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Contents/Safety Warnings
Introduction
Thank you for purchasing the Alesis M1 Active Biamplified Reference Monitor. To
take full advantage of the M1 Active’s operation, and to enjoy long and trouble-free
use, please read this user’s manual carefully. We value any comments you may have
about this monitor system, this manual, your Alesis dealer and about our factory
service. Please take a minute now to fill out your warranty card and tell us what you
think.
How to use this manual
This manual is d
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Contents/Safety Warnings ONTENTS C ................................................ Important Safety Instructions 3 Safety symbols used in this product.............................................................3 Please follow these precautions when using this product:..............................3 Instructions de Sécurité Importantes............................................................4 Symboles utilisés dans ce produit ................................................................4
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Contents/Safety Warnings MPORTANT AFETY I S NSTRUCTIONS I Safety symbols used in this product This symbol alerts the user that there are important operating and maintenance instructions in the literature accompanying this unit. Please follow these precautions when using this product: 1. Read these instructions. 2. Keep these instructions. 3. Heed all warnings. 4. Follow all instructions. 5. Do not use this apparatus near water. 6. Clean only with a damp cloth. Do not spray any liquid cleaner o
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Contents/Safety Warnings 12. Use only with a cart, stand, bracket, rack, or table designed for use with professional audio or music equipment. In any installation, make sure that injury or damage will not result from cables pulling on the apparatus and its mounting. If a cart is used, use caution when moving the cart/apparatus combination to avoid injury from tip-over. 13. Unplug this apparatus during lightning storms or when unused for long periods of time. 14. Refer all servicing
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Contents/Safety Warnings votre sécurité. Si le cordon secteur ne rentre pas dans la prise de courant, demandez à un électricien qualifié de remplacer la prise. 10. Evitez de marcher sur le cordon secteur ou de le pincer, en particulier au niveau de la prise, et aux endroits où il sor de l’appareil. 11. N’utilisez que des accessoires spécifiés par le constructeur. 12. N’utilisez qu’avec un stand, rack ou table conçus pour l’utilisation d’audio professionnel ou instruments de musique. Dans toute
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Contents/Safety Warnings 13. Die Wartung sollte nur durch qualifiziertes Fachpersonal erfolgen. Die Wartung wird notwendig, wenn das Gerät beschädigt wurde oder aber das Stromkabel oder der Stecker, Gegenstände oder Flüssigkeit in das Gerät gelangt sind, das Gerät dem Regen oder Feuchtigkeit ausgesetzt war und deshalb nicht mehr normal arbeitet oder heruntergefallen ist. 14. Bei normalem Betrieb des Gerätes kommt es zu Wärmeentwicklungen. Wenn Sie das Gerät in einem Rack eingebaut haben, sollt
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Contents/Safety Warnings Information to the User for Class A Digital Device (FCC Part 15, Class A) This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a class A digital device pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference when the equipment is operated in a commercial environment. This equipment generates, uses and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in accordance wi
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Contents/Safety Warnings CE ECLARATION OF ONFORMITY D C Approvals pending. See enclosed sheet if product was authorized for shipment to the EU. HAPTER C 1 BOUT THE CTIVE A M1 A Unpacking and Inspection 8 M1 ACTIVE REFERENCE MANUAL
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About the M1 Active Your M1 Active Biamplified Reference Monitors were packed carefully at the factory, and the shipping carton was designed to protect the speakers during shipping. Please retain this container in the highly unlikely event that you need to return the speakers for servicing. The shipping carton should contain the following items: • This instruction manual • M1 Actives with the same serial numbers as shown on the shipping cartons • Two AC power cords (NEMA to CEE type) • Alesis wa
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About the M1 Active Inside your new speakers J If you’re in a hurry to get started, skip ahead to Chapter 2, “Speaker Installation”, for connection and placement tips. About powered monitors The M1 Actives combine a speaker and amplifiers in the same compact cabinet. Powered monitors are growing in popularity over the traditional separate amplifier and speakers for a number of reasons, convenience and ease of hookup being only one of them. You can connect a powered speaker directly to any line
