Advice needed on buying a pair of studio monitors

[maalox]

Originally Posted by maalox

1.Really? I do know that you usually get what you pay for, but would it be a total waste of money to buy cheaper (<£1000.00/pair) active monitors? (let's say around £500.00/pair)

2. 5's - 6's - 8's ? Is an 8"-Woofer too much for a room without acoustic treatment? Should I just stick to the 5" and be happy ? or...

3. ...just buy a pair of (e.g. )BEYER DT770-Pro until I improve the environment (and my mixing skills)..



PS:I wasn't sure if I should start a new thread or just post/ask in this one, but anyway.

It seems that I'm not getting any answers to my noob questions. Maybe I should start a new thread?

[FrankGIK]

Originally Posted by maalox

It seems that I'm not getting any answers to my noob questions. Maybe I should start a new thread?

It's not a *waste* exactly, but it's certainly only an interim solution. You can't expect a pair of $650 monitors to be your primary pair for serious commercial work, though they'd probably make a decent reference pair.

Frank

[cane creek]

I was looking for monitors and there just so many outhere its a hard task to pick the pair for you.

I couldnt try any of the monitors out as i lived to far from any dealers and if you ask the question on forums folk will always tell you the monitors they own are the best , so out of frustration i written a letter to computer music magazine , i explained my budget , room size and genre of music i made and they came back with the answer Genelec 8030A.

so i phoned DV and ordered a pair of Genelic 8030A and im well happy with them , sound wise and build quality is amazing.

[sureno]

Originally Posted by cane creek

I was looking for monitors and there just so many outhere its a hard task to pick the pair for you.

I couldnt try any of the monitors out as i lived to far from any dealers and if you ask the question on forums folk will always tell you the monitors they own are the best , so out of frustration i written a letter to computer music magazine , i explained my budget , room size and genre of music i made and they came back with the answer Genelec 8030A.

so i phoned DV and ordered a pair of Genelic 8030A and im well happy with them , sound wise and build quality is amazing.

thats because they are quite frankly a great monitor, i dont own them.lol
can i take a stab though and say you produce house/electronic music?

[tyronehowe]

Originally Posted by cane creek

so i phoned DV and ordered a pair of Genelic 8030A and im well happy with them , sound wise and build quality is amazing.

I am interested in this as well. I tried out the 8030s earlier in the year, and frankly I was surprised at the bass response. I know they are fairly small monitors, but was I just expecting too much?

I know there is the 7050B subwoofer, but I wasn’t looking for “sub” bass frequencies, just good overall monitoring (including bass).

I really know very little about this area – as I’m sure you can tell from my post.

[ecc83]

I am CERTAINLY no expert in this field either but I think common sense and a few pertinent questions will take us a long way.

Subs: Why would you want one? Most folks out there do not have them* neither do they have 3cuft+500W systems than can pump out 30Hz at 100dBspl! For sure you need to be aware that you do not have a lot of LF rubbish in the can but a run thru' a spectrum analyser will show you that and probably 85% of everything you record has nothing going on below 80Hz anyway. It is also generally considered the height of folly to put a sub in an untreated room.

SPL: Again on a domestic audio system most of us, most of the time do not annoy the neighbours so it needs to sound right at socially acceptable levels, there can be very few monitors on the market that cannot produce the magic 83dB, my £200 Tannoys are quite loud enough but can get nowhere near the level produced by my 15W valve amp feeding a Celestion 12" and I would guess you would have to pay at lot more to do that. On a similar note, how many monitor systems can stand alongside my 200W Fane bass in a 6cuft reflex cab being hit with a 150W MOSFET? (No, I don't DO that very often!).

Accuracy: It would be nice! Ok, some speakers are more "accurate" than others but in the end we just have to make judgements despite the failings of real world transducers. If there were "perfect" montors every studio in the world would have, or aspire to them and we would all know what they were. A glance thru' a few months issues of a mag like SoS shows that the "ultimate" monitor is being invented every few years!

