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What to look for in Monitors (pg. 3)
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| Diginerd |
If I was you, I'd get the better monitors and get stands later. You can always compromise now and stack up some large concrete blocks (as used to build a garage!) with a flagsone at the bottom and top. Cheap, ugly but effective. They're rigid and massive, so will not act as accoustic springs. Your HF clarity and soundstage depends on your speakers not moving.
Alternately get some cheap stands for now and know you'll upgrade later.
You will regret compromising on the actual speakers right now...
As for positioning, can you supply the dimensions of the room including height, window & door locations? Some photos might help too. If you can describe the wall and ceiling construction that's important data too. Ie studding with sheetrock, brick, concrete, wooden logs, etcm is the room carpeted, bare concrete or wooden?
With all that info I'll model it in caracad for you so you can get some visuals of what to expect, and some pretty decent positiong information. That will also let me give you some specific advice as to what room treatments will give the best improvement for least cash.
There are however a bunch of things you can do without fancy computer tools...
As decent starting point your monitors should be equidistant from each other and your primary listening position to form an equalateral triangle. They should also be equidistant from the side and back walls and at head height.
Finally, start with the fronts of the speakers parallel to the back wall and start toeing them in slowly until after a couple of iterations they're at 60 degrees to the back wall (ie now face on to you at the listening position if you turn you head to look at one or the other). Listen to a couple of pieces of music you know really well at each position.
At some point during the above exercise you'll find that the sound field is much more cohesive than at any of the other angles. Set the speakers back to that position and you will have gone a long way to improving your mix experience.
LF extension is tricky, and room accoustics play a large part, but there are some things you can experiment with to get better results.
The closer your speakers are to the back wall the greater the emphasis of LF, this can be both a blessing and a curse. Too close, and bass becomes boomy and pronounced at certain resonant frequencies, too far and bass can get light. There will be a spot where you have the best balance of tightness verses extension.
Start about 3" from the back wall and work forward an inch or too at a time until you're about 2 ft away, or the bass drops off too much. You may need to come further into the room as well. Experiment and again listen at each step to a well produced couple of tracks.
I'd say with all of the above you might spend 2-3 hours, longer if you're moving bricks, but the payoff is definately worth the time investment. |
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| echosystm |
The problem with using speaker stands is that your computer screen will have to go on a stand also - if your monitors are off your desk, but your screen is on your desk, then your screen will be obscuring the sound path of your monitors. In other words...
/ <-Speaker
-| <-Monitor
\ <- Speaker
Any sound comming out the edges of the speakers will bounce off the back of the screen. Obviously this is even worse, in most cases, than just resonance problems.
If you have some big ass 3-way monitors, then it is worth worrying about because they will resonate like crazy. If you have standard 6" home monitors, then putting some mopads underneath them will be more than sufficient. Furthermore, putting your speakers on stands won't change the problem of early reflections off your table... If your desk is high, it's going to happen regardless, unless of course you put them a good 50cm back from the tables edge. I'm pretty sure you wouldnt be able to read your computer screen from that distance though! :p |
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| Diginerd |
Couple of interesting points in there..
Monitors (of the computer variety) these days are much smaller than they used to be when they were CRTs. Also they're usually on flexible stands. This lets you drop the height of the screen right down which helps significantly.
I have a buddy to constructed his desk so the screens were sunk in. Pretty cool actually.
My setup is simpler, my screens are off to the side and my console in the mix position
Table top reflections are alway there, from a small home studio to a "Big Room" with console the size of a pool table. they all suffer to a greater or lesser amount from this.
My main point was the accoustic coupling of the speakers to the desk being especially bad. Mopads are cool, but are not ebough to remove this effect. The desk will still resonate, hence sticking them up on stands for a significant improvement.
Position of speakers in the room makes a huge difference to how things sound, and I stand by my prior posts.. :-)
Also happy to do that modelling.. |
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| EtherealSL |
The comment about the reflection off of computer monitors is definately a concern since I run a dual display configuration (two 17"s) so my reference monitors will have to be fairly far back in order to get that equilateral triangle set up properly.
