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Any cheap powered speakers with digital coax input

I bought my wife an Epson MovieMate 60 for doing outdoor family movie parties for the neighborhood kids and families. Premier is this weekend, so I got out the Epson to check it out and give it a shakedown before we have 30 people in our back yard for movie night. I had planned on adding a pair of speakers for sound reinforcement, but just realized that the Epson only has digital coax output for external sound. I guess I could get out my HT receiver and a pair of speakers, but I think I would rather try to find a pair of inexpensive powered monitors that have digital coaxial input.

Do you know of any inexpensive powered monitors that have digital coax input? If not, any other bright ideas for adding a pair of monitors to the Epson projector without inserting a full blown HT receiver into the mix? Again, it only has digital coax output for add-on sound.

BTW, the built-in speakers are surprisingly good, but I think they might not cut it when we have a large group of people spread out across the lawn.

Thanks,

TIC
reubent
5 responses Add your response
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
AVI 9.1 takes Toslink Optical but you can order them with Coax input (optional)
edo_musica
113 posts
 
Reubent,
Was wondering why you wouldn't just bring audio out from the player, so I looked up the MovieMate....it is the player! I also see on the rear there is a headphone stereo jack. So the quick fix is just use at headphone (3.5mm) to Stereo RCA cable into the powered speaker of your choice.

That will give you time to find a basic external DAC, to your liking, that converts coax to RCA or coax to toslink.
reubent OP
6,982 posts
 
Thanks for the replies. I did find the Cakewalk MA-15D for $179 street price and they have digital coax input. In the mean time, I went into my handy dandy audio closet and pulled out my RedWine Audio Reali-T which is a battery powered class-T amp, pre-amp and DAC in a tiny little box. For now I'm going to use the RWA's digital input and whopping 8 watts/channel of class-T power and see if it will work. If not, I'll use the line-level output of the Reali-T to connect to a more powerful amp or a pair of powered speakers (also neatly tucked away in the handy dandy audio closet!).

Thanks, and Enjoy,

TIC
reubent OP
6,982 posts
 
Shadorne,

I did specify cheap. The AVIs are $2999. A bit beyond what I consider cheap, but thanks for the recommendation.

Edo,

I will also check on using the headphone output connected to a pair of powered speakers. Thanks for the idea....

Enjoy,

TIC
reubent OP
6,982 posts
 
I ended up buying a pair of Rowland/Cakewalk MA-15D studio monitors for $179. The Cakewalk monitors have toslink and coax inputs and analog inputs via standard RCA connectors. For our first movie night I connected the projector using the headphone analog outputs as suggested by Edo. They sounded GREAT! I got several comments from movie-goers that the sound was great for an outdoor movie. Also, the inflatable (think bouncy house) move screen frame worked great and it is huge!

So, the Epson Movie Mate 60, inflatable screen frame w/screen and the Cakewalk monitors combine for an excellent outdoor movie experience.
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