Monitors worthless without room treatment?

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I work at a grocery store. I don't have tons of money laying around. I have a deadline for recording a song written for my brother who passed away recently...this recording means a lot to me so I want to make it my best recording yet. I am an artist, a musician, and with no arrogance intended (well maybe a little), I'm very good at what I do. That's why it bugs me when I try to record a song at home and it sucks (sounds lifeless) or just gets all distorted before I can get anywhere with it. I'm not a scientist and just because I want to record music, I don't wanna have to be!! I just spent 3 years at work on an experimental acoustic album that sounded perfect on my computer speakers and then when I finally showed it off to other people on their sound systems I was startled (and embarrassed) by the horrible quality of the recordings. I don't want that to happen again, so, for the past year I've been researching home recording like crazy. And I really don't like the conclusion I'm being forced to make: my music will always sound like crap unless I find a $10,000 bill on the sidewalk. I refuse to believe that though, because despite bad experiences, I've actually been able to create some good quality tracks on accident...its possible.
I just got my tax refund back and couldn't wait to spend it on monitors so that I could clearly hear what was going on and not have the same issue as last time. I picked out some cheap ones and then read that cheap monitors are useless. So then I picked out the best monitors I can afford on a budget of $400 (Yamaha HS50m) and then I read something about how monitors are completely useless without the purchase of tons of stupid overpriced foam (and I have absolutely no DIY ability). Then I read an article about how a person with a crappy room is better off using nice headphones. This is why I hate the internet. Can someone please tell me if I should even bother with monitors or not?! Anything's better than my misleading Bose computer speakers right? I have a 12x12 room with 8ft ceiling and the room is packed full with a huge tv, a bed, a dresser, a guitar amp, carpet, curtains...I mean it's pretty dead sounding as it is...do I really need to shell out $500 bucks for stupid foam that i don't even know where to put? I'm not putting this song on the radio or anything...I just want it to sound good to the untrained ear, I want people to know the environment in which it was recorded and be impressed, not blown away, just impressed. How can I achieve that? (FYI - I have an audio editing super computer, good mics, interface, preamps, software, and high-end cables for all connections, and I have better rooms for the actual recording process, I'm just concerned with mixing issues for now. I bought all of that for home recording and now when it comes to monitors I don't know what to do)
 
First off, foam is not where you start. That being said, you can forget about spending $$$$ there.

I have been where you are. I know how it feels to have a room that is untreated to mix in. To be honest, I have tracked in my living room before and then taken my mix to the bedroom so that I could sit between the bed and the wall with a pair of monitors in order to mix. I have experimented with just about everything I could to get my music to mix well.

In the end I will tell you this; a properly treated room will most definitely make a difference in what you hear and how you treat the mix in general. It will definitely make a difference in how you EQ and mix the bass end of things. However, like all things, you can make your way around and produce a decent sounding recording. Not perfect, but good.

How?
That depends on what you have and how much time you are willing to spend mixing. For me, while sitting on that bedroom floor, I would first use a reference track through my in ears and then mix accordingly. Then I would listen to the reference track again using headphones and tweak things. After this I would listen to my reference track through my monitors and adjust the mix a little more. Then I would listen again through my in ears. If everything sounded good I would then burn a CD and put it into my home theater system and take notes. Then I would put the CD into my truck's CD player and take more notes. I would then adjust what I needed to again.

Yes, I would sometimes do this over and over again.

A properly treated room will allow you to skip a great many processes I mentioned. However, I still find myself burning a CD to listen to in normal environments in order to fine tune what I have.
 
Having a properly treated room would help A LOT! It allows you to more accurately hear what is going on. Your jaw will drop at the difference in sound. Headphones imo are good for isolating specific problems, but I would never mix alone with them.

You CAN make your own treatment, a monkey with a harmer could do it. You can literally go get some 2x4s or 1x4s and make a rectangle frame. You can have them cut the wood for you at lowes or homedepot so you don't have to do a thing except hammer/screw it together, and that's free.

Check out my Ultratouch panel I made: Here.

The ultratouch can be found at homedepots and menards, it's $6ish for that sheet shown in the pictures. You don't need to spend $500, you can do it for around $150-200 or even cheaper. I always suggest going to construction sites for neighborhoods and ask for their scrap wood. That's where I get all mine, I've never paid a cent for wood. And then get some cheap fabric from a fabric store, you literally roll the fabric out, place the panel on top and then fold it over and either glue it or staple it.

It really seems like your looking for the easy way out with this, in reality, just putting up some very simple treatment is that easy solution. It would take no more than a couple hours to make 6 or so panels and some bass traps.
 
Once, during the construction of my home basement studio, I recorded a song huddled underneath a "tent" of plastic sheeting. . Cause that's where my equipment was. . . guitars, amp, bass direct, drum machine, vocals, back-ups. . .Under a small tent of plastic . . .I mixed in headphones. . . Probably AKG K240s . . . It turned out pretty good. . . My point is that all this, "you must tune your room" isn't nearly as critical as "you must know what you're listening for " . . Did I check my mix on other speakers/systems ? Of course, but I didn't let the handicap of not having a decent room stop me from recording and mixing what turned out to be an important song for my "career" and my growth as a recordist and producer. . . Don't let anyone or anything stop you or even slow you down. .

