How to turn your old stereo speakers into the best sounding monitors you ever heard!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Boray
  • Start date Start date
Boray said:
BG, here are pictures from that room:
/Anders
Click to expand...
Anders,

I enjoyed the pictures. You said the organ is powered by a vacuum cleaner? :) How do you keep the vacuum noise off the hard disk?

One more thing, You said you are mastering to minidisc. I don't understand this rationale. While I don't agree with a lot of the minidisc bashing, they sound much better than cassette, it seems that you should be mastering to CD.

You said you were doing backups from your CD burner, so you must have a VS compatible burner. If you can do data backups from the VS you should be able to master to CD, and that method would be preferable.

Taylor
 
MrZekeMan,

>Aurelex is the brand name of an acoustic foam treatment,
>that is sold here in the states.

Oh, thanks! That's why I couldn't find it in the dictionary! ;)

>I enjoyed the pictures. You said the organ is powered
>by a vacuum cleaner? :) How do you keep the vacuum
>noise off the hard disk?

The vacuum cleaner is in another room with a long tube to the organ... ;) It still makes some noise, but I don't record it that often anyway...

>One more thing, You said you are mastering to minidisc.
>I don't understand this rationale. While I don't agree
>with a lot of the minidisc bashing, they sound much
>better than cassette, it seems that you should be
>mastering to CD.
>
>You said you were doing backups from your CD burner, so
>you must have a VS compatible burner. If you can do
>data backups from the VS you should be able to master
>to CD, and that method would be preferable.

Burning Audio CDs on the VS seems to me like a lot of
trouble and time consuming. It would be better to master
to CD and I might do that when my minidisk master is ready...
Why I use the minidisk is because it's so easy to edit it,
to replace tunes and try different mixes. When I am satisfied,
and ready with my master, I am probably better of making a
new master on the Audio CD recorder directly, and then I
will have all the tunes on the VS mixed and ready and just to
record on the CD.... Did that make any sense? ;)

/Anders
 
*BG, Fuck you, punk!

I don't care if you got your info from the burning bush, you're obviously a shithead idiot, with a big chip on your shoulder. Your track record doesn't impress anyone, and your posts reveal that you're a hostile jerkoff with a lot of problems, who thinks he has something to prove. But guess what? With a sorry attitude like that, no one cares what you have to say.

I rarely stoop to justify pathetic posts like yours with a response, and will not read or respond to any of your bile-swilling nonsense ever again. Don't think you've gotten the best of me, I'm just ignoring you.

You suck. Hit the road. Go crawl back under the flat rock you came from. You're giving normal people from Miami a bad name.

Loser-central.com is a few doors down, on the right.

[middle-finger-icon]
 
Boray said:
Burning Audio CDs on the VS seems to me like a lot of
trouble and time consuming. It would be better to master
to CD and I might do that when my minidisk master is ready...
Why I use the minidisk is because it's so easy to edit it,
to replace tunes and try different mixes. When I am satisfied,
and ready with my master, I am probably better of making a
new master on the Audio CD recorder directly, and then I
will have all the tunes on the VS mixed and ready and just to
record on the CD.... Did that make any sense? ;)
Click to expand...
Well I may not have a very good understanding of your equipment. I'm not familiar with the type of minidisc machine you are using. I have a Sharp portable unit.

Does it have digital-in and digital-out? If it doesn't have digital in you would be doing an extra couple of conversions. What kind of editing are you able to do on your MD? How is burning CD's more trouble and time consuming than mastering to MD?

Taylor
 
Zeke,

>Well I may not have a very good understanding of
>your equipment. I'm not familiar with the type of
>minidisc machine you are using. I have a Sharp
>portable unit.
>
>Does it have digital-in and digital-out? If it doesn't
>have digital in you would be doing an extra couple
>of conversions.

It has digital in and out, both optical and coaxial. It even has built in sample rate conversion.

>What kind of editing are you able to
>do on your MD?

Well, anything to cut, move, replace, devide songs
etc. In principle everything except for
changing the actual sound.

>How is burning CD's more trouble
>and time consuming than mastering to MD?

Burning Audio-CDs on the VS is simply a lot of trouble how I understand it. You have to first mix down all your tracks to two tracks, and if you are to master a whole CD, I think you have to have all those tracks within the same tune. Check this thread:

http://www.vsplanet.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=010965

and my post in this one

http://www.vsplanet.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=009044

Both my Audio-CD recorder and the minidisk has digital and analog connections. You CAN edit a CD-RW on the CD-recorder, but that only allows you to delete the last tune or the entire CD, so that's not very useful. Both of them are cunsumer versions, which means that you only are allowed to do ONE digital copy after the original recording. So I can first record a tune from the VS to the MD, and then from the MD to the CD, but if I would like to make a digital copy of that last copy on the CD, I have to go through the VS that doesn't have this silly protection (if you turn it off that is)...

