Hey Ed... got my 20/20's!!!

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S8-N

S8-N

..|.. Part-time Antichrist ..|..
Hey now...
Got 'em and they sound good... although my "control room" is too small to properly position them for monitoring at my desk. No big deal... It seems like you must be at least ten feet from them before you can really hear(feel) the low end. I have to wheel myself back to the other side of the room to monitor. It wouldn't be so bad except my dog always sleeps behind my chair and I run over his tail when I roll back...
I have a few questions...
1. I noticed in the photo of your studio that you have your 20/20's laying on their side... is their a difference in sound when you do this? Dr. Stawl had his set up the same way.
2. You have 20/20P's right? Does your powered monitor get hot? Mine seems awfully hot to the touch on the rear panel...
3. Do you leave them powered on all of the time or do you turn the power off when you aren't using them?
4. ever blown a speaker??? I'm pushing a lot of low end through them and they don't seem to like it... they distort. Should I back off the bottom end?
Thanksabunch,
S8-N
 
Congrats on your new purchase. This will definately be a big step for your studio.

1- With the monitors on their side, it seems that you get a little wider stereo image with them. I also believe, from doing years of live sound, that bass speakers will be more accurate when they are closer together. Bass is omni-dircectional, so by putting them on their side I am in effect keeping the bass speakers closer together, thus, cutting in half the number of different and conflicting reflections off the walls. Thus, less phase cancellation. I have also found that my mixes seem to be a bit more accurate when they are this way. Call me crazy. :)

2- I have the passive boxes. I use a Hafler P-3000 to power them. It gets warm, but never really hot. Possibly, the metal that your are feeling is the heat sink for the amplifier as I believe the whole thing is sealed. I wouldn't really worry about it.

3- I have found that with any amplifier that they seem to work much more consistent when left on for several hours. In the manual for my Hafler, it claims that the amp will not pass 20-20 frequencies untill it has been on for at least one hour. My ART pre-amps sound good after they have been on for about 3 days, but take at least 4 hours before they even sound somewhat good. I have had some really bad experiences trying to get good sound to tape when I have forgot to turn them on untill like 20 minutes before a session. So, leave them on for the day. It is only electricity.

4- I have done some very nasty things to my poor Events, but have never blown a speaker. I am even overpowering them quite a bit. So, I wouldn't worry too much about blowing one, they are quite stout (like the beer!). I think that you are going to find that it is going to take awhile to get used to mixing on them. As with any monitor, they do have a "sound". All near field monitors do, and you are going to have to mix through them for a while before you know how that sound translates into the really world. All near field monitors have less ability to re-create low end. You will have to get used to this. A good way to feel them out is to just listen to a lot of professionally done music through them. You will learn how they sound much quicker this way.

5- Have you ever considered cutting his tail off? Just kidding, I love dogs.

Ed
 
OK, in my misspent youth I was a competition car stereo installer. (no comments) I am also MECP First call certified (means nothing to you Im sure). Anyway, I have a few comments here:

The speakers low end sounds better at 10 feet away becasue the actual "wave" of a 35htz signal is about (guessing from memory here) 60 feet long. What that means is that in a perfect world, it takes 60 feet for that frequency to open completly. (back to signwave generators). Anyway, in real life this doesnt count as bad (does in cars though!). The reason is that reflection and absorbson (cant spell sorry) affect the wave. Speaker placement in highend home AND car audio makes a hugh difference in sound. Which is why he lays his on his side (he took a mental note that they just sounded better that way in HIS studio. Might not be the same case in yours). Which brings me to my next point.

I dont agree with Ed (for the first time thus far) about the speakers sounding better after being left on for a while. The fact is that speakers WILL sound better (more accurate at least) when they are COLD. Dont believe me? If you have a competition car audio system and listen to it in the winter morning you will understand. The reason for this is that the voice coils of the speakers get hot with use. When they get hot, they are not as accurate. Im not saying to cool your speakers but Im saying prolonged use WILL produce more distortion than short bursts. On that note, the next point.

Ed says he is overpowering his monitors a little. Well, he is able to do this because a clean audio signal will produce less distortion. i.e. If you run 100 watts into a speaker rated for 100watts (there are many more vars here but lets not get into it) for 2 hours with a very distorted signal, you will run the risk off damaging your speakers. "Blowing" a speaker is in fact heating the voice coil until the point that you burn a small break in the coil (it is literaly a coil). It is a known fact that you could push 150 watts into that system with a very clean signal and never blow those same speakers.

