Nord User Forum

I have a budget of £400 for studio monitors, I want them for personal playing and playing to friends in a small room. For prerecorded music I really likely the rocket 6 inch and adam a3x. Has anyone tried either of these with any digital piano? Nord or otherwise. Were they any good? I preferred the a3x and my gf prefers the rockit 6 but im afraid there may be too much bass on the a3x for a piano, likewise there may be too little on the rocket 6 (I cant afford the subwoofer also).

You can always dial back bass with EQ, but it's tough to make it up if the speakers won't go that low.

Good point

I have the Rokit 6 and I sometimes use them with my electro 3, I agree the low end is a bit missing. I also use a pair of M-Audio Bx8a, they sound better but have reliability issues (see various fora).

Perhaps i will get the adam a3x then and hopefully return them if they don't sound good with the piano. They are also much much louder so guess it will be good when playing to friends in a medium size room. Thank you.

I have the KRK Rockit 6 G2s and don't find the bass lacking, but I suppose it depends a bit on the size of your room (mine is rather small). I don't know the other monitors mentioned, but I do think the Rockits color the sound a bit (make it darker than it really is). I use them with the KRK Ergo room equalization thingy, so that might also change the amount of (perceived) bass and frequency response a bit.

Last week-end I went to the music store to check out some monitors. The music store had a test room, where different monitors were hooked to a Mac playing iTunes music.
I found that the KRK Rokit 6 G2 sounded very good. They even played very loud in the test room. So I decided to take a pair back at home to test them with my Nord piano.
After connecting them, I found the sound a bit hard, and the volume was not even close to what I have heard at the music store.
The quality of the sound got better after playing with the different settings, so I think it is just a matter of spending some time to get things right. But, I'm still a little disappointed about the volume level.
I don't think I can use this setup when I'm playing with my friends. I'm wondering if it is possible to boost the volume !!?

You are facing a common problem. I've been told by many guys what I'm going to tell you : "you won't find a monitor speaker that will deliver enough power to play an instrument with other musician, or it's going to be very very expensive."
I bought a pair of "m-audio dsm-3", the first time a friend came home with its drumset I had to put the two speakers at max volume. This is not a solution. I had to buy a "real" amp (QSC K8 or other).
All that depends on what you'll do with the speakers, but remember that kind of speakers are designed to be "near field monitors"" (sometimes "middle field" $$$££).
That means a listening point within a ~4 meters triangle.

Edit : you have listened some compressed music in the store and played an instrument at home, the dymamic is very different, that mostly explains the disapointment.

AlainK wrote:After connecting them, I found the sound a bit hard, and the volume was not even close to what I have heard at the music store.
The quality of the sound got better after playing with the different settings, so I think it is just a matter of spending some time to get things right. But, I'm still a little disappointed about the volume level.

How did you connect those KRK monitors to your Stage (what inputs did you use) and what type of cable did you use?