EV SX500+ speakers as studio monitors?

  • Thread starter Thread starter RMadness
  • Start date Start date
R

RMadness

New member
Hey guys, I really enjoy checking out the forum. After some reading, I've got a question for you all. I'm convinced that I need to invest in a decent monitoring system but before I do I was thinking I'd give my P.A. speakers a shot. They're top of the line EV speakers, model SX500+. Supposedly they're designed for pretty flat response. Here's the response specs:

Typical Axial Frequency Response,
Swept Sine Wave, 4 volts at 3.05
meters (10 feet), (anechoic environment,
normalized for 1 watt at 1
meter; see Figure 1):
60-16,000 Hz
Low-Frequency (3-dB-Down Point):
60 Hz
Usable Low-Frequency Limit (10-dBdown
point):
43 Hz

The rest of the spec sheet is at http://www.electrovoice.com/Electrovoice3/files.nsf/Pages/Sx500plus_EDS/$file/sx500-eds.pdf

The response chart looks like some I've seen on lower/middle-priced monitors.
I also have a pretty nice Crown power amp. The room I'd be mixing in is rather large, not really sure what I'd do about the acoustics in it. I have a low priced digital Behringer EQ that might be of use as well. Just looking for some input on the prospect. Let me know what you guys think. Thanks for your time.
 
Forget it. PA speakers are definitely NOT flat. While the frequency extension is good, what goes between the frequency limits is unknown.
 
Damn, thanks. What exactly do you mean when you say what "goes between the frequency limits is unknown"? In Figure 1 in the manual it looks like the response is
+/- 4dB from 100Hz-15k.
 
RMadness said:
Damn, thanks. What exactly do you mean when you say what "goes between the frequency limits is unknown"? In Figure 1 in the manual it looks like the response is
+/- 4dB from 100Hz-15k.
Click to expand...
Okay, first ±4dB is unacceptable for mixing.

Second, 100Hz to 15 kHz is too restricted of a range for mixing anyways.
In order to get a proper feel of what you are doing, a minimum requirement is 40Hz to 20kHz with ±0.5 dB. Better specs are recommended, but they come with treated rooms and thousand dollars of monitors.

For a hobbyist, I'd recommend shooting for 50Hz to 20kHz ±1.5 dB. That should be sufficient to ensure a good start.
 
Alright, thanks man. Any recommendations on which ones to go with?
 
RMadness said:
Alright, thanks man. Any recommendations on which ones to go with?
Click to expand...

Depends on your budget, room, type of music, etc....
 
Budget would be relatively modest. Around $500 would be best with $600 probably being my limit. The room I have everything set up in is also the room the drums, percussion, etc. is set up in so it's pretty large. As for music we play southern/jam rock. Would the Crown power amp work so that i could get passives or is there a special kind of power required?
 
Also, do you think I would be better served by recording tracks at home and having them professionally mixed or spending the time and money required to get a good mix at home?
 
I'm with the other commentators on this one. EV make fine speakers. I have a pair of SXA100+s, and I've used the SX500s. As the specs suggest, they are a bit light on the bottom end, but overall they have a nice clean sound, and are great for PA applications. Though light, they are big! Nearfield monitors they are not.

If you are going to be doing more home recording, then you should consider getting purpose built studio monitors. You will find them much more satsifying to work with.

Should you do the mixing yourself or get others to? That's a question only you cananswer. Give it a go yourself, see what you get. If it doesn't work, then call for help.
 
RMadness said:
Budget would be relatively modest. Around $500 would be best with $600 probably being my limit. The room I have everything set up in is also the room the drums, percussion, etc. is set up in so it's pretty large. As for music we play southern/jam rock. Would the Crown power amp work so that i could get passives or is there a special kind of power required?
Click to expand...
What model of Crown amp do you have ?
 
Please don't take any of this the wrong way, but I have to say some of this.

First off.... The sx500 is certainly not the top of the line EV stuff. In fact, it is very close to bottom of th line as far as EV goes. The sx500 is a plastic oversized cabinet. Right away this would give you problems as a studio monitor. The sx500 has readily audible "hollow" artifacts. It also requires far to much power and volume to drive it to its intended volume.

