I have the KRK ROKIT5's hooked up to my iMAC with just a stereo headphone jack to left and right RCA plugs setup --- and they are amazing! I seldom play with balance and tone settings anyways as I prefer to listen to my music as "normal" without segments of the audio spectrum altered or...

Great description! I tried to use a simple male to  make stereo extension cable to connect my iPad to an external speaker and it would not work... shutting off the iPad speaker AND no sound from the external speaker Seems the old stereo two ring cables are not useful at least not for Apple...