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Monitors (pg. 3)
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| 3rd Signal |
| quote: | Originally posted by echosystm
Behringer's are shocking. Alesis are far too bass heavy; to the point where i've seen people stuffing wads of foam into all four bass ports just to get it to stfu. :P
In this price range it pretty much comes down to RP5s or ALP5s. Both are OK monitors, but don't expect them to be totally awesome. RP5s have better bass, ALP5s have better overall clarity. Just about anyone who has put them side by side will agree.
It's up to you which you would prefer.
That said, I think you should save up and get something better. 5" is not enough. Dance music relies heavily on good bass response. I would aim for RP8s or TR6s. In my oppinion TR6s blow any other budget monitors out of the water, although I'm yet to hear Rubicons!
THEN AGAIN, Jonas Steur uses Behringers, BT uses crappy BX5s, alot of Ian van Dahl stuff was mixed on Alesis M1s, and Airbase used house consumer headphones. Maybe we're all looking into this a bit much? At the end of the day, it's what you train your ears for that counts. Someone going from RP6s to HR824s will not be able to mix as well on the HRs despite the $X,000 price difference; they're not used to it. With that in mind, get the clearest ones (TO YOUR EARS) you can afford, learn them inside out, and hang on to them.
I don't own any of these monitors, so I'm not biased at all :P
I'm saving up for HS80Ms ooooh baby. |
Well I'll say something I always say (and won't ever stop):
It's NOT the music / gear that makes the producer good, it's the producer that makes the music / gear great.
We all got a pair of something which got the highest value of all and I'm talking about our ears.
The ear can adjust it self to basicly any monitor/speaker/headphone/etc' with time. Once adjusted to it, your mix will sound good because you know how it should be like.
I've seen many producers that work with equip' though produce great music and the opposite aswell, that's why I never judge by the look of your place and the gear you got cause in the end the only thing that really matters is the ears since without them no monitor, headphone, spectrum, acoustics or anything else will help you produce.
So anyhow what I wanted to say also is that before I bought my monitors I tried over 25 brands of monitors and I still keep on trying. Monitors made by ESI, Samson, Tannoy, Alessis, KRK, Yamaha, Adam, Event, Mackie, Genelec, Dynaudio and many more. I've heard and I've heard amazing stuff, only so I could get the right decision and compair them to something better.
And one more thing, My comment about the behringer (that I've yet to try) is only from other people reviews. I've heard only bad stuff about it and bad stuff coming out of it. low metrial quality, low sound quality, and all because it's a low cost monitor.
If I had to get something then I'd go with a monitor like the OLD Tannoy Reveal or Roland (although I didn't like them much but I prefer them more over the other stuff since KRK mostly got bad reviews, M-Audio I don't like at all (lot's of reasons) and alessis got far too much bass on those 2 products.)
But anyhow, what I really got to tell you is take a good cd with tracks that you like and stuff you want to make and listen to it on cheap and expensive monitors so you could get the idea of how far it is from flat sound and then deicide what you really like.
I made a little mess but I think you'll understand me.
P.S.
I didn't like the HS80M, they don't give a sharp image (was like that tweeter was overwhelmed by the mid-sub speaker) and they aren't that strong (in amp terms). When I tried them out they were vibrating like .... on a low volume and I was scared to see how much will they distort when pushed too loud. Though I've heard many people liking them so that's only my opinion. |
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| Allied Nations |
| Rubicons are nice, that ribbon tweeter is hot... |
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| 3rd Signal |
| quote: | Originally posted by Allied Nations
Rubicons are nice, that ribbon tweeter is hot... |
Wow... I thought the Resolv were better then them and cheaper also... the Rubicon sound like the tweeter is turned off... eek... Didn't like at all... |
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| Storyteller |
| Then you were probably outside the sweet spot. Ribbon tweeters are known for having a vary small range in terms of width. |
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| 3rd Signal |
| quote: | Originally posted by Storyteller
Then you were probably outside the sweet spot. Ribbon tweeters are known for having a vary small range in terms of width. |
Yep, but when made with cheasp metrial and in low conditions then they are worthless...
On the Adam the ART's are amazing. On the Samson, they sound bad... |
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| Lunar Phase 7 |
Just tested the Genelecs 8020A's
At first I didnt wanna spend £399 on some speakers, and I din't thinkt hey would be very good with the 4" cone, etc.
But holy crap, they tore everything apart.
Crystal clear sound, deep tight bass, and a massive sound for such a small speaker.
