, "Kent Kingery" <kent.kingery@...> wrote: > As for monitors, what's your budget? I like the M-Audio line, but > monitors are a very personal choice. You'll need amplified monitors > or an amp with monitors. I prefer amplified monitors. Here's a link > to the M-Audio LX4 system that's not a bad set of monitors. This > system would require the 1/4" analog cable mentioned above. > > Again, without knowing your budget or your needs, it's hard to give > you more advice. Tell us more, and we can give you better advice. Kent, Thanks a lot for all this advice. My budget is somewhat limited, but music is music, and apparently, it seems that it has become more affordable to get a small studio going (thanks to software), so I won't complain. I will just buy what I need. I just purchased Logic Express recently to try to start learning how to create electronic dance music (House, Trance, DnB) on my laptop. Yesterday, I bought a pair of M-Audio BX5a, (I realise they are probably far from the best monitors, but for now I just went with the cheapest ones.) I hooked them up, each with a 3.5mm to stereo 1/4", and connected them with an adaptor (one stereo 3.5mm to two stereo 3.5mm) into the headphone jack on my macbook pro. Well Everything was fine until I launched iTunes and listened to some songs It doesn't sound good a all. There's a weird kind of muffling effect, that goes on when the song gets busy with a lot of layers. It is noticeable at pretty much the whole frequency range. In the treble it sounds like there is complete loss of data between the computer and the speakers. In the bass, it goes on and off. Human voice is unintelligible. Basically, it sounds like the data is not reaching the monitors efficiently. And it is pretty serious and noticeable. Now I am not sure if this is a software or a hardware problem. Could it be that my computer doesn't have enough RAM, (I have 512). I am going to go back to the store to ask them (not even sure if they'll know), but in the meantime I wrote this in case anyone, has had the same problem or knows how to fix this. And it doesn't matter if you are experienced or new like me. Anything will help. I am just trying in all directions to troubleshoot this and I will appreciate any help. Thanks again, Stan