Kara-Moon Forum

I had a chance to hear a pair of these at a friends house on Friday and was quite impressed with their performance for their size and cost. Having procrastinated for long enough (right word this time) I took the plunge and bought a pair. These arrived remarkably early this morning at my work address and cost me a miserly 104 ukp all inclusive.

My first test was at the office stuck on a fairly ordinary 20W stereo amp. They sounded pretty good with known commercial recordings, and with oggs of my own tracks, although I though they sounded a little harsh in the upper mid range.

The bass performance was far better than I expected, but then I hadn't realised they were ported enclosures not 'infinite' baffle types. It didn't extend all that far down (they are only 'bookcase' monitors) but the roll-off was smooth with no noticeable lumps or bumps - this was confirmed with sinewave testing from and audio generator. The lack of sub-bass is not a problem as I have the Hi-Fi setup in the lounge with rather exceptional floor speakers which I can use for final setting of bass levels.

As work was quite light today the boss let me quickly throw together one of my minimum feedback amplifier ideas to give that a try. The design was originally for 30W into 8ohms but can throw out about 70W into the 4ohm load that the Alesis present.

It was immediately obvious that my transistors were having a love affair with the speakers :D

The grittiness had completely disappeared, and the tracks I tried all sounded clearer. Some of the commercial ones showed up oddities in the mixing that I hadn't noticed before, particularly stereo positioning and frequency dependent shifts (I swapped channels to prove it was the source and not different performances from the amp/speaker).

Once home, this evening I immediately slapped them on my normal amp. Again, a great improvement but not quite as good as the workshop rats-nest.

Overall I am very pleased. I don't have perfection, but I do have something that is very much better than what I've been using up till now, and quite good enough for my needs.

Hmmm. With these, and my AKGs I don't have any exuses for crap recordings ::)

Congratulations - I'm sure they are just right for the job!

What AKGs are you referring to?

Will,

Here & there,from time to time,there are some great buys to be made from Alesis,& I think buying passive monitors is very wise,as you don't have to worry about an Alesis power supply going bad,as they are famous for. ::)

Before I had purchased my KRK's,I had considered the active version of the Mk's,but I figured that I own enough products from Alesis as it is and they don't make 8 inch monitors any more-which is what I was after anyway.

I trust that your speakers do indeed sound quite good,considering the price point & I'm happy for you...the best of luck with your new toys. ;D

Cheers,

Thom

The Alesis MK2 are famous for their price/quality ratio. Many studio's have a pair of these. I think you'll have much use of them.

Moon

Glad to hear it!  ;D
Things keep getting better and better.  Now get back into your room and record something with them.. :o
Most of all; have fun.  That's what it is all about.

Very good ! I'm glad you have a good combination speakers / amp
I'll never be happy with mine  ::)

@Thom : You have 8 in. KRK ? are they good (good bass I mean) ?

Cheers

@Thom: sorry  :-[ I didn't see a thread about your speakers. ::) here (http://www.kara-moon.com/forum/index.php?topic=1685.0)
Cheers

Woo. Lots of replies!

@oren
The AKGs are my headphones  - K240

@thom
The downside is that it's pushed me to update my amp  :o

@moon
I promise you they won't collect any dust!

@rharv
I'm working on it :)

@LR
There is no such thing as a 'finished' audio setup, same as there is no such thing as 'finished' music :P


Now, this will either have you rolling on the floor laughing, or running from the room screaming and pulling your hair out.

Today I took a quick snapshot of half of my rats-nest 'test' amp. Sorry it's only one channel, our apprentice had already demolished the other half for salvage before I got in this morning >:(

The spec measured today (if I dare call it such) is 35W into 8ohm 65W into 4ohm. 200mV sensitivity -3dB 15Hz & 25kHz.
THD (1kHz) 0.2% at half power,  1% @ full power 8ohms,  3% @ full power 4ohms. Hum & noise -70dB

Cute amp, Champ!

(I have a pair of AKG K240DF headphones for detail listening - also Rharv's choice)

Oh too true, I can't disagree.... ;)