Needs2Know Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 Why are good monitors so important? I have some decent powered Alesis monitors but I'm just wondering if I make a track sound good on these, in my room thats great!: for ME in MY ROOM. but everyone else listening to my bounced project will be using all kinds of crapy and not so crapy listening devices. so wouldnt it make more sense to use the most common type of crapy listening device everyone else is using with their ipods etc. because "logic"(not the program) would dictate that if you could make your track sound great on average listening devices, it will more than likely sound even greater on better listening devices. i know that alot of producers and engineers spend alot of money on room acoustics and monitoring systems and it seems in every issue of a music magazine they are preeching to do this......BUT most people are going to download your track off limewire and listen to your mix on those standard crappy headphones that come with your ipod(that blow out in less then a week). i guess what im getting at is if you use the more and more popular inserted headphones you are still getting all the high mid and low freqs but you are cutting out the middle man. by going straight from you computer into your ear drum you are not reliant on how good your room absorbs sound reflections. or how clean your sound is from your monitors. because those two factors will always be different. now ive seen these inserted heaphones range a great deal in price. i myself have fallen in love with some $50 sonys(still hate Sony though). maybe someday ill go and get those really expensive m-audio ones if i feel it is neccessary. look the concept is like converting to a digital sound generating device. you dont have to deal with expensive cables etc. you are cutting out the middle man. thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
relaxnfade Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 One reason is stereo phasing... if you mix with headphones, it's going to show when you play on a regular stereo. It's going to show when you play it in a car, if it's broadcast on radio, or on tv or film. A good mix with good monitors and a trained ear will sound good on any system, headphones, or not. You have to take this into account. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threlly Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 I think the Alesis monitors are front-ported, so placement is a little easier. They are excellent for the money but like a biggish room to get the benefit. Play a wide range of tracks your are very familiar with, you'll soon hear how they affect the mix. I went through a process in the nineties of upgrade after upgrade in my monitors thinking it would solve a myriad of problems. I ended up with a pair of custom made monitors costing thousands of pounds, they were excellent but did not produce the epiphany I was expecting. I now use JBL Soundstick II's (Yes thats right), I know exactly what to expect from them. They are dirt cheap. They are easy to position. No monitor snobbery required. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editbrain Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 threlly, have you any music mixed on these speakers i can hear? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 I like questions like this because it brings out people like Threlly sharing alternatives to the ‘standard list’ of monitors that we hear about people using. I have some Paradigm speakers, that strictly speaking, aren’t meant to be studio monitors. But I quite like them. I’d be interested to hear what other ‘offbeat’ speakers people might be using with good results. Speaking as a musician with a modest home set-up, I’ve always thought the studio monitor thing was a little overblown, especially if you have a less-than-ideal room where you have to close-monitor anyways. I guess like everything else, it comes down to the performance and the ears behind the board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shivermetimbers Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 Why are good monitors so important? I have some decent powered Alesis monitors but I'm just wondering if I make a track sound good on these, in my room thats great!: for ME in MY ROOM. but everyone else listening to my bounced project will be using all kinds of crapy and not so crapy listening devices. so wouldnt it make more sense to use the most common type of crapy listening device everyone else is using with their ipods etc. because "logic"(not the program) would dictate that if you could make your track sound great on average listening devices, it will more than likely sound even greater on better listening devices. i know that alot of producers and engineers spend alot of money on room acoustics and monitoring systems and it seems in every issue of a music magazine they are preeching to do this......BUT most people are going to download your track off limewire and listen to your mix on those standard crappy headphones that come with your ipod(that blow out in less then a week). i guess what im getting at is if you use the more and more popular inserted headphones you are still getting all the high mid and low freqs but you are cutting out the middle man. by going straight from you computer into your ear drum you are not reliant on how good your room absorbs sound reflections. or how clean your sound is from your monitors. because those two factors will always be different. now ive seen these inserted heaphones range a great deal in price. i myself have fallen in love with some $50 sonys(still hate Sony though). maybe someday ill go and get those really expensive m-audio ones if i feel it is neccessary. look the concept is like converting to a digital sound generating device. you dont have to deal with expensive cables etc. you are cutting out the middle man. thoughts? Your idea is pointed in the right direction. That's why Reference monitors are used. Everything from the expensive studio speakers, the home/car stereo system, and even those 'Crappy headphones' that come with the iPod (btw, those little earbuds happen to have an excellent sonic quality about them). Obviously, there is much more to mixing than just getting that certain set of headphones. Once you have all the instruments and vocals recorded to sound as natural as possible, it is then time to screw up all that work so that they all work together and compliment the final mix. When all those instruments have to come out of one speaker, they all have to share the frequency band. Instruments have to give up some of their natural sound spectrum in order to be heard. Using multiple reference monitors to play back on will help keep your mix sounding like the pro mix you are comparing it to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editbrain Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 to add to this. i have a pair of technique 10" 2-way home stereo speakers that i purchased from CC for $29.99 dollars each on closeout. i quite like the way they sound when mixing. to be honest some of my favorite mixes were done on these speakers and a 40 watt onkyo receiver bought at the same time for $89.99 on closeout in 1996. