Event 20/20s bass light?

P

PhiloBeddoe

New member
I've been mixing on passive Event 20/20 monitors powered by a Hafler TA1600 power amp in a room that's pretty heavily treated acoustically and my mixes always turn out very bass heavy and muddy. I really feel like I'm mixing blind down below 120 Hz or so. As a result I feel I'm overcompensating by cutting a ridiculous amount of low end out in order to get something that's clear.

I have this suspicion that these monitors are a little light in the low end and perhaps too flattering in the high mids and have also found a few reviews mentioning this.

I just ran Ethan Winer's test tone files and the results are attached here. Everything below 100Hz is noticeably lower, but I don't know if this is normal or not.

Has anyone had a similar experience? I'm not experienced enough to be sure that the monitors are the problem, but it's an interesting coincidence at least.

Should I consider new monitors, maybe Mackie HR824s or something?

Many thanks
 

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  • RoomResponse.pdf
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I use the active version of the Event 20/20's. I generally find they don't reproduce well below 50Hz or so (not sure any system with 8" speakers and no subwoofer is going to). As a result, I generally use a roll-off at around 40Hz. Seems to work OK for me, but I imagine the the results might be different depending on the style of music.

Also, mud is usually in the 300Hz range. So I wouldn't attribute the muddiness to the speakers. Try a cut around 300 for the mud.
 
Thanks for the response. I do roll everything off below 50Hz and high pass everything but bass guitar and kick drum at around 100Hz.

A few reviews I've read seem to prefer the actives to the passives.

I agree that mud region lies higher in the spectrum. I guess I meant boominess. The problems seem to get better with big cuts at 100Hz and below, but since I can't judge what is going on down there I tend to have to cut so much that everything sounds harsh to me in the studios in order to translate well to other systems. It really makes for an unpleasant mixing experience.

I'm not necessarily blaming the monitors, but I'm kind of at wits end with this and just can't figure it out. The idea of having monitors that sound clearer to me in the low end is interesting, but maybe not achievable.
 
Those test results are pretty bad. You have 20db spikes in the low end response. That is why you can't monitor the bass properly. You need to do some adjustments to the room.

What are the dimensions and what have you done to improve it?
 
That's pretty typical of an untreated space. Some of the things you can potentially help a bit with careful seating placement and using the speaker to front and side wall distances to allow the SBIR to compensate a bit.

Other than that, it's a matter of finding out which nulls are coming from where and dealing with them via bass absorbtion.

Bryan
 
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