My studio is treated with home-made bass traps, (thank you Ethan Winer, look him up). . I collect speakers from yard sales, thrift stores, church sales, auctions, any place they come cheap. . . It's my strange addiction. . But listening is key.
 
Ato brings up a good point above - checking mix on other speakers and systems. Even some inexpensive monitors will be better than using computer speakers - and even if your room is not treated. Knowing the characteristics of your monitors or headphones is important - listen to commercial music that you know and think sounds good on the same system to see how it sounds.
Mix, using monitors or headphones (whatever works for your situation), then listen on those Bose computer speakers. Burn a CD and listen on your living room stereo, in your car, at a friend's house. Make notes about what needs to be changed, remix per notes, do it all again.
 
The internet can be your best friend or your worst enemy, all you wanna do is create, so you go online for tips and you get the impression that you need better stuff, more stuff, and usually stuff most people cant afford, and the excitment you came into the idea with is sucked right out of you.

If you have decent stuff like you stated, and even though your mixing enviorment may be less than ideal there is no reason at all for you not to create music that you are proud of and sounds good. You are the most important instrument.
Like people have said it may just take a little longer to get everything just right. Mix on your system , listen in a car, on a great hi-fi system and on the cheapest crappiest cd player you can find, make notes, make adjustments, and tweek till your satisfied.
 
Ok get some monitors don't bother with treatment till down the road. Given time and money constraints, monitors are the biggest improvement. Then check mix on earbuds, computer speakers, car etc.
 
I don't have tons of money laying around. I have a deadline for recording a song written for my brother who passed away recently...this recording means a lot to me so I want to make it my best recording yet
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If I were in this particular situation I would consider taking those $400-$500 and finding a local studio to track and mix and just worry about getting the best performance possible
 
jmath1677 said:
I am an artist, a musician.....I'm not a scientist and just because I want to record music, I don't wanna have to be!!
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That is the 800lb gorilla in the room for a lot of folks.
People who play/sing well, have lots of great tunes...but are either clueless about recording, or have no money to invest in gear, or just find it frustrating having to "waste" so much time with all the technical mumbo-jumbo when all they want to do is make music.

Maybe you're best approach is to take yourself and your music to an existing studio and record there. Yeah, the money thing is still an issue, but you can easily spend a few thousand on a home studio and still be no better off than you are...and maybe it's me, but it sounds like you are getting yourself into recording somewhat reluctantly, and would rather just be the musician....?

It happens to a lot of musicians these days...they start off thinking that recording should be pretty straightforward and all you need is a "mic and a computer"...but then they find out there's much more to it than that to get the sound quality they are expecting...and then instead of making music, they are furstrated and lost.

So think about about that....how far do you want to go, and then consider your options. Three years on an album to have it fall way short of your expectations is a lot of time.

AFA that song for your brother....there's a bunch of folks here that do mixing as a service for a fee, and some that do it for fun. If you need it in a hurry, maybe you can just ask and see.
 
The importance of acoustic treatment is a theme that weaves in and out of many threads, and rightly so.

Acoustic treatment is a process of remediation, i.e. it fixes up acoustic problems in a recording space, and the amount of fixing depends on how bad that space is. Smaller rooms are acoustically more difficult than larger rooms, for example.

It's possible that you may not have to do a whole heap of work to make the room more acoustically friendly. Get out of the bedroom, for a start: it is too small and too regular. Your living room is probably better, specially if there is a lot of big heavy stuff in it, specially if its bigger, and specially if its dimensions are not even ratios of each other.

Decent speakers in this area might make a whole heap of difference.

However, your problems with mixes may have nothing to do with the room. It is possible that you may need to examine tracking and mixing techniques.

As for not being "a scientist": there is no escaping the fact (as Miro notes), that, like any human activity, to become proficient you need to learn, practice and develop a skill.
 
Well monitors without treatment definitely aren't "worthless"....not the right word. Let's just say that you won't be getting their FULL potential without treatment!
 
Bristol Posse said:
If I were in this particular situation I would consider taking those $400-$500 and finding a local studio to track and mix and just worry about getting the best performance possible
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This is my response, as well. Getting your room in shape and your ears acclimated to it and your new monitors is a matter of time and trial and error. You don't have have the luxury of either.
 
All monitors have a flat response in anechoic chambers nowadays. You choose your monitors because you like them. Not because they are better than the other ones.
Treating the room is priority #1. If you have a big bump a 160hz and a big dip at 120hz... you re mix will NEVER sound good.
Sad but true. I ve been spending months on trying things to make my room sound better. It does sound perfect. But now my mix translate better to other rooms.
Let's say that "less" surprising things are happening. And it is irrlevant to the speaker quality.
Of course, having a nice pair of speaker that does not bit your ears off and goes down to 40hz helps too.
 
Given the room dimensions you specify, I reckon it's guaranteed you've got room modes stacking up somewhere, so spending a bit of time/money on room treatment is more or less imperative.

