#174

“and an ordinary pair of quality unported bookshelf speakers for comparison”
Does “ordinary” mean a civilian hi-fi?

#175

It depends on your goals. You’ve not said much about why you want this space to be fitted out, or what you’ll be doing in it. If you’ll be trying to make professional mixes of any kind, you’ll need at least one pair of consumer-grade speakers to test listen to your mix (in both mono and stereo) - in that case, yes, any old consumer hi-fi would do - usually I suggest picking stuff similar to what you’d personally listen on at home as you’ll be familiar with how other mixes translate on that setup. If you’re really trying to maximize utility you could go as far as getting a single Auratone or the various modern equivalents. They sound fine, but they’ll utterly not sugarcoat your material. If it sounds good on that, it’ll sound good on anything. On the flip side, if you’re not terribly interested in doing pro-grade mixdowns for money and you just want to get the best utility out of a small space for enjoying and making your own personal music, where commercial competition isn’t really a factor and you have the liberty to take your more serious work outside to a studio fitted out for mixdown, it might be more enjoyable for you to get a nicer pair of speakers designed for playback enhancement (the Audioengines A2+ as mentioned above are an excellent first choice for affordable, decent-sounding small-space speakers) and just accept that you’ll have to teach yourself how to translate mixes done with them.

Remember, ALL speakers, from the most enhanced studio monitors down to the lowly Auratone and even further to boomboxes and other shite, colour the sound. The famous NS-10Ms were horrid nasty things, but the mix engineers knew them well and could compensate for their vagaries and produce excellent mixes. So, it’s not about what you get, it’s about how well you learn it and learn to translate your work to other things. Nicer speakers just make that process more enjoyable for you, as the artist/engineer.

Now, as for ports: ports are great. They enhance bass response (read: make small speakers sound much larger than they are) and, if used right, eliminate or sidestep nasty cabinet resonances due to dimensional physics, etc. But at the same time, they’re a mass (of air) that’s moving independently of the speaker cone (and thus to some extent not controlled with great precision). This means that they’ll “overhang” the bass response and whatever frequencies they’re resonant at (on small speakers this can go well up into the midrange too) and make for a “muddy” or “overpowered” presence. If you compensate for this to try to make the mix sound “perfect” on a ported speaker, it often sounds thin, nasal, or sometimes strongly resonant in other frequencies on speakers with different portings. Since the vast majority of consumer speakers are ported, this is not really a good thing. That’s why the majority opinion of pro mixers is to avoid ported speakers (even for the cheap listening boxes) - because if you’re not careful and you optimize for one ported speaker it may translate horribly to another, but because non-ported speakers don’t have the same peaky resonances, they’ll translate pretty fairly to nearly anything. Again, is this a hard and fast rule? No - you can learn to compensate and make great mixes on a ported set of monitors. But is it extra work for you? Absolutely, and you’ll get it wrong sometimes.

So yeah, long story short: it comes down to what you’ll be needing them for and how serious you are about turning out competitive professional work or just stuff for your own enjoyment.

Last note: if you are serious about pro quality output (or even just serious about good sound in general) - spend at least as much money and twice or more as much time on treating your listening space acoustically with well-researched diffusion, suppression, and bass traps (if you have the room for them) - you’ll get FAR more out of ANY pair of speakers this way than spending the extra coin on the speakers themselves and leaving the room untreated. Better to have average speakers in a great room than amazing speakers in an average room.

And if that’s all too much, just get a set of Beyerdynamic DT-880’s or 990’s and get mixing, checking your mix from time to time on nearly any handy speaker (in mono, since that’s how, in effect, the majority of music is listened to on phones, computers, and public spaces). That’s far better than a crappy room or heavily compromised main speakers.

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#176

I didn’t mention that, but yes, I’ve got the DT-880’s. It was my first buy, earlier than my semi-modular and Eurorack modules. As for my goals: I am definitely not interested in doing pro-grade mixdowns for money, I have to learn to play my modular first and learn the basic recording, mixing and mastering techniques (Ableton etc.). I just want to be able to hear all the sounds it produces in my limited acoustic conditions. The cans are sometimes tiring.

#177

in this case any of the options mentioned will work just fine. think about your budget, buy the best thing you can afford.

I own and can wholeheartedly recommend Dynaudio, Genelec, Harbeth. I use

Dynaudio BM5 mkIII as my main studio reference monitor. I love them and have had them long enough to really know them well. I’ve recorded and mixed many albums with them, and I like just listening to music on them as well.

