thawkins
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Posts posted by thawkins
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Put the BM15As in the strong hands of the UPS now - hopefully they will get back to London without too much issue. While packing them I noticed some screws on the back were loose enough to tighten with bare fingers. That and they did not come in original packaging so now I am thinking that most of these issues are probably due to shoddy packaging and damage in transit.
Anyways now the wait is on to get the money back so I can order the new ones.
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Had a close encounter with the Neumann KH120 yesterday. I guess it is true that they don't look so ugly in person, but they are still unbelievably small and this makes me struggle with my preconceived notions of "how speakers should be". However, I got the chance to do some listening (even though the room was a huge mess of noise and reverb and there were people talking etc) and at least Alice Coltrane's Journey In Satchidananda sounded totally alright.
Found this bundle on Thomann https://www.thomann.de/gb/neumann_kh_120_room_correction_bundle.htm
Wondering what you guys thinkg of this fancy new-fangled IK Multimedia ARC System 2.5? I am not expecting it to be perfect but probably it is way better than nothing at all.
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I just wanted to stress again that the abrasiveness comment is basically just my opinion having listened to the piece tired after a long day at work. I think I made a bad criticism because it's pointless to give feedback like "uh it sucked because i was not in the mood for that kind of ambient". I'm sorry!
And just like the others said abrasiveness is not necessarily a bad thing, because it is just one color in the magical palette of sound. I would definitely play this piece in a DJ set on the right time in the right place, for example.
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Spooky dreams... I found the mix a little bit abrasive - maybe because of the white noise component (or is it field recording...) - and also the song could have had something more going on in the latter part (maybe I was not paying attention though
). It's totally a personal preference and a mood thing though - it's been a long day and then I tend not to want to listen to a lot of high frequencies I guess.
Reminds me a little of Lustmord, although that stuff is way more darker.
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New one early this week as I am scrambling to prepare stuff for a gig next week and having a lot of technical difficulties. Somehow I am really happy with how the mix came out even though my headphones are broken and the left monitor lost half the frequencies halfway through the mixing process.
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Damn, this return can not happen soon enough. Just had the left mid-to upper range just fuck off somewhere mid mix session.
@xox thanks for the links. Off the top of my head, the last monitors I had for 6 or so years were Yamaha HS8 - trying to get something else for a change and hopefully a next level in terms of quality. Focal is a name I see mentioned too. I will take a closer look tomorrow once I have time. There's some interesting stuff on Reverb too.
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I got one tab open with 1k eur speaker listings and another googling "diy stuffed toys as bass traps".
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2 hours ago, Andon Hristov Seldt said:
Has that electronic construction robots feel, should be on Discovery Channel.
I wish it was.
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Yeah for as long as I have been buying speakers I try to get a pair that I can be happy with for years (or something that I can sell without too much loss in value in the future). The amount of brands and models is just driving me insane though - there's stuff on Reverb that's like 40k eur for a tiny speaker thing with a janky name - that's basically ridiculous audiophile territory for me I guess.
But as for treating the room in any way that looks like a professional studio... that's pretty much right out of the question for my current apartment. The best I can do is pile up more furniture in an attempt to dampen things, but there's not going to be any stapling bass traps into the ceiling unless someone signs me to a record company or something crazy like that.
By the way what's a good way to get a rough estimate on how fucked my room is in terms of frequency response? I suppose this requires a measurement mic and some €€€ for software, but maybe there's some free software that gives a ballpark estimate.
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1 hour ago, xox said:
Amphions One15 cost 1800 euros for a pair but without amplifier; a decent one costs at least 500 euros. More than his budget so nothing’s left for the room treatment.
the klasik is great for the money but it’s rear-ported and ive heard they blow a lot
I have been looking at some used ones from Reverb.com and it's not as grim really. There's even a used pair of One18 for 3k euro, which I can almost feel I can justify. On the other hand without room treatment all this does not matter.