I can't hear any sound degradation from my MD even when I tested to record very low levels and listening at high volumes. But that could be my speakers right? ;) But there are different quality MD recorders... Mine is type R something, and that is the best one.... But as I said, it might be a good idea to make a new master on CD when it's ready. That wouldn't be harder than just recording the final versions on the CD-recorder....

/Anders
 
I just feel like teasing you a bit here, so don't take the following very seriously:

If you are to follow the advices of the "experts" here, then logically you also have to follow these advices:

* If you don't have perfect ears, you should not do any home recording at all! You won't be able to mix then. This will practically leave out all musicians that usually have some hearing defect. I for example have a constant high pitched tone in my left ear.

* Never EQ in your mixes! This will distort the sound and introduce phase problems. Why there are $1000 monitors with built in EQs is beyond my comprehension...

* Never master! This involves EQing, multiband compression and other destuctive and bad things.

* Don't use the analog connections to your monitors! This means a D/A conversion that will distort and colour the sound.

* You need to sound isolate any computer/fan or any other noise source that can interfere with the sound perception while listening.

* The humidity of the air in your room must be according to the specifications of the monitor manufacturer, else the soundwaves will travel at wrong speeds.

* If you have a home video camera, you should not edit your films on even the very best TV set, but on a pro RGB monitor. And don't dare to touch those color, contrast and brightness knobs. Theoretically they will distort the picture. Of course you will also need perfect eyesight.

* If you are a painting artist without perfect eyesight, stop, you can just as well give up! You won't get the correct monitoring while working.

* If you run, you will need jogging shoes. Even the cheapest jogging shoes (made in China) are better for this than even the very best quality walking shoes.


;) I hope you enjoyed those!

/Anders
 
Now you will probably come with jokes like - If you want to follow Anders' advices, you should also use an old Volvo truck when competing in a formula-one race.... Hehehe! ;)

/Anders
 
....but at least a trimmed old truck will win over a standard old truck... ;)

/Anders
 
Re: *BG, Fuck you, punk!

A Reel Person said:
I don't care if you got your info from the burning bush, you're obviously a shithead idiot, with a big chip on your shoulder...
Click to expand...

But at least he has the courage to say what he thinks when everyone is listening.

/Anders
 
Boray said:
I just feel like teasing you a bit here, so don't take the following very seriously:

Okay I won't

If you are to follow the advices of the "experts" here, then logically you also have to follow these advices:

* If you don't have perfect ears, you should not do any home recording at all! You won't be able to mix then. This will practically leave out all musicians that usually have some hearing defect. I for example have a constant high pitched tone in my left ear.

I've never heard anyone give that advice.

* Never EQ in your mixes! This will distort the sound and introduce phase problems. Why there are $1000 monitors with built in EQs is beyond my comprehension...

This may not always be practical, but it's a good thing to shoot for. Ideally, it's better to get the sound you are trying for when going to tape/disk. I think home recordist should always be looking for ways to improve their craft, and getting a better sound going to tape/disk is a worthwhile effort.

* Don't use the analog connections to your monitors! This means a D/A conversion that will distort and colour the sound.

It's better to keep D/A and A/D conversions to a minimum. However some conversions are a necessary evil. As far as the monitors go, you are doing a D/A conversion. It doesn't matter if you do it before you leave your VS or if you do it in the speaker. I've heard some people call digital monitors, like the Roland monitors, nothing more than a gimmick. Is the sound somehow improved by putting converters in the speaker? Maybe on VERY long cable runs, but why would any of us be using long cable runs to monitors?

* You need to sound isolate any computer/fan or any other noise source that can interfere with the sound perception while listening.

Sound isolation is never a bad idea.

* The humidity of the air in your room must be according to the specifications of the monitor manufacturer, else the soundwaves will travel at wrong speeds.

I've found it helpful to mix in a sauna.

* If you run, you will need jogging shoes. Even the cheapest jogging shoes (made in China) are better for this than even the very best quality walking shoes.

Good running shoes are a must, unless you want to have your knees shot within about a year. BTW, what running shoes aren't made in China, Korea or (insert your favorite Asian country here) these days.
Click to expand...
 
