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

  • Thread starter Thread starter Boray
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Will you idiots stop bumping this damn thing!... oops damnit!!

I think BG was Monty.
 
amt7565 said:
BTW: An experienced studio engineer can use any crappy speaker system to do a mix well. No studio monitors with flat response required. You can play a dire straits CD on your home stereo speakers and then play your CD and compare the clarity.

Well, at least a better mix than mine on crappy 'monitors' :D
 
No doubt, *BG was probably the most obnoxious web persona you'll find out there,...

but he was a short-lived phenomenon. *BG came to us from VSPlanet, one of Boray's regular haunts.

Anyway, most of the people on this thread acted like a bunch of righteous bastards the way they pounded on ol' Boray. Believe it or not, *BG was trying to weigh in with support for Boray, but with all the choice insults he layed on everyone, I think the message was lost. I even lost my temper with *BG, and I hardly ever do that!

Sure, the title of this thread is a provocative overstatement of what Boray was trying to explain, and he took a beating and did much backpedaling, but I say, give ol' Boray a break! Maybe if he lobbed a softball on this one, he might have been given a warmer reception, but because the title of the thread was so overstated, people just came out of the woodwork to take a shot at him!

Maybe this thread should have been titled "Improve the sound of your dull crappy home stereo speakers with EQ", and I don't think it would have started the flamewar that the actual title did.

Anyway, follow Boray's links and find out Boray's a talented guy, with an undying zeal for music and home recording, I'd say more than average.

This thread should never die. It shows newcomers what righteous bastards people can be at HRcom, and IMO most are full of shit anyway.

That's my 2c.
 
Re: No doubt, *BG was probably the most obnoxious web persona you'll find out there,.

A Reel Person said:
Anyway, follow Boray's links and find out Boray's a talented guy, with an undying zeal for music and home recording, I'd say more than average.
Hardly above average...... I've heard it..... actually below, considering what I've been hearing in the clinic lately -- people's skills are getting better.......


It shows newcomers what righteous bastards people can be at HRcom, and IMO most are full of shit anyway.
I disagree -- the pros here are genuinely helpful and are more interested in making sure people get the CORRECT information instead of the bullshit that usually permeates.... one example being Boray's theories.


I'll bring it up again.... where's the "righteousness" in correcting bad information???? Do people want to actually fucking learn something here??? ...or just regurgitate crap about how good a recording you can get with a couple of cans and some twine?!?!?

What sickens me is the attitude some people take when they clearly don't have the depth of knowledge, yet choose to criticize those that do for correcting the nonsense......

:rolleyes:
 
You must just think of you coming into a new BBS... You don't know too much about the guys there... The tone can get a little more rude than over at the planet in here... And how shall someone know whether the guys are just dumbasses or know their job? Always difficult... And - I have to admit - I thought at first that none of you COULD EVER have the time to do proper stuff as you have SOO many posts... Heard some stuff, changed my mind... :D (Now I feel rather dumbass ;-) )

But I have to state again, that I know boray from the planet, and he's a nice and helpful guy over there. (He even bought monitors now... Forgot what it was). Sometimes these IT-conversations can got wrong, what obviously was the case here...

Ciao, and have nice x-mas...

aXel
 
?

What? Is this old thing still alvie?!? Hmmm..... Don't you guys have anything else to discuss or what?

/Anders
 
EQ

Cut and pasted from my review of my monitors ( http://www.vsplanet.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=012564 ) :

As a conclusion to my EQ adventures: ;-) A friend asked me if it was better to mix on a bad system instead of the great monitors he has. Because everything sounds great on the monitors anyway, so to get the mix great it would be better to try to get it good on a worse system instead... NO WAY!!! With good monitors, you are able to pin-point the mix exactly where it sounds absolutely best. With worse monitors, the range where it sounds good is much wider. You are not able to tell if "this" sounds better than "that". With good monitors - you can!

A Reel Person said:
Anyway, follow Boray's links and find out Boray's a talented guy, with an undying zeal for music and home recording, I'd say more than average.

Even though BlueBear didn't agree, Popmann of VSPlanet suggested me as "most talented planeteer" once ;-)... Anyway Dave, you have my CD so you have a lot more recent stuff than that is on the web. I don't have any mp3s of stuff that is newer than 2 years on the web... The newest I have on the web is this one:
Cutterstone Hill (1 MB) (Right mouse button and save target as...)
And it's over 2 years old. It's only half the tune that I put up as a sample for VSPlanet Comp CD 5...

But thanks Dave (Real Person) for standing up for me! And I'm glad you enjoyed the CD! You can download 10 more mp3s of old stuff (about 2-4 years old) here:
http://stage.vitaminic.com/main/boray/all_tracks/

Happy new year! (will this thread survive another year? ;) )
/Anders
 
volltreffer said:
But I have to state again, that I know boray from the planet, and he's a nice and helpful guy over there. (He even bought monitors now... Forgot what it was).
Yea, he's a nice guy. He just has a little problem taking correction. He's no doubt helpful in some areas. He's very harmful in other ways. Spreading the kind of misinformation he was trying to spread on this thread, is harmful.

Taylor
 
Re: ?

Boray said:
What? Is this old thing still alvie?!? Hmmm..... Don't you guys have anything else to discuss or what?

/Anders
These things only stay alive because posters keep them alive. PipelingAudio, brought attention to it by bringing it to the top. Then Reelperson resurrected it by making controversial statements. Then everyone since, who has posted, including yourself, has contributed to keeping it alive.