Depsite the suprising bass response of these speakers, everything else remained crisp, and overall they sounded very honest and clean.
If you can, you should try these out at all costs. |
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| Derivative |
I bought a pair of Dynaudio BM5as on june 3rd 2006 but owing to ty complications in which Digital Village persistantly ship me ed up speakers or ex return/b stock models I've only had about 4 or 5 dyas use out of them.
I like them. When I'm not in fear that the tweeter is going to burst again. They are really sensitive to positioning though and if you get them in just the right spot and play a click track, then move your head side to side a few inches you can sense the change in direction which is amazing. But it also means you will move them around all over the place and you have to sit fairly still and in the same place all the time or you will end up moving the speakers around again.
They sound horrendous when you stick them close to walls and your room has a slight echo. I ended up spending hours just moving them around and fiddling with the dip switches to get them to sound good. If you stick them close to walls you have to drop the bass dip switches or you get horrid flutter echoes. In my old house, due to space constraints I had one of the speakers adjacent to a wall with a 5 inch gap or so. The dip switch settings for that speaker were totally different to the other monitor and it never sounded right.
I moved house and my room is now huuuge so I can sit them in the middle of the room and I loved the sound off them in the time I had a working pair but my walls and floor are really thin so I can't monitor loud without peeing off my neighbors.
The thing that got me most about the bm5as is how sensitive they are to positioning sounds. If you don't pan things right or use too much stereo spreading it sounds really wrong.
My only beef is that I have had 5 days use out of a pair of speakers that I should have had brand new and in working condition nearly 7 months ago. Ive gone through 3 pairs and now I don't know if I am just getting dud ex returns or something. Ive had one tweeter burst on me (really *loudly*) and now the other suspected ex return speaker I have pops periodically. I think its going to burst like the old one as that one was making popping noises until it eventually went with a huge bang.
Word of caution with buying Dynaudio speakers. No volume controls so its all software side. When you first get them, turn windows mixer volume down to zero. All the faders. Turn all the gain controls in your sequencer down to zero and slowly increase them. The worst thing that could happen is if you just plugged them in, set the output source to +4 dB on both speakers only to have a windows system sound blow your head off at 120 dB.
If you use modular circuits or matrixes don't ever get a feedback loop because you can't suddenly kill the volume if it gets too much. You have to leap up and reach around the back of the speakers to turn the power off. It takes about 2 seconds for the volume to fade by which time you might have wrecked your ears and the drivers. So just be careful. |
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| Adiraz |
| i have bm5 passives. bought them online after listening to powered speakers in the same price range. im pleased with them! no room to move them around here, but they seem to sound tons better with an audiolab 8000a than rp 8's and the others i heard. not too basey tho. thats where my sub comes into the picture. |
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| Fledz |
| Derivative - Can't you control the sound with your external sound card? Or are you using a desktop? |
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| Derivative |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fledz
Derivative - Can't you control the sound with your external sound card? Or are you using a desktop? |
You can control the output volume using the software mixer on your soundcard. I have a Delta 1010 so theres an icon in my system tray. But put it like this: You accidentally add a multimode filter to the signal chain with a distortion unit. You get a feedback loop and unknowingly press play. Your head explodes. You now have to run the mouse down to your system tray, click it open, navigate to the inputs/outputs page and mute both channels.
It takes alot longer than rushing for the volume dial on the monitor and turning it down real fast.
Also, setting BM5as to output with +4dB sensitivity makes them really ing loud. Like scarily loud. The first time I got my BM5as, I plugged them in +4dB, lowered the Delta mixer output level to -55dB and tentatively opened Fruity Loops. The explosion sound on startup damn near knocked me off my chair.
So the bottomline is: if you are interested in getting Dynaudio monitors, you need to get into the habit of turning all gain controls down to zero. Then turning the monitors on. Then increasing the output gain until the signal is audible. Otherwise you can accidentally blow your head off. Everytime you add some dynamics processor to the signal chain, turn the output gain on the processor down, then increase it until it is audible. We should all be doing this really but I used to produce on ty 9 watt PC speakers so I never bothered with gain controls. Its not like doing anything on them is going to blow your head off using 9 watts of raw POWERRR.
If you are used to using powerful speakers then I guess you already know this stuff but the advice is for the benefit of those who are making a huge upgrade. |
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| Fledz |
Yea I know what you mean. I did that with my headphones. All I can say is ouch!
But I plan on getting an external audio interface so I can use that for the volume. Software sucks for changing levels. |
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