What do you look for in monitors?

P

prometheuswire

New member
I really need to buy some monitors and am confused about what I need to look for. What are the characteristics of good monitors? What things do I end up sacrificing when I buy cheaper monitors? The ultimate characteristic of a transducer is its frequency response, but what tangible attributes effect the frequency response?

I hear a lot about Yorkville's but a guy that I record with says that they are a bad idea because they are higher end consumer and not good for monitors.
 
Na the yorkvilles are awesome. Sounds like the guy doesn't know his shit, or at least he hasn't heard them and he's going by stuff he's heard.

Monitors should be accurate and as flat as possible. You probably want a set that don't fatigue your ears so that you can mix for longer periods of time. If you really need a lot of low end reproduction you probably want something with an 8 inch woofer or a sub. If you don't really need the heavy thumping low end from hip hop or techno or whatever, then 6.5 will probably do, unless you can afford a bigger speaker/sub.

As a general rule you get what you pay for, but there are minor exceptions, and it's all subjective to your own ears and taste. There are members on this board who could afford the Mackie HR824's and bought the Yorkville YSM1p's instead because they liked them more. You really have to try them out and see what your ears like, but remember it's not what makes the music sound "good", it's what is accurate and lets you really hear whats in the mix and whats really wrong with it. If you have a shitty mix you don't want speakers that flatter it like hi fi speakers, you want something that's brutaly honest so that your mixes will translate well.

As far as i technical end i'm not really up on it. But generally more money will buy you more expensive speakers with more expensive components and more work spent in making/designing them. A high end send of Genelecs or a pair of Behringer truth monitors are obviously going to be in different ball parks just because of the price.
 
prometheuswire said:
I really need to buy some monitors and am confused about what I need to look for. What are the characteristics of good monitors? What things do I end up sacrificing when I buy cheaper monitors? The ultimate characteristic of a transducer is its frequency response, but what tangible attributes effect the frequency response?

I hear a lot about Yorkville's but a guy that I record with says that they are a bad idea because they are higher end consumer and not good for monitors.
Click to expand...


In monitors, what you look for is "translatablility". :) In short, if it sounds good on the monitors, it should sound good on everything else. It should 'translate' well onto other systems.

This basically means that you should be able to hear what is wrong with the mix immediately on your monitors. Compared to listening to a decent home stereo (forget that compact shit), monitors should be like putting on glasses. :)

Yorkvilles are supposed tobe good, I haven't heard them myself. Tannoy Active Reveals are getting really cheap now, they are good.
 
Yorkville and "consumer" don't fit into the same sentence well.

Consumer is sony, jvc, sharp, etc...

Go into bestbuy or circuit city and ask them where there yorkville products are.

Take your friend with you so he can see the befuddled look upon their faces. Then goto any good gear shop and check out the monitors (yorkville and otherwise) side by side.

Then bitch slap him.:)
 
Don't rely totally on other's opinion (though it can be very helpful) you really do HAVE to listen for yourself. Use reference CD's and listen in you room (if at all possible).

Different people are looking for different things in monitors. Some people want as flat as possible. Some people want it to sound just like most people's stereo. Some people are used to an old set of monitors they used to use. And all people hear slightly to drastically different from one another.

You will always need another mic no matter what high dollar mics you own. A good set of monitors can last your whole "career" so take your time. Don't be afraid to save your money if necessary. Even the cheapest mic has the occasional application where it is useful. I'm not sure I'd say the same for monitors.

One trick I used that seemed to help was to listen to your reference CD and then gradually pull the fader down. Listen to see if any tracks seem to disappear or does the entire mix just get quieter. If they just vanish, cross those monitors off your list.

Hope this helps

Jason A.
 
These are all really good responses (except the bitch slap suggestion ;) ).

I think my friend was saying that the Yorkie's were HiFi and probably didn't translate well.

Thanks for the excellent info,
Courtney
 
Prometheuswire.

There are so many aspects to good monitor design that I could seriously write a book. And frequency response is far from the whole story. However, the main things that you get from better monitors are:

1. Lower distortion - often described as "transparency" and "detail."
2. Less dynamic compression - a more "open" sound that actually lets you hear what you are intentionally doing to the sound with your compressor.
3. Better impulse response - the sound is less smeared out over time. Also described as "transparency", "detail", and "sound stage."

Achieving a flat frequency response (measured in an anechoic chamber) these days is almost trivial. Especially with active monitors, you can just throw in a bunch of filters to smooth out all the nasty bumps and dips. $0.05 capacitors and $0.25 op amps are considerably cheaper than the high performance speaker drivers and low resonance cabinets required to "naturally" achieve a flat response - along with the qualities I listed above.

Translatability is important, but there are levels to this as well. Are you simply trying to translate well to average cheap consumer products, or do you also want to control the details inside your recordings that can be heard by the best playback systems in the world? Cheap "translatable" monitors will give you confidence that your recordings will sound decent on a variety of cheap systems. Excellent "translatable" monitors will give you confidence that your recordings will sound good on anything - from a $10 boom box to a $10,000 dream system.


