Looking for suggestions for studio monitors

[khowie]

I am looking for advice and suggestions for studio monitors. I am recording on Mac book pro and logic pro X. I just got a Focusrite interface and I'm in the market for studio monitors.
Your experience and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Paulie]

Howdy Kelley, and greetings from San Antonio!

Monitors are a very personal decision, everyone has their favorite and reasons for that. What I suggest is that you grab some CDs of music you are very familiar with, plus some of your own mixes, and head to the Guitar Center in Tyler. They should have a room specifically for monitors, and ask one of the reps to pop in a CD and help you pick. So many choices, usually influenced by your budget. The key is to listen to the music in detail to see what the highs and lows sound like with music you know well. Then you can compare your own tracks to those tracks. That is what people mean when they say "use reference tracks" or "ghost tracks".

Something I've also read in several different mixing/engineering books is a rough guideline of spending as much on room sound conditioning as you do on your speakers. If your room sounds boomy, good speakers will not help, they will just give you a really boomy sound and totally ruin your mixes. I just picked up a bunch of high quality studio foam on Craigslist for a great price, and there are some decent priced bass traps available on Amazon.

Make sense? Hope this helps.

Paulie

[khowie]

Makes sense. Thank you so much. I didn't even know that I could do that at guitar center. They did just open about a month ago and have been wanting to go check it out. Now I have a specific reason.

Thanks again

[cardell]

They should have a room specifically for monitors, and ask one of the reps to pop in a CD and help you pick.

Yep, that's exactly what I did. One set stood out as my clear favorite...so I bought 'em.

Stuart

[kclements]

I would add to the excellent suggestions above:

1) Don't be fooled by size. It is possible to buy monitors that are too big for your room. If you are in a small room, you should look for smaller monitors. And if you don't have a good pair of headphones, figure those into your budget and get them at the same time.

2) I have heard the ration is more 2:1 in favor of room treatment. You can get the best monitors in the world, but put them in an untreated room and they won't work well for you. The main point of monitors is to hear all the "flaws" in your mix and not any hyped frequencies. You're room will certainly add and take away certain frequencies. It's best to try and even those out with treatment.

3) Make sure there is a return policy on the monitors. The best way to audition monitors is in your space with reference audio you know really well and a couple of your mixes. I don't know about Guitar Center where you live. But here, they have all the speakers in a fairly crowded room and play them loud. Not at all what they will be like in my studio. Try and get the room to yourself and listen at low levels. And be sure you can return the monitors if they don't work in your room.

Cheers
kc

[TimWalter]

Hi Kelley
I can only share my own experience and knowledge. Take it with a bag of salt.

I just finished a month long music production course at Cre8 Music Academy in West Hollywood. Cre8 is connected with Westlake Recording Studio, in my opinion one of the top recording studios in the country if not the world. They consistently record stuff that is at the top of the charts (just one example, Rihanna has recorded ALL her albums there, and last I checked she is #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 right now).

With that said, I learned a lot, so much my head is spinning. But when it comes to studio monitors used for mixing, I learned that the pros tend to rely on very old standards: Yamaha NS-10's and Auratones. Both of these have very old histories, going back to the 70s or 80s. The NS10's are no longer being made, so your options are only used. Auratones were recently restarted by a family descendants of the original maker of the speakers. There were some variations over the life of the Auratones, and the ones they are making now are apparently pretty close to the original designs from the 80s (vs the slightly different designs from the 90s).

Anyway, I was aware of both of these speakers, (how can you not be if you read a lot of blogs etc). If you watch Taxi TV, you can see a pair of NS-10M's with their white speaker cones sitting behind Michael in every episode. A recent Taxi TV episode with Rob Chiarelli (sp?), one of Michaels best friends and winner of more than a handful of Grammy's, stated on that episode (earlier this year if I am not mistaken) that he doesn't know of any LA major studio that doesn't have NS-10 monitors.

Yeah Yeah, I had heard all that before, but still for some reason I never had procured my own pair. Maybe I was put off by the fact that both of these ( the NS-10s and the Auratones) are PASSIVE speakers, meaning you need to also have an amp to power them.

However, my time at Cre8 and Westlake has radically changed my opinion, and my new (to me) NS-10M Studio monitors arrived a few days ago after I won a bid on ebay. I am still stalking a pair of Auratones (cant decide whether to get the new version or a vintage set, I bid on a vintage set on ebay (that looked like they came out of the 70s, which they did!!), but was out bid.) I will have a pair of Auratones soon. I also did extensive research on what amp to use. The #1 amp in pro studios is Bryston, but that's a $3500 amp, and I wasnt quite ready to go there. Instead, I did tons of research, and found a bulletin board discussiing what amp works best, and (other than the Bryston) the favored amp was a Yamaha (Yamaha with Yamaha) 2200. My mind was made up when a poster who claimed (and was referred to by other regular denizens of this bulletin board) to be Bob Clearmountain himself (the famous engineer who started the whole NS-10 boom back in the day) stating that HE prefers the vintage Yamaha amp on his NS-10s. My Yamaha P2200 amp, which was last used in a church, was won on ebay and should be in my hands within a week.

