Studio monitors for $12

S8-N

..|.. Part-time Antichrist ..|..
I just spent $12 at Radio Shack (Yuk) to build a 50 foot 1/4" to Phono jack so I could run a line from the "main out" of my mixer to the "tape in" of my home stereo... Lots more accurate than Event 20/20P's...
I can put a reference CD in my CD player and punch the "Tape Monitor" buttom on my equalizer in and out to compare my mix to a pro CD mix...
To be fair... the 20/20's are very accurate as far as the high end goes... but for placing the low end... forget it.

S8-N
 
every one knows the events dont have much in the means of low end , but you should look into the event tria... it comes with a sub woofer for low end... but, i havent heard too much about it , anyone have any expierience with it ?

- eddie -
 
I hear what you're saying about the low-end on the Events, but....
It's more a matter of learning what flat sounds like and making the necessary adjustments. You're never going to have available all the speaker/amp combos your mix might potentially be played through. So give that idea up and learn to correlate what you hear on the 20/20s with your selected playback medium. I just ran a test of this hypothesis. The Mahavishnu Orchestra just released a "Lost Trident Sessions CD" made from an old tape (6/73) re-mastered digitally at 24 bits. I've been listening to this at work pretty much non-stop. On one of the tracks (Track 4; beautiful tune in 13) Billy Cobham twice (@2:14, 2:31) throws in a little Tom lick that seems to drive the cones on my Altec-Lansing ACS-295 computer speakers right to the limit without even the slightest hint of any ugly distortion. The drums just leap right out at you for those fast four beats. Somebody worked <really> hard on that. On the 20/20 pair at home, the passage is noticeably louder than surrounding material but the effect isn't as dramatic.
IMHO, this is just the accuracy I paid for.
 
Really,
I just bourght a pair of the 2020bass, is it with them as well?
Are the Tannoy Active Reveals better monitors?

HAWLK
 
Hey Dobro...
I would gladly do this except that I would have to get up and run into the other room every time I wanted to tweak the mix... That would take awhile... I guess this is the drawback to using your stereo speakers...
I will soon post a new mix using the speakers as an occasional reference point... If my control room was big enough I would bring the suckers in here...
O.K. so no one on the entire site is going to agree with me on this one... But if you mix using 20/20P's... youre gonna end up with some ugly sounding low end surprises... Maybe the problem is amplified by the fact that my instruments are tuned so low... And I am playing slap bass...
I tell ya... I worked 2 or 3 days on a mix and I thought I had it nailed... Then when I burned a CD and listened to it on my stereo... I wanted to throw the bastard out the window... The Events MASK problem sources... They make everything sound SMOOTH and CLEAR when it in fact has MUDDY lows and TEETH SHATTERING upper-mids...
I was comparing my mix side by side to a very recent recording of a similiar band using the same tuning and I thought I had everything EQ'ed pretty close... Then when I compared 'em side by side on my stereo, they weren't even close... It was like a bad joke.. Now I know that I am not going to match the quality of a pro studio but the Events made me think I was close...
And in all fairness Bro. Stawl... We aren't talking about orchestral music here... Were talking nasty, amplified, distorted, noisy, CHAINSAW ROCK... And very few producers today are able to make that kind of music sound good on tape...
And just for the record... The studio that is the working model for my virtual studio, that I compare my mixes to and strive to match... Indigo Ranch studio in L.A. was, come to find out, built in 1973 by The Moody Blues and is chock full of vintage gear... Not the low-rent studio that I thought it was...

enough.
S8-N
 
drstawl's using heartfelt science here - the very best sort. Presumably, the Mahanvishnu album's good, too. Now, Mr S8N, sir. Follow the good doctor's example, and put your theory to the test. Cut some tracks using the home stereo speakers, and see if they sound good on everything you play them on. I'll be waiting and watching the posts.
 
Usually with flat monitors, you should be able to hear everything, but nothing should jump out, assuming it is a good mix. Listen to alot of music through your system before you start using them for recording. Learn how the monitors respond to the different frequencies. Once you know your monitors, you will know what a good mix should sound like.
 
