Ok, my room is 4x2m and 2.5m high, not great but fairly dead considering. There are shelves of books and these pick up the rebound a bit. I am also sat about 1 m away from the a7's in a triangle(they are also 1m apart) and not too near corners. I have heard if you get close the effects of the room are not as much. Aside the bass, I feel the high end is lovely smooth, probably something to do with the ribbon tweeters, however, again not great in translating a mix, as I am missing a lot of the harsh piercing top end problems which my 604s happily play for me, and they are by no means neutral, anyone that knows of B&W speakers they will know they are coloured, so I would hate to hear my recordings on something of flat response such as Yamaha nt10's. As I am quite new to home/project studio recording, I would believe that the reason I get so much top and bottom in a mix is lack of experience, not because of the monitors but are there monitors out there that translate better, I am also considering the yamaha hs80's, anyone any views on these?
This is a very educational post which I believe uncovers some of the translation problems you're having, and I think emphasizes the importance of your making sure you're hearing the monitors more than you're hearing the room.
Bigtoe is absolutely right; there's no substitute for practice, practice, practice, with an emphasis on learning your monitors and how to translate them. And you don't need (in fact, will probably never get with those dimensions) a "pro-sounding" room to do so. It can be done with what you have, but your situation is definitely going to make the job much harder.
As I see it (IMHO only), you have two major obstacles in front of you right now. One is the 2m room dimension, which is a tight squeeze. The second is your current ear training and preferences and their definition of flat vs. colored monitors.
As to the room dimension, there's nothing you can do about that without moving to another room or demolishing a wall
. But what you can do - if you have not already done so - is to set your monitor triangle up along one of the short 2m walls so that the long distance of the room is behind your back. If you're set up with your back against the rear wall. that will play havoc for sure with your monitor response, regardless of how close you are to your monitors. (The idea that if your closer to your monitors, the room will make less of a difference is only half true, at best. Bass modes will occur where they want to occur based upon the room, pretty much regardless of how close or how far you are from your monitors.) And if you can, try to keep your head position away from the center of the room. Ideally if you can have your seat about 1.5m from the wall behind the monitors (with the monitors themselves about a half meter or so from that wall), that should be much better than dead center.
The second thing is that - based upon what you said in that post, anyway - is that you are used to thinking of a speaker with a midrange emphasis as "flat". The 604s are an excellent high end loudspeaker, you are right, but they do have their character (as do all loudspeakers). As a 3-way with a massive 7" midrange and a dome tweeter known to be a bit bright (B&W is kind of famous for bright high end), and a low end that goes down to 34Hz, but with a full 6dB drop, it's not much of a surprise that the A7s are giving you trouble in direct translation, as they have a rather different character. They are actually quite flatter in the mids and highs than the 604s, and tighter in the bass, though not as extended (47Hz +/-3dB).
A tip-off was your reference to the NS10s as "flat". They are about as far from true flat as one can get, with a 5dB bump in the upper mids, high end that can go harsh quite quickly, and a bass so anemic as to make the A7s sound virtually subwoofer-ish in comparison. While it would be quite wrong for me to compare the fine 604s with the NS10s, the NS10s are kind of a cartoonish-overemphasized version of the coloration characteristics present in more limited quantities on the 604s. As such, to paraphrase of the old addage, "If you can get it to sound good on the NS10s, it'll probably sound good on the 604s". Put another way, they will have a much shorter translation path for you than a much flatter speaker like an A7 or a KRK 8 or
a Tannoy Reveal will have, especially since that is what your ears are used to.
With that in mind, your question about the HSM-80s is appropriate. The 80s will have a bit lower bass response than the NS10s, though at +/-10dB, they are pretty sloppy down there. But it will be much closer to the kind of bass you're getting out of the 604s than the tighter response of the A7s. The HSM-80s are not NS10s (which is probably the kindest thing I could say about any loudspeaker
), but they are in a similar class. If, after arranging your room as best a you can, you simply find that translating something like the A7 to what you are used to is too difficult (and there's no crime in that, everybody's ears are different), then yeah, maybe something like the HSM-80 may fit your needs better.
IMHO, YMMV, etc.
G.
