Question about mixdown on monitors

Professa Plum

New member
So the best way to mixdown is some high-end near field monitors yeah yeah yeah i know that. Then you take it to a crappy stereo to see how your listener will here it. My question, hmm why not bypass the really expensive monitors and just mixdown using crap? It makes sense, right? Time and money-saving solution? (probably not, I just want an explanation)
 
You don't want something that sounds good only through crap. You want something that works overall and that translates to more situations than your monitors.
 
Good questin. The problem with the crappy ones is you won't hear the detail that you will on your better monitors. Mixing on good monitors gives you a baseline from which to make minor concessions to the range of problems lesser speakers may present down the food chain. However, mixing on bad monitors gives you a skewed baseline and you're farther out to sea. At least that's the way I see it...
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Professa Plum:
So the best way to mixdown is some high-end near field monitors yeah yeah yeah i know that. Then you take it to a crappy stereo to see how your listener will here it. My question, hmm why not bypass the really expensive monitors and just mixdown using crap? It makes sense, right? Time and money-saving solution? (probably not, I just want an explanation)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You bring up a great point. One I've been wrestling with. There is an advantage to having good monitors, but I can't justify spending 300-500 dollars for them. I've just dropped about $2000 on gear and still need some kind of finalizer. Investing in good monitors would be the tale wagging the dog, on my budget. What I did was, bought the ultra-cheap $84 Roland's (Alesis makes some a little better for $119) They enable you to get levels and are pretty clean and flat. I still have to go to my car to try out my mix. Even on good monitors its hard to judge things like eq on a bass guitar and a few other things. You just can't tell how they are gonna translate on a stereo until you play it. But they are useful because headphones can be deceiving. The main thing is you have to be familiar with your monitors until you get a feel for how it will translate on a stereo. For me it's not justifiable to pay through the nose for good studio monitors. I use the stereo in my car as the final test because it's pretty clean but not so good that I will be deceived.
 
Mixing without studio monitors is like performing brain surgery in the dark. All of your efforts are in vain.

Rev E
 
The best of all worlds is to have a few sets, with a speaker switch box (which you can get at Radio Shack etc.) I have 3 sets - some Yamaha monitor speakers, my PA speaker set (i.e. big indutrial monitors) and some small chepie speakers typical of what you would find in a good boom box. I usually have just the Yamaha's on but when mixing down I will switch between them.
 
I think that when actually mixing down using some good quality headphones is better than listening through monitors. I take the point that some can be deceptive but I have some AKG K240 DF headphones-specially designed for mixing/feels as if you are listening to monitors and are also designed for wearing for hours in comfort-the good thing about headphones is there's no external interfierence from people and noises around.

Only a suggestion.
 
Aside from monitors sounding accurate, I think it has to be decent and nice to the ear enough to show off. I've really nice headphones but I don't have good monitor speakers so I cannot show off because when my wife walks into the studio and I play a CD for her to hear, the sounds not that impressive from my crappy speakers. She'll also think that the setup is a waste of money. Good monitors will make your studio sound professional for people who don't care what monitors are meant for.
 
Krystofo1: Headphones are sometimes a necessity in this overcrowded apartment complex, but panning information is greatly amplified (read: exaggerated) in headphones versus even a "tight" listening pattern on a pair of studio monitors.
I like the Event 20/20 passives.
Almost as transparent as DCM Time Windows.
 
OK, now that I know my message is going to be posted here is the real plea for help:

I want to buy a pair of near field "passive" monitors and I'm to new to all this studio gear game stuff. I have a rectangular room appox. 14 x 20. While I've done what I could budget wise to create some kind of acoustic environment in said room, I'm probably going to fall short of the so called "correct room" or "right room". I read an article pertaining to home studio construction and the author made some kind of mention about..."the correct room" or "doing it right"...whats doing it right when we are talking home recording, and converting a garage into some place where one can take on such a task as broad as music recording, especially on a semi-professional level at best. Where the hell is A&M records when you need em?

I may be straying abit in regards to the question about monitors, but I first had to set up some kind of dialog pertaining to the subject.

I don't think going down to the local music store with a few CD's in hand to try out a few pairs of these, if they even have a few pairs...is the best way to make an acurate choice because when I walk back into my studio environment and plug them in they are going to sound completely different than what I heard in some music store that has spent double what I spent creating the so called "correct room".

Isn't there like an industry standard of some type, where as a guy/gal can purchase a pair of these and feel that what he/she brought home were an excellent choice, especially for the PRICE...

Final note...I think there is way to much media hype regarding this home recording venture, and I think everyone will agree. No matter what the consumer buys there is generally way to dam much "product hype" to go along with it.

I'm really new to setting up and learning this art form and was reluctant to do so from the beginning because of the drastic run-around, hype and huge difference of opinion from just about everyone, including store sales-people, they're the worst (did somebody mention used car salesman?) Not to knock used car salemen...really, I have a couple friends trying to make a go of it doing the car sales thing...

While I'm not looking for someone to make my choice for me, I would like to hear from a few knowledgeable people who have been there & done that, excuse the cliche', in regards to choosing some monitors.

Some gear info...Yamaha power amp model a100 50 watts a side, Mackie 1604 Pro VLZ, Tascam 48 reel to reel 1/2" tape, Tascam DA40 Dat, Alesis ADAT XT20, Tascam CDR5000 and a bunch of analog & digital FX.

It seems like this subject the more I think about it is kind of like the old saying "another man's floor is another mans ceiling" when it comes to making a choice & having an opinion.

A little long winded perhaps, sorry, I think I've sorta spelled out my thoughts on this subject well enough to get some genuine usable feedback. Thanks so much, CV



[This message has been edited by vett007 (edited 05-26-2000).]
 
Vett007: Oh yeah- the Event passives are a great price/performance choice for your gear.
My room is close to 14' x 20' but I put my face between the monitors. These are near field monitors; while they sound OK in the room, they really sound great near-field.
 
I can sympathize!

I agree that really crappy monitors aren't the way to go because you could inadvertantly end up mixing (just as an example) WAY too much bass guitar and kick or cymbals and tambourine just because your crap monitors weren't showing you how much low end or high end was REALLY present.

However, I think there's something to be said for "knowing your gear". If you mix on a certain set of headphones, for example, and know that they accentuate the bass, you can mix in a little more bass than you feel like you need to compensate.

I'm with some of the others who posted. I usually mix with headphones, but cross-check the mix with my "ok"-quality monitors (Wharfdale 2-way), my car stereo, and my living-room stereo before finalizing the mix.

Even then, it's still not an exact science. Things never sounds as good outside of my house as they do in my control room... but I'm working on it!

Charles Thomas

[This message has been edited by CharlesThomas (edited 05-26-2000).]
 
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