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I'm going off to Stockholm to study after the summer vacation, so I plan on buying a decent laptop, a small MIDI controller and a pair of more portable monitors than the ones I have at home (15 kilos per speaker). I am going to use the monitors for ordinary work up there - mostly the classical music I'll record up there, but I'm also playing around with MIDI, Reason, guitars and that sort of stuff - and in the future as location monitors when doing projects out of the house.

So I'd like to ask if you can recommend any lightweight and compact monitors that are well suited for monitoring at remote locations? At the moment I believe a good choice would be Yamaha MSP5 since they're small and cheap and popular, but I'm sure open to other suggestions.

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ghellquist Tue, 04/26/2005 - 12:53

Hi Ellegard and welcome to Stockholm, my home town. I can recommend a nice little amateur orchestra rehearsing Wednesday evenings (well, if that was not a blatant ad ...).

Anyway, I have a pair of MSP5. Works well for me. There is not that really low bass, but that sort of goes with the size. My pair got themselves handles on top, allowing me to carry them around easier. Will figure out some kind of stand mounting as well. The material is a tough molded plastic so it is easy to modify.

Gunnar Hellquist

Ellegaard Tue, 04/26/2005 - 14:24

ghellquist wrote: Hi Ellegard and welcome to Stockholm, my home town. I can recommend a nice little amateur orchestra rehearsing Wednesday evenings (well, if that was not a blatant ad ...).

Thanks! I'm going to study at the Edsberg Musikinstitut in Sollentuna, a castle with a specific focus on chamber music. I'm looking very much forward to it; it's got a great reputation here, and the teachers, environment and surrounding seem to be fantastic. My sister lives in Stockholm, she conducts an amateur orchestra named the Church of St. Thomas Symphony Orchestra. I had the chance to play the Tchaikovskij violin concerto with them last year, and they played quite well.

Are there any particularly good music stores in Stockholm that are worth checking out? I plan on purchasing the monitors there rather than bringing them with me from Denmark.

ptr Tue, 04/26/2005 - 23:01

While sitting on the other side Sweden, the local Audix distributor does not seem to cary the speaker line : http://www.visonomedia.com/

They do carry some Genelec, which is widely availible anywhere. Never warmed up to the Yamaha speaker sound. The 5kg M-Audio DX 4, sound better to my ears.

As for stores with a decent studio department check, [="http://www.musikborsen.se/"]Musikbörsen[/]="http://www.musikbor…"]Musikbörsen[/] or [[url=http://="http://www.jam.se/"]JAM[/]="http://www.jam.se/"]JAM[/], the best one on studio stuff is [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.instrume…"]Estrad Musik[/]="http://www.instrume…"]Estrad Musik[/] (IMHO)..

/ptr

ghellquist Wed, 04/27/2005 - 08:05

Ellegaard wrote: My sister lives in Stockholm, she conducts an amateur orchestra named the Church of St. Thomas Symphony Orchestra.

Are there any particularly good music stores in Stockholm that are worth checking out? I plan on purchasing the monitors there rather than bringing them with me from Denmark.

I see, Merete is your sister. I´ve actually played with the orchestra in one concert, quite a while ago though. As I remember it she as conductor made us amateurs stretch and play better than expected, a rare gift I think.

As for stores, they pretty much all get their stuff from the same two or three distributors in Sweden. So they pretty much have the same prices which you might be able to negotiate on. It might be a good idea to look out for used equipment though, sometimes bargains do turn up.

For used equipment I think the main trade goes over
http://www.vendolin.se

For catalogs with prices I think the main sources are
http://www.musikborsen.se
http://www.jam.se

As for best stores, I think, that Estrad has the largest selection at hand. Generally others such as Musikbörsen, Jam and Förstärkardoktorn has rather little on show as for monitors but they can take it home. If you are certain on what you want to have I can run the circuit and find if there are any special prices right now.

Once you are here, let me give you more info. And as I believe this is going off topic becoming more of a person-to-person discussion, why not mail me privately on
gunnar.hellquist (put the at sign here) bredband. net I put a bit of antispamming here.

Gunnar

anonymous Sat, 04/30/2005 - 09:00

Ellegaard wrote: I believe a good choice would be Yamaha MSP5 since they're small and cheap and popular, but I'm sure open to other suggestions.

I was in a similar quandry just yesterday. I'm doing some travel around Australia, and looking for transportable monitors. I did a shootout between MSP3, MSP5, KRK V4 & Tapco S5, all approx same size. Wieght wize, MSP3 & KRK about the same, MSP5 & Tapco S5 about the same. I went in to the store bent on walking out the the KRK v4's.

To be sure, I took a disc I knew well and first listened to the song on a pair of Meyer HD1's (amazing monitors!) then listened to one of the other four. Then repeated this test for each speaker. MSP3 - forget it (just crap). MSP 5 - too present and up front, far too much top end stuff going on (even with the -3db attenuation). KRK & Tapco, EQ wise were alot closer to the high end refence sound but without the detail. Tapco won out in the end, the difference being a more focused bottom end. Everything else was almost identical.

The moral, try a test like this, and go with what sounds good and fits your size/weight requirements.

Ellegaard Sat, 04/30/2005 - 10:25

I just spent fifteen minutes or so listening to a few different monitors in the music store in Copenhagen. Not very much, I know, and I didn't bring any music (I just passed by and had some spare time before a rehearsal), so the test music was some ordinary pop R'n'B or whatever - not ideal, but better than no music, and enough to give me a brief impression.

I agree that the MSP5's are very direct and up-front compared to most of the other monitors in that price range. I'm not sure if that's particularly good or bad, but initially I thought it seemed quite revealing and almost made many of the other monitors sound more hi-fi-like.

The Tapco S5s were in my opinion quite horrible when I listened to them extensively last year. I was really disappointed since they have received some good reviews out there, but they seemt ridiculously hyped in the mids. It could've been that the EQ setting was just totally off, but since then I've stayed clear of any Tapco monitors!

Unfortunately they don't sell KRK's here. They seem to be very popular as well, so it could be really interesting to hear them some time...