Boray said:


But at least he has the courage to say what he thinks when everyone is listening.
Click to expand...
And, the courage to trash everyone else for saying what they think when everyone is listening.

The post that "A Reel Person" took exception to was the following:

Originally posted by Vanilla Ice

Okay Reel Person:
Ask your wife if I can have one of hers.
Understand one thing - you're just another shithead idiot who knows nothing about recording.
I've been there and done that and my track record can back up my mouth. Put your jealousy to the side and you might learn something here.
Click to expand...
Yep, he's a brave individual. What a trooper, to courageously stand up and declare "what he thinks" in this situation. And all because Reel Person made a light-hearted comment about the big words the other poster was using.

Yep, that BG is a real winner. Too bad there's not more like him.
 
MrZekeMan said:
And, the courage to trash everyone else for saying what they think when everyone is listening.

The post that "A Reel Person" took exception to was the following:

Yep, he's a brave individual. What a trooper, to courageously stand up and declare "what he thinks" in this situation. And all because Reel Person made a light-hearted comment about the big words the other poster was using.

Yep, that BG is a real winner. Too bad there's not more like him.
Click to expand...

My comment to A Real Person was a personal comment from me to him that you don't understand (but he will). It has not much to do with BG.... I have not even read (all) BGs posts that wasn't addressed to me... I don't defend BG in any way. He is not exactly a good example of good manners... He is in fact a good example of that "I know better and you are not worth shit" attitude that I have written so much against earlier in the thread... You have a much better attitude than him!

/Anders
 
...That is probably BGs game, to meet you with the same attitude that he percieved that some of you to had for me in this thread... But that's his game, not mine. I think it's better to answer rude attitudes with very polite answers (even if I not always can keep my cold). That does often drive the other part to big frustration...

/Anders
 
My ending notes

I noticed something new yesterday. When connecting my headphones directly to the VS's phones jack, the sound resembles the sound of my EQ tuned speakers very much. And when turning the EQ off, the difference between the speakers and headphones is like night and day. I take this as a good sign.

I still think that the idea to EQ any speakers or monitors for flatness is a good idea. It's a better idea to do it on old stereo speakers than on new monitors, just because monitors are designed to have a flat frequency response allready. But if you don't know what you are doing, then go and buy yourself a couple of monitors, that's the easy way out.

Nobody here has really had any valid arguments against the idea to EQ tune monitors for flatness. Their main argument has been that it's better to use real monitors than to use any stereo speakers at all. This has nothing to do with if it's a good idea to EQ tune or not.

Now let's see how they have answered to my points:

1. EQ induces phase problems.
From what I have heard, this is mostly related to analog EQing and not to digital EQing. If digital EQing still induces artifacts and phase problems, then these are minor to the improvements. At least this is what I experiance when listening and comparing. If I just turn the EQ off from time to time or take my mix to listen on different systems, I can't see any problem with that.

Barefoot (the loudspeaker designer) and Esactun confirms that theoritically, all EQing introduces distortion. But nobody has said anything against the second part of this point, that these artifacts are minor to the improvements from the flatness of the speakers. I have never noticed any degradation in sound from EQing before, so why would I do that now? There ARE $1000 monitors (a piece) with built in EQs (for example Alesis ProLinear 820), so what's the theoritical difference?


2. If you move your head away from that spot, your EQ tuning will mean nothing.
This is exactly the same on any monitors or speakers. If you move your head to another location, it will sound differently. The trick is to find the right spot when you do the EQ tuning and to have really good dry acoustics in the room.

Barefoot (the loudspeaker designer) confirms that I am absolutely right here.


3. You have never listened to real monitors, so you know nothing.
I have listened to decent active monitors almost every day for over a year when I worked at a multimedia company.

Nobody has questioned this.


4. You are a "newbie", so you know nothing!
That's more of an attitude problem than an argument. If you can't accept other peoples opinions if they don't agree with you, then I think you should do something other than hanging around a BBS all day long, preferably something that doesn't induce human contact.

Esactun "confirms" this. ;)


Some more notes;

Barefoot confirms that my method is just as good as the traditional white/pink noise method of EQ tuning monitors.

When I asked ZekeMan if he had any experiance of EQ tuning monitors/speakers, he choosed not to answer. I take this as a big NO.

I agree that there are more to accurate monitoring than a flat frequency response, but I know from experiance that this method has made my speakers much better for monitoring. The sound is now much more detailed, more natural and not muddy.

