Adam A7 - and question for recording artists about high end monitors (over $1.5k/pair)

When I tested the HS8 vs the HS7 I found the HS8 somewhat "brittle" at low volumes. Similar to many amp+cab combinations at low volume. It could have been the source, it could have been the room or it could have been the monitors themselves, I have no idea what the reason was but I didn't really like them at low volumes.

 

I like the sound of the Adams, but never mixed on them. I like the Hs-8 and Hs-7's too. I like the JBL's with calibration mic (forgot the model number).

For $1000, what I 'm planning to do in the far future, actually, is to get a pair of Hs-7's, an Avatone mix cube for mono compatibility, and a Radial Mc-3 monitor controller, then add the Yamaha HS sub later on. Combined with my AthM50-s and a pair of opened back's too, this should be a pretty unbeatable combination. Total cost with sub and headphones is probably around $2k, but deals can always be found, especially in the used market.

The main thing is mix translation to other systems. To get that there's no way getting around having to know your monitors. Obviously some are better at it than others. The added bonus is if they also sound pleasing as a playback system, which these all do.

I use to own some ns-10's , but had to sell them long ago for money. I've since just been using a cheap $20 computer speaker with sub system from best buy. The aren't too bad, actually, and the results aren't that different than the ns-10's once you get to know them.

Another "trick" is to use Small diaphragm cones, a single true mono speaker (stereo l/r) Properly merged (that's a biggy, along with proper pan law and sum/difference law applied), and low volume mixing, goes a long long way. It's almost a secret. Use good headphones for reference. If you can make a mix sound good like this, it will sound great on anything.

 

When I was younger and even more stupid, I bought a pair of O200s by Klein+Hummel (acquired by Neumann in the meantime). Compared to the Alesis Monitor Two I own in parallel, those are better of course. Are they 1000 Euro (per piece) better? Don't think so. But then again, my ears are pretty screwed up with a tinnitus on both sides...

I'd personally spend that money for other things. Top selling albums have been produced on all kinds of crap equipment and the best monitors are the ones you know best.

 

The Avantone is a nasty little monitor so if your mix folds down well to mono on that thing you'll know you're pretty much good for radio. Don't know how relevant they are at this point for anything else. Basically if your mix sounds good on that, it will most likely translate well on all systems.

I. for one, could never come to grips with subwoofers, maybe cause I can to audio production from a time that there were no subs and I stayed in rock/metal for the most part. So anyway, subs still seem more like a hindrance to me. I prefer full range speakers and luckily still have a few of those to test my mixes on.

 

Sound proofing is fiendishly expensive and if your monitor budget is $500 and you don't actually own the building you're working in, then it's not worth the time and (significant) expense. To give you some idea, soundproofing generally requires some sort of room-within-a-room approach with the inner room vibrationally isolated from the outer. If you're lucky, you can do it for about the price of a good new car.

Treating a room, on the other hand, for frequency dampening on reflected sound, is still not cheap, but a lot easier to do. Descent has the right idea but to add on to that you're not talking "acoustic foam" or egg crates or anything like that, but broadband frequency traps. DIY you could probably get the ball rolling for about what you spent on monitors, but it's a lot of work and time in addition to the raw materials needed to build broadband traps (Owens Corning 703 insulation is the de facto starting point though if you want to go down that road). Again, though, I'd say that if you're in a rented apartment and you're not going to be working in the same room for years at a time, it's probably not worth the effort. I own my place, have been there 6 years, and I still haven't bothered, because it's a condo in the city and I definitely won't be here the rest of my life (if the current girlfriend has her way, probably no more than another two or three years, which is right around the breakeven point I'd say). But, the price of that is I have a FUCK of a time gauging ambience and low end in mixes, and have to demo them on a number of other systems to make sure I'm getting things right.

To be fair, the HS7s didn't exist when I bought the HS8s. But, that wasn't my experience at all, compared to everything I compared to them. Also, the switches on the back give you a bit of control over the balance of the mids and highs, so if they were overly icepicky, it's possible the high shelf was set for a bit of a boost...?

I've been railing against that line of thought for several years now. The argument, near as I can tell, goes something like:

1) Smaller rooms have trouble with low frequencies, and often have a lot of notching and comb filtering, boosting some and cutting other low end frequencies.
2) Smaller drivers put out less low end than larger ones.
3) Therefore, smaller drivers will create less notching and combing in the low end than larger ones.

....but, that's crazy. If the low end is not there at all, then how does that give you more accurate response than producing low end that's then getting beat up a bit by early reflections? IMO, the only reason to use a smaller driver in a smaller room is that the monitor itself will probably be smaller, and therefore take up less space, in a room that's likely to already be pretty cramped.

