Anyone using a monitor controller ?

spark240

Like Presonus central station, Mackie Big Knob, Palmer Monicon, SPL etc...price range form £50 upwards to lots off £££..

Id like Presonus, but not at £300+ really.....I don't have multiple monitors, just want a single Volume control close by

ecc83

Yes, I bought the Mackie BK passive Nov last year. I got it because I want to do some dubbing of vinyls and cassettes to HDD and needed to switch my Tannoy 5As between  my NI KA6 line outs 1/2 and 3/4.

Works a treat. I leave the KA6 set to max and use the very nice Big Knob.

I am aware of possible technical shortcomings of passive MCs but my setup is very compact, no cable more than 2mtrs or so.

Dave.

ecc83

Yes, I bought the Mackie BK passive Nov last year. I got it because I want to do some dubbing of vinyls and cassettes to HDD and needed to switch my Tannoy 5As between  my NI KA6 line outs 1/2 and 3/4.

Works a treat. I leave the KA6 set to max and use the very nice Big Knob.

I am aware of possible technical shortcomings of passive MCs but my setup is very compact, no cable more than 2mtrs or so.

Dave.

spark240

Thanks pal...Id heard that there was a significant difference between the BK and the Presonus...but I can't see it affecting a small setup like mine

ecc83

Well, by definition a passive cannot change the sound except a bit of HF loss if you have very long cables on the output.

Don't know why that posted twice but the forum has been acting up for me today.

Dave.

octatonic

I had an SPL MTC2381 for sale (still do, but I’m in Singapore so probably not practical), when I upgraded to my Grace M905.
I’ve owned the Big Knob and Presonus Central Station before too.

All of the cheaper ones colour the sound to a degree, when I got the Grace it was like a veil was lifted off the audio, but I managed to work with it successfully for years.
I prefer the rack and remote idea because it is neater than having cables everywhere.

ecc83

I have read one or two mentions of "colour" introduced by certain Monitor Controllers . As a technician it is hard for me to think of a mechanism for this? MCs are just a pot and some switches in the simplest forms and maybe a couple of very highly regarded OP amps in others. The AI feeding the MC will have at least 3 or more in the signal path a F Knows what is in the monitors! The presence of a couple more cannot IMHO have any audible effect unless the maker has done something incredibly silly.

So, the claims are threw out but never a before and after recording to prove them.  I bow of course to people's personal, subjective findings and the Grace M905 should be bloody good at over three bags!

Dave.

ecc83

I had to preview that post, do nothing, THEN I was able to post it. WTF is going on Frets?

Then, I didn't!

Dave.

octatonic

ecc83 said:

I have read one or two mentions of "colour" introduced by certain Monitor Controllers . As a technician it is hard for me to think of a mechanism for this? MCs are just a pot and some switches in the simplest forms and maybe a couple of very highly regarded OP amps in others. The AI feeding the MC will have at least 3 or more in the signal path a F Knows what is in the monitors! The presence of a couple more cannot IMHO have any audible effect unless the maker has done something incredibly silly.

So, the claims are threw out but never a before and after recording to prove them.  I bow of course to people's personal, subjective findings and the Grace M905 should be bloody good at over three bags!

Dave.

I'm not an electronics engineer so I cannot speak to that side of it.
I do have a lot of experience in studios and I think I have pretty good ears.

There is more to a good monitor controller than just a pot and a few switches.
What you get in the more expensive monitor controllers is part feature set and part... what I will call 'audio clarity' that I can easily demonstrate being lacking in the cheaper ones, just by doing an A/B comparison and taking some measurements.

To the first- feature set.
The two monitor controllers I have here are a £730 SPL MTC2381 and a £3200 Grace M905.

The SPL is a desktop device that has all its inputs on balanced jacks and its outputs on XLR.
It also has a stepped pot, and the ability to sum all offs inputs as a stereo pair that can be sent to any of the 3 stereo outputs, even simultaneously.

The Grace has more inputs, including digital input. It has more outputs, including digital output and also a stepped pot.
The Grace as a rack and remote design with a colour display and the ability to create level adjustments between different monitors, so when switching between them they aren't hugely unbalanced.
The Grace also has a separate output for a sub, which is I can either mute or solo. I can also choose which of the speakers it is paired with.
The SPL doesn't have any of this.

