Best Speakers/Monitors From A Mixer?

[ecc83]

The audibility of "absolute phase" has been debated since the dawn of hi fi. No one has yet demonstrated that it matters a fig.
The RELATIVE phase* of cones and signals is of course important.

*Properly called "polarity" of course.

Dave.

 

[ecc83]

"have got a level metre. I needed this to check our drum kit wasn’t dangerously loud without ear protection! I don’t know if that would be any use."

I am sure it will Gareth. Ideally you want an SPL meter with a C weighting. If yours is fixed it is probably the vastly more common A weighting but it will serve I am sure. The fact is, if you look up "Calibrating monitor speakers" on the net you will find lots of confusing and different processes.
IMHO what is most important is that you balance your tracks at a consistent sound level day to day, regardless of genre or how you are feeling at the time (e.g. had a bit too much "pop" the night before!)

The general recommended SPL is 83-85dB but that is a bit loud in a domestic setting. For example, a 50" FSTV would probably be at its volume limit at 85dB (at one mtr) and starting to distort. You will probably find that 70-75dB is more acceptable and quite loud enough. You would therefore set your monitors to produce 75dBC for pink noise reading -20dBFS on your DAW. Of course there are a lot of controls 'in the way' of that setting but we can cover that later.

Half midnight here, of to me pit.

Dave.

 

[stingspunk]

I went the JBL 308 route. A friend has a pair of older Mackie 824s. Come straight out of the interface into the back of the speaker. With a powered monitor, no extra mixer or stuff is needed.

With monitors, I find the best thing to do is to go listen to various ones, and try to narrow things down to 2 or 3 models. Looking at a spec sheet is meaningless for the most part.

JBL is the best value in monitors, including a couple different sizes -- cheap for the quality.

Yamaha is slightly more expensive and with more detail -- as a medium price standard.

And then over that price you get better, but room treatment has to come first or at the same time, hence, expensive.

Room treatment is the overlooked critical variable.

 

[Joseph Hanna]

JBL is the best value in monitors, including a couple different sizes -- cheap for the quality.

Yamaha is slightly more expensive and with more detail -- as a medium price standard.

And then over that price you get better, but room treatment has to come first or at the same time, hence, expensive.

Room treatment is the overlooked critical variable.

I've said this often. The critical chain in recording is something to the effect, and in order of;

1) the player, 2) the room, and 3) the instrument. All else including mic's, speakers, compressors, DAW's, and what-have-you, falls far, far behind. Any decent brand of currently available consumer and or prosumer studio monitors will utterly and absolutely shine in a great room. Conversely, the absolute best and most costly monitor will completely and Titanically fail in a miserable space (room). Fix the room, to the best of one's ability and budget, and the rest will follow.

 

[ecc83]

There is a debate about some of this elsewhere. Lot of opinions but the general idea most often expressed is...

Get THE best, most accurate monitors you can afford FIRST. Then treat the room if necessary, some of us live in rooms with lots of squishy stuff in them already. The principle being that you don't want to modify a room to correct speaker deficiencies. V. V.

Of course! IF your room is bare brick and a solid floor get something in it to start with!

Dave.

 

[Gareth Williams]

If OP is unfamilair with extension cords, then phase and polarity are going to be the least of their problems.

Yeah, for sure, I've never heard of phase polarity! I will be learning many new things when setting this up. That's for sure! About the extension cords Gecko, do they do them with a right angle like jack leads? That would be a good idea even is the cords are long enough anyway. Otherwise the speakers will have to be miles from the wall! Anyway, I will Google it and see what I find. Thanks again.

 

[Farview]

First, you don't want the monitors against the wall, it will exaggerate the bass response.

An extention cord is used to extend the power cable that comes with the speaker. It is a power cable with a male wall plug on ones side and a female wall socket on the other.

 

[TalismanRich]

All the speakers you have looked at have standard IEC power cords. You can buy IEC power cords that are 5 or 10M long. You can get IEC extension cords as well. Just look on Amazon for something like this. They run about $10 or so. And yes, you can buy right angle power cords as well.

 

[Joseph Hanna]

There is a debate about some of this elsewhere. Lot of opinions but the general idea most often expressed is...