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About the M1 Active along with the closed cell synthetic rubber surround, are both nearly impervious to ozone, direct sunlight, heat and humidity. Therefore, after an initial break-in period (about 20 hours), the sound should remain virtually unchanged for the life of the product. Alesis’ proprietary design tweeter features a pure Japanese silk dome, an internal pole-piece mounted phasing plug and low viscosity ferrofluid formulated specifically to retain the best balance of transient response t
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About the M1 Active • Improved transient response. • Better amplifier/speaker coupling for woofers. • Better crossover performance working into a constant impedance load. • Better subjective sound quality than high level (passive) networks. • Easier control over driver sensitivity differences. • Easier manipulation of phase, time delay, resonance, and various kinds of shaping, contouring and equalization. • Specifically in the case of the M1 Active, the wide, mid-frequency polar response of the
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About the M1 Active The cabinet and port design The M1 Active cabinet construction employs vinyl composite material laminated to a .625” MDF (medium density fiberboard) core for the four sides and the rear. The front panel is 1” thick MDF, to withstand the greater demands of the drivers mounted on it. The entire cabinet is braced extensively in random fashion to dissipate intramodal vibration. Why the tweeters are offset The M1 Active speakers have been developed as a mirror-imaged pair with d
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About the M1 Active About Nearfield monitoring In the early days of recording, most recording studios used big monitor speakers almost exclusively. Unfortunately, they also required high powered amplifiers and expensive acoustic treatment (often poorly done) of the entire control room. Still, a well-constructed big monitoring system really was impressive to listen to, a fact not overlooked by the studio owners who wanted to impress the record company executives who paid for the big studio's ti
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Speaker Installation monitor system to be either light or heavy on the bottom, try moving them around within your listening room. You should avoid locating your M1 Actives near reflective surfaces such as glass, tile, large open walls or table tops. Still, many rooms used for recording have these surfaces, so the best way to deal with them is to place the monitors out in the room away from reflective walls, windows and sizable objects. Even with these reflective surfaces separated from the mon
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Speaker Installation Random Reflections Moving the monitors to a position behind the meter bridge causes the bridge to block the offending reflective path Careful consideration should also be given to the physical spacing between the speakers. Alesis recommends that the distance between the speakers for stereo applications equal the distance between the listener and either speaker. In other words, the listener and the two speakers are at the three corners of a triangle having equal- length si
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Speaker Installation Stereo nearfield placement of the M1 Active NOTE: We recommend that the M1 Active speakers be placed with the inside tweeters to the , not the outside, of the listening triangle. The “classic” studio monitor layout used to be that the tweeters be placed to the outside of a horizontally-oriented speaker. In the past, this configuration was actually beneficial in time aligning the tweeter with the woofer if the cabinets were not toed- in toward the listener. However,
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Speaker Installation Proper tweeter orientation is toward the stereo image center (the middle) as shown. Ports are always faced toward the bottom side of the cabinet. This set-up will promote a strongly focused center image such as for the vocalist. And because the (vocal) image width will be narrower than if the speakers are placed vertically, it will be possible to place the vocalist with great precision at stage center. In this orientation there will be much less chance of first reflections f
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Speaker Installation Vertical Placement Recommendation Vertical placement of the M1 Active as shown in Figure 3 is highly recommended. This position will simulate the soundfield that will be heard in most consumers’ homes and (to a great extent) their cars. For this reason, even if the M1 Actives are positioned horizontally for all of the mixing, the vertical position should always be used in the final "playback check" mode. (See next section) There are a couple of possible drawbacks to vertic
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Speaker Installation Playback check mode (vertical mid-field) After you’ve got your mix just right it’s always good practice to perform a “playback check” by standing the M1 Actives vertically and making the listening triangle larger. The purpose of the playback check is to simulate what your masterpiece will sound like in a “typical” home listening environment. It is in this configuration that the imaging specificity of your mix can best be evaluated. Generally, in the playback check mode you
