little radio/telly as reference monitors

[kinglouis]

Hi all,

I have a UAD Apollo 8 which has two sets of monitor outputs. It would be a great help to hear my melodious wafflings through a basic speaker (i.e. an old bush radio or old telly) as that's what I'm mostly writing for. And it may help me sort out some bass mixing issues...!

Can I buy any old radio with a 3.5mm aux input (and I guess buy a set of stereo 1/4" to 3.5mm jack cables) or do I need a more specific type of speaker?

Thanks for any advice,

Alex

[CS70]

So long the radio has a line in (often "aux") you need the right cable or even use the headphone output works. Be aware that the UAD and a consumer radio likely have different expectations on line levels (-10db volts output for the UAD vs +4db unloaded for the radio - there's gazillion explanations courtesy of Google).

But if all you want to do is to get an idea on how things sound on midrangey kit, really you can do it by simply high and low passing the master bus, and tailoring the slopes and cutoff frequencies to simulate the capabilities of the device . It's not gonna be precise but as all playback devices behave differently, it's no point in trying to be precise.

Not as fun as buying new kit tough.

[kinglouis]

Great! So an aux in should do it. Thank you.

You're right, I COULD just slope the eq... but I suspect you understand men in sheds too well and new kit tends to win the day!

Cheers, and I'll bear in mind the potential speaker-exploding differences between the units.

Alex

[Humble Bee]

Any cheap computer monitors should do, that's what I use... or Avantone Mixcubes (I use one on the mono out of my Drawmer CMC2). They don't transmit BBC6 tho...

[ef37a]

IMO you don't want an "old" telly or radio. Who has those these days?

I picked up a super 22" WS FSTV from the Scope shop in my town last week. I just need the picture and have not even tried the sound circuits but I guess they work. £25.

The reproduction from those tiny FSTV speakers is limited in the extreme, if you can make things sound even faintly tolerable on those? Good on ya!

BTW since you will be doing a fair bit of messing with cables and the like, might be an idea to put a mono' switch in the feed to the TV?

Bur seriously chaps, check out the charity shops. I am presently playing with a 6 speaker Home Theatre system (pannsonic) I grabbed for 35 quid! More on that later in the Lounge.

Dave.

[CS70]

Great! So an aux in should do it. Thank you.

You're right, I COULD just slope the eq... but I suspect you understand men in sheds too well and new kit tends to win the day!

Cheers, and I'll bear in mind the potential speaker-exploding differences between the units.

Alex

Laughin', we're all in the same boat (pardon, shed)

Another thing that you may want to be aware of, is that a radio "aux in" is likely to be unbalanced (i.e. it expects that the two channels of the TRS jack or mini-jack that plugs in carry the left and right stereo channels). The UAD monitor outputs are surely balanced - each of the two XLRs carries two signals - for a total of 4 - and you want your connection cable to pick up the right ones from each (and discard the other), meaning that internally the cable must connect the right XLR pins to the tip/sleeve of the mini-jack.

My experience is that picking up cables of the shelf usually works fine, but I haven't done it very often and definitely am not a guru on these things, so if you can give try before any sizable expense, it's a good thing.

The headphone out is already unbalanced so no problems using that.

[Humble Bee]

I use of the shelf cables and adapters to make 2 unbalanced TS jacks out of Apollo (and/or CMC2) to mini stereo jack in on my Logitech speakers. It works just fine even if they are not balanced.

[kinglouis]

This is super helpful, thank you.
So 2 x off-the-shelf 1/4" balanced cables into a 3.5mm jack?

[Humble Bee]

Two TS (Tip-sleeve like a guitar jack). Not TRS...

Like this one:

https://m.thomann.de/intl/cordial_cfy_1 ... 1536143663

[kinglouis]

Thank you Mr Bee, very kind. And thank you all for advice.

Cheers,

Alex