No decent monitors - What to do?

T

trag-o-caster

New member
I've been recording on my TASCAM 414 and monitoring with headphones, through a small P.A., and through a boombox. Since I have no proper monitors, I've been doing a mix, and trying it out on these various sources, including the car stereo, and going back and remixing until I get it sounding somewhat acceptable over all of these. I'm not really financially able to run out and buy good monitors yet. Any advice or suggestions? Thanks in advance! Trag.
 
Keep doing what your'e doing! And save for some monitors.
Sam Ash had a sale on decent low to mid level monitors.
I'm goin' over there in a hour and if I see any in your budget (BTW,what is your budget 4 monitors?),I'll relay the info here.
Peace
 
My budget for monitors at the moment is zilch! What would be the absolute cheapest I could get away with? Either way, I still feel obligated to check out my mixes on various sources before deciding on a final mix. A couple times when I thought that I had a good mix, I'd play it over some cheapo mini-blaster and the bottom end would be too much and distorting, although it sounded fine on everything else. Would decent monitors put an end to that, or should I still continue to check on different sources? Thanks, Trag.
 
Having monitors are practically a must. Monitors provide that flat response needed to check your mixes with.
I too also used to use home-speakers and or PA speakers and
after mixdown,I would cross reference my recording on var
players like,cd players,home-system,car stereo etc.and would have totally different sounds in each unit.What I thought sounded good on my home-speakers sound crappy everywhere else. I own a a pair of Event Trias ($450) and
a pair of Tannoy Reveals (got 'em used for $270) and believe me monitors do provide a major difference in hearing your actual recordings.
Perhaps maybe you can rent a pair from a music store,or even check out E-Bay for some deals. In the mean time keep on using your headphones (What Kind?) and cross referencing
your recordings to other equipment until you could adjust for tonal differences for each component to actually match the sound you recorded.
Good Luck!
 
I got a pair of Alesis M1 Actives that I like. There are a bunch of other active monitors out there now in the $500-1000 per pair price range -- Tannoy, Event, Yamaha, bunch of others...

I also used to use ordinary stereo speakers and headphones and the M1 Actives make a huge difference. The detail and the sense of spatialization I can hear now is mind-boggling by comparison.

-AlChuck
 
With a no money dead end, the only thing I would suggest is

1. Get a pair of headphones that are as flat as you can find.

2.Take your mixes to a good studio. Rent an hour to Listen to them on a good set of monitors - write down what you hear.
If you hear to much lows then you'll know to cut at home the lows more and so on.....This way you will learn some of your systems problems and be able to compensate for it to some degree.
 
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