Studio Monitors

Twiddler

Twiddler

of the Nurgulated Plupper.
I joined this forum today due to being profoundly unsatisfied by what I made yesterday and listened to earler.

One of the things I have read several times today is that the speakers you use to listen to your work should be really good quality, flat response studio monitors.

Since relocating from the uk I've been using a pair of JVC SP-UXD88s, which sound great in the control room. They didn't sound very good in the old property and I rarely used them there, but now that we have a dedicated control room they've been hanging from the ceiling and doing a good job. Or so I thought...

I can't seem to find any frequency response curves for them online and even though what I produced sounds fantastic in the studio, it sounds pretty awful outside of it. It's so quiet and lifeless.

I've been thinking about upgrading to a pair or KRK Rokits for a while now and should have a budget to do so in a few months, maybe sooner if we sell a few more songs!

There is another pair of speakers in the studio that are somewhat home-made. They are a pair of big wooden speaker cabinets from Russia that a second hand hifi shop had thrown in a skip and were salvaged by one of our chaps. A bass, a mid and a tweeter are in each, cannibalised from old car stereos. The whole thing was put together by another of our chaps, who is sadly no longer with us. These cabs sound pretty bassy and muddy. I only really use them to check what some really big bassy cabs might sound like with our music in them. They would probably work quite well in a small nightclub.

So tell me more about monitoring. Are the JVCs any good? Why do the JVCs now sound great but they didn't when we lived in Devon? Are the Rokits as good as people say or is there something better for a similar price?

There doesn't seem to be a dedicated section to monitoring in the forums so thought I'd post this here. Hope that's ok.
 
4" (100mm) drivers are insufficient on their own to give you accurate lower end response in addition to carrying the burden of also creating almost all the mid range frequencies.

By 'sound good', do you mean the clarity and definition of the output? They *might* at lower volumes, and if correctly positioned / angled in the control room they might be fine for tracking. Mixing entails a lot of subtle details that get lost in most bookshelf speakers, hearing something played back A/B (side by side) would reveal to your ears what that means.

I'm not for spending money for sake of spending money, I only have two lower end (but decent) studio monitors with a mid range $$$ studio sub. They're fine for the money spent, certainly better than PC gaming or most bookshelf speakers.

This is a complex topic and I'll close with "you can't mix what you can't hear". Your current speakers probably aren't as good as you think they are, and are intended for casual music reproduction not actual music production. You have to get the right tools for the job or expect the results to be 'sloppy'. The KRKs are probably a step up, but depending on what style music you produce you may want larger (6.5 or 8") drivers and maybe even a sub like I need for heavier, bass intensive instrumentation. You don't necessarily need $2000 monitors, but getting the cheapest monitors on the market may not be money well spent either.
 
For the money, I don't know that you'll do much better than the Yamaha HS7 or HS8. If I had to go out and buy monitors on a budget, this would be the sweet spot for me between cost and performance.

www.sweetwater.com

Yamaha HS8 8-inch Powered Studio Monitor - Black

120W Powered Studio Monitor with 8" Cone Woofer, 1" Dome Tweeter, and Room Control and High-trim Response Controls (each)
www.sweetwater.com www.sweetwater.com
 
If they sound good now, but didn't before, the room was your problem.

Having speakers that can properly reproduce the sound you are sending it is essential to being able to mix something that will translate to other systems.

Speakers that always sound great are lying to you. You need speakers that will sound awful when you send it an awful sounding signal.

Also, you need to acoustically treat your room, so the room doesn't add its own sound to what you are hearing.

Doing all this on a budget can be challenging and does involve compromise, but it is possible to get good results without investing tens of thousands.
 
Just have a few thoughts.

1) The JVC are consumer stereo speakers.,They’re designed to sound good not accurate. Pretty much they will always make things sound ‘better’

2) The KRK s , while being a ‘studio monitor’ and being very popular, aren’t accurate in my opinion. The Rokit series are low level and I’ve found all of them to be very bass heavy.
3) As mentioned earlier, the Yamaha HS 8 is a good speaker. I’ve side by side compared them with it’s 8 inch KRK competition and the Yamaha was far superior.

Kali Audio Lp6 and Lp 8 are a great speaker as well.
 
My experience is with Event TR8 monitors, and they sound really good to me.
I also bought some cheaper Samson Resolve 80a's, and they were not so good.
My other monitors are Tannoy Reveal 502's, which are surprisingly fairly good, for 5".
My acid test is to play my MP11 piano through them, and see if I hear a grand piano.
Anything less than 5" is going to be dodgy, so start thinking at 8".
I've heard that Rokits are made to have an artificially better low end, so may not be good. Never tried one though.
 