I can't guarantee that my method will work for you. You will (probably) need a good dry acoustics in your listening room and you need to follow all the instructions in my description of using a mic with a flat frequency response that is wider that your speakers frequency response etc. etc. But I think it's worth a try for anyone who knows what they are doing and for some reason would like to continue to use your speakers instead of buying real monitors.

Good Luck!

I think I have said all I want to say about this matter now, so from now on, I will consider this matter closed. I will not comment anything you say from here on any further. It has been an interesting experiance. Thanks; Barefoot, Escatum, Roel, A Real Person and thanks also to ZekeMan for the good match! ;)

Kind Regards,
Anders Persson

http://listen.to/boray
http://mp3.com/boray
 
Since you still don't seem to get it... and don't beleive me or the other pros...

...here's another pro's take on it......

Setting aside the phasing problems associated with equalization, the reason you can't use EQ effectively to flatten your room response is that you're attempting to fix a time domain problem in the frequency domain. Can't be done.

Let me explain.

Let's say you're listening at at spot in front of the monitors and there happens to be a big room mode at 180 Hz (this is not a random example). In the spot you're at, the reflection of 180Hz off the back wall and ceiling happen to exactly cancel the NEW 180 Hz tone coming from your monitors. The net result is you hear NO 180 Hz in the mix.

So, if you're clueless, as we all were once upon a time, what do you do? You think, geez, the vocals and acoustic guitar are a little thin on the bottom and the bass sounds funny. And where's the bottom on my snare drum? So you reach for the channel EQs and start adjusting the various tones to your liking. The mix sounds good and you print it.

The next day, you're excited about your mix and you play it for your friends in your car stereo. It's total mud. You think, what the f@*k! You're embarassed. You realize your monitors are lying to you. Maybe you get online and read the guy's post about using an EQ across the monitors and you give it a try.

You run some pink through your system with an RTA mike at your mix position. You see the gi-normous dip at 180 Hz and you say, "Ah-ha! I'll fix that fucker with the graphic EQ." You grab whatever slider is closest to 180 Hz and crank it up. That's strange, it's taking a LOT of boost to correct. Eventually, though, with maybe 12 db of boost your realtime display looks a lot flatter at 180 Hz. A quick listen and things seem to sound a little better, too. You pat yourself on the back for a job well done and get back to mixing your hit song.

When you play it the next day in your car stereo, it sounds even worse. WTF???!!!!!

Here's what happened.

Remember the cause for the apparent lack of low mids at 180 Hz? This was happening because the reflected wave was about the same amplitude as the direct, but 180 degrees out of phase at your mix position. When you cranked up the graphic at that point, you increased the volume of both the direct and the reflected sound by about the same amount. The net result is still the same: cancellation. You just made both waves louder but you did nothing about the phase problem which is in the time domain.

Then why did the RTA show an impovement? And why did it sound a little better?

Because the RTA, the graphic EQ, and your ears all average frequencies over a range. When you pull up a slider at an frequency on a graphic you also boost frequencies above and below what the slider says. The RTA averages the loudness across all the frequencies in the octave, 2/3 octave, or 1/3 octave depending on what you're using. You boosted frequencies around the range of the trouble spot but not the trouble spot itself, which cannot be boosted. The RTA gives a thumbs up because you managed to get the average loudness in that octave up, your ears give the thumbs up because you hear some increased volume in the low mids, and your brain gives the thumbs up because you don't understand what's happening and you're blindly trusting gear to solve a problem it wasn't designed to address.

Let me close with an example. This is not a thought exercise, it's something you should actually do. If you go to the trouble to do this, you'll reach an understanding of sound and this specific problem that 100,000 words of my lecture would never achieve.

Go outside and tie a rope to a tree. Stretch it out tight and start shaking it up and down rhythmically. You will see the rope appear to stand still with peaks and dips in it. These are standing waves in the rope, caused by the reflections coming back off the tree interfering with the new movements you're creating. Look closely and you will see cancellation points where the rope is not moving at all. This is exactly analogous to the situation you have with room modes.

Now shake the rope harder, do the nodes in the rope go away? No, the peaks and dips just get larger but the dead spots stay right where they are. This is analagous to using the equalizer to fix the room sound. It can't be done, you have to deal with the reflections themselves, not the source.

You know, I teach graduate classes, where I have a whiteboard and PowerPoint. Seeing the light go on in a student's eyes as he or she finally understands what I'm trying to get across with my poor communication skills is what I live for. I'm bad enough at that under those ideal conditions. Here, with just written words, I know I've at best provided food for thought and a spark of interest for some of you to get a good book on acoustics and read it. I urge you to do that; acoutics is fascinating in its own right, and everything you learn will make you a better musician and better recordist.

