limiting/compressing the L+R of a JAZZ mix

  • Thread starter Thread starter earworm
  • Start date Start date
earworm said:
ah, yes, the volume on the back of the speakers, i find it stupid that its on the back, sometimes when i turn my speakers on/off i touch the volume and it changes, most of the time i just turn the volume all the way open,

how did you calibrate them? i'm definately interested,
i've got an old spl meter, with a VU, soon i'll get me a modern digital meter too.
i didnt know that the volume of both speakers isnt matched, a bit sad i think.

and if i ever win the lottery i'm going to replace my two computerscreens with lcd or flatscreen things, cause now indeed my screens might block a little bit of sound,

and the tweeters of my monitors, should they be at exactly the height of my ears? now they're like 10 inch below "my ear holes" when i sit behind my desc at mixer position

If your monitors are low, seriously consider the Auralex Mo-pads. They are foam pads that you can put underneath your monitors which isolates them from your desk (better more accurate sound) and they also allows you to aim them flat, up/down 4 degrees and up/down 8 degrees.

You probably need to aim them up 8 degrees given that you say your tweeters are 10 inches below your ears. Aiming the tweeters at your ears is a good starting point. However, since you need to hear the woofers too, my preference it to try and use the mid-point between each driver, say a few inches below the tweeter aimed at my ear.

Have you gotten them in an equilateral triangle set up ? How far away is your listenting position from each monitor ? Give me some numbers and I can give you some suggestions.

Here is a link for the pads:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Recording/Media/Accessories?sku=422603

To balance your monitors volume level, run some pink noise (you should have noise generators in your DAW). Starting around 12 o-clock on the gain dials, use your SPL meter to find out what RMS values your monitors are putting out. Most likely they are off a few dB from each other. Putting the meter about an inch from each driver (tweeter and woofer) compare both sides. Tweak the speaker gains to get both sides putting out the same SPLs of pink noise. Also check for a consistent drop off, (from one inch to two inches to 3 inches). The SPLs should drop off the same amount for each monitor as well.

Definitely get some mo-pads and aim your monitors up, definitely use your SPL meter to calibrate even output for your monitors, and definitely try to get an equilateral set up that works. After these few things, you should definitely hear a drastic difference in your imaging and sound quality.

Sush
 
earworm said:
ah, yes, the volume on the back of the speakers, i find it stupid that its on the back, sometimes when i turn my speakers on/off i touch the volume and it changes, most of the time i just turn the volume all the way open,

how did you calibrate them? i'm definately interested,
i've got an old spl meter, with a VU, soon i'll get me a modern digital meter too.
i didnt know that the volume of both speakers isnt matched, a bit sad i think.
Yikes that's wild about the dial being bumpable like that. :o
I wanted to mention you could try for helping check out your balance set-up. Try temporarily setting some absorption in front of the screens. That would tend to kill whatever smear is going on diffracting off the hard face. Then once you're setting in a good accurate triangle and the image is dialed in, pull the panels out. I'd be willing to bet you might see things focus slip out some. Any-who', it's a starting point and a least removes some variables.
:)
Wayne
 
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