speaker question

norm · Joined: Mar 11, 2004 Posts: 18 Location: Canada

Hi,

It s time to change my little speaker to be something better than the old one. Please give me your advice. (I m going to use it for my MUSIC and FILM SOUND (sfx, dialog, bg). For my little old speaker, it s lack of low end and alway give me a clipping when I turn the volume up. Also when I work at home and bring it to school. I alway have to mix my project again and again after I mix it from my house. This is very annoy me. (I know I should learn about it)
Now I have my eyes on Genelec 8030A, Mackie HR624, KRK rockit8, and Blue Sky Pro Desk 2.1 system. Has anyone using it? I been using Blue Sky in my school and I think it s ok for me (my school use Blue Sky Pro Desk 5.1 System). Please give me some recommendation.

Thanks

seraph · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:00 am Post subject:

check this out:

http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-3907.html

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:32 am Post subject:

It all depends on your ears actually.. and the room.. and on how you are going to use your final mixes.

I have demoed extensively a lot of monitors now and I guess if you are looking for something small, inexpensive and darned good you should at least consider the Yamaha MSP5.

I am not the only one who loves the MSP5. Kurt over at recording,org likes them too. His review of these is here:
http://www.recording.org/e-mag/article_102.shtml

The MSP5 should be excellent for film audio work.

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:37 am Post subject:

If you are really considering the 624 you should also listen to the ASP6 and ASP8.

..and... the MSP5

ASP6

seraph · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:28 am Post subject:

jkn · Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 469 Location: La Porte, IN, USA

I'm fond of my Mackie 824's - but this is truly a personal preference thing. There are many great speakers out there at all price points.

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 12:18 pm Post subject:

One obvious problem with the 824s is that they have the reflex thingies at the back. This means that placement is difficult in most small project studios. The room has to be taken into consideration when choosing monitors. [/list][/list]

mosc · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 12:27 pm Post subject:

Wil Rogers once said, "I never met a man I didn't like."

I have never heard a Bose speaker I liked.

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:04 pm Post subject:

I dont like Bose. I don´t like the Samson monitors. I am not incredibly fond of genelec monitors. The lesser KRK stuff like the Rokits are OK for tracking but not that cool mixing. The budget Event stuff is not that great really. -And I don´t like the M-Audio monitors . The Behringer monitors are not better than the Samson monitors.. rather the opposite really.

When I say I don´t like.. I can mean several different things really. The Samsons are grainy. The genelecs aren´t really that detailed and they are pretty tiring. The Behringer monitors are... involuntarily funny etc etc etc.

Of the cheap stuff the MSP5s are incredibly good.

A decent budget speaker is the active Event 20/20basV2.

The Mackie monitors are an aquired taste really, but they are at least great fun while tracking. I know of people who have thrown out in the 824s in favour of MSP5s.

Bass is cool, but in pop music there aren´t´really much bass at all. The good stuff ends at approx 60 hz. Subs can be useful, but then I am really thinking about custom jobs.. designed for a specific room and costing lotsa money. Over here such gear starts at 30 000 USD. A better alternative in most cases is getting monitors that have the bass extension that you really need. You must consider what you need. Mixing surround is not easy and then you are either mixing for home entertainment gear or cinema. If you do surround mixes for home gear you will have to mix for a playback system WITH subs.. and that is completely different from just making an audiophile mix with a lot of bass. That said, most consumer subs won´t go much deeper than 40-50 hz anyway. Considering the quality of a lot of this gear, you cannot throw in much energy below 50hz unless you want the sub to go dishwasher . Bad subs will often make harmonic noises way up into 1 khz if you hit them hard with really difficult material. Very few of the surround DVDs on the market right now will do that. Instead the mixes play with volume in the above 30-40hz region. So.. a "great" consumer sub will instead be able to play loud rather than deep.

I guess my recommendation is to NOT go for cheap subs unless you have a very good reason. The bass extension of the MSP5 is good enough for most uses and some of the low end characteristics are similar to some of the better hifi midrange gear which means that if your mix makes the MSP5 keel over.. the mix will do the same with any midrange PSB/DALI/B&W/JBL hifi speaker. One of the most obvious disasters is putting too much energy in the low end resonance slot of the reflex design ( most home speakers are reflex designs these days). A studio monitor will usually handle this relatively decent, but a lot of hifi gear will really get into trouble very fast. A closed cabinet design is of course completely different and handles low bass far better but you will need very large cabinets in order to get low with such designs. the cabinet will also have to be heavy, stiff and damped. This is expensive and there are very few closed cabinet hifi speakers on the market now. These were very popular in the 70s though.

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:16 pm Post subject:

What you might need is really a lot of B and C reference monitors. They should all be typical designs of what you find in low end and midrange hifi rigs. You can just as well try to get secondhand 80s gear. If you choose well, these will display all typical design flaws. This should be passive, not active and I guess something like a secondhand 2x40 watt NAD early 80s amplifier will work well.

No matter how flat your studio monitors will be, all consumer monitors wil have serious problems with the crossover frequencies. When you hear what happens you might find that you probably shuld tweak the mix a bit.

Better hifi monitors will be more like your studio monitors in balance... hopefully.. and some will be far far better. It is often great fun to hear your own mixes on gear like the big Martin Logan speakers, but clearly such speakers are completely useless for mixing in the studio.

mosc · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:29 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:29 pm Post subject:

A lot has happened. The most important thing is really that all the materials used in drivers are generally far better these days. This does not mean that the drivers today generally are far better though. What this really means is that all the parts are better.. cheaper and this allows for design choices that weren´t thinkable in the old days. So.. what we have now is a lot of low end stuff with specs that looks nice and some even sound pretty OK.

Some of the best stuff from the 60s, 70s and very early 80s still sounds great and much of this is absolutely OK. Making passive crossover filters is hard and generally fewer drivers / less crossover frequencies sounds best. No doubt about it. However, this is a general rule and there are a lot of great "more than 2 way" speakers that are absolutely great.

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:35 pm Post subject:

Rectilinear III

http://reviews.iwon.com/pscAudioReview/Rectilinear/PRD_120513_1594crx.aspx

nice reviews!

Very Happy

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:45 pm Post subject:

THis is a bit OT, but entertaining anyway..

http://www.tnt-audio.com/intervis/bongiorno_e.html

An Interview with James Bongiorno

This section is fun:

mosc · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:07 pm Post subject:

Wow, other people are still using the Rectilinear 3s. Amazing. Great minds think alike. I've even used them as PA speakers. They aren't all that efficient though. Thanks for the link... Very Happy

seraph · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:30 pm Post subject: