Connections
Professional grade 5-way binding posts are provided for external
wiring back to the amplifier. This type of connector can
accommodate bare or tinned wires, banana plugs and even spade
lugs. A lot of hype and confusion exists about the type of speaker
wires to use, most of it created by the wire manufacturers
themselves in an effort to have a unique story to tell. While this
expensive wire will not hurt the speaker’s performance at all,
Alesis does not subscribe to most of this hype and chooses to take
an approach based on science when recommending speaker wire.
Our recommendation is simple; use the shortest length of the
largest diameter wire you can get. #10-14 gauge multi-stranded
flexible speaker wire found at most electronics and hi-fi stores
works very well. This kind of wire resembles oversized lamp cord
and is very easy to work with.
Make sure your amplifier is turned OFF before making
connections to it and be sure you get the + terminals of the
speakers wired to the + terminals of the amplifier. If one of the
speaker’s polarity is miswired, the result will be loss of low
frequency response and stereo imaging when the system is played.
Power and Protection
Alesis recognizes that professional speakers need to be strong to
survive, so the Monitor Two uses proprietary high power drivers
and oversized crossover components, choices made principally to
offer the user an extended margin of safety. Therefore, an amplifier
with a 100-250 watt power rating into 4 ohms, like the Alesis
Matica 500, is recommend for most monitoring situations, but this
can be varied up or down somewhat depending on the size of the
listening room and the engineer’s preference for normal working
levels.
Be sure to verify that your amplifier is rated for 4 ohm speakers.
Some older amplifiers are not and may fail if overloaded. Alesis is
not responsible for any failures caused by the use of the wrong
amplifier.
Also, there are few situations where a very high power amplifier
should ever be used because of the danger of damaging the
