What do old tannoy monitors sound like

Mixes with midrange that's cloudy or not clear were most likely done on speakers that had a midrange peak or lacked low and/or high frequency extension. That's because you naturally compensate for the deficiencies of the speakers you're using. So the absolute last thing you should do if you want midrange clarity in your mixes is use speakers with a pronounced midrange.
 
rob aylestone said:
I just cannot relate to any of this. All this stuff is so skewed from anything I'd call quality, I'm lost.

If you are into music for video or movies, or want to do aby kind of more than stereo, then people like Dolby lay down very specific criteria for monitoring systems, and these rooms always sound neutral, flat and really, really capable of accuracy and truthful reproduction.

I work a lot with show music, classical music and choral stuff and if you record somebody with an antique instrument, or something really special, your recording really must sound realistic. The big movie studios know their carefully crafted and balanced mixes get played back in certified movie theatres and cinemas, but also get streamed and listened to on all kinds of devices. They spend a fortune recording things huge numbers of listeners never even notice. I simply don;t recognise this muddy mids thing we're talking about here. If the mid range is muddy and indistinct, which is what I think you mean, then your mix put too much in the mids where they all fought with each other.

Theres another thing - tired ears. Full range, truthful and neutral speakers allow longer exposure before you start to get tired and lose acuity. Small speakers can be more tiring. I hate the small Genelecs that are so common in OB trucks. A pair of them, close in, sound pretty good, but after a few hours, your ears have got used to the way they sound and you start to make less good decisions.

The Quad electrostatics were truly amazing sounding speakers - brilliant for classical and choral music. You really felt like you were in the room, but they were impossible to use with pop music, or even jazz with a double bass - they'd fart and crack horribly.

I found a couple of old recordings, made on NS10s, and in fairness, they've not actually made the recording strange that I can tell, but the tracks probably had very little bottom end anyway.

Panax said

Full frequencies aren't accurate? Surely that's reversed. You can put a bass truthful speaker system on a flute, or something that struggles below 60Hz - but how about a 5 string bass twanging the open B - what would the bandwidth limited speaker do? Try to reproduce the note it can't? Can you imagine how the flute would sound with a dinky driver doing it's best to manage that B, and do the flute at the same time. I struggle with subs in a recording situation. I know many people add a sub, but despite not being able to localise bass, I suspect most people do detect it is coming from a different place in the room.
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oh i see what your saying i guess i meant that modern full range speakers sometimes have this scooped mid thing going on with excsessive high screach and too much bottom end and it kind of drowns out the more critical areas like the midrange.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Mixes with midrange that's cloudy or not clear were most likely done on speakers that had a midrange peak or lacked low and/or high frequency extension. That's because you naturally compensate for the deficiencies of the speakers you're using. So the absolute last thing you should do if you want midrange clarity in your mixes is use speakers with a pronounced midrange.
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what? that makes no sense to me at all what are you talking about
 
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rob aylestone said:
I just cannot relate to any of this. All this stuff is so skewed from anything I'd call quality, I'm lost.

If you are into music for video or movies, or want to do aby kind of more than stereo, then people like Dolby lay down very specific criteria for monitoring systems, and these rooms always sound neutral, flat and really, really capable of accuracy and truthful reproduction.

I work a lot with show music, classical music and choral stuff and if you record somebody with an antique instrument, or something really special, your recording really must sound realistic. The big movie studios know their carefully crafted and balanced mixes get played back in certified movie theatres and cinemas, but also get streamed and listened to on all kinds of devices. They spend a fortune recording things huge numbers of listeners never even notice. I simply don;t recognise this muddy mids thing we're talking about here. If the mid range is muddy and indistinct, which is what I think you mean, then your mix put too much in the mids where they all fought with each other.

Theres another thing - tired ears. Full range, truthful and neutral speakers allow longer exposure before you start to get tired and lose acuity. Small speakers can be more tiring. I hate the small Genelecs that are so common in OB trucks. A pair of them, close in, sound pretty good, but after a few hours, your ears have got used to the way they sound and you start to make less good decisions.

