Two sets of Monitors... at the same time?

carlosguardia

carlosguardia

New member
I've used the same set of nearfields for a few years; Roland DS-90A and they do the trick for me. Among other things, I've been recording a really great album lately and my friend/client had a pair of M-Audio BX8a's. He brought them to the studio so that he could hear the mixes in the same speakers that he already knows and left them here while we´re working. Now I have them set up so I can A/B my work, however, it's happened that I have clients in the studio and when both pairs of monitors are on, everybody hears it louder and they actually sound nice together. Dilema... what implications does hearing with 4 speakers have... many, how about having two sets of tweeters... but if they're pointing at the same sweet spot?
I'd love to hear comments on pro's and con's of listening with two sets of monitors at the same time. BTW, they're equidistant from all the surfaces and point to the same sweet spot.
 
I use two sets of monitors together while tracking drums, so that the level is greater for the other musicians that are playing/recording scratch tracks in the control room. I would never try to mix that way though. The idea is to learn what one set of monitors is telling you. I will switch back and forth between monitors while mixing, but I feel that it would be difficult to get detailed separation with multiple drivers, that are not designed to work with each other. Of course, what works for you is what works for you. :)
 
carlosguardia said:
I've used the same set of nearfields for a few years; Roland DS-90A and they do the trick for me. Among other things, I've been recording a really great album lately and my friend/client had a pair of M-Audio BX8a's. He brought them to the studio so that he could hear the mixes in the same speakers that he already knows and left them here while we´re working. Now I have them set up so I can A/B my work, however, it's happened that I have clients in the studio and when both pairs of monitors are on, everybody hears it louder and they actually sound nice together. Dilema... what implications does hearing with 4 speakers have... many, how about having two sets of tweeters... but if they're pointing at the same sweet spot?
I'd love to hear comments on pro's and con's of listening with two sets of monitors at the same time. BTW, they're equidistant from all the surfaces and point to the same sweet spot.
Click to expand...

For critical mixing, you want to reproduce the variety of speakers that other
people are going to be listening to your music through,
this means one pair of speakers at a time.
 
The fundamental problem with using more than one pair of speakers at a time is phase alignment. Part of that will be due to small differences in arrival times. The result is comb filtering. And that assumes identical speakers. Different speakers have inherently different phase response, so it's almost certain some frequencies will always be out of phase when using two or more types at a time. Making it louder is just not a simple matter of adding more speakers.
 
carlosguardia said:
I've used the same set of nearfields for a few years; Roland DS-90A and they do the trick for me. Among other things, I've been recording a really great album lately and my friend/client had a pair of M-Audio BX8a's. He brought them to the studio so that he could hear the mixes in the same speakers that he already knows and left them here while we´re working. Now I have them set up so I can A/B my work, however, it's happened that I have clients in the studio and when both pairs of monitors are on, everybody hears it louder and they actually sound nice together. Dilema... what implications does hearing with 4 speakers have... many, how about having two sets of tweeters... but if they're pointing at the same sweet spot?
I'd love to hear comments on pro's and con's of listening with two sets of monitors at the same time. BTW, they're equidistant from all the surfaces and point to the same sweet spot.
Click to expand...

Careful, louder always sounds better initially.
 
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