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I'm looking for an amp for my MOX6 for personal home use. Right now I'm using computer speakers and they're not quite up to the task. Not looking to spend a lot, maybe $50, but I have no idea what the costs are for what. Any suggestions?

For fifty dollars, you will get what you pay for, that is, keep the computer speakers.

I have used this for several years as both a speaker, and as a monitor at gigs...the sound is very clean and it is amazingly powerful. Lots of connectiabily, a build in EQ, But it costs more that $50.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...pe=&gclid=CNP51bvA8bkCFcJj7Aodxy8APA

That's about what I was thinking. As far as money. Could the smallest Roland Cube work out ok? Still won't be fifty bucks.

Well the small one sells for about 100, and is no where near the quality of the monitor cube as far as sound reproduction goes.

Well, usually people ask for budgets when you are looking to buy equipment. I have no idea what a cheap monitor costs, so I threw that out as in meaning "really cheap".

So given that, what would you recommend is the best quality for the money? I've got the Roland Cube as an option. Any other suggestions for comparison?

One option is a small "keyboard" amplifier, but no one I know who plays digitals likes them.

Just about every performer that I know, including me, has gone thru numerous keyboard amps, dislikes them all, and eventually ends up with some sort of a PA, be it small or large.

The Roland Cube I mentioned is like a mini-PA...its sound is very controllable, and is phenomenal. It is rare that I do a solo gig and someone does not come up and marvel at its clarity and accuracy.

I also use it at home for practicing with my keyboard (Roland RD700sx). (I have an acoustic as my main instrument.)

But it has to the the Cube I mentioned....Roland makes many various Cubes, some are for guitar, some for Bass, but the "monitor 30" Cube is the one that works for keys. IMHO

Just to put another idea out there . . . the Rokit 5 and Rokit 6 are decent small powered monitor speakers. The latest versions are dubbed G3 but G2's are still available for about $115 and $150 respectively at Amazon (and perhaps other places). zzounds.com has b-stock of the Rokit 5 G2 for $100 each.

http://www.zzounds.com/item--KRKRP5G2

Another vote here for the excellence of the Roland Cubes.

I have another question, and hope it's not stupid. But is it typical to get two monitors to make it stereo, or do you usually just have one?

Your keyboard most likely has two "outs"....Left and Right. One is also labeled "Mono", so the two are summed, i.e. not stereo.

It sounds better to a listener to have stereo, but when you are playing the piano, say a grand, you as the player do not hear stereo.

Instead, because the soundboard is below, much of the sound goes down to the floor, and,if the lid is propped, the rest of it goes out sideways to the right as you sit.

So the player of a grand does not hear pure and separated "left and right stereo". Instead, it is mixed. So too for the audience...they are hearing much of what reflects out from the lid, which cannot be "bass on the left, treble on the right" stereo. Instead, it also is a mix.

There are some who claim that unless you utilitze the stereo output from a digital, you will have a bad sound. That was somewhat true back in the early days of digitals.

But with todays digitals that have a "mono" out, that does not occur, although some will still claim that it does. Its the internet, after all. Check out my free tune in my signature below...it is a digital in mono.

As a caveat, stereo is a big improvement when you are using the keyboard to emulate a Hammond B3 sound with a Leslie rotating speaker. In that case, the stereo really helps to replicate the rotary speaker.

I still think you would be very pleased with the Roland monitor cube. If you want to go stereo, get two of them. But start with one.

"Just about every performer that I know, including me, has gone thru numerous keyboard amps, dislikes them all, and eventually ends up with some sort of a PA, be it small or large."

My experience too. I use an accordion amp (stereo, gotta be stereo) when I play "away from home"

Except when using headphones, no one ever hears "pure" stereo as you have described it, but that doesn't mean one sitting at a piano doesn't hear in stereo or that the stereo differences do not make much of a difference in the perceived quality of the sound. In fact, because one is closer to the piano while playing, the stereo effect will be stronger than it is for someone sitting farther away. The higher strings are literally to the right of your head, while they are pretty much in front from an audience perspective.

For pianos that have perspective emulation (typically software pianos), the stereo effect is stronger for the player perspective than it is for the audience perspective.



Actually it's still quite an issue today. Many pianos do not implement a very satisfactory mono because it's not very frequently used. Or something. Actually I don't know why they don't. Simply summing the two channels frequently leads to unacceptable audio artifacts and I believe it is not frequently done in today's digitals. There's quite a bit of variety in mono sounds across digtitals, and poor mono samples is one of the more common complaints we hear in this forum.

