Studio Monitors?, Flat response and budget :) |
It's hard to go wrong with Genelec Monitors IMHO. They are quite nice. Even the lowest end Genelecs I've heard sounded very even and flat and clear. Makes a very nice addition to any home studio.
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Sep 15 2011, 05:09 AM
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checking those genelecs as i post
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Sep 15 2011, 09:37 AM
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QUOTE (nikeman64 @ Sep 11 2011, 06:31 PM)  ... Very often, low frequencies are the toughest part. I made mixes that had a real tight and punchy low end on my studio monitors, but when I recorded it on a CD and played it in my car, the dashboard almost came loose because of low frequency madness  Low bass is problematic to produce for most monitors and too many mix rngineers boost it becuase they can't hear it properly. There's also an issue with translation. QUOTE An excellent tip , but you probably knew that already, is to listen for 20 minutes to professional mixed music. The kind of colour you want to achieve, and how that sounds through your set up, in your specific personal environment (think accoustic circumstances), and then try to work towards that same colour with a constantly A - B comparison. Constant A/Bing also isn't good IME. You are much better off listening to the piece to start to lock the sound in to your head and then work on your mix separately. Constand A/Bing results in you trying to cope with too many micro changes. Trying to frequency match will not work. There are already frequency matching spectrum analysers around that let you see the spectrum for a recording and then let you 'match' yours to it by adjusting EQ. Doesn't work unless the two are very, very similar: ideally two versions of the same song. QUOTE (Adrian Figallo @ Sep 15 2011, 05:09 AM) checking those genelecs as i post Genelecs are ok-good mid price monitors. Not flat at all but no mix studio monitor is. Have to say that I did a lot of work with a pro mix studio last year and they had a pair of Genelecs and a matched sub. I returned a few of their early mixes for corrections prior to mastering as the frequency spectrum was skewed and the mid band, particularly around the lead vocalist, was odd. Finally got their head engineer to come to us to hear the issues on our monitors. He said it was a revelation - he could finally hear the issues on what he had previously thought were good mixes. He sold the Genelecs and their mixes are now much better. He could however have kept them though and spent a lot of time getting to know them better. It's true of all mix studio monitors - none of them are flat, all of them colour the music in different ways. You need to spend time with them to understand how they present your music and what you need to do because of or inspite of this. QUOTE (what is flat anyway ???, How strict is this ?? A flat response from a speaker would mean that it is capable of producing a spectrum across its range from 0-20kHz that showed no attenation or gain of the original signal. So if you took a tone generator, set it to produce a simple sinewave and swept it across the frequency range 0-20k with no change in amplitude and then measured the output of your speakers on a spectrum analyser you should seea horizontal straight line. That doesn't happen in reality as speakers can't meet this ideal. All speakers roll of the bass and very high end. The more they do so the further from flat they are. Every drop of 6dB is the same as halving the volume for that frequency: so a monitor that starts to roll off at 80Hz and does so at say -6dB per octave (similar to many mix studio 2 ways) will produce significantly less bass than one that rolls off at 50Hz and does so at -2dB per octave (similar to a 3 way mastering monitor). The far ends of the spectrum are not the only issue though as mix studio monitors and hifi speakers are deliberately voiced to sound 'musical' rather than accurate. This often means that they will add some gain and attenuation to the signal at differeing points in the spectrum. Many deliberately add some gain around 80-100 on a narrow Q to blur/mask the bass roll off a little. Many add gain in the mid band to add presence to the mid range around 1-5kHz. Some speakers have issues with cross over and so you can have dips and peaks at the cross over bands. Many don't have properly matched amps driving the separate speakers so you end up with shifts in balance and attenuation. Exactly what a monitor's spectrum looks like depends on how the manufacturer wants to voice their monitor and what issues/deficiencies they are trying to deal with: they are not flat though. It's also worth noting that most manufacturers produce a frequency spectrum plot for their monitors that you can look at and compare. If they do it's worth a look but as wiith all of these type of things you need to be careful: 1/ lies, damned lies and statistics: many do not state the test conditions, how measurement was conducted and what weightings were used. Many give no indication of the vertical scale so you do not know how far up the axis + 6 dB is and consequently don't really know how 'flat' the line is. Very few give information on timing, phase and other issues. Even if they supply all the data it doesn't really tell you how they sound and whether you like them- you need to hear them. It's just the same as if you were buying a guitar or amp. The best thing is to test a pair in your actual studio and so hear it properly in situ. If you can't do that then you should try and have an extended trial in the shop. Just buying blind without hearing them is risky. -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Sep 16 2011, 05:37 AM
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once again tony, your knowledge is great, i may keep my JBL monitors having that in mind, i know how they sound very well, i have listen hours and hours of music thru them and also made mixes for the past 2 years, they're in good shape but i just wanted to have a flat thing, now i don't think i need it
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Sep 16 2011, 05:45 PM
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Well at some stage you'll have to replace the JBLs in order to hear your mixes more accurately Adrian. But if you're used to the JBLs and can work around their issues then keeping them for now and saving more to get better monitors (and sound treatment, stands and a good pro end DAC
 ) later isn't such a bad idea. Least that way you might avoid one stage in the upgrade path for monitors and go straight up to @ the 2-4kk USD band and so avoid losing money on a pair around the 600-1000USD mark. Even if you just want to stay in the 600-1000USD band then saving more opens up more choice.The difference between a 2000+ USD monitor pair and a 600-1000 USD pair is quite obvious, as is the difference between 200 and 600. So jumping from 200 to 2000 will give a huge improvment. Once you get beyond 4000USD then the differences are somewhat smaller. -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Sep 16 2011, 05:47 PM
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thats exactly what im thinking man, i think i might save up $2k more or less for a new pair in the future, i wanna hear EVERYTHING
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Sep 21 2011, 12:22 PM
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As Todd pointed out, great info in this thread about Studio Monitors.
I created an entry on our wiki with Tony's comments on the matter: https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/wiki/inde...Studio_Monitors I'll add to it as more info becomes available on the boards 
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