Now for the Crown. Crown makes notoriously "slow" sounding amps. The Crown amps really do not start to sound decent until you get to the Macro tech series, and even then, that would not be my choice for a studio set up. Especially once you see the price on a Macrotech.

In my opinion, even the cheapest $200 set of active studio monitors with a 6" woofer would be more usable and useful than using a PA set up. Especially one like is mentioned.

Sorry if that sounded harsh, but those are my thoughts.
 
With the possible exception of the new Bose dancer poles, when was the last time anyone heard PA mains that actually sounded good at all, let alone good enough for studio use? Your ears had the answer long before some spec sheet did.

G.
 
L Acoustics, Meyer, Nexo, D&B.... There are just a few of the great sounding PA's:D
 
It's cool static, I appreciate it when people tell it how it is. And you're right...don't know what my top of the line comment was all about. I'm just a moneyless college student trying to think of ways around spending money and rackin up debt. The power amp is a PowerTech 2. Any suggestions on <$500 monitors?
 
Last edited:
I just got a pair of new KRK RP8s for about $360. They're very loud, clean, and seem to me to offer a good value/performance ratio for the $. They offer both balanced and unbalanced inputs, and a high frequency attentuation/boost control which can be handy if your room is a bit bright or overly damped. They also have a gain control, in case the outputs from your mixer or recorder are a bit hot. The smaller version, the RP6, just received a very favorable review in one of the recording mags I glanced at the other day at a bookstore; I can't recall which it was, but it might have been Sound On Sound.
 
RMadness said:
It's cool static, I it when people tell it how it is. And you're right...don't know what my top of the line comment was all about. I'm just a moneyless college student trying to think of ways around spending money and rackin up debt. The power amp is a PowerTech 2. Any suggestions on <$500 monitors?
Click to expand...
You could get some passive Event 20/20. Your Crown amp teamed with a good pair of passives should perform much better than $500 powered monitors. You get what you pay for...either $500 of speakers and amps, or $500 of speakers!
 
Normally I prefer passive speakers. Given the amp that you are planning on using though I thing any of the sub $500 active speakers will sound much better than using the Crown with the passive version. Crown makes their amps very differently and for a very different application. Personally, I don't hear a whole lot of difference between all of the different cheaper monitors. They all sound different, but no one set seems to really sound "better" than the others to me. I would test out everything you can with music that you are very familiar with and use that to start your decision making process.
 
Dude, a power amp IS a power amp. If the specs are good, the amp is good.
 
TheDewd said:
Dude, a power amp IS a power amp. If the specs are good, the amp is good.
Click to expand...

Going by that, isn't a speaker a speaker? :D

Amps all sound different too.
 
TheDewd said:
Dude, a power amp IS a power amp. If the specs are good, the amp is good.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but you could not be farther from the truth here. Power amps can be VERY different sounding from one another. There are many specs involved with how power amps function asa well. Is it class A? B? H? AB? Then there are slew rates, dampening factors, quality of the transformers etc... Even pure wattage isn't a fair reference. For instance, I would definately rather have 1000 watts of a Crest power pro amplifier than a Peavey amplifier. Not only will the Crest sound better, but it will actually sound louder as well. In fact, there is a good chance that 1000 watts of Crest Power Pro will be louder and fuller than 2000 watts of Peavey. The best part is that Crest is owned by Peavey, so some people might think they would be more similar. Then again, they are also drastically diffferent in price.

One other often overlooked thing in the Pro Audio and Recording industry is the importance of specs. Many specs are not as accurate as we might like to think. Otherwise you really would have $200 monitors that sounded like $25000 monitors. The specs may look pretty close, but 2 seconds of listening will instantly tell you just how different they are. Amps are the same way. Believe it or not, I have several trusted friends that swear up and down that they can hear a difference between using a standard power cord and a high end extremely expensive one. None of them wanted to believe that and were all very skeptical. However, experiencing it is the only way to decide, and to their amazement they were all suprised at the difference they could here.

One of the problem with specs in the indutry is that there is no true unified standard by which all of the companies have base their specs on. There are too many variables that are left up to the testers to decide (typically on staff with the manufacturer). I am not saying that they lie with their tests, but there are definatley ways of tilting your results by changing certain variables within the testing procedure and not ever actually lying to anyone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top