I read somewhere that you should be prepared to spend the same amount of money on treatment as you spend on your monitors.

If you don't need earth shattering volumes, try and go for a pair of un-ported monitors. Your bass end won't lie to you so much.

I've been battling with various rooms for years, and I'm only now getting my mixes to translate to other systems more or less predictably, but I didn't get here overnight - this takes time, a lump of cash here, another lump there. These differences are incremental.
 
Well, that was my first post on here...I'm pretty surprised, thanks for all the good advice. I decided to record my brother's song professionally, but I still want to be able to use all my nice equipment at home sometimes too! See, I still find myself a little confused. My ultimate goal as a musician is to demo out another album at home that sounds decent, one that I can listen to in several places and not get major distortion...again the keyword is DEMOS. I have a few songs that have so much potential to me that I'm not going to even attempt to record them at home, I'm saving them for a studio. But I have over 100 songs right now and I can't get everyone of them recorded professionally. That's why i invested in all of this equipment. I'm fine with not having the greatest room (for now), I'm just more curious about the monitors thing. I want to be able to "monitor" my mixes with the speakers that are least likely to lie to me. Sure, the room can lie to me just as much, but it's better to be lied to by just one thing at a time then everything at once right?
I love the advice about checking the mix on every possible system, taking notes, and mixing some more...I'll definitely be using that. With that said, I want the first speakers I check the mix on and continue to tweak the mix on to be as accurate as possible...yes, audiophiles, as accurate as possible means with room treatment, I know, but I honestly don't think I'll personally be able to hear the difference (years down the road maybe, but I'm a noob and I'm okay with that for now).
I don't recall the exact name of my Bose computer speakers but I can't stress enough how much they suck for mixing! They make even famous songs we all know and love sound completely different! Don't get me wrong, I love how they sound, but they're unrealistic and they do terrible things to a mix...I don't ever want to go through another mix with them again. That's the major reason I want monitors so bad. With that said, in an untreated room, would I be better off buying another pair of regular computer speakers? Or should I buy monitors and attempt to treat the room later? Here's a few options I'm considering:
Option 1 - purchase the best monitors I can afford now (probably Yamaha HS50m) and get better room treatment and headphones later (way later - like after I've already recorded many songs and the damage is already done - that kind of later)
Option 2 - purchase lower end monitors (maybe KRK Rokit 5's) and with the left over money buy some good $100-$150 studio headphones, to check back and forth, and again, acoustic treatment way later.
Option 3 - keep the annoying Bose speakers and mix primarily on high-end headphones, check back and forth...save a lot of money.
Which option seems best?

I'll try to treat my room later, I promise...I just don't have time now.
If anyone has any suggestions on monitors, computer speakers, or headphones, let me know. Thanks
 
I'd say get good monitors don't bother with good headphones for now. I know some will disagree but that's my opinion. Mst interfaces have a plug for headphones, just hook up earbuds, computer speakers, whatever else you have that can plug in and be a reference. You'll get some good results that way.

Also you need to address the reason it distorts I. The first place. Probably clipping.

To get decent sounds you're gonna have to learn some. So don't be scared. Also even if you're gonna go to a studio, having a home studio is nice for working out arrangements and listening to a song sometimes makes you realize which are the gems and which suck.
 
Go for the best monitors you can afford.

Don't use PC speakers, don't use Bose.

Your mixes may still be unsatisfying, but you will be placing yourself in a good position for the future.
 
I just wanna say that the whole point of using near-field monitors at a lower volume is that they minimize the room's effects. . . Having said that, the room will still have an effect. .

Headphones will lie to you just because of their proximity, no matter how accurate they are, though they can also be "learned", their purpose is more intended to isolate noises, find the trouble spots, more like a magnifying glass on a painting- -it's not really a good way to see the whole painting. They can help, but monitors are what you want. . . And even $5,000 monitors would still have to be "learned". . There's no magic bullet. . Whatever you do or buy will still have to be learned. .
There are not too many short-cuts to learing both mixing, and how your mixes translate in other rooms on other systems. . . I agree with buying the best monitors you can afford. . . You ARE going to NEED them anyway.

BTW, "professional studio" is a relative thing as well. . . But that's a whole 'nother story. . .
 
AtoDeficient said:
I just wanna say that the whole point of using near-field monitors at a lower volume is that they minimize the room's effects. . . Having said that, the room will still have an effect. .

Headphones will lie to you just because of their proximity, no matter how accurate they are, though they can also be "learned", their purpose is more intended to isolate noises, find the trouble spots, more like a magnifying glass on a painting- -it's not really a good way to see the whole painting. They can help, but monitors are what you want. . . And even $5,000 monitors would still have to be "learned". . There's no magic bullet. . Whatever you do or buy will still have to be learned. .
There are not too many short-cuts to learing both mixing, and how your mixes translate in other rooms on other systems. . . I agree with buying the best monitors you can afford. . . You ARE going to NEED them anyway.

BTW, "professional studio" is a relative thing as well. . . But that's a whole 'nother story. . .
Click to expand...

yeah, it's seems that the problem with headphones isn't necessarily that they arent accurate or flat, it's that they screw up the stereo field.
 
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