What turned my opinion was what I learned at the school. And it was demonstrated to me. We were working on a mix (rather my instructor was mixing as we observed) and he was using the NS-10s. Still work to do on equing, etc. But in the middle of the session, he switched over to either the big Genelucs on the console or the huge mains bulit into the walls (I dont remember which) and the mix sounded AWESOME!!>. He looked at us and smiled and said that the great sounding speakers make you think your mix is done when it really isnt yet. he said he NEVER uses the bigger speakers until he is done with the mix. Then, you show of the final mix to the clients using the big speakers.

The reasons both of these speakers are so valuable:
1) they are passively powered. Active powered speakers flatter your mix, making you think the mix is better than it is
2) they have no ports. Both of these speakers are closed box. Ports can work on more expensive speakers with precisely designed ports, but on most monitor speakers being considered by home studio enthusiasts, the ports were used to enhance the lower frequencies. AND ports create resonance at specific frequencies, which dont dissipate fast enough, greatly disturbing and deviating from a desired flat neutral sound (ref waterfall plots of different speakers for more technical info).
3) in the case of the Auratone, there is only one speaker in each speaker cabinet which means there is no crossover between speakers. Crossovers, no matter how well designed, will not be completely seamless in their handling of frequencies around the crossover. There is a company making what they claim as similar replacements to Auratone, their brand is Avantone, but dont go there. Avantones are ACTIVELY powered speakers (see #1 above) and they sound substantially different than Auratones. The Behringer clone is also not worth the money.. get the real thing... $349 delivered from Sweetwater.

What I learned is to use the NS10s to do your eqing, and the Auratones to do the balancing of the mix. The Auratones are mid heavy and really reveal issues that more "slick" sounding speakers wont.


I cant tell you yet if the change will significantly improve my mixes, because I am still in the procurement and installing phase, but I do expect to take a leap forward after I have both of these speaker pairs in place.

I also was surprised to learn that mix engineers (at least at Westlake) didn't use any subs. I have read numerous discussions as to which sub to get etc etc. Our instructor, a Grammy nominated engineer/producer who does primarily urban genres (which should be more bass heavy) scoffed when I asked what he used for a sub..... he doesnt.

Sorry for the long post. Hope its helpful to you and/or others.

NOTE: Westlake had the NS-10M Studio monitors (which lay on their sides with the writing horizontal ) in the studios I visited. Michael's appear to be the original NS-10M's which are vertical. Some folks prefer one over the other, but the original vertical NS-10M's had a reputation for harsh tweeters and Bob Clearmountain apparently would put tissues over the tweeters to ease some of the pain from the harsh tweeters. The NS-10M Studio version was supposed reengineered to soften that harsh tweeter issue, negating the need to hang tissues over the tweeters. I noticed Westlake had the Studio version, so that's what i purchased. There are also other version (Pro something, not sure) but I went with what Westlake had in their studios. I got a pair from a guy who stated he bought them in 2000 (which was almost the last year they were made) and that he "hated" them, and only used them to mix about 5 songs. Cant find any serial number info on these speakers (my speakers have serial numbers, but cant find any info as to what the serial number means as to year of manufacture, etc) so have to go on his word, but they look basically brand new. When I get my amp we'll see how they sound.
I paid I think $650 for the pair, somewhere in that ball park. I have seen another set go for less on ebay, but they had issues (like one had had holes drilled in the cabinets for mounting, another had bent tweeter frames, etc. This pair that I got looked EXTREMELY clean and I paid more for that.). You can still get tweeters and woofers as replacement parts from yamaha.

Best regards.
Tim

[Russell Landwehr]

Kayle makes an interesting point. It helps to know the size of your room. Some monitors could over power your room.
Like the other replies say, taking a couple of your favorite CDs to guitar center to test drive some monitors would be really helpful. That's what I did before I bought my Yamaha HS series monitors.

Russell

[khowie]

Thank you everyone. Extremely useful info!

Kelley

[lesmac]

I based my decisions on which monitors to put in my small studio on Mike Seniors recommendations.

http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-ch1.htm

A room the size of a bedroom is small, thats the key.

A 2.1 system with un-ported satellite speakers is desirable according to Mike.

I have the Blue Sky Media Desk and one Avantone powered speaker.

Having the 8" sub is handy in a small room as you can position it in a place that has the least impact on room resonances.

Personally I think one could probably get good mixes on any set of monitors if you got to know them and didn't monitor too loud.

[mojobone]

Not to rain on the NS10 parade, but unless you can mount them horizontally on the meter bridge of a large format console, you're unlikely to get the best out of them. While I'm at it, the new Auratones are said to have better frequency extension than the originals (and the same great phase response) and there's also nothing at all wrong with the Avantones, in either the active nor passive versions.

Really, the upshot is, you can learn to mix on just about anything, if you do a lot of critical listening to good reference material. I happen to agree with Mike Senior (and many others) about ported enclosures; trouble is, almost nobody makes sealed-cabinet monitors for anything under a thousand a pair, yet I notice there are plenty of folks with cheaper systems who manage to get an awful lot of work done. As to active vs passive speaker designs, they're all engineered to meet a price point, including the amps, regardless of whether they're mounted in the speakers. My personal preference is for active and bi-amped, because it's A: more efficient and B: fewer cables. And maybe C: someone who knows more than I about speaker design has matched the amps, the drivers, the crossover and the cabinet/waveguides.