Get THE best, most accurate monitors you can afford FIRST. Then treat the room if necessary, some of us live in rooms with lots of squishy stuff in them already. The principle being that you don't want to modify a room to correct speaker deficiencies. V. V.

Of course! IF your room is bare brick and a solid floor get something in it to start with!

Dave.

Yea Dave, I certainly agree that one should get the very best monitors that also comfortably fit their budget. I will however continue my mantra that a good room trumps a good pair of monitors virtually always, and honestly by a long shot. With respect, I'm gonna strongly disagree that one doesn't want to correct a room to correct speaker deficiencies. You correct the room period. Squishy stuff in a room is absolutely as likely, even perhaps more so, than bare brick and solid floor to cause hapless, hopeless, and misleading recording and mixing environments. The same scenario often arises when discussions of microphones pop up. I'll take a $150.00 microphone in the "A" room at Oceanway infinitely over a Neumann U87 ai in a bad room. The absolute fact is a U87 in a crappy room is gonna sound...crappy. The same juxtaposed scenario holds true with monitors. A pair of high-end Adam's in a crappy room is gonna sound....crappy. When constructing a recording/mixing environment, even if it's a bedroom or a corner in the basement, the first fundamental step, before anything else, is to access the room and address problems as best as possible. I understand many here can't change the aesthetics of a room significantly and for all sorts of reasons, and many have limited budgets but from a sonic's versus budget perspective, I'd submit the room is equally important if not more so.

I guess the great news here is addressing room anomalies doesn't have to be expensive, it just has to be acknowledged and fundamentally understood. There are gobs of internet sites dedicated to the home recording enthusiast as to inexpensive solutions and many are Saturday afternoon DIY with materials that can be obtained at the local hardware store. I do understand many are initially slow to come to the realization of just how massive a component a room is in an audio signal chain. for both recording and listening. The truth is, however, sonically the room is second only to the artist.

 

[ecc83]

I bow to your experience and vast resources Joseph but the concept does somewhat fly in the face of the 'Nearfield Monitoring' principle.

Most folks here at HOME Recording have to live with much smaller rooms than are ideal and nearfields are the best solution with a bit of treatment for early reflection points to sharpen up the stereo image. The main problem with small rooms is of course bass but there is rarely enough room (or cash!) to get the amount of trapping in there to make a significant difference. Plus, most hobby recordist's rooms have to be dual use at least!

The 'fashion' these days is for DSP correction but the top men in the field will tell you it can only be a 'polish' on a very good monitor. You cannot straighten the back leg of a dog with EQ, never could.

Dave.

 

[Joseph Hanna]

I bow to your experience and vast resources Joseph but the concept does somewhat fly in the face of the 'Nearfield Monitoring' principle.

Most folks here at HOME Recording have to live with much smaller rooms than are ideal and nearfields are the best solution with a bit of treatment for early reflection points to sharpen up the stereo image. The main problem with small rooms is of course bass but there is rarely enough room (or cash!) to get the amount of trapping in there to make a significant difference. Plus, most hobby recordist's rooms have to be dual use at least!

The 'fashion' these days is for DSP correction but the top men in the field will tell you it can only be a 'polish' on a very good monitor. You cannot straighten the back leg of a dog with EQ, never could.

Dave.

Yep, Dave, I agree with this. I do understand the idea of small rooms, limited budgets, and perhaps a significant other objecting to drastic changes in the aesthetics of a particular area of the house I'm also familiar with various DSP correction software and monitors onboard correction. I do know Dolby Labs, at least here in town, offers a pretty comprehensive room eq'ing service and I wanna say it was pretty affordable. All of the Audio Bays at work were constructed pretty much from the ground up addressing room treatment. No floating floors and ceilings but good nonetheless. We still however have Dolby in once a year to recalibrate. The one caveat is a decent stereo graphic EQ is needed.

Either which way my proffer is that a) the room itself is very important b) it costs nothing to research and make an attempt to identify problems c) it can be improved for a minimum expenditure.

 

[ecc83]

"Either which way my proffer is that a) the room itself is very important b) it costs nothing to research and make an attempt to identify problems c) it can be improved for a minimum expenditure."

I do not disagree with that but it is a general engineering principle that you START with the best system you can afford before you try to improve it.

