What speakers to buy????

Well, i guess one cab will be more than enough

Unfortunately, not any PAs sound the same, so it's impossible to guess about yours. But probably a PA speaker is more in the ballpark. Dependingon your budget, you might like to try a yamaha. They are quite popular here, and while I've never heard onehey say they sound good and loud.one of them will be your partner in other venues or rooms as well

Not sure what your budget is, but I've tried three sets of monitors and can give a bit of advice. I have an old set of Behriger 4 inch monitors, a set of Equator D5s and a set of Airmotiv 6s. They go in that same order in terms of listening enjoyment (Airmotivs being my favorites). They go in reverse order when considering their spacial requirements (the 6's are quite large, almost too big for my 25x30 ft practice room).

The small 4 inchers are good for quiet practice, dont have much of a low end, but will sit easily on a desktop (good for listening by computer).

The 5s are a bit bigger and will fill the room with sound (loud enough to get guitar feedback going without making your ears bleed). The low end is much better, but still a little lacking. They are a bit crowded on a desk, unless it's a big desk.

The 6's look monsterous on a small desk, so I had them on stands for a while, and now they are on a large cabinet with tweeters near ear level. They are louder than needed for that size room, but the low end is superb at all listening levels. Only problem is they really should be several feet off the ground and several feet from a wall to give a nice flat response, but when you get them located correctly, they really do sound great. I havn't found the need to go any bigger than this for my in-home use.

I think if you get a set with good flat response, you will be able to trust that your presets and profiles are accurate, and leave the PA adjustments to the sound guys at your venues. I suggest one monitor if you are just practicing solo, and two if you like using sterio jam tracks. Hope this helps.

The Atomic CLR is incredibly accurate and would help you gety the most out of your rigs and would work live as well. There are also several other FRFR speakers that would do the job. If you will never be needing it to play live a set of good studio monitors would be your best bet. And make sure you tweak your Rigs at gig volume or they still won't sound right . Good luck

There are definitely some good, cheaper options, but my vote goes for a Xitone cab. Sounds almost identical to my desk monitors.

Guys, guitarors is asking advice about a cab he can use at home which will play as close as possible to the church PA.

The request is paradoxical in itself, and listing you favourite cabs will be of no help I'm afraid ...

Even if you bought the same PA speaker as the one used at your church, it would sound different in your house. And I bet the one at church sounds quite different with nobody there compared to the place full of people.

You can chase your tail with this stuff. I spent hours today switching between a QSC K8, a DXR10 and a Atomic CLR. All have their strong points, and all sound a little bit different.

Any of these mentioned are gig friendly too.

Or small desktop monitors are good too.

I think you can't wrong, as long as you stay away from the cheapest PA stuff.

Quote from guitarors

If I want enough low end, should I keep my search to 8 inch speakers at least? They do need to be active as I have the non-powered KPA.

This depends on volume. Smaller is fine for desktop monitors, but placement of these greatly affect their low end response. To have something loud enough to gig with, 8 is minimum. My K8 cranks and handles guitar duties easily over a loud drummer. Amazes people when they find out that sound is coming out of an 8" speaker.

Just in case you decide to go the PA speaker route, there are some dealers who sell new stuff on eBay to get around the Minium Advertised Pricing. So you can save some money that way, and get a stereo setup. It's such a nice treat hearing the Kemper in stereo, and your patches with still work fine in mono at church.

If you aim at getting a close as possible to the church's PA, I'd avoid monitors and would go for the yamaha or the QSC, which are closer to a PA system. The CLR will probably sound "too good" to compare...

... unless you guys start using it as PA as well

I'd also strongly avoid placing the cab(s) on a wooden desk or any resonant surface, close to walls on to corners where possible. Depending on how your room is made, you run the risk of listening to the room more than to the cabs LOL

Also, remember that tweaking patches at a different volume than stage volume will result in a different freq balance. But the higher the volume, the more the room will have to be factored in.
You'll need some experience, and I'd also advise to go to church if possible and rehearse and tweak there at stage volume. Sure, an empty church will sound different, but you'll get closer to the ballpark IMO, specially if your room is small (and I have to guess it is if compared to the church )

HTH

Quote from guitarors

so what yamaha speakers would compare to the QSCs? For volume sake, i'll probably have to tweak everything at church anyways. If that's the case, I'll probably never play very loud at home (2 kids under 3)

Try the YAMAHA DXR 10.

