Hi everybody, I have been thinking of upgrading my home stereo system for a while and randomly came to the idea of using active monitors for a home stereo system and have been doing some research on this new found path to madness, when I realized you guys have a thread on the exact same subject.
The main two issues that were stumping me were worries about cable lengths going over RCA would really be too long to scatter all about a room and the issue of whether plugging in active monitors to different plugs and perhaps even different circuits in a home would introduce noise.
I don't really have an answer for the 2nd to be honest.
On the other hand one no longer needs to buy amps so the money spent on upgrading an amp can be spent on buying swanky preamps. The
outlaw 990 has xlr outputs and I believe one of the rotels has balanced outputs (maybe not?). So if one was dreaming and building a swanky home theatre system:
one could use the outlaw as the preamp glued straight into
Mackie 824 L/R fronts
Mackie 624 L/R surrounds
Mackie 626 C
and a subwoofer (the mackies are crazy expensive subwoofers) so perhaps something else can substitute.
Now I dont have that sort of cash so my poor people's alternative is to try the active idea out on building the most awesome stereo system that I can afford. I'm doing this from scratch as my stereo is from back when I was an undergraduate (back in 90) Perhaps one day in the future I could scarf the parts to build a home theatre system. So this is where i've come to ask for some advice. Here is the "poor peoples ultimate active balanced stereo system" i've come up w/.
The hard part is find a stereo tuner that has balanced outputs. The one I have found is a dirt cheap rackmount gemini (yes we all know what "gemini" rhymes w/
) But there is a gemini
PA 7000 rackmountable preamp w/ XLR/TRS outputs. Its got phono/cd/aux/tape monitor inputs. THD seems to be about 0.05% reasonable enough I suppose. I do not know if it is possible but since it has XLR and TRS outputs I can glue the other one to the subwoofer inputs.
So the basic idea is some equivalent to the Mackie 824 (maybe KRS, maybe the JBL 4412's) a subwoofer and this gemini.
The crazy addendum to this (again suggestions critiques are most welcome) is motivated by the fact that the disappearence of equalizers in the world bothers me. So what I was thinking since this is for the "ultimate stereo" is to use the tape monitor function to glue in a
behringer 6200 31 band stereo eq/analyzer from behringer </a>. One it has pink noise generators and analyzers built into to see what is going on in the room and fix that and also lets me take that flat output of the studio monitor and fix it how *I* like it. Which at the end of the day is what I want. (I admit I am from the 80's and am a little weirded out that equalizers have dissappeared and turned into "jazz", "rock","hall" buttons so I would like my equalizer back). The THD from the behringer is 0.006% so negligable.
The other advantage of the behringer is, instead of using the tape monitor, I think I can just use the XLR out of the gemini to the XLR in/out of the equalizer and I get the adjustable crossover for the subwoofer for free. The Behringer is $179 and the gemini is something like $80 so these two components are practically free as far as "high end audio" is concerned and the rest of cash goes into active monitors. The behringer tells me whats going on in the room since I dont live in a studio as well as lets me muck w/ the signal to make me happy. The other version of this is the
behringer
DSP equalizer that has an automated room equalizer as well as timing delays if you have weird placement (so perhaps using a few of these for home theatre?)
So thats the current idea forced into a budget of somewhere around $1500-$2000. Some of the things that bother me is I am a big fan of digital inputs where ever I can as long as I can (for the CD player and for the computer) but while this is easy to do w/ receivers/preamps its not as obvious when one w/ using actual "gear" where this would belong. The other main issue is I am not really a big fan of gemini equipment. Maybe this is just snootiness on my part but I can't find anyone that makes a variation of the PA-7000 that isn't $1000+.
BTW the alternative which is probably more sane is buying the HK 3480 and two pairs of swanky speakers like (for my price range) LSI polks or maybe those axioms that people tend to rave about and scarf the speakers in some future time for home theatre. This was my original plan actually.
In any case I am curious if this seems like a really dumb idea and what alternatives should be considered instead of what i've outlined above and of course whether I should stick to the HK 3480 and some nice speakers.
-best, avi
