Bedroom project studio guy wants to make the move to monitors (from comp. speakers)

[M|\tt]

Hello!

I've got just about everything else I need in my Power Mac G5 bedroom studio except for monitors (speakers). I have been using some dumby JBL Creature II computer speakers and want something with more truth! I have the money, and was thinking about a pair of Genelec 8030A's based on all of the good reviews I have read about them. It's kind of a nice jump in quality, I know, but I figure that If I am going to do it, I should do it proper! Anyway, I have done most of my stuff 'in the box' with MIDI and virtual instruments and such. The only acoustical recording has been vocals. Suffice to say, I never gave the acoustics of my bedroom much thought. My desk is actually a huge dining room table in the corner of my bedroom with most of my stuff on it. How big of a deal is it going to be with my monitors, on the desk of course, not positioned symetrically in my room due to this?

Also, I heard about a feature that many monitors have, where they can take a snap shot of the acoustics in your room, and than balance themselves to translate what you hear in your compromised room, and what is actually being adjusted in the audio. What exactly does this feature compensate for (reverb, speaker placedment, etc.?) and do the Genelec 8030A's have this?


I am completely new to monitors and have actually done little research, although, oddly enough, I am dying to jump right in and get monitors working for me (clearly, there are other things I want to obsess about than room acoustics and whatnot. I just want the best bang for my buck and for my limited understanding to wrap my noodle around it). Please feel free to throw other stuff at me that I should consider. I really appreciate it!!

 

[chamelious]

I have a feeling that most members will tell you that you need to both get out of the corner, and you need to have the monitors positioned in an equalatral triangle with your head- or its not really going to make a differance how good your monitors are.

Im not expert but i think what people will say is spend the money and time on some acoustic treatment and proper positioning of your gear.

 

[Massive Master]

Absolutely freakin' positively.

There is no such thing as a speaker that can fix your room -- It *can* make the speaker much less accurate by taking problem frequencies out of the output of the monitors -- Which means there will be problematic frequencies that you will not hear anymore from your speakers - that are *still* being supported by your space.

There is no substitute for correcting your positioning and acoustically treating your space. None, period.

More here: http://www.massivemastering.com/blog/html/blog_files/Basic_Room_Setup.html

That all said -- I think the 8030 is a wonderful speaker - for a 5" speaker. A little more would get you ADAM A7's or Dynaudio BM5a's. Maybe even for the same price you could pick up a used pair of B&W DM602S3's and a decent used Rotel high-current amplifier.

 

[SonicAlbert]

You could also pair a powered sub with those monitors, to make sure you get the low end you need.

The thing about near fields is that they do take the room out of the equation a bit. Since you are listening close in, you'll get a lot more monitor and a lot less reflections than with bigger monitors and listening further back.

Yes, the room is super-important. But it always strikes me as overkill to read posts recommending full acoustic room treatment for a home studio. If you are running commercial studio with clients, you will definitely be sitting further from the monitors and need to have a room that is acoustically balanced. But if you are sitting in your bedroom a few feet from near field monitors, then you really *don't need* the same level of balanced room acoustics.

Just do the best you can and do all the sensible things regarding setting you monitors up: not in a corner, not against the wall, the correct level to your ears, the correct distance apart, the correct angle to your head so that you stay in the sweet spot. For a home recordist, this is 90% of the battle.

Those Genelecs will be superb for your purposes, assuming that you find a way to cover the bass frequencies as well, like using a properly dialed in sub.

Or get a pair of monitors with 8" woofers and skip the sub. That's what I would recommend.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I have to take the controversial tack here that speaker model recommendations are next to useless. All those speakers that John recommends are fine speakers, and so are the Genlecs. But none of us can tell you which ones will work best for *you*.

You have got to give them a test listen before you can decide which ones will work better for your profile. If you don't have a dealer in which you can A/B them and you're instead getting them mail order or over the net, then make sure you getting them from a place that has a reputable return policy and a sales staff that you can actually work with over the phone one on one.

And as far as room acoustics, you may not necessarily need the full nine yards of pro treatment, but basic room placement, basic bass trapping and first-reflection diffusion can be done very easily and on a very small budget, and will be needed to make any one of those speakers listed in this thread with the investment. Without that stuff, you might as well spend half the price on speakers.

The fact that they are nearfields actually has only a partial effect on that situation; bass modes remain bass modes, and remain fairly static properties of a room regardless of the distance of the loudspeaker from the ears. If you're sitting in a bass null, that same null will be there and will attenuate the loudness of the speaker at those frequency by the same amount whether the loudspeaker is 3 feet or 15 feet away. And as far as HF first reflections, they can still be just as much of a problem with nearfields if the room in which they are being used is smaller. If you're using nearfields, but your room is only 12' wide and 8' tall, your HF first reflections are still going to be loud enough to be a problem.

G.

 

[suprstar]

Also, I heard about a feature that many monitors have, where they can take a snap shot of the acoustics in your room, and than balance themselves to translate what you hear in your compromised room, and what is actually being adjusted in the audio. What exactly does this feature compensate for (reverb, speaker placedment, etc.?) and do the Genelec 8030A's have this?

They dont auto-correct or anything, but there are some switches on the back to alter the freq response a bit.. I think basically you can turn the low freq's up or down based on where you position it.. Ie, turn em down if you put em in a corner, etc.. I've seen other monitors that do that too, but it's up to you to determine how to set those switches based on your room and monitor position.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

They dont auto-correct or anything, but there are some switches on the back to alter the freq response a bit.. I think basically you can turn the low freq's up or down based on where you position it.. Ie, turn em down if you put em in a corner, etc.. I've seen other monitors that do that too, but it's up to you to determine how to set those switches based on your room and monitor position.

Well, actually there are some new lines of speakers - notably some from JBL, but I think maybe there are some other new ones as well - that do have built-in frequeny analysis and EQ "correction" meant to try and automatically adjust the speaker's response to fit the room.

But I agree completely with John's analysis of the weakness in that idea. The room is going to be the room regardless of how one tweaks the speakers, and there's only so much that can be done on the speaker end.

The monitor/room/ear monitoring chain is nothing more than the instrument/room/microphone recording chain in reverse. Trying to EQ one's monitors to compensate for deficiencies in one's room or one's ears is equally as effective as trying to use EQ in the recording chain to compensate for deficiencies in the sound of one's recording room or instrument quality. Sure it can make some difference, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. But either way, it's not even close to being a substitute for a good-sounding instrument in a good-sounding room.

G.