The Quad electrostatics were truly amazing sounding speakers - brilliant for classical and choral music. You really felt like you were in the room, but they were impossible to use with pop music, or even jazz with a double bass - they'd fart and crack horribly.

I found a couple of old recordings, made on NS10s, and in fairness, they've not actually made the recording strange that I can tell, but the tracks probably had very little bottom end anyway.

Panax said

Full frequencies aren't accurate? Surely that's reversed. You can put a bass truthful speaker system on a flute, or something that struggles below 60Hz - but how about a 5 string bass twanging the open B - what would the bandwidth limited speaker do? Try to reproduce the note it can't? Can you imagine how the flute would sound with a dinky driver doing it's best to manage that B, and do the flute at the same time. I struggle with subs in a recording situation. I know many people add a sub, but despite not being able to localise bass, I suspect most people do detect it is coming from a different place in the room.
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oh btw rob i dont know how open you are to headphones for mixing but I've heard someone whos used tannoys (cant remember the model i think dual concentric) rave about sony mdr7561 headphones saying they sound really similar i dont know how true that really is but ,
they have that pin sharp sound that ecc83 was talking about and they have a very nice airy but focused sound to them snare drums sound really nice on them in particular for just casual listening.
andrew scheps mixes on them
 
panax_27 said:
what? that makes no sense to me at all what are you talking about
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The frequency balance of your mix will tend to be the opposite of the frequency response of your speakers. If your speakers have a peak at 2 kHz, you'll tend to turn down that range relative to the rest of the spectrum.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
The frequency balance of your mix will tend to be the opposite of the frequency response of your speakers. If your speakers have a peak at 2 kHz, you'll tend to turn down that range relative to the rest of the spectrum.
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oh yeah apologies i misunderstood you i completely 100 percent agree with you on that
 
Exactly the same thing applies to headphones, and we’ve had a lot of topics here. Ignoring the important stereo consequences, good headphones can do the job, with practice. My favourite in ears, that I happily used on stage, are not good for mixing. I chose them for clarity in the bass, but mixing with them produces bass that doesn’t sit well on speakers. I don’t know why.
 
It is certainly true that the guitar/amp/speaker is a 'system' that produces a sound quality to the players taste. That is NOT the case for monitors. They are 'tools' and must stand alone and not contribute to the mix.
Would you argue that although you would use a highly accurate digital vernier to check a part on 2023 Beamer you would use a 1945 carpenters wooden folding rule on a pre war Jag?

Subs can be an issue, it is difficult and expensive to make a speaker that can produce 110dB at 30Hz without some distortion and so those harmonics are going to call attention to themselves.

There can be no such thing as "reference grade" headphones because the multiple folds in people's ears are as unique as their fingerprints and modify the sound enormously. Good article in SoS about this this month.

Dave.
 
panax_27 said:
oh btw rob i dont know how open you aAre you re to headphones for mixing but I've heard someone whos used tannoys (cant remember the model i think dual concentric) rave about sony mdr7561 headphones saying they sound really similar i dont know how true that really is but ,
they have that pin sharp sound that ecc83 was talking about and they have a very nice airy but focused sound to them snare drums sound really nice on them in particular for just casual listening.
andrew scheps mixes on them
Click to expand...
Are you talking about MDR7506s? I have a pair, and yes, they are great for hearing details. I've been able to hear the self noise of different mics with them. Some years back, a user name CatMalone was trying to determine where all his background noise was coming from, and with the Sonys, you could really pick up stuff.

However, when I tried mixing on them, things come out dull, because I tend to do cuts in the upper mids, and I don't hear the bass very well so I upped the bass. AKG 240s are much better balanced overall. I also have HD280s and they are the exact opposite of the Sonys. Lots of bass, but they don't have the mids and highs. The differences are not even CLOSE to being subtle. They are huge!

OF course the point is that I use all three, depending on what I'm listening for.
 
panax_27 said:
oh btw rob i dont know how open you are to headphones for mixing but I've heard someone whos used tannoys (cant remember the model i think dual concentric) rave about sony mdr7561 headphones saying they sound really similar i dont know how true that really is but ,
they have that pin sharp sound that ecc83 was talking about and they have a very nice airy but focused sound to them snare drums sound really nice on them in particular for just casual listening.
andrew scheps mixes on them
Click to expand...