Another neg to the Rockits. I have owned both the G2 5's and 8's. Very hyped in the low end. Not good for mixing IMO. Sold them long ago.
I held on to my Event TR8's until I pulled the trigger on ADAM A7x. The Event's were much more accurate. I have heard great things about the Yammy HS8's from someone I trust.
 
I must admit that while I love my old and trusty monitors, at some point I will need to buy some new ones, and a friend put in some Adams and I really like them, so that will probably be the make for me, at that point.
 
rob aylestone said:
I must admit that while I love my old and trusty monitors, at some point I will need to buy some new ones, and a friend put in some Adams and I really like them, so that will probably be the make for me, at that point.
Click to expand...
I have heard some great things about Adam's budget T7/8V models as well. Seems to be the same high frequency driver as the A7x's.
The A7x definitely changed my perspective. There is truth to what you can hear from a worthy pair of monitors. The definition of midrange became quite apparent. Mixes translated much easier after procurement. It was a challenge with the KRK's way back. And admittedly, my room treatment had progressed over time, so the changes in monitors I have owned and worked with may have been skewed by those progressive changes as well. I suppose you get what you pay for is a big thing there, but room treatment and placement in any given room are also variables to address. Some rooms just work. Some don't...
 
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Pinky said:
4" (100mm) drivers are insufficient on their own to give you accurate lower end response in addition to carrying the burden of also creating almost all the mid range frequencies.

By 'sound good', do you mean the clarity and definition of the output? They *might* at lower volumes, and if correctly positioned / angled in the control room they might be fine for tracking. Mixing entails a lot of subtle details that get lost in most bookshelf speakers, hearing something played back A/B (side by side) would reveal to your ears what that means.

I'm not for spending money for sake of spending money, I only have two lower end (but decent) studio monitors with a mid range $$$ studio sub. They're fine for the money spent, certainly better than PC gaming or most bookshelf speakers.

This is a complex topic and I'll close with "you can't mix what you can't hear". Your current speakers probably aren't as good as you think they are, and are intended for casual music reproduction not actual music production. You have to get the right tools for the job or expect the results to be 'sloppy'. The KRKs are probably a step up, but depending on what style music you produce you may want larger (6.5 or 8") drivers and maybe even a sub like I need for heavier, bass intensive instrumentation. You don't necessarily need $2000 monitors, but getting the cheapest monitors on the market may not be money well spent either.
Click to expand...
Thanks very much for your thoughtful response, very much appreciated. Everything you say here makes complete sense, especially "you can't mix what you can't hear" being almost certainly the main issue.

I don't own a pair of decent studio speakers. The JVCs are as good as it gets. There's a pair of Gales, which are not very good, and a few other things which are also not very good that used to belong to various stereos. There are also the enormous Russian cabinets I described above. As the JVCs are indeed the kind of speakers that are for making audio sound good rather than accurately portraying what is really there, it does make the job of audio engineering more difficult.

Speaker investment really does seem to be the best way forward. Am thinking 8 inches would be the way to go. We should be able to achieve it by the end of the year. These things have to pay for themselves these days. I'll probably want to do a humungous amount of remixing of the things that we've released in the last few years when it happens!

Our people cover a variety of genres, none of them particularly trendy. Progressive rock, art rock, psychedelia, world music, acoustic songs and pieces, nothing that would trouble today's trappers, rappers and other crappers. We do some electronic music as well, but mostly use musical instruments played by humans using their talent, terribly old fashioned idea. ;-)
 
Pinky said:
For the money, I don't know that you'll do much better than the Yamaha HS7 or HS8. If I had to go out and buy monitors on a budget, this would be the sweet spot for me between cost and performance.

www.sweetwater.com

Yamaha HS8 8-inch Powered Studio Monitor - Black

120W Powered Studio Monitor with 8" Cone Woofer, 1" Dome Tweeter, and Room Control and High-trim Response Controls (each)
www.sweetwater.com www.sweetwater.com
Click to expand...
Great recommendation, I'll compile a few and build a budget and then try to make a good decision. I found these as well, which are on offer just now.... hope this link is legal here... https://www.thomann.de/de/jbl_308p_mkii.htm
 
Farview said:
If they sound good now, but didn't before, the room was your problem.

Having speakers that can properly reproduce the sound you are sending it is essential to being able to mix something that will translate to other systems.

Speakers that always sound great are lying to you. You need speakers that will sound awful when you send it an awful sounding signal.

Also, you need to acoustically treat your room, so the room doesn't add its own sound to what you are hearing.

