Affordable Monitors thread (1 Viewer)

[RED(tape)MENACE]

Speak up with your personal experiences with monitors costing less the €600 per pair that the home recording brosefs might be interested in!

Here's some reviews I dug up randomly :

http://www.tapeop.com/reviews/767/

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

Why can't I edit the first post RAAAAAGE (pete!)

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

http://www.tapeop.com/reviews/218/

 

[tim]

http://www.tapeop.com/reviews/218/

I have the MR5's. I recommend them. They are good.

 

[dubh in seattle]

whew this could get to be a long thread! I've had crazy good luck with the Wharfedale 'diamond 8.2' monitors at home. My home room is pretty extensively treated for fairly neutral frequency response, and that will make a biiiiig diff with any monitor. For real the mixes I do on 'em translate pretty dang well on every other system I play the mixes on. I'd really prefer to have Adams at home, but life keeps interfering with the cost! The Wharfedales cost something like $300 new here in the states... shocking value. I also use a pair of M-Audio 'studio pro 3's' for a boombox-type comparison; those are like $150 the pair. Good to have a larger & smaller pair to quickly A/B and check mixes on....

 

[GO]

What room treatments have you got going on Dubh my man?

Its a subject I've ben thinking about.

I'm using Yamaha MSP5s..€500 the pair off Thomann I think..I love them.The room is tiny so they go plenty loud.Bass is a bit nonexitant in them but I'm used to that now..Not ideal but grand.

 

[tim]

POPWHORE, I read similiar things about the KRK5's in regards the bass. Alot of people said they just hooked up a cheap enough sub so they could tell what was happening in the low end so maybe you could try the same for your Yamahas.

 

[theoootini]

i had a lend of a pair alesis m1 activs recently, sounded pretty good and seemed to translate well but i had to stuff socks in the bass ports. probably down to placement.

i've a pair of yamaha hs80s now and am really pleased with them. had to completely reconfigure the spare bedroom to make them not sound boomy as hell though (rear firing bass ports).

 

[GO]

tim; I've read that adding a sub can make things more difficult..unless you get matched sub and monitors..and apparently(IIRC) the're not that essential for rock music.
I could be talking out of my hat here.

 

[tim]

tim; I've read that adding a sub can make things more difficult..unless you get matched sub and monitors..and apparently(IIRC) the're not that essential for rock music.
I could be talking out of my hat here.

Well most brands seem to have add-on subs for their monitors. Best best is probably just to go for the 8" monitors in most ranges and get the bass from the go.

 

[dubh in seattle]

What room treatments have you got going on Dubh my man?

Its a subject I've ben thinking about.

I'm using Yamaha MSP5s..€500 the pair off Thomann I think..I love them.The room is tiny so they go plenty loud.Bass is a bit nonexitant in them but I'm used to that now..Not ideal but grand.

Hey Sisk-o-tron I don't mean to jack the thread with going into room acoustics & stuff, hope this is relevant to the subject and as usual I'm incapable of writing a concise post...
***note!!! the pics below are from when I first threw this room together over a year ago, so they look rough as hell! Different computer, interface, tape deck etc since these too blah blah blah. BUT even then, it really worked well & even better now that I've properly mounted the stuff on the walls & covered up the batting, both for looks & to keep the dust from gettin in the gear***
I'm using this 4" thick cotton-fiber insulation batting, called 'UltraTouch' here in the states. It's recycled from jeans manufacture, so doesn't give off itchy/dangerous junk like unbonded pink fiberglas batting... though it gives off blue dust, not dangerous but'll give ya blue snot .|..|. Like in one pic you can see I mounted the side-wall 4x4 foot panels on cedar garden lattice with bolts & washers, & since these are old pics you can't see that they're now hung up on the walls using big-ass bolts to 'float' the whole assembly with a couple inches of airspace between the panel frames and the walls, that makes the absorption way more efficient. So you can grab some old bed sheets (or cool tie-dye tapestries, Gaz lol) and use a staple gun to cover up the batting, stapling the cloth to the frames.

Across the room corners, I used folding closet doors from other rooms where we didn't want 'em; there's more batting draped over those AND batting left rolled up & stacked behind, since the excess bass waves that'll mess with your mixes accumulates in corners...

I did the math to figure out the problematic frequencies in the given space and placed the monitor speakers/best listening position accordingly (and the approximate amount of batting to use)... I'd be glad to go into all that math & stuff later but I'm burnt at the moment so!
You DON'T want to over-deaden the room; this might look like a load of treatment for a small room but it really isn't...ymmv but an ultra-dead room generally sux for mixing.
Oh, btw this room is basically 11'6" x 10' x 8' tall; I've got the monitoring along the 11'6" wall since the window is smack in the middle of it, so this was the best position taking that into account.

ANYways... here're the old pics of the 1st set up. Hah, note the insane looking but VERY functional 'ceiling cloud' using 1" batting hung over the ceiling fan... of course the damned fan is exactly above the ideal mix position... but it works...

view of the left wall, mix rig & window (drapes since added & batts covered/hung) Ah, up top in the corner is more batting, at that point I'd just stuffed it into a plastic bin liner)

Right side wall; the additional small panel was batting sandwiched btween furnace filters, scavenged this from what was laying around since we'd just moved in that week. Whatever works when you need it, yeah?

