nearfield monitoring and acoustics

[camus]

After reading through the reams of info about acoustic control, a sudden thought just struck me. Would alot of this stuff be considered "overkill" if you're just planning to use nearfield monitors? I'm asking cause I'm currently designing me room, and I really don't want to overdo it if it's not going to make too much of a difference. The place's about 17 by 10, and I'm thinking of sticking the setup right smack in the centre of the room. In your measured (and vastly experienced) opinions, do I really need to go all the way, or will a little selective treatment in the right places (where??) be enough? Thanks again, folks.

 

[John Sayers]

Yeah camus - that's what nearfield monitoring is about - remove the room effect - but if the room is good they will still sound better

Cheers
John

 

[Brian Grey]

Yeah camus - that's what nearfield monitoring is about - remove the room effect - but if the room is good they will still sound better

Cheers
John

yeah, exactly. Nearfield monitoring is very nice because it does minimize the room effect. I would suggest, though, to make your room as nice as possible while you're still doing construction, later you're just going to be lazy about it probably... you'll think, "I don't want to do that, the room is done..." but if you do it while you're building you just won't say it's done until it's right. Also, what if sometime down the road you want to get rid of the nearfield? I just like to take possible future modifications into considerations.

Later,
-Brian

 

[BigKahuna]

I'm not as concerned with the acoustics during monitoring as I am with tracking. I use nearfield monitors, as most home recordists do. But, I can learn how the room will affect the monitoring and deal with it ... I don't, however, want my crappy room sound leaking in on my vocals/drums/etc. That, to me, is the real point of acoustic control ... so you can get a good sound on tape in the first place.

Also, Brian makes a good point about taking care of it during initial construction. I wish I had done that. 3 years later ... I still have bare walls. Oh well, that's life.

 

[barefoot]

Near field has another meaning which is completely glossed over by the manufacturers. At the typical crossover frequencies and listening distances of most “near field” monitors the distances between the tweeter, midbass and listener are all similar. This is actually the midfield (in physics speak).

So what, you ask? Well, the radiation pattern in this midfield region is very complex and the response changes dramatically with small changes in position of the listener. If a manufacturer claims they have designed their speakers with a flat response in the “near field”, they have done it for a very specific distance and angle relative to the monitors. Any deviation from this specific position which they placed their test microphone will cause significant response anomalies, especially in the crossover band.

This argument is mainly aimed at the separate tweeter/midbass design of the majority of monitors. There are some exceptions. Dual concentric drivers like those used by Tannoy should not suffer from this problem as long as your ears are directly on axis. Planar magnetic, electrostatic, or ribbon speakers, where the dimensions of the source are large relative to the listening distance, might also offer a very good near field solution with little positional dependence. These are, however, large, expensive and not terribly practical.

Just a thought.