To my ears, Sennheiser HD600s sound close enough to the Tannoys to allow me to make similar mixing decisions on either. The Sony 7506s have a reputation for sounding very bright - some people like them but they don't sound like Tannoys.
 
TalismanRich said:
Are you talking about MDR7506s? I have a pair, and yes, they are great for hearing details. I've been able to hear the self noise of different mics with them. Some years back, a user name CatMalone was trying to determine where all his background noise was coming from, and with the Sonys, you could really pick up stuff.

However, when I tried mixing on them, things come out dull, because I tend to do cuts in the upper mids, and I don't hear the bass very well so I upped the bass. AKG 240s are much better balanced overall. I also have HD280s and they are the exact opposite of the Sonys. Lots of bass, but they don't have the mids and highs. The differences are not even CLOSE to being subtle. They are huge!

OF course the point is that I use all three, depending on what I'm listening for.
Click to expand...
TalismanRich said:
Are you talking about MDR7506s? I have a pair, and yes, they are great for hearing details. I've been able to hear the self noise of different mics with them. Some years back, a user name CatMalone was trying to determine where all his background noise was coming from, and with the Sonys, you could really pick up stuff.

However, when I tried mixing on them, things come out dull, because I tend to do cuts in the upper mids, and I don't hear the bass very well so I upped the bass. AKG 240s are much better balanced overall. I also have HD280s and they are the exact opposite of the Sonys. Lots of bass, but they don't have the mids and highs. The differences are not even CLOSE to being subtle. They are huge!

OF course the point is that I use all three, depending on what I'm listening for.
Click to expand...
yeah sorry haha i meant sony 7506... yeah there a little bright in the upper mids but i heard tannoys are a little bright too?
and the mark 1 akg 240 black and gold right? i have them too those are interesting have you ever mixed using those yet?
 
I usually listen to the mixes on the AKGs. I have more faith in the overall balance on those than the Sonys or Sennheisers.

However, I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS do my mixing on my JBL monitors. I have both 305s and 308s. The 305s are easier to get sounding nice, but they seem to lose the bottom 2/3 octave of bass guitar which is where a lot of my bass guitar work lives. Neither I nor my bassist friend plays a bright plinky bass style. Not slap or anything. So I found out when I got the bass seemingly right on the 305s they were way too strong on the 308s and other speakers. This is in spite of the fact that JBL says that the -3dB point for the 305s is 49Hz.

So now I mainly use the 308s for mixing, and then I check them out on the stereo upstairs with the Vandersteens. I'm blessed, I have the Vandys, a 5.1 Polk Audio setup, an old pair of IMF transmission line TLS 50s that will actually go down to about 28Hz and up to 22kHz (which I, of course, can no longer hear). If I can't get a consensus on how something sounds through that lot, I'm completely screwed up.
 
Unfortunately we all have to deal with what we’ve got.

Not many of us can afford 10k and up for monitors. And even if we can, how many have the ability to justify the purchase to our wives. :-)

And who has a professional correctly treated room??
 
jamesperrett said:
To my ears, Sennheiser HD600s sound close enough to the Tannoys to allow me to make similar mixing decisions on either. The Sony 7506s have a reputation for sounding very bright - some people like them but they don't sound like Tannoys.
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which tannoys do they sound close to ?
 
I suppose the reality for all of us is that we do most of our work in one space - and experience bends the brain so we learn how our sound translates to other people's systems? I read Rich's comments on bass comparing with two speakers? Maybe this is the same sort of thing that we got hung up on - the mega speakers compared to limited bandwidth ones - you just select what works. Having one pair of headphones and one pair of speakers probably fails for people who record different styles. If you are playing clean, and perhaps a C on the low B string - any distortion needs to be evident, and reasonable volume - or everything won't get. Maybe we should all do more than just one speaker or headphone.
 
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