How big do nearfield speakers need to be?

Thanks!

The monitors are where they can be: about 2.5' from my face and about 2.5' apart. They can't go back farther because there's a wall and they can't come closer because there's a big Tascam there.

The room is about as treated as it's going to be. Foam and wood ceiling, astroturf floor, walls of cardboard, cloth, wood, straw mats, cork, and cinderblock, and full shelves.

For now, I'm sticking with headphones.
 
While headphones don't often prevail, I think that's probably the best choice.

All of that said and done, don't forget that monitors allow something that headphones don't, no matter they're well balanced or not.
Each of your ears can hear both monitors.

You might still get good use out of them for assessing stereo image, identifying cancellation issues, etc, even if your final mix isn't happening on them.
Might sound like clutching at straws but I'm sure Andrush with his almost completely cancelled out intro guitar would add a +1. ;)
 
Whatever you're using to monitor your mixes, the most important thing is always to spend time getting to know them. You should and probably must listen to everydamnthing as often as possible on them. If you only ever hear your own mixes on these speakers, then how do you have any point of reference at all? If you're listening to all your favorite music all day long on your big stereo system and then go strap on these headphones every once in a while to listen to your own stuff, how do you even start to compare?

You can get good results from less than ideal situations. People do. I have. You can. But you have to know what you're working with, and be intimately familiar with the system itself. I don't believe that "reference tracks" is quite enough because our ear/brain/memory just doesn't work that way.

So anyway don't feel bad about using headphones in this situation. We do way we have to do, and I really do think it's your best bet in this case. Steen is technically correct about the crosstalk, but I'm not completely convinced it's as big a deal as most people think. It tends to encourage us to think more carefully about stereo balance - not to make things narrower by panning everything into the middle, but to arrange things so that the same frequency ranges have similar amounts of energy on both sides. That's not a bad thing. It tends to keep us from cranking the wide-panned ear candy up. That's not a bad thing either. We can get in trouble when we start using phase trickery to get superawesome wild stereoness, but that always makes my head feel like it's turning inside out on headphones, and I instinctively avoid it. Plus, there's always the Mono button for a sanity check.

In that vein, there are some pretty sophisticated crosstalk plugins out there now. Some will emulate specific speakers in real(ish) rooms. Basic ones just mix in a delayed version of the opposite channel. I'm not sure it's a whole lot better in practice than just a straight crossmix.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Whatever you're using to monitor your mixes, the most important thing is always to spend time getting to know them. You should and probably must listen to everydamnthing as often as possible on them. If you only ever hear your own mixes on these speakers . . . .
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As I think I've said above, my usual practice has been to check my mixed AIFF recordings on a cheap stereo, then a more expensive stereo, then the car stereo. Our car stereo died about a month ago, though, so until we get a new car (probably in 2020), I'll be limited to the two stereos in the house. But I think we must have a boom box somewhere that I could drag out of mothballs.

I've remixed most of my hundred-plus recordings at least five times - more than a dozen times, a lot of them. Nothing is where it needs to be yet, but I keep creeping closer.

Just got a channel strip, and that might help.
 
Delmont said:
As I think I've said above, my usual practice has been to check my mixed AIFF recordings on a cheap stereo, then a more expensive stereo, then the car stereo.
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Fine, but I think that's the opposite of my point. It's all well and good to check the mixes you make with your headphones on other things, but I'm saying that you should listen to other things on your headphones. When you get to know the headphones and how they are different from other systems, you will start to find yourself going back and forth.

Just got a channel strip, and that might help.
Click to expand...
Lolwut?
 
I'm playing a live mixing game with a couple played instruments and as many MIDI devices as will fit on sliders. I'm much better using fones for that. Use what seems to work best for each thing. If your mixing QUAD, you've only got two speakers, anyway : )
 
garww said:
i'm playing a live mixing game with a couple played instruments and as many midi devices as will fit on sliders. I'm much better using fones for that. Use what seems to work best for each thing. If your mixing quad, you've only got two speakers, anyway : )
Click to expand...

=o]
 
Glancing through this thread a couple of points come up.

1) your room is really small. Why not move the studio elsewhere? You did state you have a house.

2) you said you did "sound treatment"? with foam and cardboard?

Sounds like that would just suck up all your high end, which could accentuate the bass frequencies in the room.why not just remove that?

I've found even in a small room without treatment one can get a good response with low volumes. People say all the time here that they can't mix at night or with neighbors because of the noise. I say bullshit. If you can watch TV, you can mix.
At low volumes right in front of a set of nearfeild's you're hearing more direct than reflected.
Provided you have a decent set, and I wouldn't consider the m audio a decent set, it can be done.