For that reason, among others, we tend to recommend using stereo whenever possible with digital pianos. Particularly if the intended audience is yourself rather than, say, a big room with an audience that may not be paying much attention.

For the OP on a budget, a single Roland cube should do just fine.

For an audiophile or someone recording a performance for sale, "unacceptable audio artifacts" may be present.

If so, which is unlikely, add another cube.

I think for $50 you'd get more bang for the buck with headphones, but even $50 won't buy you fantastic headphones.

Don't be cheap with sound. Speakers (or headphones) are the last link in the sound chain, skimp there and even the best keyboard will sound bad.

I agree that $50 will be better spent on headphones. I think $100 or more would be better spent on headphones honestly. Poor monitoring can make playing unenjoyable as much as a poor instrument can. Of course wearing headphones is a different thing from playing through an amp or speakers, let's say you want to play along with someone etc. I have the original Koss porta-pros, and for $40 or so they sound pretty darn good. AKG, Sennheiser etc all make good studio phones for less than $100.

Unfortunately many music stores don't seem to get the idea of "let's make our instruments actually sound good". Assuming they are hooked up at all (argh) they often are hooked to a small speaker or tinny little amp. Speaking of amps, I've owned a few and played through others, and I prefer powered speakers. Piano is usually the sound that makes me regret using an amp, and for that matter it's a tough sound for cheaper speakers to handle too. I'm more familiar with stage monitor type speakers, but I expect that there's some decent not-too-expensive studio monitors out there. I wouldn't expect decent ones for the price that you could get decent headphones though as I mentioned. Note I said monitors with an s, leading to....

As someone who plays live through a mono PA--mono generally is a bad prospect for many keyboards and with most sounds. I do it because I have to. Piano is one of those sounds that can often be tweaked to sound decent in mono...strings, synths and most other sounds can lose a lot of their sound in mono, and I think this often is due to the effects (reverb, chorus, delay) sounding bad in mono. For example an electric piano that pans left-right might end up being a tremolo effect when put in mono.

Edit: I see mention of the Roland Cube...aren't those guitar amps? If so then be careful they are not "tuned" for guitar...most guitar amps have midrange and not much else, and will sound very boxy. That's due to guitars having midrange and not much else! Might be good for crunchy electric piano but not many other keys sounds.

Yeah, $50 will buy you very little in the speaker world. With that budget I'd suggest prowling craiglist for people's old hi fi or some higher quality computer speakers (we have people using kiplsch pro media or logitech z2300 speakers with some satisfaction).

Basically I'd echo Dave's suggestion. On a budget you can sometimes get pretty good headphones, but speakers you can get for an equivalent price may not improve on what you have now.

I haven't used the Roland cubes mentioned in this thread, but Roland is not known for bang-for-the-buck and neither are portable/robust gigging speakers. For that reason I'm very suspicious about them.

Gigging guitar players often spend as much on their speakers and amps as they do on their guitar. Same for bass players. When they practice at home or rehearse with the band, they generally (IME) use the same gear as they gig with. One thing I never really understood is why it is almost universally acceptable to run a DP through speakers that cost 5% of what the piano cost. (I suspect that built-in speakers are ~5% of the keyboard cost too.) Not a criticism, just an observation. The piano has a huge sonic range and capable of a large dynamic range as well. It takes quality speakers or good headphones to reproduce this IMO.

If you have not used the product being discussed, why would you give your opinion?



FYI, The Cube mentioned is not a guitar amp. Check this out, it is what we are talking about.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...pe=&gclid=CO-c6qHO87kCFWZk7AodAhgAlA

I could have written this review:



To the OP...check out the Roland monitor Cube 30.

To everyone else: Bye folks...have a nice day!

I also have the Roland Cube 30 monitor, and agree it is a great little amp.

However, if you are looking for a bit more power as well as excellent fidelity in sound reproduction, the Yamaha MSR100 active monitor (which I also own) is fantastic:

Yamaha MSR-100

Excellent bang for the buck at $299.

Because one can know a lot about a product without having used it, especially if one is familiar with the class of product and manufacturer. BTW a pair of these Roland 30's looks to me like it would exceed the OP's budget by several hundred dollars. For that price there are LOT more options than are discussed here. I'm not sure why you would even introduce it.

Your link doesn't work by the way.