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 editbrain, Funny you should mention some of your favorite mixes were done on 'consumer' gear. A friend of mine has a temporary studio set-up, where he is using a Pioneer receiver and some mid-size Yamaha speakers, probably both from the late 70s or early 80s. His mixes sound great. Mind you, he's been recording for a good 20 years and has his Pro Tools Operator certification but still… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sound609 Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 I'm relatively new to Logic, and to producing music on a computer and as I was putting together my rig, I had some of the same questions about monitoring. I'll share my experience. I initially planned to do my monitoring and mixing purely on headphones, for reasons similar to those listed in the initial post, along with the fact that I generally have to keep things at a low volume when mixing at home (an apt.). I've always been a bit of a headphone fanatic and after doing quite a bit of research I decided on the AKG 701's. After an exteremly long break-in (300+ hours) they have become the best headsets I've ever heard. Very nice "flat" repsonse, and quite accurate I think. But I found that, even though very comfortable, after a couple of hours I couldn't stand to have these things on my head. It was quite distracting. I can only imagine that it would be even worse with ipod ear buds, or less than comfortable headphones. Maybe those moulded (expensive!) earbuds would fair better. So I decided I neaded some "real" monitors. I ended up with M-Audio BX-8a's. I got them for a steal at Guitar Center ($300) and couldn't be happier with the sound, especially for the price. Throw in another $90 for monitor stands and I've got a nice setup. I've found that having both the headphones and the monitors available (as they give clearly different results) when mixing has really helped me get closer to a good sounding final mix... but I think that (and this is the lesson I learned, and I'm sure has been repeated on this forum) no matter what your monitoring setup is, there is no substitution for bouncing the song down and playing it on as many other stereos, ipods, car stereos, pc speakers, as you can. Then you come back to the mix and make adjustments based on the overall picture you got from all those sources. Were the highs consistently too bright on multiple systems? Was the kick popping those pc speakers and ipod buds? etc... Then, after you've been through this process a number of times you get to the point where you have a feel for how a certain mix/eq in your monitors, will come across on other systems... as it sounds Threlly has done with his Soundsticks. One of the benefits to having a high-end monitoring setup is that you have to do less of this... that what you are hearing is closer to what you'll get in the "real world." But probably the biggest reason for going with a high-end system is that the most subtle details (ie flaws) of the source material is revealed. If, for example, you are mixing on crap headphones that have virtually no response below 70 or 80hz, you never know what the bottom end is going to sound like when someone pops your CD into a stereo with a killer sub. Could blow their speakers... could be nothing down there at all. A good tip I picked up from this forum is to add a low pass filter on Output 1-2 (I use 55z) that is a bit above whatever the manufacturer claims is monitors/speakers lowest response, in the case of my BX-8a's it's 40Hz. This way at least you know! In the end, the biggest thing is not what monitoring equipment you use, but learning and experimenting with that equipment until you are familiar with the mixes/results it produces. Well, didn't mean to make that into a book... but there you go Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllyMusicGirl Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 ...there is no substitution for bouncing the song down and playing it on as many other stereos, ipods, car stereos, pc speakers, as you can. Then you come back to the mix and make adjustments based on the overall picture you got from all those sources. Exactly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben parsons Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 "I like questions like this because it brings out people like Threlly sharing alternatives to the ‘standard list’ of monitors that we hear about people using. " i would like to add to that list. i monitor using both a team of trained dolphins and bats. they have an extremely broad frequency response, and then i can find out what my mixes will sound like underwater. NOTE: dolphins are partial to classic rock, and will consistantly say the "mix is bad" on any other genres. this can be quite frustrating at times, as i produce mainly instrumental hiphop and ambient. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benw Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 i dont quite understand the low pass filtr on 1-2 tip... surely then anyhting below 55hz wont be heard... so how can you handle the low end??? im most probably missing something really basic here... im absolutely knackered! Cheers, Ben Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erfmufn Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 lol @ ben parsons! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiny333 Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 you need speakers to listen to dimwit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcel72 Posted June 6, 2007 Share Posted June 6, 2007 A lot of mix balance is about learning how your rig behaves... When you take a mix to other places, what is it about the mix that sounds 'bad'? Are there areas of the frequency spectrum that are too low (or are not there at all), do certain things jump out too much (the 3 - 5kHz in the singer's voice), etc? When you learn over time what these are, you will learn to compensate for them on your mixes, after a while you probably will do this unconsciously. Things may not sound as 'cool' while you are mixing, but you will know that they are going to translate better... Most of the reason for well designed, expensive monitoring setups is that the level of detail that they offer you when assessing these adjustments is much greater - you hear things that a consumer system just does not reproduce. Sometimes these things can be important in the way that they interact with the things you do hear on other systems. Also worth keeping in mind that the most expensive element in any high-end mixing setup is always the room... No setup or room is 'perfect', but that does not mean you can not educate yourself on exactly how yours will behave... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcel72 Posted June 6, 2007 Share Posted June 6, 2007 Sorry, should re-phrase... The most expensive element in a great monitoring setup is always the room... Please don't flame me too bad. I know how expensive mixers can be. LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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