Monitors.

[xox]

4 hours ago, Nil said:

Aside from the Amphions, I'd stil recommend a set of Klasik.

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

[Squee]

Yeah, don't buy your acoustics panels. Build them yourself and save a fortune! And the money you save from building them could be used for buying Sonarworks Reference

It's a shame about the BM15As though.
I'm gonna get their new Core 7 or 47 speakers later this year.

[thawkins]

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...

[xox]

Well if you can spend more than 2k euros, closer to 3k, then you’re entering into the high-end land! If you'd be willing to spend additional 300-500 euros for absorbers/traps, then id do it differently if i was you; id stretch as far as I could and buy best speakers i could afford and id think about room treatment later. Id buy either used Amphion One15 (+ solid amp) or used PSI a17m. For 2500 euros you can buy new Geithain RL906, for 2800 euros b-stock PSIs @Thomann.

Neumann Kh120a are great and i love them and been using them for some time but they can’t match with aforementioned speakers. Same with other similarly priced speakers, like Adam, Eve, Focals, Genelec, JBL or Dynaudios.

Amphion One18 could be too big for your room. They need listening distance of at least 1,3 to 1,5 meters to sing properly, for One15 1 meter is enough.

Also, Amphions are passive speakers so they don’t have integrated eq options so you can’t attenuate bass if it’s too boomy in your room; One18 could be too bass heavy for you.

Edited September 18, 2019 by xox

[thawkins]

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.

Edited September 18, 2019 by thawkins

[thawkins]

I got one tab open with 1k eur speaker listings and another googling "diy stuffed toys as bass traps".

[xox]

I know that this works well but cost monies! It calculates a room response and corrects it.

https://store.sonarworks.com/collections/reference-4

there is a free sw for just measuring but you’d need a 150 euros mic anyway //cant remember now the name of the sw

7 minutes ago, thawkins said:

I got one tab open with 1k eur speaker listings and another googling "diy stuffed toys as bass traps".

Carpets help too, as absorbers for high frequencies.

Edited September 18, 2019 by xox

[xox]

1 hour ago, thawkins said:

By the way what's a good way to get a rough estimate on how fucked my room is in terms of frequency response?

You can also make a logarithmic sweep sine wave from 20 to 20000 hz, 30-60 sec long and play it in loop and listen at the listening position what frequencies are the loudest and which disappears. While listening you need to watch at frequency analyzer to be able to determine given frequencies.

Edited September 18, 2019 by xox

[Squee]

51 minutes ago, thawkins said:

I got one tab open with 1k eur speaker listings and another googling "diy stuffed toys as bass traps".

lol

But I'm not kidding when it comes to Sonarworks Reference. When I treated my studio I was a bit too... ehm, thorough. So much so that I lost a lot of low end. I then tested out Sonarworks and lo and fucking behold it fucking worked. It did a massive difference and all my mixes have been pretty much spot-on since I started using it.
You can download a trial and just use a decent mic to calibrate your monitors. Just to see if it's something you need. If you can hear a difference and it sounds better then consider buying the full bundle including the mic.

[xox]

Some additional recommendations:

https://m.thomann.de/intl/focal_shape_twin.htm?i11l=en_GB%3AHR.HRK%3AEUR&o=228&search=1568762040

 

https://m.thomann.de/intl/focal_shape_65.htm?i11l=en_GB%3AHR.HRK%3AEUR&o=110&search=1568834383

 

https://m.thomann.de/intl/hedd_type_07.htm?i11l=en_GB%3AHR.HRK%3AEUR&o=116&search=1568834383

 

https://m.thomann.de/intl/adam_a7x.htm?i11l=en_GB%3AHR.HRK%3AEUR&o=133&search=1568834383

 

https://m.thomann.de/intl/yamaha_hs_8_w_bundle.htm?i11l=en_GB%3AHR.HRK%3AEUR&o=130&search=1568834383

 

https://m.thomann.de/intl/neumann_kh_80_dsp_white.htm?i11l=en_GB%3AHR.HRK%3AEUR&o=143&search=1568834383

 

https://m.thomann.de/intl/yamaha_hs_7_w_bundle.htm?i11l=en_GB%3AHR.HRK%3AEUR&o=167&search=1568834383

[thawkins]

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.

[thawkins]

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.

[xox]

Haven’t tried the IK system but I’ve heard that Sonarworks’ system is much better but costs more and afaik no mic in the bundle. 
But yes, better the IK system than nothing! Although, you need to remember that you can’t boost certain frequencies much with such systems bc by booting frequencies you also boost harmonic and inharmonic distortion of a speaker and you can easily choke speakers if you crank the volume. Such systems work good when used moderately = upto 6 dBs for  low level to moderate listening levels and upto 2-3 dBs for moderate to load levels. What brings us back to room treatments...
 

re: Kh120a

Yes, they are small but enough for a small room and upto 1.5 meters from your ears. You have 30 days return policy at Thomann. Try them for a week or two, at least.

and btw, they’re made of aluminum not plastic  
 

 

 

Edited September 22, 2019 by xox

[thawkins]

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.

[thawkins]

So I got the Neumann KH120A a week ago. They are surprisingly small, sturdy and metal. No technical issues so far, which is nice (and what I would expect from a quality german brand  ). I also like that they are small and compact, I can now have loads of room on my desk to arrange all the other gear nicely.