My inititial thought when I saw it going again, was to ignore it. That was mainly out of respect for you. Unlike Reelperson, I think it's mainly unflattering to you, as opposed to the majority of posters. But since you decided to contribute to it's extended life, here I am. ;)

Taylor
 
Re: EQ

Boray said:
With good monitors, you are able to pin-point the mix exactly where it sounds absolutely best. With worse monitors, the range where it sounds good is much wider. You are not able to tell if "this" sounds better than "that". With good monitors - you can!
Nice of you to acknowledge that.
Boray said:
Even though BlueBear didn't agree, Popmann of VSPlanet suggested me as "most talented planeteer" once ;-)...
Doesn't say much for the planet does it? ;)

Taylor
 
Re: Re: EQ

MrZekeMan said:
Doesn't say much for the planet does it? ;)

Taylor

I expected that would be BlueBears comment, and not someones who is a regular member of VSPlanet...
 
MrZekeMan said:
Spreading the kind of misinformation he was trying to spread on this thread, is harmful.

To whom? Anyone with a bit of sense understands that you never can turn some old stereo speakers into the worlds greatest monitors. I know the title was overstated to catch attention, but I never expected someone to be that stupid that they would think that anyone actually would beleive that you could transform old stereo speakers into the greatest monitors there is. That was a big surprise to me. Your problem over here is that you see the masses as stupid people who must be fed with the "right" information all the time. You are the enlighted ones who can guide them.

I still think you can improve old really crappy speakers with EQ. Not much with the mic I used, but with a real reference mic. Or why not borrow a couple of real monitors. Put them next to your speakers. Play different isolated frequencies as in my method, listen and compare and compensate the EQ for the speakers. This would probably work better and I think actually I will try this with my monitors as a reference to find out....

If I have said that you can improve the performance of good monitors (or for good stereo speakers for that matter) by using EQ, then I have spread missinformation. But I don't think I have said that. But if I have said that, I appologize.

I wrote this above mainly to defend my theories that I still think works. But in real life I DO however agree that it's a much better idea to buy some decent monitors than to try these "poor man's monitoring" thing of mine. You will get much better monitoring - and... it's a lot simpler! ;) If you are to buy a reference mic and a 31 band EQ just to EQ your old crappy speakers, then it's much better to spend the money on the monitors directly!

Also check this thread and listen to the sample mp3:
http://www.vsplanet.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=011764&p=

/Anders
 
Boray said:
I wrote this above mainly to defend my theories that I still think works.
The problem is, you don't seem to understand the concepts involved that are leading you to these malformed theories.


Do you understand the concept of non-linearity in poor speaker design?

Do you understand that ANY EQ added to a signal degrades the signal due to phase shifts - especially with the cheap EQ units you're describing??

How about the negative effect of the room modes on frequency response - even with good speakers???

Does it occur to you that putting all these variables together in the crackpot theory you've come up with results in a big acoustic mess????

If you don't understand what's going on BEHIND what you hear with your own ears, your theory is meaningless..........


Why post here at all??? You don't seem to have any sort of grasp of the principles of acoustics, and you refuse to learn or even try to understand what others who know more than you are trying to explain -- so what are you doing here???

I'd say stick to VS Planet -- I'm sure the "pros" at there can appreciate your "expertise" far more than we can.... :rolleyes:
 
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Hey Blue Bear...

At first I have to restate, that I also think that it is unlikely to get better overall results in using EQ to improve your monitoring sound. (If you are completely successful, this is more unlikely than a lottery win...) The problem is that a monitoring room can IMHO only be corretly described as a nonlinear very high order partial differential equation. Every simplification as a simple differential/difference equation will only be valid at one point in your monitoring environment...

But I cannot understand the arrogance when you talk about the vsplanet... I think the audience (don't know how to call it correctly) for both forums is completely different. The Roland forum in here is at a point where it starts to smell strange, simply as there are almost no activities. Completely different at the vsplanet. If someone wants to know something about vs recorders, the planet surely is a better way to go...

I assume on the other hand, that in here, there are a lot more people using high end gear and surely being experts with it (I always try to avoid the word 'pros', as I know some who don't know a shit a bout either mixing or recording, but earn their living with it and so they're pros...). But this alas seems to assure, that some guys seem to have a certain wish to let everyone know what preciaous gear they have. I haven't yet read answers to posts like 'what is the best compressor for under $300', where there were answers like 'get youself a manley'. The latest example that came to my mind was your post about the people talking to you about the 'analogue sound of their porta-studio'. I think some ten posts later the first ones came up talking about the neve consoles compared to a VS-studio... Things like that happen quite seldom at the planet...

I understand and absolutely can respect that the conversations in here are a little more rude than over in the planet (I didn't get this at the beginning), but I simply can't understand what's the point in the arrogance I often find in here. I think it's ridiculous to state things like 'there can't be good musicians over at the planet' simply as someone stated that 'boray is one of the most talented people over there'. Music is still a matter of personal taste and cultural surrounding. If we talked about engineering, there MAY be absolute measure of quality (though only from a certain extent - as there is too much personal taste in it, too).

I have the background to understand a lot of the theory behind mixing, simply as I am a systems engineer, did my PhD in control theory and have worked for over ten years as a control/software engineer. A lot of people have not and I think they should be treated with the same respect as other ones. A lot didn't understand the theory but simply seem to 'learn the rules' that the 'pros' tell them. They wouldn't even try the smallest thing, if it collides with one of their 'golden rules'. These are the ones that I don't understand, and that I have the problems to respect. (Example: They have a really bad recording, but simply refuse to use EQ, as it is best to use no EQ. What simply seems to be omitted in this statement, is the fact that you have to be able to imagine your complete song, know how you want the single tracks to sound like and get them recorded that way by mic placement and THEN not use EQ...)

And don't forget: this is a HOMERECORDING forum, so we should not wonder that a lot of people in here do not have the engineering background...

If I know so much, why do my recordings and mixes suck... :D:D:D

aXel
 
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