Subtractor,

I hate to say it, but I tend to agree that Yorkville's are rather "consumer". Not that you can go out and buy them where you buy consumer products, but in the sense that "consumer" is often used synonymously with "cheap". I design and build loudspeakers, so I'm extremely familiar a large number of component suppliers and their offerings. I recognize the tweeter used in YSM and it definitely leans towards the low end of the quality scale. The woofer is more difficult to identify since I haven't had the opportunity to open a YSM up, but typically a designer chooses components from the same quality range. And a simple tap on the side of a YSM box reveals a lot about its build quality.

Now, I'm not saying one cannot produce good mixes with Yorkvilles. And it's arguable that they have a good performance versus price ratio. But we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that they offer anything even remotely close to everything that one could ask for in a recording monitor.

Loudspeakers are by far the weakest link in any audio chain. And building them such that they perform to a meager one tenth the accuracy of even medium grade electronics quickly turns into an extremely expensive endeavor. Don't skimp on the weakest links - the devices that are almost literally the ears to your music.

Thomas

http://barefootsound.com
 
Well... You're the speaker dude, so I guess I'll take your word for it.:)

BTW, where've you been? Have you come up with any groovy new tunes lately?
 
barefoot,

I guess the biggest concern I have for monitors is that of translatability. I want better knowledge of what my recording will sound like most of the time. I was concerned with flat frequency response because I don't want a bass sound that is diminished compared with a mid sound because my monitor was unable to handle lows well.

The way I see it if my monitors are "flat" and I like the mix, if the recording sounds to "bassy" (or something like that) on someone else's speakers then its their deal not mine. Is that a bad philosophy to have? Trying to make a recording sound good on everyone's speakers seems impossible.

Thanks for the reponse
 
P,

That's a very reasonable philosophy and monitors with a flat response are sort of an absolute minimum requirement (though you'd be surprised at how many companies "massage" their data to make it appear flatter than it really is). I hope I didn't give the impression that flat response isn't important. It is. But it's the old "all chimpanzees are apes, but not all apes are chimpanzees" situation. Accurate reproduction necessarily implies flat response, but flat response doesn't necessarily mean accurate reproduction.

Thomas

http://barefootsound.com
 
Barefoot what are some monitors that are actually really good quality that won't break the bank?

I've heard the yorkvilles work very well, but never heard anything about the component quality.
 
I design and build loudspeakers, so I'm extremely familiar a large number of component suppliers and their offerings. I recognize the tweeter used in YSM and it definitely leans towards the low end of the quality scale. The woofer is more difficult to identify since I haven't had the opportunity to open a YSM up, but typically a designer chooses components from the same quality range. And a simple tap on the side of a YSM box reveals a lot about its build quality.
Click to expand...

Not that I have anything against your method of evaluation, but perhaps a more proper way to test speakers would be to listen to them rather than looking at and beating them.
 
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Ambi,

Realize that I'm jaded and it's difficult for me to get too enthusiastic about most any monitor - especially those in the economy price range. Anyhow, Blue Sky's are decent for the money. They definitely have their issues, but I think they're a good step above your average YSM or 20/20. Truth Audio also makes a nice monitor. The design is decent. Not outstanding, but decent. But the driver units are excellent, so that compensates a bit, resulting in a fairly high performance "sound" - or should I say lack of "sound' .

NuTT98,

I have heard the Yorkville's and they sound rather like run of the mill low priced monitors. Perhaps a slightly different set of compromises than some others, but fraught with problems just the same.

Often times it's difficult to make reliable determinations about the sonic merits of a speaker because either the demonstration room is bad, you don't have a good comparison available, or whatever. So looking at a speaker is actually a very useful and objective tool for evaluation - as long as you have the experience to know what you're looking for. I'm doing nothing different than, say, a car engineer who looks at the suspension and narrow H rated tires on a car and says with a high degree of confidence that the car isn't going to fair well taking hairpin curves at 100mph - no test drive required.

Thomas

http://barefootsound.com
 
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Ambi,

I'm right in the middle of building "beta" prototypes of my first official production studio monitors. I plan to have the design finalized and offer them for sale on my website in approximately 2 months. I don't want to say too much about them at this point, but I'm shooting for a price target that will make them extremely good values compared to Dynaudio and Genelec monitors in a similar class - though they will somewhat create a class of their own. So, this might be well out of your price range.

I do also plan to create a semi-economy version of my product, but this is a bit in the future. It requires a lot more initial capital investment to build in the quantities required to really drive down the costs and compete in the lower price ranges. Hopefully, if my flagship model takes off I'll have the resources to offer a low cost version. I think I have a good chance, provided I can get the word out!

Thomas

http://barefootsound.com
 
The Earthworks Sigma monitors look very impressive. Time and phase coherent (good step and impulse responses) and tight, well damped bass (for a non sealed enclosure). Check out the details on earthworks site and the measurements and comments in this stereophile review.

http://www.stereophile.com/fullarchives.cgi?859

http://www.earthworksaudio.com/ns/speakers.html

http://www.earthworksaudio.com/ns/f_reviews/soundonsound/soundonsound_sigma62.html

An issue is the resonance at 488hz seen in the cumulative spectral decay (accelerometer). Perhaps the MDF version would be better than the solid cherry in this regard (as well as being $1500 cheaper).

Have you had a chance to audition this speaker barefoot?
 
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