The sound is not as nice as it was with the Dynaudio BM15A, at least I don't feel the same kind of nice vibes when I listen to music. I think this is due to my room being fucked up and also that the Neumanns not having the bottom end the BM15A had. That said, some songs are really nice to listen to on the monitors, especially old school stuff like Fleetwood Mac (Dreams was jaw droppingly good), Miles Davis, which are not mixed to depend on a massive sub woofer anyway.

I think in general the lack of bottom end really does not bother me mostly, at least not when I am not really making any club bangers that absolutely demand this. Listening to some of my fave hard banger tracks though I got to say that they fail to deliver the punch. A. Mochi, Funktion, Katharsys .. no way I could make stuff like this at home and be into it. Yeah I could drop a cool 2,5k EUR into getting the Neumann sub too, but I that will absolutely blow the budget - might as well get the Amphion at that stage.

All above said, this is without applying the IK ARC correction system which I plan to set up properly tonight. It's probably going to be a pain to set it up so that I can listen to regular audio with the room correction stuff going on, because the thing only works in a VST host, which means there is going to have to be a dedicated Reaper instance going at all times.

Ps feel free to tell me to fuck off if this thread is becoming too much of "one guy livejournaling all his bad monitoring decisions".

[xox]

Neumanns are proper monitors; they dont flatter like Dynaudios, imo.

Yes, they’re smaller but i believe that you’ll produce and mix much better with them than with any other speaker in that price range. For under 50hz just use headphones. 
Youll need some time, 2-3 months, to learn them, as youd need with any other new monitor.

Congratz btw!

 

[thawkins]

I get your point about flattering and giving a good accurate representation. I think currently I am a bit unsure about whether I am happy how the music I like sounds on them. It's because I feel a large part of my thing depends on me listening to a lot of music on the same system that I use to produce, so I feel it's kind of important to like the sound for everyday listening, even though it may not be analytically good or revealing. Not sure if I had this with the Dynaudios either though.

On the other hand I did some test listening with the ARC system yesterday, and I think it sounds ok. As you said it's a 2-3 month process to get used to things so it's probably too early to tell... 

[Enthusiast]

https://musicandmiscellany.com

This is an interesting blog by a loudspeaker designer who also reviews monitors for Sound on Sound. Some really interesting stuff about speaker design, the difference between hifi speakers and monitors (if there is any), repurposing and modifying old B&W speakers for use in the studio etc.

I found this piece about the suitability of Q-Acoustics bookshelf speakers for studio monitoring interesting. I have some of their speakers in my Av setup, they are excellent for the money they cost.

He also likes these Neumann's

[xox]

5 hours ago, thawkins said:

I get your point about flattering and giving a good accurate representation. I think currently I am a bit unsure about whether I am happy how the music I like sounds on them. It's because I feel a large part of my thing depends on me listening to a lot of music on the same system that I use to produce, so I feel it's kind of important to like the sound for everyday listening, even though it may not be analytically good or revealing. Not sure if I had this with the Dynaudios either though.

On the other hand I did some test listening with the ARC system yesterday, and I think it sounds ok. As you said it's a 2-3 month process to get used to things so it's probably too early to tell... 

Yes, sometimes i feel the same; many of my fav tracks sounds like shit on them!  ... but mostly it’s the speakers fault.

Lates albums that ive been listening to that sounded good on them was Objekt’s lates album, Bola DEG, Stephan Bodzin Powers of ten, Yello’s latest, Atoms for peace, Plaid ... but Bc they really sound good. 
 

 

[user]

On 10/15/2019 at 2:20 PM, thawkins said:

Ps feel free to tell me to fuck off if this thread is becoming too much of "one guy livejournaling all his bad monitoring decisions".

No way, it's interesting!

[thawkins]

5 minutes ago, user said:

No way, it's interesting!

OK, let me drop a small teaser life hack until I get around writing the next episode.

The life hack is (loudness warriors hate this) - when testing out your mighty pro audio rig after you have just spent half an hour carefully doing the measurements for your 21st century clever room correction software... do fucking remember to turn off the automatic gain correction crap in your free DJing software so that you don't spend the next day wondering why some tracks sound really quiet and weird.

[TubularCorporation]

So I can't remember if I already posted about it somewhere in EKT, but when Ozone 8 Elements was free a couple weeks ago I got it and I don't plan to use it for its intended purpose since I have other things I already like more, but what it IS really good for is making sort of reference tracks from your own mixes.  What I've been doing is getting my mix to where it's about 90% done, rendering it, then running Ozone 8's mastering wizard on it but disabling everything except the EQ. What I end up with is sort of a generic, safe, middle-of-the-road frequency balance that I can compare my mix to (by ear but also looking at the actual EQ curve it chose for me), decide if there are things about the O8 version I prefer, and then go back and adjust the actual mix accordingly.  In an ideal world with a fully treated mixing room it probably wouldn't be as useful but since I'm working in an apartment and can't really do that it's a big help - I've already found a spot around 80Hz that I tend to overcompensate for in my mixes, and every recent thing I've done has translated a lot better since I went back and EQed the bass heavy tracks accordingly.

Edited October 16, 2019 by TubularCorporation

[dingformung]

80 Hz is one of my fav frequencies, please never overcompensate on it!

[TubularCorporation]

I'm partial to stuff below 40hz but 8t's not really practical.

[Nil]

@TubularCorporation now that you’re used to them, do you like your set of Coax ? Genuinely curious