Monitors or Cans?

  • Thread starter Thread starter shoggoth80
  • Start date Start date
Which means that I am going to have to go and demo ones in my budget range when it comes down to it. I guess I can make a day of hanging out at guitar center, and bugging the ever loving shit out of the guys in pro audio, listen to a lot of different sound, and take none of their advice. Lol. Salespeople piss me off sometimes. On the other hand, if I know what I am after, it makes getting in and out fast, without any BS involved.
 
shoggoth80 said:
Which means that I am going to have to go and demo ones in my budget range when it comes down to it. I guess I can make a day of hanging out at guitar center, and bugging the ever loving shit out of the guys in pro audio, listen to a lot of different sound, and take none of their advice.
Click to expand...
Absolutely! I couldn't have said it better myself :).

As far as bugging the salespeople, you'd only be bugging them if they don't have a comparative listening environment already set up. And if they don't that's their fault, not yours. Otherwise, they should be able to leave you alone to listen and compare to your heart's desire.

Also, make sure to explain to them (or whomever you actually want to purchase your speakers from) that you understand that there's no way you can actually tell how what you pick will actually wind up sounding until you actually try them in your studio, since their public showrooms usually suck when it comes to making sure your not trying to compare apples to oranges, so you promise to keep all the boxes and packing intact until you have tested them at home for sure, so can return and exchange them for something else if need be.
shoggoth80 said:
Salespeople piss me off sometimes. On the other hand, if I know what I am after, it makes getting in and out fast, without any BS involved.
Click to expand...
Man, many years ago I was in sales, selling this stuff to folks like you - before I repented. I worked for several different companies, selling everything from studio monitors to computer systems. There's two things learned; first, a salesperson is *never* to be trusted, and second, the more successful the salesperson,the less they can be trusted.

They are not there to serve the customer, they are there to serve the company for whom they work.

"The customer is always right" is nowadays just double-speak that means "Convince the customer that it was their idea to buy what you wanted them to buy all along."

G.
 
"since their public showrooms usually suck when it comes to making sure your not trying to compare apples to oranges, so you promise to keep all the boxes and packing intact until you have tested them at home for sure, so can return and exchange them for something else if need be."
-Yeah, their little showrooms are just that. Not the greatest acoustically. Didn't get much of a chance to demo any last time I went in. They were displayed, but there is so much noise in that store that getting a chance to accurately demo would be hard. Also, some of the setups had sound coming out, but not from the monitors themselves, so I wonder what voodoo they are trying there?

"Man, many years ago I was in sales, selling this stuff to folks like you"
-No, you wouldn't have sold much of anything to me, unless it was already something I had settled on. :P I try to get as well informed as I can for stuff within a certain budget range, and try to stick to it. I try to get as much quantitative and qualitative data as I can (hence many posts on here asking for experience with item X).

Kinda wanting to find a way to listen to some of the KRK monitors, they seem to get good reviews. This project will grow a bit over time I think. Start small and keep adding as I can afford to, and maybe actually set up a room to do stuff once I get a real job (graduating from UW soon), and hopefully a nicer residence to go with that. Lol.
 
dont know if i responded in this thread already but if i did its worth repeating ;)

I tried out quite a few monitors in the same price range as KRKs, I ended up with RP8's and to be honest I could barely tell the difference between them all

I know Ive not got the best ears, and I could hear a slight difference between 5inch woofers and 8inch woofers, but I was probably convincing myself I could. Ive no idea if my mixes are better because of have 8inch woofers now or Im just a little more experienced


Im sure folks here will tell you they could hear a difference, but i didnt really...maybe a $1000 to a $500 monitor would be more noticeable but I think some people like to say "this ones boxy" or "this one lacks bottom end" just because they like to sound like they know what theyre talking about or reassure themselves they made a good choice :)
 
and behringer mixers are harsh and thin sounding apparently :)
 
I like to use a variety of different headphones, from tacky and cheap to studio quality. Also worth thinking about how most people will experience your music, through an iPod or something most likely.
 
