain plain switches, no active or passive electronical parts. So they can hardly mess your sound up.

ott

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 8:48 pm

Well, I guess I'll just use the on/off switch on the Mackie's then for the time being and see how it works out in practice.
Thanks for all the suggestions.