Do your homework, ask the questions and within your budget, pounce. Like everything else audio you just have to live with the inevitable shortcomings.

Dave. *Should I ever need to mix for the Subaru, bluetooth in ear brigade I would just hook in aformentioned Fane!

[tyronehowe]

Hi Dave

Thanks for your post. It certainly made sense to me.

It’s just that whenever you read the reviews, you ALWAYS here that if you’re on a budget the 8020s (or even the 8030s) are an excellent buy.

When I tried out the 8020s I didn’t understand how I could have used them as reference monitors since so much was missing from the low end (the 8030s were better but still missing something).

But anyway, as I said, I have no idea about this. I was just surprised that such a well reviewed and recommended monitor should have so much low end missing.

[terminal3]

One problem is that people are always glass-half-empty about the 8020s. "No bass!" they cry with alarm.

The fact is, they actually have a lot of bass - a surprising amount - for a monitor that size.

But the reason they make excellent monitors, at least for me (I use them as secondary monitors to Tannoy System 600As) - is because they sort of sound like my telly, or my old mini-system. They're a very good "real world" reference set with enough frequency response that I can hear problems in anything other than the really LF stuff.

I was at a huge audio post production house in Soho (very famous) the other day where they mix telly, commercials, even the odd film. In one of their dubbing suites they had a couple of giant midfields built into the wall (didn't catch the make), some big PMC nearfields, but they told me that 99.9% of their TV mixes are done through a tiny little Samsung flat panel TV they have sitting next to their ProControl. The mixer's own words were "the public don't have massive speakers in their lounges, so what's the point of using anything OTHER than the target medium as a reference?"

It's a little different for music I suppose but the moral of the story is that if you can make it sound good on your iPod or your Nokia speaker, you're probably nearly there.

[tyronehowe]

Thanks T3

My expectations were obviously way out – comes of me not knowing enough about the subject.

I can see what you mean when you say “The fact is, they actually have a lot of bass - a surprising amount - for a monitor that size.”

I have a project studio (I think that’s what it’s called) and at some time soon I will want to buy a pair of monitors. My room is untreated, but I am not recording live (or only very rarely). What kind of thing should I be looking for? Do you have to spend a £1000 for decent monitors, are the cheaper ones not worth it? Or are some of the cheaper ones still good enough?

My music type is film/tv/game.

[cane creek]

More bass ? then without doubt Genelec 8040's , if id of done my homework abit more and saved somemore money id of got the 8040's instead of the 8030's.

I was reading a thread sometime ago on gearslutz where the great man himself Bob katz couldnt stop praising how good the 8040's were and he claimed they were a better monitor than the 8050's.

I for one would not touch separate Sub woofers , they sound to me like a right mess about setting up ... have to mess with EQ to get it just right at the point where your monitors bass over laps the woofers bass (the joining point of both basses) .. to much messing/tweeking for me because if you dont know what your doing and set it up wrong then your monitoring to a faulse bass maybe both monitor and woofer playing the same bass frequency as they overlap making the bass frequency X2 in that region giving you uncorrect reference to which you are making corrections making your whole bass tits up in the mix lol.

[bluebearddub]

my wifey bought me a pair of krk 5s for xmas, im well chuffed with them

needs vs wants i guess..

[ecc83]

Eeeachually,
There is a school of thought that says "forget the, Frequencies below XHz are non-directional" follderall and go for two, smaller subs, placed as close to the primaries as possible.

Because the roll off filters do not have to be tight enough to sqeegee out any signals that might muck up imaging, they are fairly easy to make and with very respectable 100W+ power amps now being so cheap this is a vein the DIYer can plunder fairly successfully.

If I can spare anything after 'eating and eating when I retire I shall have a dabble myself. My hearing is that of a 14year old below 200Hz!

Dave.

[allsorrowsjoy]

my god i need some new monitors. i have the shittiest pair in the world and no cash to fork out for something actually any good.

i'm also running out of my sugar high. ugh. life is meaningless.