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Wanted: active studio monitors
| Message Board > Gear Buy & Sell > Wanted: active studio monitors |
| ticklefish User Info... | Anyone upgrading gear in their studio, or desparate to unload some gear for cash? I am looking for some active studio monitors. Watcha got? also in the hunt for mic preamps. - Mon, 1 Dec 2003 6:26am | ||
| Zippgunn User Info... | Hey Fish, I gotta warn ya: exactly why do you want powered monitors? I have found that having unpowered monitors is sometimes a better idea because if you have a problem with the amps you can just plug in another amp (this has happened to me before) whereas if you pop a powered speaker suddenly you are left with no monitors at all. Also you can tailor your amp to your speakers whereas with the powered ones you are stuck with what they give you (I know of no powered monitors that allow you to bypass the amps). This bears careful consideration; it seems you are putting together a studio and I can state emphatically that your monitors are just about the most important thing you will buy for it, far more important than preamps, outboard gear or even microphones. All the fancy geegaws in the world are useless if your monitors are lying to you. I made recordings for years on what would now be laughably obsolete gear but at least I had really flat monitoring and even my 20 year old recordings stand up pretty well, even though back then I was still learning my craft. Good luck in your quest. - Sat, 13 Dec 2003 9:54pm | ||
| ticklefish User Info... | Thanks for the advice on powered vs unpowered monitors. I am indeed trying to build up a studio, and have been at it for a couple of years now, but thus far I have mostly been learning techniques/engineering aspects focussing on mic technique/signal path/editing etc. I have been acquiring gear bit by bit over time, and monitors are indeed next on the list (in hindsight, I should have got them before a lot of the things I do have). I was looking at powered monitors primarily for simplification, as it is just a single piece of gear to worry about, rather than having to deal with monitors/power amp/EQ, but your point about blowing a powered monitor leaving you rather hooped is a good one. Now, I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a good set of passive monitors (I was leaning towards the Event PS6, to give you an idea of price range...I can't afford to go any higher), and power amp. Is an EQ critical if you are using unpowered monitors to get a flat response in your room? Could I survive without an EQ for a while and just try to train my ears to the bias in the monitors by checking mixes on other systems/listening to commercial CDs through my monitors? - Mon, 15 Dec 2003 8:57am | ||
| Zippgunn User Info... | Only use an EQ as an absolute last resort. Try to find the place in the room where the speakers work best and, yes, reference a whole bunch of CD's whose sound you are super familiar with. Walk around the room and listen for the "swish" (the phase change as you move around; it's in almost every studio and it can really throw you for a loop if you're not careful). Me I just go from my board to the (non-integrated) power amp to the speakers and it seems the best way to go. I have heard a LOT of work from other studios around town that have insane EQ curves in them (even a couple of very expensive studios); from 2 of them when I engage a 75hz roll off filter...NOTHING HAPPENS. That is to say, there is nothing below 75 hz in these recordings. Both of these recordings cost their clients thousands of dollars too. Reference, reference, and then reference again. It's also a good idea to have more than one monitor set-up. I have 4; my B&W 805's with a Sugden Au 41 amp (same as what George Martin used apparently; ruthlessly flat and accurate)as the main ones, a pair of Design Acoustic D-12's with a Quad of England amp (my home stereo; a little tubby but what I call my "real world" set up), an old Telefunken 12 band mono radio ($3 at the Sally Ann and every bit as good as a $500 set of Auratones; my "radio mix" monitor) and a pair of Grado headphones (as accurate as the B&W's and pretty much essential for fine tuning things like panning etc.). If it sounds good on all 4 of these setups then it almost never has to be remixed which saves a lot of hassles. By the way a good way to buy 6 very good mic pres is to buy a used Mackie 1604; they are way better than you think and, used judiciously (don't clip them coz then they sound horrible) they are more than good enough for all but the most finnicky applications; after all they are basically rip offs of Neve pres. - Mon, 15 Dec 2003 12:02pm | ||
| ticklefish User Info... | Thanks for the more detailed response. So you don't biamplify your monitors? How about a subwoofer? I was doing some research today on passive monitor systems and kept encountering biamplification. Even after a couple of years with my head deep into this stuff it still blows my mind how much there is to learn (and how easy it is to throw money down a hole). I am doing my best to make informed gear purchases. I can't afford top-line stuff, but have found in recording just like anywhere else in life there are way too many gearheads who think that something twice as expensive is going to make their music twice as good. I have hunted pretty hard to get what I do have and have found some pieces that work as well as much more expensive pieces. So far when it comes to monitoring, I have used my ghetto blaster, a pair of AKG K240 cans, PC speakers and my home stereo, but a pair of monitors would vastly improve my mixes and tracking decisions. I have a Yamaha MG16/4 mixer that I use after tryign several mixers. I have tracked on a Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro, and quite seriously, in a blind test, I cannot tell the difference between tracks done on the Yamaha and the Mackie...well , not totally true, there is a difference, but I honestly don't prefer one over the other. Are you referring to Bowers and Wilkens as your monitors? - Mon, 15 Dec 2003 1:13pm | ||
| Zippgunn User Info... | Yes. I've used B&W's since 1977 for any serious listening, first a pair of DM5's (now museum pieces) then DM100's (their old budget speakers) and now the 805's (pro stuff). All are/were flat as a pancake and accurate to a fault. Metalheads all hate them which, to me, proves their worth (not enough boom for them). I dislike subwoofers intensely; they tend to smear my stereo image and IMO are only useful if you're going surround or 5.1 or whatever. And bi-amping is OK but i find if you have a really good power amp it's not essential and just over complicates your rig for what is for me no audible benefit. And boy are you right, if you get into gear addiction and keeping-up-with-the-audio-Joneses you can pour money down the drain like piss down a rat hole. $1500 mic pres are of only so much use if you've got a 6 foot ceiling f'rinstance, and vintage gear is only good if it works on a consistent basis. The advances in recording technology in recent years has radically reduced the cost of a lot of things, mics especially and mixing desks. Tube gear is fine but for some applications (f'rinstance classical recording) it's all but useless because of the inherent noise and sometimes the sound changes gradually over time as the tube croaks. Gear tends to increase in price exponentially as the quality increases; to get a compressor thats half again as good as that $300 Alesis job is a lot like $1200, a condenser mic from China ($190) is almost as good as the one I got from Austria ($1650). I know, I checked them out side by side. Gear cachet, I call it and it must make the L&M folks happy that it exists to the extent that it does in this biz. I still get people asking how many Joe Meek compressors I have (none) or U87's (zilch) while complaining about how high my rate is (typical). I just tell 'em "Sorry, my dad isn't that rich". And his son isn't that gullable. Bottom line: trust your ears and don't kid yourself. - Mon, 15 Dec 2003 2:04pm | ||
| nobody User Info... | My two cents worth: when it comes to monitors I firmly believe that how well you know your monitors will make a bigger difference than what you're using. Spend as much time as you can listening to well produced albums on them as you can. Having a subwoofer can be a plus for checking your mixes (how else are you going to know what's really going on down there?), but I don't recommend mixing with it on. Going with self powered monitors will allow you to bi-amp your speakers, but there are bigger things to worry about than that. Keep in mind when you're picking your monitors that what sounds good and what will translate well aren't neccesarily the same thing. Take Mackies for example. I think they sound tubby as hell, but they translate well because you'll certainly know when you've got mud in your low mids. As for EQ on the master buss... I wouldn't really recommend it. There's no such thing as a perfect EQ filter. EQ has a nasty habit of messing with the phase of your signal, and when you have phase problems in your monitors they're basically useless to you. If you're going to EQ anything, EQ your room with acoustic foam. Real-time Analizers are out there to use, but be fore-warned, once you see just how insane the frequency deficiencies are in the average room you may become obsessed. Sometimes it's better not to know. One last thing: not to argue with you Zippgun, but having used some really high end preamps and compressors in some less than perfect environments, I can absolutely say that there most certainly is a difference. I agree, a good engineer can do more with cheap gear than a bad engineer can with top of the line gear, but I've got to say it sure helps. Alesis' compressors are great little transparent compressors, but they sound absolutely nothing like a Joe Meek, and Mackie's VLZ preamps sound nothing like a Drawmer 1960. - Mon, 15 Dec 2003 9:46pm | ||
| Zippgunn User Info... | You're absolutely right, but I disagree on your speaker theory. I HATE Yamaha NS-10's because, to me, they sound weird, yet i've had lots of people tell me that they are the shit because a)everybody else used/uses them and b)their weirdness helps you figure out things in your mix that you might have missed using flatter speakers. Nonsense. If this were the case then companies like Deutche grammophone or Windham Hill would use them, but of course they wouldn't be caught dead using these speakers. For your critical monitoring you just gotta have flat speakers. And, like I said before, if you're recording in a shoebox a Joe Meek isn't going to be much more help than an Alesis, nor is a Neve strip going to be the "magic bullet" that turns your basement into Abbey Road. - Tue, 16 Dec 2003 10:07pm | ||
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