Quote from ur2funky

Even if you bought the same PA speaker as the one used at your church, it would sound different in your house. And I bet the one at church sounds quite different with nobody there compared to the place full of people.

You can chase your tail with this stuff. I spent hours today switching between a QSC K8, a DXR10 and a Atomic CLR. All have their strong points, and all sound a little bit different.

Any of these mentioned are gig friendly too.

Or small desktop monitors are good too.

I think you can't wrong, as long as you stay away from the cheapest PA stuff.

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This is IMO a very good post and mirrors my own experiences with lots of monitors and cabs.
Stay away from the cheapest stuff, then go shopping and testing.

Quote from Ingolf

Try the YAMAHA DXR 10.

These are very nice. I bought two and I've only opened one to try it out. I would sell the factory sealed one for $450 plus shipping.

Sorry, I know this isn't the place, and I wasn't really thinking of selling it, but if you want it.

Cheers~
Scott

The isolation pads serve the purpose of mechanically isolating (i.e. decoupling) the cab from the surface it lays on. This prevents the base's resonance frequency to enter the cab's sonic spectrum giving it its signature.
The usefulness of such a device is higher the more the base's resonance is in the audible spectrum. If you for example use a couple of inert, high-resonance stands they become less useful.
OTOH, if you placed your cab on a wooden, empty 3' cube the pad would not damp enough.
So, besides using some, carefully choose cab's placement in the room!

I can't give a definite answer, but I'll give my own experiences:

People running high end PA-rigs these days aim for linear systems so that is what you should tune the KPA for. If you play a lot through a particular rig make sure you get a good sound there and use that as you benchmark. I've found that a decent headset is a good start if I can tune things so that what I hear through the headset is a good match to what I hear from the PA. In the next step I use the sound in the headset as a reference for setting the EQ for my monitors. Tone-matching must be done at gig-level.

Particular speakers I have used or use are (all active):

• Adam A8X nearfield studio monitors. Good, but expensive. From $1000/piece
• Behringer B3031A studio monitors. Good, maybe a touch heavy on the bass, but cheap. Got 2 of these @ home. From $500/pair.
• Behringer F1320D wedge monitor. Requires a bit of wiggling with the built-in 3band EQ as they sound boomy with a flat config. The 300W amp proved slightly weak when playing with a very loud drummer. Worked great @home and in most settings, but I had to get something more powerful. From $250/piece.
• Yamaha DXR10. Good speakers/monitors. I first tried the DXR12 but it sounded a bit dark for my taste. This 10'er packs a real punch. Got 2 of them. From $600/piece
• Atomic CLR wedge. I borrowed a couple from a friend who use them with an AXE-FX2. They sounded great but are the most expensive at $1000/piece.
• Mackie HD1221. These are 1200W PA speakers that double as wedges. Powerful and a bit bulky. The speakers sound good, somewhere between the DXR10 and the CLR. At $750-800 a piece the price is also about half-way between the DXR10 and the CLR.

I'd suggest that you go for the flattest pair of speakers you can. If mono is not a problem, the Atomic CLR fits nicely in your ~$1500 budget. The reason why the speakers should be flat is that they'll translate better across many different types of PA systems/speakers as possible. Right now, your issue is that your current monitoring setup at home is not like the church's sound system. But if you go out and gig after tweaking on a PA system at home that's A/Bed to your church system, you'll run into the same complaint.

So I reiterate. The flattest sounding FRFR (a hated term here) speakers you can find. Monitors will work well and I'd suggest a pair of Dynaudios if you like accurate response, that's what I'm using. But a CLR seems like a better option, since it's tailored toward a guitar application.