Ok here’s my take on the ASP 8’s
I hope someone finds this of some use
I thought about posting a new thread, but figured peopel can find it here.
So you know.
I am in a 10 X 12 room give or take with 3 inch foam on curved panels covering 2/3 of the wall behind the speakers and a huge comforter spaced out from the wall covering ¾ of the rear wall. There are some extra foam panels on the sidewalls to either side of the speakers.
Picture link
http://www.funnelhead.net/stud030307.jpg
I previously was using BX8’s so you can assume any comparisons are to them unless stated otherwise.
I am enjoying the aps8’s in a lot of ways. The frequencies do not seem to smear together at all like on the bx8’s. As soon as I had played enough reference material to get to know them I popped in a mix I had been working on that I was convinced was pretty much complete. I listened to the mix and knew right away that there where adjustments to be made. I heard transient problems in the mix and knew what instrument was making them, where as before I might have had to do some muting and soloing to hone in on the problem.
I heard muddiness and knew what track or tracks where contributing. I guess what I am getting at is that these speakers really do capture detail that I did not know I was missing. They have the ability to reproduce the mix with out frequencies melding together into a mixture. Blue and yellow next to each other stay blue and yellow, they don’t become green where they meet. I can hear eq adjustments I am making in no uncertain terms. Before I often would check to see if I had brought up the wrong eq for the track I was tweaking because some times it sounded like no change was being made.
I think that the frequency separation that these speakers achieve contributes to the mid scooped sound that people describe.
The sweet spot: When the say these have a large sweet spot they are not kidding! The sweet spot on these is huge and off axis listening is so much better than the bx8’s it’s not even comparable. If you are mixing for money with the band in the room these would be a great choice to keep from having to explain time and again how what they are hearing is not even close to what you are hearing. Yes it’s different off axis than on but it’s mild compared to any monitor I have heard that can consider it’s self a near/direct field.
The cone on the asp8 has aproxamently a 7 ¼ inch diameter usable cone area (excluding suspension). By comparison the bx8 has a 6 ¾ inch diameter area.
The power: 280 watts of power is a lot. Yes they are loud. 280 watts loud????? Not to me. I turned these up to normal cranking out volumes and listened for a while. I then decided to give them a good test run. Shortly there after I was met by the flashing clip light in the speaker bezel. I never heard any glitch in the sound just saw the light. To be fair there where lots of power sucking lows going on.
The lows: These things have the lows in spades. They reach way down there and reproduce it very well. They are not punch machines. If you want it punchy you will have to count on your mix. There will be no magic transformation on your behalf by the asp8’s. The ability to reproduce punchy bass is fully there but they will not create it for you. This I like! I have a clearer picture of my mixes because of it.
The down side of the bass reproduction on the asp8’s is that they do a little to good of a job. If you are expecting a gross resonance to crop up when you dial in a bunch ugly bass, don't hold your breath. Bad bass was easy to spot on the bx8’s. The ugly swelling resonance was apparent and unpleasant. The asp8’s seem to do what you ask of them with out much if any griping. I tested this with a mix posted here by a user (that someone did for him) with ridiculous amounts of bad bass in it. On the bx8’s it was unlistenable, on the asp8’s they pulled it off. You heard what was recorded with out the speakers or room having a fit about it. You heard a pretty well mixed song that happened to have the lowest of the lows in it. My guess would be that a subharmonic processor had been used in mastering.
The ability to pull off large amounts of ungodly low frequencies is my biggest worry with the asp8’s but, if you have experience and know how to manage your lows it should not be a problem. A newbie on these monitors could make some really rancid mixes on the low end. I can hear the bad low end on these speakers fine, it just doesn’t sound near as bad. In fact it sounds totaly clear and clean. There will be a bit of a learning curve for me, but I don’t anticipate any problems.
Edit: I guess I should mention placement. some say these are a bit much for a small room, but I have had no problems. The front make them alot more friendly twards walls to the rear than their main competitors seemed when testing before purchase.
My nit picking dislikes: The speakers click about 1 second after you turn them off. The amps are not physically dead silent. They do not hiss out the speakers, the amps do have a slight physical hum though. I am sure two large front ports do not help
At 3 feet back I can not hear them. My audio treated computer with special fans and all that crap is wayyyyyyyyy louder.
Well that’s all I can think of. I am open to questions and can tell you more about how and why I picked them if you’d like.
F.S.
With the ASP8's you are free to mix to the delight of a cheering crowd 