Hey S8-N. I feel for ya man; especially since I did give those Events a thumbs up review. If footprint size in your studio is a problem, I've got a pair of Fishers just a little taller than the Events I'll be glad to trade you for your 20/20s. Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself walking back and forth between the two sets of speakers. I'll even pick up the shipping tab... And as to the Mahavishnu Orchestra; that's a highly electrified jazz fusion band, not the Boston Pops.
You wanna hear some smoking drum mixes, check out these CDs, "The Inner Mounting Flame" and "Birds of Fire", both by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Listen to them on the Events <last>. Billy Cobham at his best. His solos are downright instrumental and inspirational. The rest of the band pulls their weight, too.
Bottom Line: This ain't a Sci-Fi world where we can crawl into each other's heads and experience the organic signal processing that's going on when humanoids mix tracks down. If speakers with a hump in the bass response allow you to create a better mix- then go with it!
 
Well, this is yammering from the cheap seats (really cheap - I don't even have monitors), but the exchange seems to be:

Old hands: monitors speak a different language, man. You gotta learn to *translate*.

S8-N: my final product's in Russian. So why not work in Russian all the way through?
 
S8-N, are you still running your event's through crappy old wire? :)

I have to differ on the low end aspect. 20/20's really have some amazing low end response for a near field monitor. I am not sure what the heck you are expecting from near fields. They are definately not going to sound like your home stereo, or the radio, or a boom box. They are just going to sound accurate to what the original source was. You just are not going to get sub woofer punch out or any near frield monitor without sacrificing sonic accuracy. Now, if you feel more comfortable mixing on a different set of monitors because they deliver the type of sound that pleases you, well, have at it. I am not so retarded to think that you can't get pretty damn good mixes out of home stereo speakers, or cheapy computer speakers. Plenty of people do. But, I have heard your mixes. For how little engineering experience you have, they are damn good. But, they could be a whole lot better too. That will come with experience. I think as you gain more experience, you will learn to appreciate a very accurate near field monitor like the 20/20's. But hey, do what works for you man. If you feel you are getting better mixes using a different monitor, well, take drstawl up on his offer to trade speakers..... :)

Anyway man, soon as I get my internet stuff together again (I am in the process of changing ISP's because I moved) I will download some of your new stuff with the live drums and let you know what I think.

Ed
 
This is all I'm saying...
When I get my mix sounding pretty decent on the 20's... I changeover my playback to the computer speakers... Boston Acoustics with a sub... $120 or so...
For some reason this changeover causes my harddrive to spin for about 45 seconds before I can playback ... Then I listen to my song and the bass is booming, the kickdrum sounds like an 808 and the subwoofer tries to walk across the floor...
Then I bring the bass down a bit, EQ a bit of the ultralow out of the kick and it sounds OK... Then I switch back to the 20's for playback and it sounds exactly the friggin same... like I didn't change anything... Those freq's are so buried that they might as well not even exist....
I think that the main reason for this is that, because my room is so small, I have to sit DIRECTLY in front of the monitors... When I back away from them I can hear a bit more of the lows but the room is so small that I can't get far enough away...

S8-N
 
That 45 second delay is pretty weird. Have you narrowed this down to the SW or the GadgetLabs card? Does it happen in Cool Edit or WaveLab or both? The 8*24 was looking really nice to me until you mentioned that. When I change output routing on the Gina, the results are immediate.
The listening position you describe is exactly how they should be used. I sit close enough to my Events to touch both of them without leaving my seat or even leaning forward. But they still sound pretty nice from the other side of the room, where I use them for Hi-Fi TV speakers.
 
The delay is the software... CEP... I dont use wavelab...
Why is there a delay??? No clue...
In CEP you select the playback for each channel... You can select the channels of the WAVE that you want each track to playback through... Or you can select your computers soundcard... There is a little box that you check to make all tracks playback through the same channel... Then you click OK and the hard disk starts running like it is saving all of the tracks... And that is about how long it takes... Why??? IDONNO
Then when you switch back to the soundcard... it is almost instantaneous... DONNO...

S8-N
 
I might be talking out of my ass here, since I don't know CEP that well, but I do know that it pre-mixes the tracks in the background before actually playing them back.
When you switch the outputs on it, you're effectively telling it to create a new mix for those outs, hence the delay.
 
Well, it depends on the way you look at it. That small delay before playback is allowing you to use 64 tracks + much more RT effects than otherwise possible...
 
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