Here's what it looked like from the mix position-

...and here's that cedar garden lattice I used to mount the side wall panels on... ah, and my wife's cool acoustic in the pic too

So even though I've prettied it up now, it got me up and mixing right quick after we'd just moved in & all told the cost was about $250-$300. Not shown is the little entrance way that I use as an ad-hoc vocal booth or the built-in wardrobe directly behind the mix position, a couple feet back. Took the folding doors off; clothes hanging up in it work really well for additional absorption. *sigh* and we didn't even get into diffusion vs. absorption or the math and physics of sound wave propagation/nodes/modes/etc etc but I've gone plenty far off topic!

 

[theoootini]

would i be wrong in thinking that if you mix at a fairly low level, have the basics of room placement ok there's no need for any of that mess?

 

[ann post]

yes, you would.

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

would i be wrong in thinking that if you mix at a fairly low level, have the basics of room placement ok there's no need for any of that mess?

No.
Yes.
Or maybe.

Define "need".
Does what Dubh has done improve his ability to hear what's actually going on and mix better?
I would say yes.

Do you want to do some of the things he's done to achieve this result?
Doesn't sound like it

 

[theoootini]

i'm only a messer anyway so it doesn't really matter i guess. this is pretty much what my room is like with big heavy curtins at the back wall.

 

[GO]

Dubh...thats a great fecking post thanks.I am defo gonna invest in some damping ala Dubh soon.We were practicing in a place that had what I thought were just a few small insignificant panels on the walls but they made a hell of a difference to the quality of what I could hear so I defo think this stuff will help make more accurate mixing a reality.No question.

 

[dubh in seattle]

Yeah, it gets complicated because of the way we perceive sound & how the sound waves act when they bounce around...our ears are the most linear in their sensitivity when we're listening/mixing at around 85dB (meet our good friends Fletcher and Munson... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour ). So generally- generally, mixes done at around this volume level will translate well when heard on a variety of speakers/headphones etc.

The problems in an average square or rectangular bedroom set-up (like mine) come from the ways different frequencies will bounce around, reinforcing and boosting themselves at some points in the room and canceling themselves out at others, even at fairly low volume levels. So, it can commonly happen that, say, a low 'E' on guitar will sound much louder or quieter than the low 'G' right where you're sitting to mix... so we end up over or under-compensating, and when we play a resulting mix in a different room it sounds totally different that what was intended. True, messing with acoustic treatments & the math/physics/geometry can be a total throbbing pain in the hole & just not possible in many situations. Mixing & acoustic design consultation for home set-ups is my job so I needed to geek out a room to do work at home too... but furniture, bookcases, etc can go a long way towards minimizing problems. And for real, if you're getting results you like without treating the room go with it!

OMG I'm actually gonna go back on topic here!-- I really really like almost all the KRK monitors, the newer rokit lines seem like a good deal for the $. The 5's definitely don't put out a ton of low end, but I'm a fan of the midrange detail and the smooth high end... though I haven't used them enough to really learn them. A huge improvement over earlier rokit lines. I was spoiled by having some of their high range stuff for over 10 years, but the newer rokits are all pretty good for the dough. A friend who has very expensive genelecs bought a set of the Yamaha MSP's and LOVES them... I'm dying to try the least expensive Adams, the A3x with the 4.5" woofers, they're $250-ish each here, and if their higher range monitors are any guide (that's a biiiiiig if, considering the diff in price), they're probably fkn good. Adam S3-A (erm, about $4k the pair) and A7/A7x (about $1200 the pair) being my all time faves... the newer Alesis are a massive improvement over the old ones, though it's just a personal preference that I can't seem to figure out midrange details with 'em, ymmv sure.

 

[GO]

Yeah...I'm tres happy with the MSP5's I wanna move up to the 8's though..that'd be me low end sorted I reckon..the 5's are clear and detailed but the bass is a bit whacky on them to say the least(mind you..one of mine is pointing out from a corner )

 

[dubh in seattle]

Hah! while I was droning on and on (and on...) a bunch more posts appeared! THE 38% 'RULE' as shown in Oootini's diagram is our friend, for real. Don't get me started on why but it is. RED TAPE- my brotha. Didn't you have a stickythread on acoustics & such here?? Could've sworn you did... if not, dare I start a thread with math and diagrams and all the dark arcana?

And yessir PawpHoor~ ain't it a trip what just a few little panels can do? My pics are totally absurd looking since we'd just moved in, I'd take current ones but that'd mean I'd have to tidy up in there first... looks like a trainload of cables smashed into a cd factory right now... Panels made with rigid compressed fiberglas (MUCH thinner and tidier) can achieve results as good and better but I'm cheap & have no way to transport the 4x8' panels... god it's almost 6am I am actually finally going to bed. Oh how I've missed THUMPED.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

does the messiness of that grey stuff all over the place not play havoc with your ability to concentrate and your general sense of wellbeing?