please help explain

L

lhmagic13

New member
hi everyone,

i've always been super interested in making music but yet haven't really tried anything, until recently someone sent me a pair of jbl lsr305 so i wanted to setup my own music equipment and try things.

when i got the monitors i wanted to try the sounds but since i didn't have any cable to connect both monitors, i directly plugged a regular audio cable with a 1/4 adapter to one monitor and my iPhone, thought could use the single monitor as a "mono" output, it turned out that no matter what song i played the vocal sounded "cancelled-out", everything sounded just instrumental, i was wondering why but couldn't not find much info online. what hardware do you need to make it sound right?

i know this probably sounds quite stupid but i really don't have much experience with pro audio equipments and really want to learn. please can any of you masters out there help and explain for me?

also, what do you need for an easy home setup typically (just listening to music with monitors, or decide to make easy electronic beats)? does jbl lsr305 need a preamp? can a mixer replace a preamp?

kindly please help this newbie out and thank you in advance.
 
I'm no tech expert with audio hardware, but are the vocals the only thing that's missing? Do you hear bass instruments, kicks or snares?

Typically lead vocals are in the center of a mix along with basses, kicks, and snares. If these other instruments are missing or sound out of phase then I'd assume that your issue is the little setup with the phone and speakers. I didn't completely understand your setup though. Do you have both monitors connected to your phone or just one monitor connected? If you just have one monitor connected, try getting a cable that takes the output of both monitors and combines them into a single input.
 
The problem is you are only hearing one channel of the audio, either the right or left. You were right you need to set the speaker to play mono. Try going into your computers audio options and see if there is a single speaker setup, also make sure that your cable is plugged in all the way. Sometimes if a cable is not plugged in fully it will only play one channel.
 
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if they are studio monitors they don't use and RCA cable. they use a TRS cable probably or most likely. There is another type of cable that is used on some monitors but I forgot what they are called.

Anyhow don't use RCA it will mess or break your stuff.
 
actually they are hearing a summed mono version caused by connecting a stereo output to a balanced input

the iphone only outputs left and right signals with a common ground

the jbl has a balanced TRS/XLR input and will invert the ring side of the signal 180[sup]o[/sup] before combining it with the tip side of the signal to cause phase cancellation across the board and destructive/constructive reinforcement of the signal:
- it will be constructive if the sounds are out of phase in the original stereo signal,
- it will be destructive if the sounds are in phase in the original stereo signal
 
Bandcoach is right - you're summing left & right into a single channel.

Also, this is just wrong:
MadAnthony81 said:
Anyhow don't use RCA it will mess or break your stuff.
Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with RCA - it's a very common unbalanced connection type, found on lots of studio monitors (the ever popular Rokit series, for example) - using it certainly won't "mess or break" anything.
 
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