Also. Coming from a very highend audio field, I can say that I dont think most monitors for stidio's are worth crap. I have seen the construction and even listened to them and I think they sound ok, but nothing to compared to a true audiophiles system. I would recommend any recording engineer to study speaker design by way of car audio. Most people do not make their own inclosures for home audio but you do in car audio. Theil/Small baby all the way.

DBHO
 
Well, if you want all your mixes to sound "good in the car" then maybe you should just mix in the car. :D If every body had a nice audiophile system them, the "OK" sounding Nearfields would be just "OK". But you want the mix to sound good on boomboxes and crappy earphones as well as you phat ride with the killer bass. That's the whole point of the "OK" sound of Nearfields.

So Ed, Are your tweeter outwards or inwards? (an innie or an outie)

My tweeters are on the inside, but I can't remember why I did that. Actually I've tried them offset- man that was just wierd for me.

BTW I mix on a pair of Technic SB-CR-33 speakers. And actually I love em'. But I do want a pair of 20/20's to go along with them. In due time I will be there with ya Clayton... :)

-jhe
 
Ya word up S8N, nice procurement. Now throw down those 5 bones, in unmarked 1 dollar increments and send away. I'll be expecting them.
 
Well, it seems I have a follower here.

Ummmmmm.......dbho, you should go back and re-read my post (was posted many many months ago!!!). You will find that I made no mention that the SPEAKERS sound better after several hours, but that the AMP sounds better after being on for several hours. I still stand behind this as the truth, and have conversed with peers who I respect who notice the same thing.

Next.......The reason for overpowering the speakers is a little more involved. Yes, I can keep gain stages before the amp down, thus creating less potential for "clipping the input of the amp", which is a very bad thing to do because a power amp is capable of producing up to 5 times it's rated power when the input is clipped. Actually, trying to turn the input of the amplifier down will only highten this potential for clipping the input.

I forgot the technical stuff behind why overpowering a speaker sounds better. It was a concept that was introduced to me by a P.A. system designer several years ago. In the years since, I have found that the best sounding P.A. systems are over powered by about 150% of the speakers rated power. It has something to do with the carrier signal that is always present at the speaker being a hotter signal, thus making the speaker more hypersensitive to modulation from the audio. But like I say, that was over 10 years ago, and I forgot the technical stuff. I DO know that the concept works just fine.

As far as overheating the voice coil from prolonged use, well, good point. But, this is not compitition car stereo we are talking about here. This is studio monitoring, and if you are pushing your studio monitors that hard for extended periods of time, YOU ARE MONITORING TOO DAMN LOUD!!!

Next......Audiophile systems are mostly bogus. Smoke and mirrors. A big sham.

There is a high end home stereo shop in town here that also happens to be a pro recording audio dealer. I have gone in a heard CD's through some of the most expensive consumer systems there are. While they sound nice, they also color the sound quite a bit. That may have more to do with the quality of these "high end" amps more then anything. Who knows. I DO know that the Hafler trans-nova series amps are on the equipment list of some pretty impressive state of the art studios in the world. Also, the Event 20/20's where independently tested, and found to be quite flat at around 3-4 feet away. So, maybe the high end consumer stuff sounds more like how I may want to listen to audio for pleasure, but they don't sound like I would want to hear audio for recording/mixing/mastering. There poor response just becomes too intrusive to get anything done effectively.

Now, I am not going to bang you too hard about trying to model studio monitors after car stereo speaker systems......Ah shit, what the hell, I AM going to bang you on this..... :) That is a 100% bogus concept!!! Car stereo boxes are made for car stereo systems, and the design of a car, not a studio control room. There are so many differences in the audio purity between a car stereo deck of CD player and the stuff in my studio it is not even funny dude. I am sure that the D/A converters on my Fostex DAT (which is a somewhat average DAT machine) are much better then most of the higher end car CD players D/A converters. Let's not even get into the differences between the amps, and wiring. It is just not the same thing here dude.

A good car stereo system would be nice for "referencing" a mix, but would not make a nice monitoring system for mixing. We are talking about boxes designed for two very different environments, and with very different response curves (no matter what the spec sheets try to tell you).

There is a very good reason you don't see high end car stereo, or high end home audio components in a studio. They just don't deliver flat sound in a studio environment. If they did, you would probably see state of the art studio using the stuff.

So, take my critisism is good stride.... :) You just touched a little nerve, and misread something I wrote, and may not be up on studio monitoring.