Other things the SPL doesn't have are an SPL meter (ironically), any digital IO, so no display of sample rate, bit depth or clocking, nor is it in any way programmable.
I can also solo the L or R speaker or the Grace.
The Grace is also a class compliant audio interface over USB2 (albeit playback only) .
I can also go digitally out of my audio interface into the Grace and then either analogue or digital out into my monitors.

So you get a lot more features with the Grace.
You also get a difference in sound quality.
The Grace is precisely accurate in its stereo image.
The SPL is not, especially when monitoring at low levels- I can hear a shift in the stereo image at low levels in the SPL that is absent in the Grace.
This is repeatable on different source material and once you've heard it you cannot really unhear it.
I can also demonstrate it by sending a sine wave through each unit at different levels and observing the L/R imbalance that happens in the cheaper units.

The Grace also exhibits lower noise- I had one set of unbalanced inputs on the SPL that was particularly noisy, until it was serviced. It is still noisier than the Grace is.

I trust what I am hearing with the Grace- I never really did with the SPL and it is still a 'professional product'.
I know other folk who use them in pro studios (Amicii had one)- it all depends on what you want from the device and how picky you are.
I wanted to have the very best conversion possible in a monitor controller and have the ability to bypass it and go straight into my monitoring digitally. I also wanted a tidy desk and have a rack and remote, rather than all my IO on a desktop unit.

One thing the SPL does that the Grace does not is to sum sources.
With the Grace I have to choose a stereo pair to mentor through- it doesn't allow me to sum, for example, my audio interface, plus a synth plus the Mac system sounds from the computer's internal output.
I asked Grace why they didn't allow this and their response was that it would have compromised audio quality.
My solution is to plug things into the audio interface and use hardware monitoring so it goes straight from input to stereo output (actually an AES/EBU output straight to the monitor controller).

I tend not to buy purely based on specs but there is a marked different in each units specification, certainly in the level of detail that is provided.

MTC2381:



Grace:

spark240

Thats all good info but...I guess the average home studio is stuck with choosing from the the lower budget ranges, i.e. Mackie, Palmer, some odd ball ones and maybe Presonus  Central station at push, so do you think there would be much variant in sound quality on these, obviously they all have different options for I/O etc. 

octatonic

spark240 said:

Thats all good info but...I guess the average home studio is stuck with choosing from the the lower budget ranges, i.e. Mackie, Palmer, some odd ball ones and maybe Presonus  Central station at push, so do you think there would be much variant in sound quality on these, obviously they all have different options for I/O etc. 

Actually the Central Station is one of the worst sounding and has reliability issues.
I had one briefly- it sounded ok until you connected the remote.

I don't know if they fixed any of the issues in the new one (the plus)- I assume they did.

Something to bear in mind is a lot of large format consoles had surprisingly coloured monitoring sections.
I'm pleased I have the M905 but I happily made records before I had it.

I would probably prioritise feature set unless you are looking at the high end- Grace/Crane Song Avocet/Crookwood and such.

Danny1969

I installed a whole bunch of active FBT monitors recently in a place and in one room they wanted the ability to turn one of them done without accessing it near the ceiling .... so I basically converted the balanced signal into single ended and put it across a 10k pot on the wall then fed it into the monitor. Very very basic and cheap but works fine. You could do the same balanced in stereo by using either 2 x dual  pots or one 4 gang type

 

spark240

Danny1969 said:

I installed a whole bunch of active FBT monitors recently in a place and in one room they wanted the ability to turn one of them done without accessing it near the ceiling .... so I basically converted the balanced signal into single ended and put it across a 10k pot on the wall then fed it into the monitor. Very very basic and cheap but works fine. You could do the same balanced in stereo by using either 2 x dual  pots or one 4 gang type

 

May be a daft ask....can you draw that out for me ?

Danny1969

If your running balanced cables convert to single ended by shorting pin 3 of XLR to pin 1 or if TRS short ring connection to ground ..... now you have ground and hot which you can then connect the signal to the outer connections of  a 10K log pot like in this diagram 



When soldering the pot solder the ground to the left tag if viewing the pot from the shaft or solder it to the right tag if your soldering the pot upside down ........... get this the wrong way round and turning the pot clock wise will lower the volume and vice versa  .......... the output to your monitor is the centre wiper of the pot and ground like above 

For a single pot to work both monitors you need a dual gang pot which is basically 2 independent pots but the same shaft