And it's so liberating to be able to take the damn headphones off!
:D
 
Thanks!

The whole house (the Blue Note) is small. The recording gear is in my basement recording space. The rest - living room, kitchen, bedroom, office, bathroom, closets - are bespoke. (I might have fun playing, singing, and mixing in the bedroom, but my wife's votes are automatic tie-breakers.)

I doubt I said "sound treatment," since I don't know what that is. This thread is the first time I've heard it. There's just a bunch of stuff I had on hand that I used to cover most (but not all) of the cinder block walls, cement floor, and overhead joists. I did try to make the left and right match. Anyhow, whatever treatment is, it's not in the budget.

I play the monitors at lively conversation level, but I can always try turning them lower to intimate conversation level. Worth a try!
 
Ah, so I see. She has banished you to the subterranean depths of the dark cold basement. Kind of like gollum. :D

Sound treatment is a broad term to cover anything you're doing to 'control '
sound. Be that taming frequency, noise reduction, reflections, etc.
You mentioned foam, well, all that does is suck up the highs.
 
It also soundproofs the kitchen floor slightly and keeps some of the space heater's heat in.

Good to know about the highs. It's more the lows I seem to be losing, though. I was blaming the 5" speakers, but y'all have schooled me that 5" is plenty if the room is good. (Which,apparently, it isn't.)

Anyhow, mainly using the headphones these days. On we go!
 
Sound treatment isn't sound proofing to contain the music.
Sound treatment helps to control the frequencies, room correction to create a flat response.

The lower the frequency, the hard to control as it ripples like a drop of water. It needs distance.
a drop of water in a small bowl, will ripple and hit the edge of the container.
a drop of water in a pond will have the ripple loose it's energy long before is it reaches the edge.

Treatment, proper treatment, can help with the small container you are in...

Is it important ???
Absolutely important.
You find your mix is boomy, because your lows / midlows, are canceling since the space is small.
They smack into each other and cancel, or change the actual sound so much, you push those frequencies so "you hear them correctly in that room"
But, when taken out of that room, it translates poorly...
So, your in a mixing game, only guessing at what really needs to be done to a track.
Doing this on many tracks, will increase the issue,

Also, you push your speakers hard with incorrect low / midlow levels. So don't turn up too loud.
take a mix you have that sounds good, now keep your head in the center and move forward til almost having your head with each speaker on either side.
I'll bet you get an idea of the lows your actually pushing. There is a huge build between the speakers and the wall even the upper / midhigh frequencies have no time to ripple out...

That said, you can learn to mix on speakers, in that room. It will just never translate properly, until you treat the room.
You will train your ears to hear allowing you to advance in mixing to a point.
When the point comes, you'll want treatment, lol... You'll want good translation.
You can be creative nothing can hold that back. It might discourage creativity if / when the issues show and you let them get to you. But it can't stop you.

Here's a good place I used for treating my room.

Acoustic Panels | Bass Traps | Diffusors | GIK Acoustics



Here's a google search showing video how correct treatment can help.

https://www.google.com/search?q=gik...rceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=gik+acoustics&tbm=vid


Just a little info




There is soo much more to all this, but, it's a start and hopefully I haven't wasted my time or bored you to tears, lol,,,
I'm just a guitar player that got into mixing when I broke my back.
Can't stand since I lost my left leg nerve, so live changed.
Music found another way into my life. it helps me keep sane, lol,,,

Most of all man, Have fun ,,, thats why we do what it takes to have fun...
 
I've listened to that guy in the video, before, and he does pretty well. That diagram with the walls is only valid if you let sound get to the walls.
 
garww said:
I've listened to that guy in the video, before, and he does pretty well. That diagram with the walls is only valid if you let sound get to the walls.
Click to expand...

Walls will always be there even with acoustic treatment. You can't stop sound from bouncing around. You can only tame it.
 
Well ya, one can buy speakers without a mile-wide sweet spot and then pay more to treat that shit. hahaa. I see no reason to let mids and highs think they are freebirds. I have a pic somewhere of my monitors peeking out of the studio recesses. They look like they are sitting in a tall-sided rifle receiver sight
 
Delmont said:
I know! But the rest, I didn't. Thanks!
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lol,, Sorry if it came off sounding wrong, I knew you knew this, lol,,,

I just wanted you to know why things may sound the way they do in translation and to save your speakers from being pushed too much.

We've all been down the road chasing sound, and wanting our mixes to sound how we mix them..,
It's a constant learning process to mix. But once you know a little more about why and what to expect, hopefully you'll keep your creativity strong while you hone your craft of mixing...
Heck, I'm still learning myself, every day ,,, and remind of things I knew but have not considered even when I could have done things that way...

Have a blast man,,,
 
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