I use Genelec 8010A+7040APM in my art studio and they are also great. If I had space and didn’t need it to be ultra-portable I would have gone for the 8040 without the sub, but this setup lets me easily move it to new locations or use it for temporary installations. The sub sounds great for listening, but is hard to setup for critical work, and I’d almost always recommend larger full range monitors over a sub for anything critical. I partly got the 8010 because I do multi-channel sound art and if I need 8-10 of these I can rent them and know what they will sound like.

In my main listening stereo I have Harbeth C7ES-3’s. These are absolutely phenomenal—balanced, expressive, and just a pleasure to listen to for hours and hours. IMO they are also revealing and flat enough that I could definitely use them as studio monitors. However, if I was going to get this style for a monitor I’d go with the Harbeth Pro series or similar since they are voiced more specifically for studio work rather than home stereos.

If I was buying new main monitors now I would consider the Genelec 8040 or the 8340. The digital room correction is very appealing in the 83xx series. And although I love my BM5mkIII’s, I’m not sure I love the current range of Dynaudio options quite a much as the previous models.

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#178

I believe you the Dynaudio BM5 mkIII are great monitors but I’m afraid 7" inch woofer is too much for my small room…

#179

Yeah, I’m not suggesting you get those specifically, just relaying my experience. The smaller Dynaudios are also really nice. As are any of the other brands mentioned.

Frankly, based on your needs you probably don’t even need to spend this much. The JBL 305’s are excellent for the price if all you want to do is hear what you’re playing more clearly and listen to music.

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#180

I have a pair of Neumann KH 310 which I love.

Some years ago I had the chance to listen to them (and their other speakers) at Neumann’s own showroom, which was the best speaker listening experience I ever had before and after.
Their room is well treated and measured to the centimeter, so it also made me realize what an important role the room itself plays.

Recently, Neumann released a new sub, the KH 750 DSP, which comes with an iPad app and detailed room correction. The cool thing is: Since the room correction and bass management all happens in the sub, you can connect the older analog speakers and still benefit from the room correction on the whole system… :raised_hands:

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#181

Just recently got some stands for my nearfields to replace the hutch shelf (made with a board on a second tier keyboard stand) I had my monitors sitting on, and I just wanted to say the difference is HUGE. The stereo image is much tighter and there is so much more bass. I really did not change the overall positioning of the speakers that much. they were in an equilateral triangle with my listening position (albeit smaller) and tweeters were at similar height.

I had started thinking about how wobbly and precarious the makeshift hutch I had made was, and how that’s probably not the most effective thing to place something that works by making very accurate vibrations, hah. Also been reading more about positioning and wanted to have an easier way to explore widening my listening position triangle.

I got these and I’ve been impressed, especially for the price. It is nice that the base is not much larger than the monitor, as I have a closet door to the right of me, and something more bulky would block the door from being able to open enough. But thinking more generally, having something sturdy for the monitor to sit on, decoupled from the other one (and other things) probably really helps it perform more ideally!

#182

I have a pair of original JBL LSR305s. Unfortunately my cat punctured the surround on one of them… :heart_eyes_cat:

I see that the originals have been replaced by the MKIIs. Does anyone think it would be weird to have one of the MKIIs and one of the originals from an aural perspective? I know it might drive me crazy aesthetically not having matching finishes, but that doesn’t really matter. Would rather avoid buying two speakers when I still have one good one but idk if it makes sense to use two monitors that aren’t the same model (even though they are the same series).

#183

You can get the surround repaired far cheaper than buying a new monitor. Talk to JBL about authorized repair shops in your area.

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#184

Unless it’s been meant to match specifically and have some sort of backward compatibility with MKI, I think it’s really not advertized to have two speakers not meant to have the exact same frequency response, matching curves etc. I dont know. Doesn’t feel ok to me though.

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#185

Never done a studio monitor but replacing the surround in a hifi speaker is dead easy. Like tying a shoe easy.

#186

Can confirm. Replaced the surround in a 10" sub a while back. I was scared to do it, but the repair was easy and the speaker is still going strong after years of daily use.

#187

Yeah, it’s super simple, except some of the studio monitors use really crazy materials (silicone, etc, which needs heat sealing instead of glue, and sometimes special forming jigs to help shape it properly as it’s aligned), plus the certified shops are able to guarantee original performance, which you won’t get if it’s a DIY repair on precision drivers.