Comedy option, there's also a pair of NS-10s with an amp for like 500.
In general with the capitalistic overconsumption etc I am more eager to buy something used than getting them new. I hope I don't get burned a 2nd time though...
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9 hours ago, sweepstakes said:
TidalCycles is really great. But it demands a certain way of working and has limitations that I sadly have decided I can't abide right now - specifically, it demands that you pretty much use it as your only sequencer, or at least that you use it as the master clock, and you just kind of leave it running all the time and expect to start/stop it on beat. Also it's kind of tricky to build macro/song structures in it. If you are cool with that, it's a beast. And even if you kind of aren't cool with that, there are satellite projects emerging to bring its excellent syntax to other environments, especially web/JavaScript.
It's an incredibly fast workflow and you can conjure up surprising stuff really, really easily. It's easy to think in. If you're interested in it but intimidated, just go through the excellent tutorial and things will click almost immediately. The only really tricky part for me was setting up the whole Haskell/SC/Dirt stack and getting the whole thing back up and running when it crashed (note: don't try to go too much further than 1/1024th notes and it probably won't crash on you much). A lot of that is surely down to me using it on an outdated laptop.
It was possible to slave TidalCycles to Live, but it was not so user friendly as it could be - it was necessary to manually tweak the delay to make it sync up properly. It has been some months since I tried, maybe it has improved.
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Thanks a lot for the long post. I have read the SOS review on the Neumanns and they really seem like good speakers. Personally they are not super ugly, I guess I discarded them at first because they look like pieces of cheap plastic and I still have this completely illogical fear of small bass drivers. Maybe it's a fetish thing I don't know.
I have to say though now having the BM15As I think they are slightly too huge - it felt like I was setting up a PA and my interface is still maybe at 1/10 the max volume level which is probably a good indicator that these things are meant to be used in a louder and more spacious environment.
As for room treatment I feel I am totally screwed - I am basically sitting with my back to a window, with one corner behind me having a bookshelf (which is not a bass trap) and the other corner is a double door so there's no way to put a bass trap there. Not sure actually if the bass traps should be behind the speakers (in front of me) or behind. I should read up on that actually.
Why I am feeling not so happy about acoustic treatment is that the room is basically an extension of our living room and I can't just start throwing foam shit on the wall without significant diplomatic consequences.
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3 hours ago, xox said:
Ok, that’s good! Let’s go back to the beginning!
1. How much money are you willing to spend? (including taxes)
2. How big is your room?
2a. What’s the length of the listening distance?
3. Do you have any absorbers and bas traps installed? Are you planning to do the room treatment?
1. I think I'd rather not go over 2k EUR.
2. Seems like 3.2x3.6m.
2a. Around 1m of the speakers.
3. I only have a bit of furniture but probably won't have anything serious like bass traps.
This is looking like I shouldn't be buying any huge speakers right?
Thanks a lot for all your advice by the way.
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Yup I am returning the BM15As, just waiting for the guys to walk me through the process. I almost knew that it would be too good a deal for almost half the price for a new pair. I wanted to have them but it's just a crap shoot whether the sound will be OK or not once you turn them on. Maybe it's something to do with getting them warmed up? No matter, it would be stupid to keep the things if they already have issues 2 weeks in...
Not sure now what I will get - the Amphions are of course nice but quite pricey too. I don't think I care too much about specific frequency response stats or something like that - I think my needs distill down to:
1) clear & accurate sound that lets me hear what's happening in the mix
2) must have some bass freqs
3) I want to enjoy listening to good music on the monitors so I can build a gut feeling for the speakers by doing everyday listening
4) bass ports out in front because I don't have much room still
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This is really weird, quickly made out of an old project and mixed on headphones mostly. I like parts of it, but it needs remixing and compositional changes.
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22 hours ago, Squee said:
Man, return those monitors immediately.