 

You can look up Paul White on SoundonSound - he is the room treatment DYI guru. He has done thousands of articles on the subject, where they crash a person's home studio and DYI acoustic treatment to improve results.
In most cases he builds picture frame type things and gobos with acoustic insulation that they either hang or glue on to walls.

Look this up:
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/monitoring-acoustic-treatment

 

The HS8s require/prefer/request in the manual 1 metre of clearance from the wall behind them due to rear porting so that may be a concern depending how much room you've got.

 

I mean, this is probably good practice anyway - you want your listening position centered along the short axis of the room, and along the long end, 1/3 of the way down the length of the room. I don't bother while tracking, but when actually mixing something I care about, I'll usually roll my desk a couple feet towards the middle of the room to make sure I'm in a better listening position.

 

- The mono mixing thing has mostly to do with phase issues, real world listening situations, and AM radio. If you adjust everything in stereo, which is normal, then collapse it to mono, certain things may either be amplified or attenuated, and some things may totally or nearly disappear. This is due to phase issues of certain frequencies cancelling each other out and others amplifying each other. Things like stereo delays, reverbs, tremolos and auto pans, are especially vulnerable to this. They sound phenomenal in stereo then in mono, literally completely can disappear.
- Try setting a stereo auto pan up and then collapsing it to mono, it literally ceases to exist. I'm talking 1 speaker real deal mono, where the left and right channels are summed to a single source using a phase aligned merge box, not dual mono. Daw's that compute this properly (which is most daw's) will also make it disappear. I have an example file clip if you want to hear what I'm talking about, but sso apparently doesn't allow .mp3 or .wav files to be uploaded. I can email it as an attachment if you want to hear it. Just let me know.

- In the real world, people usually don't hear music in the center stereo position like an engineer does when mixing. They hear it in an offset way which is mostly mono. Whether in your car, at a club/bar, etc. It's usually mostly 1 speaker or the other. Mixing in Mono changes the way you choose to pan and level mixes, when it's working good on that, when you expand it back to stereo it sounds really good, no matter what, but doing it vise versa , not so much. I usually get the best mix I can in stereo and then check things against mono, which exposes all the problems, then usually spend more time in mono to fix what I got wrong when I should have been working in mono to begin with : ) I find if I start with mono it feels difficult to get a vibe for the overall mix at first.

- I always turn my equipment off if I won't be using it. I never understood the leaving stuff on all day thing. Seems like a waste of electricity and unnecessary wear on screens and lcds and other components. It makes sense for a really busy studio, maybe.
- For stuff I rarely use. I try to always turn it on at least once a month or two for a little while, not so much to make sure it works, but to keep the parts working. It seems that when gear sits it can develop some issues. Things like plastic/rubber parts can interact with other rubber and plastic parts, even packing material, and make them start to decompose or dry out. Pots can get dirty by sitting, caps can get old by sitting etc. Tapes and even cd's can decompose if not stored properly, manifesting in errors. Sd cards and other solid state drives can lose their static charge and start getting errors. This is all stuff I learned the hard way. It would be nice if manufacturers let you know this stuff in the manual. Proper maintenance takes a lot of time and energy.

 

These monitors are paired with the power amp, so if power amp is toast so are the monitors. Although honestly running pro monitors on for extended periods shouldn't be a big deal, but you should power them down when not in use.

 

Nice, I don't have experience with Beats phones, but I think they are bass heavy. Be aware of that when mixing. I think they are closed back too. The most difficult thing to judge on headphones is low end and spatial imaging. A tip is to mix low end and track volumes on them at the lowest volume possible (like barely audible, where when you turn it up they barely come on and the left and right speakers just start to sound like at even volume, so barely on at all), and when mixing pan's for spatial imaging to put them around your neck and flip each ear facing away, or on the table in front of you like a little pair of monitors. It's a dirty way to do it, but any tricks or thing that helps is good for headphone mixing. Also don't fatigue your ears by blasting it to loud, but sometimes we all gotta do that and live a little.

 

Thanks. I'm sure they probably sound great. The main thing about any phones or monitors is to try to "learn" them, meaning know how their responses and sounds and levels translate to other systems you're familiar with, like your car/home stereo, tv etc. When you know that then you get a feel on how it will translate so eventually the transition or remixing becomes less and less and more seamless, hopefully. I've been using my Ath-m50's for years and still over mix the low end on them even though I know better.

 

Is this an elaborate joke? Beats are by no means neutral. They are consumer headphones (not even good ones), not mixing engineering gear.