It is very nice of you to offer to do the modeling, Diginerd! I will provide room dimensions at the end of the week/ beginning of the weekend as I am traveling at the mo and away from my house.
Here is another concern, I will be on the move for the next couple years since I am a student. Right now I am in my house with my family in D.C. Within the next year, I will be studying in the UK and in the US. After a year, I will be going somewhere else for graduate/medical school so I won't be at one spot for too long. I wouldn't want you to spend too much time doing the room modeling if I will only be my house for a few more months. Some apts will be wood floored, others will be carpeted, some will have windows, others wont and room dimensions can vary greatly. This is an unfortunate predicament, but is a good reason not to invest in sound treatment material (other than stands). What would you do in my situation. |
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| EtherealSL |
okay so I thought I would update a bit on how the monitors sounded to me.. I went to a local store and tested out the models they had available. Unfortunately, they didnt carry Events or the Adams so I did not get a chance to hear those. Even the owner of the pro audio dept told me she was going to start using the Adams herself. I demoed using Trance DnB and even a little hip hop and rock. With trance music it is the easiest to differentiate the monitors from each other because of the full use of the frequency range, while hip hop and dnb on the other hand helped determine the depth of the bass response.
The Dynaudios sounded great. VERY clean and very tight. The Mackies were solid and the 824s bass response was extremely deep, I was impressed at how deep the bass was but unfortunately, it was very messy. The bass just boomed and sounded sloppy overall even in the professionally treated room. They were also a bit more mid heavy than the dynas. The Bx8a were no good. Painfully loud his, very noticable when ABing with the other monitors. The only thing that seemed to compare to the dynas were the Yamaha HS80Ms which were very clean (not cleaner than the BM5a, however). The HS80M did have a deeper bass response and it was very tight compared to the mackies. The mids did seem a bit elevated.
Right now I am 99% sure I will get the BM5as and will give a test in the home studio environment. I may switch over to the Yamahas in case the bass does not seem to be low enough for my needs. The bass response seems to be the only advantage that the Yamahas have over the Dynaudios. In all other respects (especially sound clarity), the Dynaudio monitors beat the others by miles.
The stands may be the next thing I should look into (if I can find the money!) For now it looks like I will be using tables and books to put the dynaudios on, hah.
Thanks for help guys, let me know if you have any suggestions for stands and if you have any questions about my little "review." Im sure many people will have the same dilemmas about monitors so hopefully I can provide any insight as to how good those Dynaudios are.
Cheers |
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| echosystm |
you can make your own stands that are as good as $200 pro audio ones for about $35 or less. Don't buy them... it takes like 2 seconds to make them!
Work out how high you need your monitors (such that your ears are level or just below the tweeters) and buy two 100mm PVC downpipes of that length. Then buy two downpipe end caps. Buy 2 pieces of wood cut to the dimensions of your monitors base and another two about 2-4 times the size (this will be the base). Then screw the end caps onto the pieces of wood, and connect them together using the pipe! Paint the whole thing (black, DUH), fill the pipe with sand and there you go, pro quality stands. :)
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| Omega_M |
| n00b question : what are monitors, and how are they different from speakers ? |
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| echosystm |
| quote: | Originally posted by Omega_M
n00b question : what are monitors, and how are they different from speakers ? |
hifi speakers are made for listening, monitors are made for making music. put simply... hifi speakers are made to sound impressive/good, whereas monitors are made to show all flaws. |
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| Omega_M |
| so you can't detect the flaws listening in your headphones ? |
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| echosystm |
| quote: | Originally posted by Omega_M
so you can't detect the flaws listening in your headphones ? |
no... headphones don't have as good frequency range or stereo field (it's like having one speaker up to each ear). |
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| meDina |
| quote: | Originally posted by echosystm
no... headphones don't have as good frequency range or stereo field (it's like having one speaker up to each ear). |
you CAN detect flaws with headphones easily. |
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| EtherealSL |
| quote: | Originally posted by meDina
you CAN detect flaws with headphones easily. |
you can detect flaws with anything...
with some of the better, cleaner monitors, though, you can hear the smaller flaws that you couldn't with headphones |
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