What’s good? I’ve so far used DT770 headphones fairly exclusively but looking at mixing some upcoming band recordings for promo stuff, so I’m looking at some kind of speaker setup to use at least 50% of the time.
I’m well aware that I almost don’t have the ability to properly prep a room from an acoustic perspective, but can certainly hang some blankets to help soften the room a bit. With that in mind, where would be a good place to start looking in terms of speakers?
Happy to spend a few hundred rather than aim cheap, but assume it’s not worth spending more given the limitations of the room.
I also have a pair of Fyne Audio speakers that are great for listening but I assume not quite the right thing for monitoring. Happy to be educated on all of the above…!
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A search of gearspace.com could help but there are so many speakers out there.
Reliable brands are Genelec, Neumann, Dynaudio, Adam, Yamaha
However...
For desktop nearfield monitoring I loud micro 250 the pair new. Really good and for monitoring similar deal to the KH80. Rich, detailed, deep. No need for room treatment as thats the appeal and equally comfy on a lounge coffee table as well as hard up against a bedroom wall.
For good mixes, nothing beats Yamaha NS10s. They sound shit but accuracy hard to beat.
Surely by now someone does a plug in for lo-fi mastering?
(I also have the iLouds mentioned above - surprisingly good.)
Nowadays though I wonder. Most people don't have hi fi's ... they listen to music on phones and BT speakers. I'm glad I'm out the game TBH
Also the connector broke where the speaker joins join, that big chunky cable connects to a flimsy socket with little strain relief.
Really poor design. Like I said they sound good but very much average prosumer build quality rather than professional gear.
Back to the op. If you do have to use the narrow end of the room put a desk with monitors facing the couch and a big 10cm panel or two above the couch.
I know my limits and have a couple of sets of Ilouds, which I treat as a relief from mixing on my Senn HD650s.
I have one pair set up as near fields on either side of a 27 inch IMac, and another set clamped to both ends of a mantelpiece immediately opposite me in my lounge / studio/ living room.
One thing I do like about them, is the Bluetooth connection, so it is easy to stream crap music from my phone, which is really the most often thing I do, apart from mixing on my 650s.
The main thing, is to get used to hearing well mixed stuff on them, and then aiming for the same thing with my own mixes.
I can't justify the next step up in the Iloud series, which has some form of room correction built in, and I am being continually bombarded with ads from Slate, for their studio emulating headphones, with the ability to hear mixes inside modeled real rooms.
I don't own a car anymore, so the car test isn't an option.
I have many limitations in my "studio". It's setup in the corner of a room with no option to change it sadly, so that and other factors mean that there's a huge and wide 150Hz hump when monitoring. I've attempted to compensate it using EQ, but I still have little confidence when mixing down that end. A friend let me use his Sonarworks measurement mic but even though things seemed better in front of the monitors, it resulted in the worst mix I've ever done when listening in the car and one my earbuds.
I've ended up buy some better open-backed headphones for making decisions with the low end.
Avoid rear-ported if you're close to a wall and treat the room as much as you can/need.
Once you know your spot though and get familiar with the speakers you can overcome all kinds of limitations. I have a couple of mix engineer friends who do sterling work in small spaces.
One thing to bear in mind these days is you kind of have to make the mix work on a phone and that can be very challenging for songs that have a lot of instruments dropping out in sections .. leaving just the bass or the bass provides the chordal movement of static chords. You almost need to have an octave of the bass slightly synthed or fuzzed just so it's audible on a phone / ipad etc. Difficult to do but listen to a lot of current mixes and they do work on a phone speaker.
Really useful to hear that, thanks for sharing.
iloud micro - sound really good, especially for their size and pretty revealing, was happy to mix on them, had some limitations, mostly volume.
so went to the iloud MTMs at considerably more expense, didn’t get on with them as well for some reason, the sweet spot seemed really small with them.
Currently using Presonus Eris Studio 4’s - cheap and sound quite nice but not revealing enough for a serious mixing.
Problem for me is that stepping up to KH80’s or Adam A4v’s is hard to justify as mostly I need to use headphones due to late evening being the only time I get to do it.
I’ve ordered some Kali LP-UNF which have good reviews and at £300 (for the pair) seem like a good half way house between presonus / M-audio which are essentially computing speakers and serious studio monitors. I’ll update how I get on with them.