shoggoth80 said:
Which means that I am going to have to go and demo ones in my budget range when it comes down to it. I guess I can make a day of hanging out at guitar center, and bugging the ever loving shit out of the guys in pro audio, listen to a lot of different sound, and take none of their advice. Lol. Salespeople piss me off sometimes. On the other hand, if I know what I am after, it makes getting in and out fast, without any BS involved.
Click to expand...
Absolutely do this - if they're helping you, keep on your toes and trust your judgment, possibly over what they're telling you. I set out to buy a pair of monitors and subwoofer that I had been researching, and went ahead and did a test at GC, and the sales guy was trying to sell me on a pair of M-Audio monitors that had a lower bass response than the Adams I wanted - indeed they did, but I was getting the subwoofer anyway - as we listened, he insisted that the M-Audios sounded better, and I had to push back (and pay a little more, I think) to get him to give me the Adams. The M-Audios sounded scooped to me, and the Adams were stronger in the mids. Anyway - just keep your wits about you. From a leisure listening perspective, the M-Audios probably did sound a little better, but of course, that's not what I was buying. I didn't have years of studio listening experience, and so I had to deal with my inability to articulate what it was that I preferred about the Adams, which doesn't help when you're at odds with someone trying to sell you on something.

I guess this is why it's a good idea to bring your own CD of something you're really familiar with, and listen for blemishes - if you can hear them, that's good, if you can't, that's bad. If you're hearing the test music for the first time or its something you're not really familiar with, it'll be challenging.

On any serious project, I use both cans and monitors. But for the mixing phase, just the monitors. I use the cans for picking at the tracks, working on punch ins, other little details and stuff.
 
"Also worth thinking about how most people will experience your music, through an iPod or something most likely."
-This was the train of thought that started my whole internal debate, that I then externalized via this thread. :D
 
This being said, I probably will end up using a mix of both cans and monitors. Both have reasons why they would be good tools, and at different phases. Cans I will end up having anyway, since I listen to a lot of music on my computer, and play a couple games on it... which would cut down on the "girlfriend irritation" factor. Lol. Since I'll be having them anyway, why not use them when appropriate?

Sometime in the coming month or two, going to have to get time, and get those buggers to actually let me listen to a couple different types of monitors. Reading online reviews? Great. Getting active feedback from a community of those who do? Awesome. Personal testing? Priceless.
 
This thread has a bunch of info, but I think I can add and/or simplify here. I recently went through this exact thing.

I think the advice given by many here is good advice (as usual), using monitors instead of cans for mixing. I agreed with this and now I use monitors.

But you have to take into account that some of these guys have full blown studios and the advice is really coming from the "top shelf" and as much as they like to help, may not be totally relevant to the guy in his basement (like I use to be).

Cans may be inconsistant due to the sealing properties of the faom etc (as Massive Master was saying) - this may lead some readers to think that cans aren't the go. But if the alternative is having a pair of monitors, even good monitors, in a 3mx3mx3m concrete cube, I'd be using the cans. You can buy the best (flattest response) monitors that money can buy, but if your room isn't treated, what good are they at giving a flat response if the room response is *whack*.

What I'm saying is that, there is a point where for some monitors in some rooms, the cans might give a better result. What I mean by "better" is to be able to mix music listening to a more accurate sound source.

Hope this helps.

FM
 
shoggoth80 said:
"Also worth thinking about how most people will experience your music, through an iPod or something most likely."
-This was the train of thought that started my whole internal debate, that I then externalized via this thread. :D
Click to expand...
Personally, I always found this line of thinking pretty unproductive. If one makes a good mix and does it properly, what the user is using to listen to it is irrelevant. A properly manufactured mix will sound good everywhere.

This is within the limitations of the playback medium, of course; any song is going to sound only so good on a cheapo lock radio. But we can't worry about that in the studio, that's the problem of the listener. Which is an important point, IMHO. If the listener doesn't like the sound of what he's listening to my music on, that's not my problem. When a mix leaves my studio, I know it sounds good and will sound decent on any system meant to sound decent. Anything beyond that I can't be concerned with; that's the listener's issue, not mine.

