Disapointed with my monitors

YanKleber

YanKleber

Retired
Today I started reading a book called 'Mixing secrets for the small studio' from a guy called Mike Senior. Since I am not from the industry I never heard about him so I really don't know if he knows what he is talking about. Anyway, I stopped reading it at page 9 and I think I am not going to get back to the reading until I can spend a bunch of money on better monitors.

The case is that the writer blabs a lot about frequencies and responses and such setting the fire specially over the ported monitors. Well, I confess that I wasn't convinced that my small Edifiers R1000 were that bad as I was listening to a nice jazzy CD through them while reading. Then, at certain point the guy wrote:

"If you want to hear what I’m talking about, try listening to the lowfrequency sine-wave tones in the LFSineTones audio file through a budget ported monitor. (You can download this file from this chapter’s URL: www.cambridge-mt .com/ms-ch1.htm.) Particularly on the lowest frequencies you’ll usually hear a good dose of fluttering port noise and low-level distortion harmonics overlaid on what should be pure tones."

OK, so I downloaded the test tone and played it through my small monitors. Yikes. From 24-40Hz only what they spits out is distortion (unless I set the volume REALLY low). Also it has an annoying resonance peak between 120-180Hz. Funny is that listening it through my cheap HD202 cans I didn't get any distortion and any peak.

Blah!!!!!

:facepalm:
 
While the sub-frequency distortion is probably a limitation of your monitors, the resonance peak in that 120-140 Hz area is most likely a resonance of your room. It could be the monitors as well, but I'd plug your room dimensions into a room mode calculator and see if the room is a culprit in your low-frequency resonance.
 
Are you making music to be played in systems with sub woofers? Frequencies below 40Hz? Anyone without a sub probably doesn't hear those at all. I'm not sure what the file had that you linked, but you were probably hearing the harmonics of those frequencies, not the actual 24-40Hz themselves.
**I just checked the spec on your Edifiers, they are only rated down to 50Hz**
 
I tried to calculate it using an online room mode calc an it showed a bunch of frequencies that appear as oblique, tangencial and axial. Since I don't know how to interprete it didn't tell me too much. My (small) room is 2.94 (length) x 2.8 (width) x 2.56 (height)...
 
mjbphotos said:
Are you making music to be played in systems with sub woofers? Frequencies below 40Hz? Anyone without a sub probably doesn't hear those at all. I'm not sure what the file had that you linked, but you were probably hearing the harmonics of those frequencies, not the actual 24-40Hz themselves.
**I just checked the spec on your Edifiers, they are only rated down to 50Hz**
Click to expand...

No, just pop/rock to be played at regular loudspeakers. But I thought that regardless where it will be played, the fact of my cheap monitors doesn't pass the test is a clear sign that they are a total crap. That's what desanimated me.
 
With those dimensions, I figure your room nodes are roughly around 60, 120, 180 and octaves up from that. If you are getting resonance peaks between 120 and 180, rather than at those points, that suggests the speakers as being the culprit.
 
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