Doing all this on a budget can be challenging and does involve compromise, but it is possible to get good results without investing tens of thousands.
Click to expand...
Oh yes, the acoustics of the old room were definitely dreadful! Improved somewhat with an assortment of remnants, but still not good. It was only one small room, the back bedroom in my old flat.

Nowadays the control room is pretty good. The sound in there is nice and dead. All the walls and ceiling are dampened with carpet, old duvets, packing blankets, horse blankets, sleeping bags and such that make wonderfully irregular shapes. The new room sounds good!

The live room isn't quite so good. Because it used to be the strongroom of a bank before we moved in, trying to even drill a small hole in the wall or ceiling is.... well, forget it. If it took a direct hit from a nuclear missile we'd probably be fine. So, dozens of egg trays held in place with double sided tape, packing blankets, old carpets and rugs have dampened it down a lot and now it doesn't sound too frightful.
 
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RFR said:
Just have a few thoughts.

1) The JVC are consumer stereo speakers.,They’re designed to sound good not accurate. Pretty much they will always make things sound ‘better’

2) The KRK s , while being a ‘studio monitor’ and being very popular, aren’t accurate in my opinion. The Rokit series are low level and I’ve found all of them to be very bass heavy.
3) As mentioned earlier, the Yamaha HS 8 is a good speaker. I’ve side by side compared them with it’s 8 inch KRK competition and the Yamaha was far superior.

Kali Audio Lp6 and Lp 8 are a great speaker as well.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your thought, truly appreciated.

1) Yes, I wholeheartedly concur.
2) I'm beginning to think the KRKs may not be the best option, despite the funky yellowness.
3) That's extremely useful information, thanks! :)
 
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Slouching Raymond said:
My experience is with Event TR8 monitors, and they sound really good to me.
I also bought some cheaper Samson Resolve 80a's, and they were not so good.
My other monitors are Tannoy Reveal 502's, which are surprisingly fairly good, for 5".
My acid test is to play my MP11 piano through them, and see if I hear a grand piano.
Anything less than 5" is going to be dodgy, so start thinking at 8".
I've heard that Rokits are made to have an artificially better low end, so may not be good. Never tried one though.
Click to expand...
Thanks very much, that's very interesting. 8" is sounding like the way forward.

In our old studio in the 1990s we had a pair of Mordaunt Short near fills and a pair of rather directional Tannoys for far fills. Standing at the desk to mix you'd hear mostly the MSs, then when you took big stride straight backwards you'd hear mostly the Tannoys. Goodness knows what model they were, it was 30 years ago by now! We also had a ghastly Panasonic radio cassette thingy for checking how it sounded on something nasty, and some huge cumbersome Peavey Black Widow PA cabs for the other extreme. There was even a pair of bean cans joined with string which had to pulled tight for communication between the live room and control room, although this was mostly a joke and wasn't very effective!
 
jimmys69 said:
Another neg to the Rockits. I have owned both the G2 5's and 8's. Very hyped in the low end. Not good for mixing IMO. Sold them long ago.
I held on to my Event TR8's until I pulled the trigger on ADAM A7x. The Event's were much more accurate. I have heard great things about the Yammy HS8's from someone I trust.
Click to expand...
Thanks Jimmy, that's excellent information. :)
 
jimmys69 said:
I have heard some great things about Adam's budget T7/8V models as well. Seems to be the same high frequency driver as the A7x's.
The A7x definitely changed my perspective. There is truth to what you can hear from a worthy pair of monitors. The definition of midrange became quite apparent. Mixes translated much easier after procurement. It was a challenge with the KRK's way back. And admittedly, my room treatment had progressed over time, so the changes in monitors I have owned and worked with may have been skewed by those progressive changes as well. I suppose you get what you pay for is a big thing there, but room treatment and placement in any given room are also variables to address. Some rooms just work. Some don't...
Click to expand...
More good information! Being an ignoramus who spends 8 days/week in a cultural vaccum, Adam is largely unknown to me and I will need to check him out. Thank you! :)
 
The Adams my friend has were also able to be soffit mounted - and the speaker response can be switched to allow this - This was the studio I built for him - those speakers are really nice.
 

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Very compact - but that was the space he had. The speakers were probably the most difficult part once he'd settled on them. I sat him on the chair and used string to go from his head position to the speaker positions. Then had to project left/right and up/down at 90 degrees from the string and build the frameworks the speakers aim accurately. sorting the timber and then making the panels fit was really hard - in the end, I abandoned the maths, and did it with cardboard so it fitted properly. `None of the walls have 90 degree angles and this was a killer with the calculator.
 
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