Mix your music well and everything else will fall into place. Anything beyond that is outside of your control and concern.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Which is an important point, IMHO. If the listener doesn't like the sound of what he's listening to my music on, that's not my problem. When a mix leaves my studio, I know it sounds good and will sound decent on any system meant to sound decent. Anything beyond that I can't be concerned with; that's the listener's issue, not mine.
Click to expand...

This is a really great point.

The whole "but my mix has to sound great on an iPod with earbuds" thing is a dark place for a mixing engineer to wander into. No matter how good your mix is if it's funneled through earbuds it will sound the way music through earbuds sound. I agree with Glen that it is not the mix engineers concern that people listen to his mixes on iPod earbuds.

His only concern should be that he 1) knows the characteristics of how his system sounds (dependent on a lot of things) and 2) likes how his mixes sound on that system (subjective taste). Seeking your personal solutions to those two points will get you much further than seeking other people's opinions of those two points. You can talk to others about their opinions, but don't let their opinions become YOUR opinons for the sake of having an opinion. (And that, of course, is IMHO!!)
 
When's the last time you ever heard anyone say that their favorite [fill in your own favorite band name here] album sounded fine when played on system X, but sounded more like horsesh*t than usual on system Y? "Oh man, that's a great album, but it just doesn't work on earbuds?"

It just doesn't happen.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
When's the last time you ever heard anyone say that their favorite [fill in your own favorite band name here] album sounded fine when played on system X, but sounded more like horsesh*t than usual on system Y? "Oh man, that's a great album, but it just doesn't work on earbuds?"

It just doesn't happen.

G.
Click to expand...
absolutely ...... in theory ANY sound system, whether a big component stereo or earbuds, would have been dialed in when being designed to play back hi-fidelity recordings so if you mix to where it sounds good on your quality monitoring system (assuming you have one) then it should sound right on any system.
 
I think most people listen to music in headphones these days - I also seem to get better mixes when I use headphones instead of monitors.

Bob
 
You mean you THINK you get better mixes with headphones. Headphones always SEEM to sound good. But you actually don't get better mixes with them. Nobody does.
 
I used to mix on headphones a long time ago. Then I got monitors and treated my room. Now my cans hang on the upper horn of a strat I never play and collect dust. I think my mixes sound good everywhere I've played them. I'm very happy with the results I'm getting.

+1000000 for monitors.
 
Greg_L said:
I used to mix on headphones a long time ago. Then I got monitors and treated my room. Now my cans hang on the upper horn of a strat I never play and collect dust. I think my mixes sound good everywhere I've played them. I'm very happy with the results I'm getting.

+1000000 for monitors.
Click to expand...
Just out of interest, those mixes that you did on cans, did they sound good everywhere and what do you think of them now ?
 
grimtraveller said:
Just out of interest, those mixes that you did on cans, did they sound good everywhere and what do you think of them now ?
Click to expand...
ya' know ...... I'm one of the few that thinks you can mix on cans.
My mixes I do on my 'phones sound pretty much like my monitor mixes.

However ...... I have a fairly expensive headphone rig ..... Sennheiser HD600's which are really flat, and a nice HeadRoom headphone amp.
That rig is flatter than most of ya'lls monitor set-ups. Yes, you do have some of the 'in the head' placement issues but not really that much if you have a well designed crossfeed circuit as the HeadRoom does. And it eliminates room issues.
Not everyone is gonna spend a grand on their head phone rig of course and actually, the only reason I did was because I'm also a mild audiophile with a large record collection.
But because I have one I use it in the studio for late night mixing ..... the end results are very similar to what I get when I just use the monitors.
 
grimtraveller said:
Just out of interest, those mixes that you did on cans, did they sound good everywhere and what do you think of them now ?
Click to expand...

They eventually sounded good after I'd make a CD, listen to it in the car and elsewhere, tweak on cans again, make another CD, etc. So yeah, the very end result came out okay. It just took 17 times longer and with more effort. Do i think they sound good now? Not really. I hear tons of problems on those older mixes. In all honesty though, a lot of those problems were tracking problems. On my monitors in my treated room, I make one mix, maybe two occasionally, and it's good to go and on to the next clusterfuck of a Greg song.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top