Ed
 
no no no no. You mistake me. I dont think car gear is for monitoring. let me restate: The Technology in some car audio gear is is extremly high. For the same reasons you point out. A car is NOT an ideal enviroment to listen to music. Thus the equipment (more so the installation) plays a big role in the sound outcome. The shotty consumer home stereo can get away with much more slop than a car as the enviroment is controlled. Think about it. Humm, it takes a $600 set of seperates with good x-overs in a CAR DOOR made of metel to sound as nice a a pre-constructed set of $200 home speakers. Thus, designing custom enclosures for a car requires a bit of skill and knowledge of a speakers electrical properties (q). (dont get me confused with a bass bumping thug pumping 35htz at 2 a.m. in your local neighborhood. I enjoy a real system).

OK, the other thing was why an amp being overrated with power blah blah blah. The short of that concept has been termed headroom. Clipping is very detramental. I shorted it all into a clean signal into a clean amp will play over rated watts into a speaker. Headroom is key.

So we are in agreement mostly :)

DBHO

p.s. I was at your site and listened to some of your mixes. I dug the jazz deal (second song) The mix/sound of the first song was cool but not my style of music (but then agian, neither is jazz but it was cool :))



[This message has been edited by dbho (edited 06-22-2000).]
 
so, I want to get nice monitors, but Im in my car so much... can I get a flat reference sound in the Car? or is that out of the realm of possibility. Cuz that would save a lot of time.


xoxoxo
 
The ideal speaker is a single point source that would reproduce the whole frequency without coloration.

This is why some cheap one way speakers sound in many ways better than two or three way speakers. One way speakers are closer to the single point source ideal.

The problem with a one way speakers, is that there is inherent coloration, because the high end which comes from the center of the cone is horn loaded by the speaker cone itself.

Now we move to the two way design, inherently wrong, no longer a single point source. Many things to fight, crossover design, crosover frequency, proper volume level between woofer and tweeter, and phasing problems.

But one big stength, the high end is no longer horn loaded.

The closest you can come to a single point source, with a two way system is what's called a line source.

Now here is where Ed and I disagree, to acheive line source with a two way system, the woofer and tweeter have to be on the same vertical plain.

By the way in my recoding studio I prefer cheap one way speakers, 5" seems to be about right size. It took a while to find the ones that sounded right, but when I did I knew.

I know this may sound crazy, but keep an open mind, there is something to be said for inherently better, when it comes to sound, and speakers.

Tannoy still makes full range one way speakers, and so does Kef.
 
GT, what is vertical plain when the sound comes out of the speaker is a cone fashion? Set them on their side, up and down, whatever, they are going to sound very similar. The reason I suggest sitting the Events on their sides is to widen the distance between the tweeters, and to keep the woofer closer together (which creates a more efficient low end). By the way, I am currently not sitting them on their sides, but rather, have them actually sitting upside down to assure that the tweeter (a far more directional source) is at ear level. Seems to be working out okay, but the monitors look a little silly! :) Now, if you want to talk about positioning the drivers in the box to produce better time alignment, well, there is a big issue. But verticle or horizonal plains just don't seem to make any difference except for how wide my stereo field is. I realize that somewhere on paper, this could be the wrong thing to do, but you are also not supposed to create distortion with anything in your signal path, yet often, doing so sounds much better.... :)

I have posted this link before, and I still think it is a cool site pertaining to speaker design, and sound in general. Call it a phlethera of sound knowledge! http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/ . This dude is pretty up on speaker design and all that.

Anyway.....

Ed
 
Hey ed,

Thanks for the reply!!

I've been a speaker nut ever since I was a kid. The line source of a two say system I referred to, is the line between the woofer and tweeter, where the sound blends together.

Having this line on the vertical plane simply makes for better, truer dispertion, and more coherent sound. In other words closer to the single point source ideal.

The tweeter on top is usually better, that's why allmost all speakers are desingned this way.

You would be better off lowering the speakers, to put the tweeter at ear level, than turning them upside down. The woofer will be that much closer to the floor, better bass reinforcement.

I totally agree with you on having the woofers closer together much stronger truer bass. Another words closer together, closer to being in phase.

I also agree about time alignment once again, this has to do with keeping the tweeter and woofer on the same vertical plain depthwise in the box. I once took a tweeter out of the box, and moved it in and out over the woofer, the music sounded like it was running through a phaser. So time aligment is real.

Once again keep an open mind about one way speakers, if you can find some that do the bass and treble right you may be plesently surprised.
 
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