background:
I decided to expand the playback options for my mixing station. Headphones initially opened up a whole new world of detail for me over my awful computer speaker system which was more than 10 years old.
A few months ago I replace the old speakers with a new Logitech 2.1 setup that I had originally bought for my kids' computer but decided better to only give them headphones so we don't have to listen to their Youtube Minecraft videos but can keep an eye on them. Not high end by any stretch but not bad and gave me a better assessment of stereo imaging and low end with the sub.
Now I decided to add in real monitors and picked up a pair of JBL LSR 305s which seem to get generally positive reviews and reportedly are fairly flat and a key factor in a beginner's price range. Very happy so far but only had them a few weeks. I will probably get a sub (JBL LSR310) as well. My basement is fairly large but with a low ceiling. I thought about getting the 308's but decided to stick with the 305's. Maybe I shouldn't have but we'll see.
Anyway, they expect balanced input which I knew. I thought I would be ok using RCA > XLR adapters out of my Audioengine DAC which is ok at lower levels but when I turn them up the interference they are picking up becomes noticeable. I have to run across power cords and stuff without some rearranging so I'm sure that's not helping. Plugging my USB Pre2 in and running balanced out of that solved the issue of course.
Questions - Does anybody here have experience with USB audio interfaces like the ones from Focusrite (
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/892515-REG/Focusrite_Scarlett_2i4_USB_Audio.html), Mackie Onyx (
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/734207-REG/Mackie_ONYX_BLACKJACK_Onyx_Blackjack_USB.html) and the like? The USBPre2 works great but of course I like to use it for recording so pulling it in and out of the gear chain all the time isn't ideal.
- Is there something else that's relatively economical I should consider to drive these? I'm definitely going to research my cabling a bit and see if I can configure everything to allow unbalanced to work but maybe there are other options I'm not thinking of. I don't need them to run particularly loud most of the time so I may be ok with them at lower levels where the interference isn't audible to me but I think I'd prefer to get rid of that all together I think.
thanks for any suggestions or even just chime in with what you're doing to get beyond basic computer speakers.
I'm actually starting to think I might rig up a surround arrangement.