Dave.

 

[Joseph Hanna]

"Either which way my proffer is that a) the room itself is very important b) it costs nothing to research and make an attempt to identify problems c) it can be improved for a minimum expenditure."

I do not disagree with that but it is a general engineering principle that you START with the best system you can afford before you try to improve it.

Dave.

Not to be a contrarian cause I tell ya at times I certainly can be The best system one can afford starts, embryonically, with budgeting for the room. Almost everyone who has ever built a great home recording/mixing environment will tell you, sooner or later, they realized the room was the primary player. Virtually everything in the signal chain will fail, at some level, past the point of a fundamentally bad sonic environment. One could plop a pair of Hedd's in a bad room and unfortunately, the Hedd's wouldn't and couldn't outperform a pair of Mackie's. It'd be a Titanic waste of money. Nearfield or not. As I mentioned earlier there just isn't enough money one can invest in a microphone locker that'll outrun a room full of problems. Again a waste of money.

I'll leave things at that before we start chasing our tails, but I do absolutely believe, especially for those fairly new to recording and mixing, the room, as a fundamental sound source is far far more important than many realize.

 

[ecc83]

Not trying to have the last word but the monitors are the reference point and the better they are to start with the easier and quicker the room will get sorted.

I have been interested in hi fi reproduction for over 50 years. I devoured periodicals like Hi-Fi News* Wireless World and Studio Sound. These mags reviewed hundred of extremely good loudspeakers IN DOMESTIC SURROUNDINGS and there was never any mention of cu feet of rockwool!

So, as really old fart I see this insistence on extensive room treatment as a very recent 'fashion'.

*Before the beardy,tweaky subjectivists took it over.

Dave.

 

[Joseph Hanna]

So, as really old fart I see this insistence on extensive room treatment as a very recent 'fashion'.



Dave.

We're just gonna have to agree to heartily disagree I've been in far too many great rooms to consider it a "recent fashion". And, as a side note, I've been at the audio/mixing/production game since 1969. You're in good company with another very old fart

 

[rob aylestone]

If you look at the picture of my studio - to the right behind the monitor is a floor to ceiling foam strip. That was where the wall used to be, and I had turned the recording room into green screen area for some video work in covid. I took the wall and the dividing window away and the foam - which of course doesn't really do much for the acoustics is there simply because the walls were a mess where I joined the two room within rooms into just one. The foam just hides the 'bodges'. My monitor speakers are now 5m from the far wall, with about the same, maybe a bit less behind me - and they sound so much nicer, and the room doesn't need the old bass traps I had. All I have added is a rockwool filled panel 1.5m x 60cm above where the keyboard is, as the angle on the desk made a weird sort of reflection that messed up the stereo imaging. The panel on the ceiling fixed it. I've never known anybody do this before, but this way around is so much better than spinning the gear through 180 degrees and having the speakers at the end.

 

[ecc83]

We're just gonna have to agree to heartily disagree I've been in far too many great rooms to consider it a "recent fashion". And, as a side note, I've been at the audio/mixing/production game since 1969. You're in good company with another very old fart

Your last statement makes the point. YOU were in the Big Side of studio audio. This forum is for home bods and what can be at Abbey Road cannot be done in a suburban bedroom. Best then IMHO for the tyro to buy the best monitor they can get and tweak the room for best stereo imaging. Then of course, very few people here will have the luxury of a separate recording space and a control room. They each have different acoustic criteria.

Dave.

 

[Joseph Hanna]

Your last statement makes the point. YOU were in the Big Side of studio audio. This forum is for home bods and what can be at Abbey Road cannot be done in a suburban bedroom. Best then IMHO for the tyro to buy the best monitor they can get and tweak the room for best stereo imaging. Then of course, very few people here will have the luxury of a separate recording space and a control room. They each have different acoustic criteria.

Dave.

........... Yep.

 

[ecc83]

What are those monitors please Rob?

Dave.

 

[rob aylestone]

Celestion DL8 MKII Dave - The Celestion factory was in Ipswich in the 80's - I went on a training course, and came home with them. I'd have real trouble swapping them. I think I paid £450 or thereabouts as a 'trade' price - no idea what that would equate to nowadays - they're ancient!