Studio monitor(s) not accurate

S

siog

New member
I just mixed an album using my Behringer M40 nearfield monitors and I'm not happy with the results. I know I should have used headphones for a final mix but by mistakes we learn (and I'm lazy!). While sounding almost perfect on the M40s, the CD sounds tinny with way too much top and possibly not enough mid on the headphones and on a home hi-fi system. Bass is okay.

I need to buy a studio monitor(s) that will give me accurate sound (not enhanced) and I have about 250 euro ($300-$350) to spend. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
 
siog said:
I just mixed an album using my Behringer M40 nearfield monitors and I'm not happy with the results. I know I should have used headphones for a final mix but by mistakes we learn (and I'm lazy!). While sounding almost perfect on the M40s, the CD sounds tinny with way too much top and possibly not enough mid on the headphones and on a home hi-fi system. Bass is okay.

I need to buy a studio monitor(s) that will give me accurate sound (not enhanced) and I have about 250 euro ($300-$350) to spend. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
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I use some M-Audio Bx5a Deluxe monitors and the sale price I got them for was lower than your budget stated. KRK's are good/popular as well for that price, but I did a side by side comparison at banjomart and I liked the sound of M-Audio's better. The bass port is in the front on the KRK's so I think it tricks the listener into thinking their mix is fuller/bassier, but I could be wrong. Also, I think the KRK's are more popular due to their recognizable yellow woofer cones.

After doing a few mixdowns and those M-Audio 5 inchers I am regretting getting the 5's and am wishing I;d had save d a couple hundred more (CDN dollars - like USD) and gotten 8's to monitor the low end more accurately without having to go listen on home hifi's and cars as often as I do now during mixdown trials.
 
Well, first off, how's the acoustic treatment in the room where you mix? I hate to say it but that can make as much difference as the speakers--reflections off the walls can cause peaks and nulls in the frequency response which can really fool you about what your mix sound like.

Second, even with the best monitors, you still have to train your ear to know what a mix has to sound like on them to sound good on a variety of systems. You can start off by listening to a commercial mix you like (and in the same style you tend to work) and see how IT sounds on your monitors (and in your room) then emulate that. Second, do a trial mix, burn a CD and play it back everywhere--on your hifi, in your car, on your portable player, etc. Decide what you want to change then do another trial and play that back again. You'll soon train your ears as to how you need things to sound.

Finally, onto speakers. You might try some Yamaha HS80Ms or perhaps the KRK Rokit G2s. Or...if you can stretch your budget another hundred Euros (go on, you know you want to!) the GENELEC 8020BPM is in a different league again--getting into real professional kit.
 
siog said:
I just mixed an album using my Behringer M40 nearfield monitors and I'm not happy with the results. I know I should have used headphones for a final mix but by mistakes we learn (and I'm lazy!). While sounding almost perfect on the M40s, the CD sounds tinny with way too much top and possibly not enough mid on the headphones and on a home hi-fi system. Bass is okay.

I need to buy a studio monitor(s) that will give me accurate sound (not enhanced) and I have about 250 euro ($300-$350) to spend. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
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at that price range all monitors are simply bookshelf speakers with the word 'monitor' added to their name. The Genelecs would be pretty nice but unless you start to spend 1500 bucks and more on a pair, none of them are particularly flat.

The key is wht bobbsy said .... you simply have to learn your monitors and how their mixes translate to other speakers. Once you really learn the monitors well you can mix on anything .... even NS-10's!!!!
 
Thanks very much for your 'sound' advice guys! I know, budget monitors sound budget but a guy has to tailor his cloth accordingly. I just can't afford big bucks at the moment.

My room isn't great either. Decent natural acoustics but two windows which don't help, though it's on a quiet country road. Still, Buddy Holly recorded in a garage with a cricket hidden somewhere in the corner! :guitar:
 
siog said:
Thanks very much for your 'sound' advice guys! I know, budget monitors sound budget but a guy has to tailor his cloth accordingly. I just can't afford big bucks at the moment.

My room isn't great either. Decent natural acoustics but two windows which don't help, though it's on a quiet country road. Still, Buddy Holly recorded in a garage with a cricket hidden somewhere in the corner! :guitar:
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my point is that you'll have some sort of issues with any budget monitors. Until you can spend enough money to get some good ones you're gonna have to learn to compensate for any monitor's colorations anyway so you may as well just learn to do that with the ones you have and save the money.
That's my opinion.
 
You could spend thousands on monitors but if your room is lying to you your mixes will still sound like shit.

You need to take Bobbsy's advice and spend some time/money treating your room. THEN start listening to commercial material in the genre you're working in to get an idea of what your mixes need to sound like.

Bear in mind also that this commercial material will be mastered so you need to compensate for this
 
Jonesey9 said:
You could spend thousands on monitors but if your room is lying to you your mixes will still sound like shit. You need to take Bobbsy's advice and spend some time/money treating your room. THEN start listening to commercial material in the genre you're working in to get an idea of what your mixes need to sound like. Bear in mind also that this commercial material will be mastered so you need to compensate for this
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Thanks but I'm not a complete idiot. I've been listening for a few decades now. ;)
 
I sure did Lt. Bob but it depends how one defines "help". Stating the obvious over and over again and treating a member as a complete gobdaw (Jonesy9) is not what I consider 'help. I did thank all the others who left really helpful comments.

