Connecting Monitors to the Mbox 2

[LucasM]

I recently purchased the Mbox 2 and now i am thinking to buy a pair of active nearfield monitors. A product that seems intersesting are the "Tapco s5". Reading a review about these monitors, i realised that they have 3 inputs a balanced XLR, balanced jack and unbalanced phono.

My question is if i purchase these monitors, what cables should i use to connect them with the Mbox 2 achieving the best performance possible?

Thanks in Advance,
LucasM

[PRS4LIFE]

You want to get a 1/4" to 1/4" TRS balanced cable. Id suggest Mogami cable. Sorry id go into detail more but i gotta run, hope this helps!

[dubhausdisco1]

First of all welcome the DUC....

Second, "I recently purchased the Mbox 2" doesn't tell us a whole lot, as there are a few mbox2's now... But to answer your question, you will need 1/4 inch jacks, as that is the only analog outputs on any of the mbox2's...

[No L]

I just recently bought a pair of KRK V4 nearfield monitors and I am using XLR to 1/4 TRS cables with positive results.

[LucasM]

I am really glad to be here and thank you for your welcome and interest in my problem.

My Mbox 2 is the USB version (Not pro or mini)

It is a bit strange that all manuals suggest that unbalanced outputs should use unbalanced cables as well.

In addition the Tapco's manual which i read online suggests that the balanced input of the monitor can take an unbalanced TS jack.

Anyway i have more faith in your experiences and i will trust your opinion.

Once again Thank you all. I am very happy of the existance of DUC.
LucasM

[JMS40]

Unfortunate but true… the Mbox2 has unbalanced analog outs.
Balanced cabling won’t be of any real benefit in this situation. Try and keep the lengths as short as possible.

[LucasM]

So what do you suggest guys?

If you have any specific solution in mind please share it with me.

What kind of cable? balance? unbalanced?

They got me confused here.

Oh and another question that came up, I saw that there are different types of jacks lead, speaker..what do you suggest?
Could another solution be unbalanced jack to phono?

Thanks in advance!

[JMS40]

i realised that they have 3 inputs a balanced XLR, balanced jack and unbalanced phono.

Decent quality, short run, 1/4 unbalanced cables with phono adapters or 1/4 unbalanced to phono unbalanced.
It's possible the 1/4 balanced jack on the Tapco's will accept unbalanced signals as well but I can't tell you for sure.
If so you could use 1/4 to 1/4. It should say so in their documentation.

Understand, you won't hurt anything using balanced cables out of the MBox, but you won't get any advantage either. It will only be using 2 of the 3 leads.

[JMS40]

I just checked out the documentation. The Tapco s5 accepts unballanced inputs via the balanced 1/4 jack, so I would suggest you use 1/4 to 1/4 unbalanced cables.