What direction to take.


Hello all hope everyone's having a good day.

I am a musician by trade and I have finally decided to begin and assemble a music listening room. The room in question will be double as an office. My room is 11 1/2 X 18 X 10 ' tall. I don't know how much I want to spend because I don't really know how much it would cost to get a decent set-up. If anything right now I am willing to spend around 6-800 dollars. Now here's my delima.

I spoke to one of my friends and he suggested with my budget I should get some really good studio Active monitors. That would yield the best bang for the bucks. He recommended two brands to look at Genelecs and Dynaudio. Such as the Genelecs 1029a and dynaudio bm-10. My questions two all of you is what is the difference in listening enjoyment with active monitor with hi-fi speaker set-up?

Now the other route I can take is just using my computer and getting a good integrated amp (don't know what that means) and then get some decent speakers. Onix online has a good sale of a onix a-60 amp with their .5 reference monitors. is that good? I don't know. Would this type of set-up give me more choices and flexiblity later on. My biggest worry about getting studio monitor is sound quality and listening enjoyment.

Maybe this can help with the type of sound I like. I am a big headphone collector and I own and enjoy the Senheissers hd-580 and the Etymotics 6 and 4s and also own a pair of shures 3's.

My main question to everyone is in what way should I spend my money. Buy some good active monitors or start buying components slowly? What yeilds a better sonic quality and listening enjoyment?

Finally feel free to list what you would do with the budget listed. If the budget needs to increase say a to maybe a thousand I would be willing to do that aswell. So have fun and help me out please.

Thanks alot everyone
daimbert

Showing 1 response by dweller

$800 bucks? Are you serious?
Actually, you can build a pretty darn good system for this amount.
Here's what I suggest:
Sony STR-DA1000ES HT Receiver (I own one 100 watts X 7),
KEF Q1 monitors (I own 'em too),
Cheapy Sony DVD player with SACD (I own DVP-9000ES -paid full boat. Ouch! Depreciation!),
Generic wire.

Dealer are furiously dumping HT receivers with no HDMI connections. I got my Sony for half price ($300).

The KEF's can be had for about $250/pr.

The cheapo DVD player is $200-$300.

I've owned high-priced gear (ARC, Classe, Levinson) and am thrilled by how just plain GOOD my current system SOUNDS!

I admit I in no way crank it to free-man levels but my movie watching volumes more than reveal the quality of this setup (oh, I forgot to mention my main speakers are Thiel 1.6s. I am using a KEF Q9c center channel which holds it's own with the Thiels -and is based on the Q1).

You could spend something extra and get some Nordost Blue Heaven wire.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Remember us 'Goners like to know if our advice was useful so drop a line if it was...