Just because a member isn't sure of something doesn't mean that he/she is a fool.
 
I think sometimes we rely too much on our gear and not on our ears. You can have the best gear in the world and do everything according to the specs and what all the "pros" say but unless you use your ears, you're never going to get a really good mix.I have a fairly good set of studio monitors(Roland DS 90A's/ about $1000.00 for the pair)but I still play some of my favorite songs and mixes through them every now and then to keep my ears calibrated to the different nuances of these particular monitors.You can do this with even less expensive monitors.If you really know the nuances of your gear and really use your ears, you should be able to get the best out of it and hopefully some really nice mixes.:thumbs up:
 
As has already been said, learn your mixing environment. I burn a disc, then listen to it in my truck (pretty good indication of overall sound, but also highlites ESSSS problems, put it on my stereo (big hulking 15" woofers), put it through some smaller bookshelf speakers with an old Sony receiver, and even though my computer 2-1/2 speakers.
I've gotten pretty good at making the mix right based on monitors and headphones, and typically only need to tweek a little bit more after all the checks.
 
It''s worth saying that, even if you spend $20,000 on monitors, you still need to go through a process of learning them. It might not be so dramatic but every system/room combination is a bit different.

On acoustic treatment, until it's done, one trick is to move around the room from time to time. Instead of sitting in the sweet spot between the monitors, get up and go sit on the couch at the other side of the room or just give your wheeled chair a random shove and then close your eyes and listen where ever you end up. It's no substitute for true treatment but by moving you'll at least get different acoustic funnies in each location and hopefully they'll balance out a bit.
 
Yes, there is actually no such thing as perfectly "flat" speakers. Yes, they can test flat within 1dB in an anechoic chamber but the fact of the matter is that nobody is monitoring in an anechoic chamber. I'm pretty sure that if you put those M40's through an FFT test, you'll find that on paper they are, for better or worse, quite "flat" as well. The problem is almost always the listening environment (the room).

The best advice has already been given. Experiment with some acoustical treatment and do some research on the matter. There are a million threads and sites dedicated to this and it can help immensely.

As always, most problems originate in the low to low-mid region. The mid to high range can easily be remedied with foam panels or the like, but if you want to clean up the low end, it's going to take a bit more research. Although, the M40's don't extend farther than 50Hz, so it might be easier than you think.

A couple of tips?

Get four bass traps and put them in the corners. Get some space between the monitors and the wall. If you've got walls on either side of your speakers, put acoustic panels up at the primary reflection points on either side of the listening position. This is easy to visualize as sound reflects off of a wall at 90 degrees from it's angle of incidence.

Hope that helps.

Cheers :)
 
The $800 I spent in room treatment made a much bigger difference in the way my mixes translated than my $1400 monitors, but they are still pretty sweet!:-)
 
In full agreement with Cyparski and Pahtcub.

I used to mix on an old (but good spec) Sony DTS hifi system. w/sub. My mixes usually came out a little harsh. After some time, I bought Edirol MA-15Ds, which gave a very flattering sound, but over-smooth, and with not much detail. My mixes sounded weird, then slowly improved as I adjusted a few settings and compensated for what I identified early on to be a strange 'hole' in the woofer/tweeter crossover.

Then I bought a set of Yamaha HS50ms. Beautifully detailed, tight, focused bass within its range (for a 5" cone) and great imaging... but never felt I could entirely trust them for EQ purposes. They were so detailed that my mixes ended up sounded muddy and had a lack of detail.

Finally got a set of Adam A7x monitors which sounded a lot closer to the Edirols in terms of character, rather than having big differences in the sound, I can hear many smaller differences.

I haven't done much on the Adams yet, but can say that in the end all my best stuff was done on the Edirols because I had learned to pull out more detail in the mids and hi-mids. To tail back the lo-mids a touch and a few other bits. My desk is set into a bay window area and my room has no treatment.

I'm planning to sell my Yamahas and some other bits and buy a pair of HD650 headphones. My room should be treated better, bit if it's not; the headphones take my control room acoustics out of the equation and I have a reliable monitoring solution that I can also take with me :) (I did really like the NS-10-like white woofers though)

If you can't pitch too high money-wise, but do want something reliable and good, I'd say the Sennheiser HD650 phones. There is a newer and more costly version, but I don't think the price difference will justify the benefits. I can safely say, new monitors never improved my mixes. I had to do that through learning whichever speakers I was using at the time and comparing on two earphones, two headphones, my monitors, desktop speakers and my car. Once I've spent a little time with all those, then re-checked on my monitors, I understand their shortfalls and know how stuff should be sounding on my monitors to sound right...
 
yeah ..... HD 650's are awesome ..... I like mine.
If you're going phones, something that sounds pretty similar to the HD 650s are the AudioTecnica ATH-AD700's. I have a pair of those too and they really sound a lot like the 650's for just 100 bucks.
 
Lt. Bob said:
yeah ..... HD 650's are awesome ..... I like mine.
If you're going phones, something that sounds pretty similar to the HD 650s are the AudioTecnica ATH-AD700's. I have a pair of those too and they really sound a lot like the 650's for just 100 bucks.
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Did anyone realize that the tone thread is unlocked?
 
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