I’m usually all for DIY, and highly recommend it for simple (paper/board woofers with rubber or “accordion” surrounds) repairs but for something like a high quality pair of studio monitors I’d be more interested in the precision of the repair ensuring a return to proper specs than in the cost of it. And I do believe that skilled technicians are worth paying for good work.

#188

Agreed that techs are going to be worth it. But I’m looking at my LSR305 and the surround looks stunningly similar to the Paradigms I repaired a couple of years ago. If it were me, I’d give it a shot.

#189

I used to design loudspeaker enclosures professionally and still own LEAP, having originally purchased it in 1993 or so. Before that, in the late 80s, I used the original AES papers from Neville Thiele and Richard Small to write my own CAE tools for enclosure design.

I see a lot of opinions expressed in this thread about the merits and drawbacks of various enclosure designs and their interaction with the space they are placed in. Without questioning the sincerity of the people having these opinions, I have to say a good deal of the folklore surrounding discussions about e.g. vented vs. acoustic suspension enclosures isn’t very useful for making a decision. There are a lot of reasons why an engineer chooses one design over the other, and the average consumer isn’t able to make an engineering conclusion about the effects of those decisions. In other words: if you don’t like the bass response, there’s no way for you to tell why you don’t like it without some test gear and a fair bit of math. (Obvious cases like feeding large 25Hz signals into a vented design tuned to 40Hz aren’t what I mean–but as a consumer, do you know why I say “obvious”?)

In general, I suggest that lay people use the the very sensitive test equipment on the sides of their head and to train that equipment on as many top flight systems as possible. Ignore the design choices made to arrive at the solution, and to a certain extent I also recommend that people ignore the specifications since there are so many ways to game them without being the least bit inaccurate.

As miraculously good as speakers have gotten these days, I think most people are better off choosing one of the workhorse standards (Dynaudio, which I have, though I don’t know about the post-acquisition gear; Neumann, Genelec, and few others), a good pair of cans as a backup check (Sennheiser HD600 or better), and then devoting their attention to room treatment. A visit to an audiologist for a hearing check is a good idea too.

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#190

Since this is going to be rather difficult for most non-wealthy people to accomplish, I think this advice is pretty top notch:

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#191

I’m solidly middle class but have heard some of the best audio systems around. Hit your local high end audio store and listen to the best they have. I’ve listened to a full-up Krell rig powering Wilson Audio speakers in a well-treated room, for instance, and it struck me how incremental the differences were from what I had at home.

A local speaker designer at long-gone Soundsmith had a gorgeous prototype speaker design called the “Timelord” in the back of the shop that I got a long listen to when I was just out of high school in the mid 80s. He didn’t care that I was 100% not a customer–like many artist/engineers, he just wanted to share his work with a fellow enthusiast. I was inspired to get into loudspeaker design as a result, though I never got anywhere near his level.

There are lots of opportunities. I think most people who make a career in hi-fi or pro audio are in the business because they love the gear and love music, and they tend to be eager to let people listen.

1 Like
#192

None local. But I’m glad you have access.

#193

My last word here, and mainly directed at those who might think they are in a similar position … it appears you’re in the Santa Cruz area, so you have at least a few within a half hour driving distance:

http://theanalogroom.net/


http://www.nekoaudio.com/

Even Guitar Center in Santa Cruz is worth a visit: they might carry some higher end monitors in the production A/V room. Best Buy Magnolia dealers like the one in Santa Cruz have some surprisingly posh gear also, I heard some spendy Sonus Faber speakers in a fairly nice room at the San Diego Best Buy not too long ago. Sales pressure is rarely an issue IME.

I’m sure there are many others, and I’ve been known to check out places when I’m in unfamiliar cities. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I used to ride my bicycle further than half an hour to go listen to stereo gear I couldn’t remotely afford when I was in high school and college. I made friends with a sales guy at a hi-fi dealer when I was in college in Phoenix, and I’ll never forget him firing up the 4(!) Klipschorns they inexplicably had in the demo room at the same time, powered by a pair of hulking Harman-Kardon 200W amps … test tracks included the Telarc 1812 Overture with “Digital Cannons”, of course! Once this stuff gets in your blood you won’t get it out. :slight_smile:

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