I sent a huge e-mail to the funky junk people now, let's see what happens. I think I will have a tech check them out again locally here in Paris if possible. I can't really rule out that something is fucky with my electrical system at home, and if I need to spend some $$$ to buy a power conditioner anyway, then it's still fine by me.
However if they are going to say that everything's working as intended and I keep having the issues then I have no choice but to return them. It's just been a little more than one week (and I have a gig on 28th so would be nice to have even janky monitors so I can prepare something!).
The good thing is that I listened to a bunch of my half finished stuff yesterday and basically every track the mix had different issues with bass it was maddening. This is all because I mixed stuff on headphones and did not cross check enough. I am supposed to make a live set out of this stuff damn.
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Dynadio BM15A trip report, day 8 (yesterday): did some listening and mixing. At some point I discovered that the left speaker had high frequencies missing. Fixed this by turning it off and on again. Slightly nervous now because it's looking like something's busted in a weird way.
Dynadio BM15A trip report, day 9 (today): right speaker won't turn on. No red light, no nothing. Can't be the outlet because plugging other stuff in it gives power. Going to wait and hope that it's one of those electricity issues that fixes itself when you unplug the device for some minutes. Update: it was a blown fuse.. wonder how that happened.
This is extremely shit because I really like the sound.
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Weird thing about that bass crackle - I just had it show up again. Both the speakers have been on since 5 hours ago and I have spent all that time streaming dub techno mixes off Soundcloud. Now just 5 mins ago the right speaker started crackling again, it's definitely doing that in reaction to bass frequencies. First I tried to jiggle the cable, but basically this made no difference. So I just turned the speaker off and on again, and voila the crackle is gone. Weird thing.
And I have been working in the other room so everything including the table the speakers are on is totally untouched, just playing the mixes off Soundcloud.
I suppose one way to test is to switch the speaker cables from right to left and see if it shows up in the left speaker. There is definitely something weird going on electrically because occasionally the MS2000R metal body gives off a buzz - I thought this might be related to it being hooked in through a step-down transformer though.
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11 hours ago, xox said:
We Are Not Regular People >>> We Are The Music Makers
Wait dude I though nobody here's actually making music - it's just people talking about how to make music. Whoever actually follows through and does something gets banned instantly or the account mysteriously goes inactive.
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I do love them already, aside from the occasional bump like the bass crackling which is due to some cable issue probably.
I spent the whole of yesterday going through my weekly music stuff and I can't help feeling that I just got to go through and remix everything. The HS8s were not nearly as clear as these are.
I used to have a tendency to listen on headphones when jamming and recording, to have a more closer idea of what's happening (esp. on the low end). Last week I did everything on the BM15As, and it was so much more liberating and the resulting mix translated much better as well to the cans I have lying around in the office. Even though my "mastering" consists of slapping a multiband splitter which pipes low end to mono along with 2 airwindows plugins on the master.
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46 minutes ago, Squee said:
Correct!
The lights on the left monitor should be to the far left and vice versa
Well damnit. I just switched them around because I saw this on Thomann https://www.thomann.de/intl/dynaudio_bm15a_right.htm
Turns out they use the same pics for both right and left! https://www.thomann.de/intl/dynaudio_bm15a_aktiv_studiomonitor.htm
How's a regular person supposed to understand any of this.
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One weird thing about the BM15A is that there seems to be absolutely no indication on the speakers and in the manual about the most basic fucking thing: which speaker is left, which one is right side.
Or is it me who is the dumbass here?
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Feeling a strong GAS for Arturia Keystep because I want a nice small keyboard with arpeggiator that I can take on gigs and that does not drift like a drunk uncle Akai Mpkmini. Also more keys than just two octaves.
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@Nil Do you know any place in Europe that sells the sorbothane bumpers?
Headphones?
in EKT General Discussion
Posted
Just wanted to say big thanks to everyone here who recommended Sennheiser HD280 Pro - I got an used pair for work a couple of months ago and only yesterday had a mix session with them as my Beyerdynamics are a bit broken. Really nice sound - I'm happy with them.