M-Audio AV42 studio monitor upgrade ?

Monitors and other professional speakers are often sold as singles, as opposed to typical home audio/hi-fi speakers. When buying a monitor I would suggest that unless explicitly stated as pair you should assume it is a single.

tr27 said:

Oh wow there's 38 page detailed discussion over this, definitely adding this to my bookmark. Thanks

Oh wow there's 38 page detailed discussion over this, definitely adding this to my bookmark. Thanks.

Click to expand...

It only has people arguing. Nothing useful.
Can anyone explain if I use 3.5mm to XLR cables and hook it up with a streamer which has aux output, will I be losing half performance? (After setting -10db)

dazzwilliams said:

It only has people arguing. Nothing useful.
Can anyone explain if I use 3.5mm to XLR cables and hook it up with a streamer which has aux output, will I be losing half performance? (After setting -10db)

Click to expand...

If you were a professional, which you're clearly not - seeing as you're using a non-professional source, you would be able to glean a lot of useful information from the measurements in the review. Discussions, very much like this one, are usually useless if you are not invested in the subject matter. And that's fine. You don't need to be, not for a speaker at this level.

In any case, your question deserves an answer because a lot of new owners will have the same question. Basically dropping the input to single ended drops your theoretical S/N ratio by 6dB, simply because the signal is cut in half whereas the system noise floor remains the same. At a purely theoretical level, most of the noise is added by the speaker itself and so this is not the ideal situation. But in real terms this is unlikely to make any difference at all in the price range of this speaker. Your source will influence the final results of the configuration, both in terms of its output impedance and signal level.

cranky said:

If you were a professional, which you're clearly not - seeing as you're using a non-professional source, you would be able to glean a lot of useful information from the measurements in the review. Discussions, very much like this one, are usually useless if you are not invested in the subject matter. And that's fine. You don't need to be, not for a speaker at this level.

Click to expand...

That's what the argument on the said thread was about. Lots of measurements and graphs but no implications to draw out which can serve as a metric to compare and choose while buying (Maybe I've not understood properly).

cranky said:

In any case, your question deserves an answer because a lot of new owners will have the same question. Basically dropping the input to single ended drops your theoretical S/N ratio by 6dB, simply because the signal is cut in half whereas the system noise floor remains the same. At a purely theoretical level, most of the noise is added by the speaker itself and so this is not the ideal situation. But in real terms this is unlikely to make any difference at all in the price range of this speaker. Your source will influence the final results of the configuration, both in terms of its output impedance and signal level.

Click to expand...

Understood. Professionals who deal with studio monitors don't need to think about how to put these to use or whether they're worth purchasing. Casual audio listeners/consumers such as myself are only attracted because of price/performance ratio and not anything else.
I was looking to replace my Klipsch R15M speakers (driven by Chromecast audio+ cheap TDA7498 class d amp) with these.
If I were to invest in a 10k worth interface with the 8 inch JBL 308 pair, it would have been reasonable. But spending that much on 5 inch 305s kills the deal. I was planning to use CCA as a source with 3.5mm to XLR cable to JBL 305 monitor pair. (it's probably a bad idea)

No, it'll be fine for the most part. Not a bad idea, maybe you'll want to move up the ladder later. Any new hobby or interest is welcome regardless of what stage of the hobby you want to enter (or stay at). Your streamer will suffice for casual use.

Re the graphs, the ability to read them and draw conclusions will typically not be found in discussions, because only those who are versed in reading them will talk about it. On another forum I help out with staff duty, we see about 95% of our members are silent and the discussions are usually restricted to about 5%, with most of the posts being made by between 2 and 3% of members. From my understanding, this is typical for most internet forums.

Nobody will answer a question that hasn't been asked. If you want more info, you can post a query there to ask. The 305 are a decent pair for multimedia, they're not awesome but they're acceptable. For production, they're a no-no. The cabinets are very poorly made with thin material and the amplifiers are Class D which is prone to failure. The rest of the product is actually competent, which is surprising at this price.

The 308s are bigger and need a bigger space, but they are more neutral and the dispersion is better. Which is weird, because smaller speakers tend to generally have better dispersion. The amplification is uprated but I believe of similar quality, and the cabinets are still thin-ply. So yes and no, depending on what you need them for. If you're mixing commercially, it might be better to get a set of entry level Neumanns that you can pay off in a few months of assignments. If you're dabbling in production or just a hobbyist, then yes, the 308s may make sense.

Here's the review for the 308, you can compare on-axis response (as flat as possible), polar plots (uniform dispersion) and distortion. The issue with both 308 and 305 is the amplification, which is shockingly poor quality. But for entry level production work the 308 is definitely usable.