Hi all sorry for the noob question
Needed a new headphone amp and based on the excellent review thread here bought the iamd v200 which has been frankly magnificent for headphones so far.
Now I want to connect my KRK 5 to it, but it looks like it only supports speaker cable, and the KRK 5 are active so they only have RCA/TRS and the usual.
What's the best way to connect each KRK speaker to the IAM amp? I have three options, RCA unbalanced, or TRS balanced, or XLR balanced.
I attached i/o photos for convenience
Needed a new headphone amp and based on the excellent review thread here bought the iamd v200 which has been frankly magnificent for headphones so far.
Now I want to connect my KRK 5 to it, but it looks like it only supports speaker cable, and the KRK 5 are active so they only have RCA/TRS and the usual.
What's the best way to connect each KRK speaker to the IAM amp? I have three options, RCA unbalanced, or TRS balanced, or XLR balanced.
I attached i/o photos for convenience
Attachments
![-[1].jpg](/community/data/attachments/868/868393-84c38f8c65ba85d324acf39791d2e03a.jpg?hash=hMOPjGW6hd)
![krkrear-qxhCXz0G06Er7nGZ39tts1xi05QAB559[1].jpg](/community/data/attachments/868/868399-c997fcee1506219f270d7e078b325cf3.jpg?hash=yZf87hUGIZ)
In both devices we are dealing with a signal to accomplish two differing goals.
The headphone amp is to drive your headphones which are some eight to twenty (or higher) ohms worth of impedance, and swinging up & down maybe eight volts worth.
Your RCA inputs on your monitors are at "line level", a very low voltage level AND a very "light" impedance load coming in, some 50,000 ohms.
As such an amp driving headphones "wouldn't even notice" a 50,000 ohm load...but the voltage is too high.
They do make attenuation interconnects for just such scenarios as you are facing...Run down to your local stereo-shop & they can tell you more & rig-up what you need .
-----------------------------------------------------------------Rick........
The headphone amp is to drive your headphones which are some eight to twenty (or higher) ohms worth of impedance, and swinging up & down maybe eight volts worth.
Your RCA inputs on your monitors are at "line level", a very low voltage level AND a very "light" impedance load coming in, some 50,000 ohms.
As such an amp driving headphones "wouldn't even notice" a 50,000 ohm load...but the voltage is too high.
They do make attenuation interconnects for just such scenarios as you are facing...Run down to your local stereo-shop & they can tell you more & rig-up what you need .
-----------------------------------------------------------------Rick........
Ah, interesting, thank you for the detailed info. This explains why my googling wasn’t giving me good results.
As the v200 can push 2x150w I’ll likely solve this problem by buying a new set of small passive speakers. These rokit 5 have always felt too big for my desk anyway and one of the damn things always crackles which was what I was hoping the v200 might fix with different amplification circuitry.
As the v200 can push 2x150w I’ll likely solve this problem by buying a new set of small passive speakers. These rokit 5 have always felt too big for my desk anyway and one of the damn things always crackles which was what I was hoping the v200 might fix with different amplification circuitry.
The KRK Rokit 5 has its own class D amp onboard, similar to the V200, (assuming its not the old 'passive' version). The "Classic" Rokit 5 uses conventional onboard A/B amplification however...
If you have some crackling or odd noises, something's wrong & needs to be attended to, bad interconnects maybe?
Frankly, a well functioning Rokit 5 is about as good as it gets, recall the Rokits are studio speakers, not your garden-variety consumer stuff.
By selecting a smaller new pair for your desk, sound quality is going to suffer for incremental gains in smaller enclosures (a bigger desk maybe?)
An idea I had..since you have two more amp channels...Get the Rokits "fixed", take the two unused channels out of the V200 & get an correctly- sized pair of sub-woofers. Split the music source for the two...this would make for a super-nice setup....filling in the only significant shortcomings of the Rokit 5s' , that of bass extension towards 20 hertz.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Rick......
If you have some crackling or odd noises, something's wrong & needs to be attended to, bad interconnects maybe?
Frankly, a well functioning Rokit 5 is about as good as it gets, recall the Rokits are studio speakers, not your garden-variety consumer stuff.
By selecting a smaller new pair for your desk, sound quality is going to suffer for incremental gains in smaller enclosures (a bigger desk maybe?)
An idea I had..since you have two more amp channels...Get the Rokits "fixed", take the two unused channels out of the V200 & get an correctly- sized pair of sub-woofers. Split the music source for the two...this would make for a super-nice setup....filling in the only significant shortcomings of the Rokit 5s' , that of bass extension towards 20 hertz.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Rick......
Last edited:
thanks for the suggestions rick, i should crack these open and have a tinker, there are lots of repair guides. the hissing and popping and crackling is loud and renders them useless. i haven't run them off a balanced source only off the unbalanced RCA, would that make a difference do you think?
these are much older (gen 2) rokit 5 which have the a/b amp as opposed to the newer class D versions.
it's a very rare occasion that I switch from headphones to the desktop speakers so something dirt cheap like micca mb42 will do as a replacement for these old hissy cracklers, and I can just wire them straight up from the speaker wire on the v200.
these are much older (gen 2) rokit 5 which have the a/b amp as opposed to the newer class D versions.
it's a very rare occasion that I switch from headphones to the desktop speakers so something dirt cheap like micca mb42 will do as a replacement for these old hissy cracklers, and I can just wire them straight up from the speaker wire on the v200.