Thanks for reading!

Terry D.
 
Blue Bear - in the quote you posted, was he talking about main monitors, or near-fields? The reason I ask, is that I've always thought that the main purpose of near-fields is to provide a way of monitoring which is (relatively) unaffected by the room (modes etc.), and which doesn't have the disadvantages of headphones.

- Wil
 
Terry was talking about monitoring in general....

While near-fields do present a slight advantage in the fact that they are "nearfield", room modes and acoustics still play a significant role and cannot be discounted.........


Bruce
 
I think its time to throw in some more variables. Let get into decoupling to avoid structure born resonance and mounting above the meter bridge fiasco's. How about the old verticle or horizontal dicussion. We forgot about room size and acoustic treatments on how they effect the way you hear. Hey, we need a Monitoring Forum!


Peace,
Dennis
 
Hello BlueBear!

I said that I wouldn't comment any futher, but I just had to break that promise when I saw your nice and theoretical explanation.

Thanks for your long and fine explanation. It's should be correct in a room with a problem of standing waves. I don't really think my room has much of these troubles (the opposite wall of the speakers AND the speakers wall is simply filled with things to avoid acoustic reflections). Take a look at my pictures. The wall behind the drums is the opposite wall to the speakers. Some sound will of course still be reflected, but my main problem IS the speakers/stereo with a bad frequency response. When I tried to put the mic very close to one speaker, I got a very similar curve. It had less high end, but that was the main difference. If you look at my compensation curve (in the original thread), you will see that there is no POINT to compensate for any cancellation in the low end (where this cancellation theory would apply). It's like a nice continous curve. The boost in the very low and very high end is simply to compensate for frequencies the speakers have a problem to produce (I have noticed lack of the very low end before when I had the speakers in a completely different room). In the rest of the low end, I have cut in the EQ, not boosted to compensate for any cancellation. But for fun, just let's use some maths to see if my boost at 31Hz is to compensate for standing waves. The speed of sound is 331 m/s (meters per second). The distance between my speakers and the bookshelves on the opposite wall is 3 m (I measured now). The time it takes for the sound to reach the wall is 3/331= 0.009063444 s. How much of the wave will reach the wall before it bounces? 0.009063444*31(hz) = 0.28097. If there was to be a cancellation standing wave at 31hz, this number would be 0.5 (half of a wave). So let's see what frequency this would require: 0.5/0.009063444=55.17Hz. This is a bit closer to 62.5 (where I cut) than to 31.1 (where I boost). I boost a bit more than I cut there, that would mean that around 55Hz, there is about +-0.... No detectable standing cancellation waves there... Even if there was standing waves lower than 31 Hz, these woudn't be detectable by either the microphone or the human ear. I usually locut at around 40Hz when doing my final mix anyway, so this wouldn't matter..... But could my cuts in the low end be because of standing waves increasing the volume, maybe... Let's see: 1.0/0.009063444 = 110.03 Hz. That's closest to 125Hz. That is more likely (even if I cut more on 62.5).

Of course there are sound waves interfereing with eachother in the room, I don't question that. I even saw this (or the speakers inaccurance) when doing the EQ tuning. You could see small variations in the strength of the bass tones when using only one bass frequency band with music as the test source. This made it possible to compensate for this, to set the EQ so that the middle value of the bass tones was at the same level as the original sound source. If you get it right, the varying of the tones will be so small that you won't notice the difference. (This is why I think my method could be better than the white noise method). When I listen now, every bass tone (from the same bass guitar) sounds to be of the same volume. If I turn the EQ off, the volume of different bass tones are far from the same.

Your theory is correct, but you also have to take into your calculation that the sound of the speakers will interfere with eachother before reaching your head, then it will break up into a million different directions when hitting something other than a flat wall behind your back and then maybe some components of the sound will reach your ears on the way back (mostly the low end). Your example with the rope would be correct if you had only one speaker right in front of you (parallell to the wall) and a flat shiny wall behind you.

But you ARE correct, and your theory applies to most ordinary tidy livingrooms/bedrooms. But I don't understand your reasoning when saying that EQing your speakers to compensate for standing waves will give a worse mix than if you didn't do that. Your mix will just be worse in different areas than before, so the result will be about the same. That is if you for example use a 10-band EQ or less... But if you use a 512band EQ, I can't imagine that your mixes would be worse even in a room completely full of standing waves.

Kind Regards,
Anders Persson
 
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