Considering To Buy Studio Monitors

Tannoy Reveal’s FTW!!

My apologies for not answering sooner.
Kinda hectic at home nowadays, I’ve moved out for 2-3 weeks, hopefully things between me and my gf will stabalize.

Haven’t bought any new speakers yet, (money issue) so I’m still relying mostly on my Grado SR80 headphones, and I know; DO NOT MIX ON HEADPHONES!

But man, if you tried these on, I swear you wouldn’t want to take them off either.

But Rockit is probably the ones I’ve got my mind set on, so far at least.

I’m also considering getting something in the 500 Euro class and the main purpose is to get speakers with less/smaller bass woofers to use in my “everyday musicmaking”.

I now use headphones or hifi/surround setup with 2 pretty old front speakers with 12 inch bass woofers and a sub with 2x15 inch woofers driven by a separate amp. When turning the volume up to hear what the hell I’m actually doing, my wife complains. My children will probably not complain though.
We live in a house and my “studio” is the basement. I have made extra soundproofing to prevent sound getting too loud in rest of the house but bass is really hard to get rid of efficiently. I also used acoustic damping ceiling (not cheap), a fitted carpet and additional fabrics along walls so the acoustics is pretty good I think for a home/hobby studio.

Anyway, I’m stuck with headphones at night when I’m gettin’ busy. A pair of smaller 6.5 or maybe 8’s woofers will probably don’t shake the house as my other system will at normal listening volumes. Headphones work but the mixing gets kind of wrong. Also, it’s really hard to get a good sense for bass without feeling it a little.

And when it comes to monitors I would like to have something that I can use almost all the time and with monitors making my ears fatigue doesn’t sound compelling. I’m looking at the HS80M’s if they “sweeten” things up a bit. Or is it really important to have as true monitors as possible? Also, really true monitors seem to cost way more than I’m ready to spend. Is there a huge difference in going up to 7-800 Euro speakers?

The headphones and hifi-setup will probably be good for cross-reference and to test bass levels, and monitors for everyday use (and of course mixing and mastering).
Am I understandings things right? Or do I use monitors for mixing and mastering only?

OT1:Maybe out of topic, but I think A/B-ing with commercial music is a good technique if you’re not so experienced in mixing/mastering.
OT2: what a nice tone and infomative posts here at Renoise! At KVR the first 5 posts are ok then flamwar is unavoidable. Thank god there are places like this!

What a messy post it became…

Considering it’s your first, it wasn’t that bad

I have KRK RP6 and RP10 sub, it sounds great. I’ve only bought sub a few weeks ago, and it really does the difference. Without it, the bass was still very defined and clear, just not strong enough (especially the really low frequencies), so all my mixes had a bit too much bass. They work perfectly together.

I was also listening to behingers and alesis when I bough RP6 (approx same price range), and I liked KRKs much better. The other two sounded more like a hifi speakers that monitors.

The KRK RP6’s looks good too and in my price range. And it sounds like they are just what I need: defined and clear bass but not too strong. Do your ears get fatigue during musicmaking sessions due to the harsh sound?

And yeah, I understand getting the bass wrong using 6 inch woofer speakers. I think it’s real hard to get it right without “feeling” it. I don’t know if it’s wierd or absolutely wrong, but I have actually put my fingers on the woofer itself to “feel” the bass when mastering. I’m probably wierd :wacko:

after following numerous ebay auctions which all ended up with a WAY too high price (i don’t know why the ebay crowd is willing to pay up to 90% of the original price for 1 year old monitors with traces of usage), i decided to go for a new pair of speakers from thomann.
i originally wanted to spend 500 EUR max, but now i am so frustrated for waiting that long that i thought “f**** it, sekt oder arschloch!” and went for the adam a7’s with two XLR sommer-patch-cables.


will report back with a little review as soon as they’ve arrived.

i got my adam’s about a week ago and am using them on heavy duty since that time.

upon opening the boxes after delivery first thing i thought was “these mates are really tiny!” and i instantly thought it was a mistake to not order the respective sub together with them straight away…

so i unpacked them, positioned them in the recommended listening triangle, plugged in the (non-bundled) XLR cables and got them busy with some of my favourite flac tunes.
when i sat down in the proper listening position i got instantly shocked:
absolutely awesome stage and stereo image, very pleasant treble and a surprisingly thumpin’, highly responsive (quite natural for 6.5"ers i guess, but i’m used to huger diameters) and well defined bass - so i absolutely won’t need an additional subwoofer, that’s for sure.

the more tunes i checked, the more i was pleasantly surprised about how well and direct they sound. the interesting thing about them is that the reproduction of a mono sound is that mono, that you actually think it comes from a position between or infront of you, even though the speakers are standing way further to the left and right of you.
sometimes i catch myself looking behind me, because i get the impression that some sound is coming from there or from the ceiling - the stage produced by these speakers is absolutely uncomparable to anything i’ve heard before and i’m used to some really good hi-fi / audiophile setups if i may say so.

the only explanation i got for this phenomena is that either my mind is slowly starting to get a life of its own or it’s due to the very high resolution of the “A.R.T.” ribbon tweeters (up to 35khz).

coming back to their size again: i would’ve never expected that speakers of such a size could produce such a high level of loudness without peaking or distorting a single nuance.

so i’ve been impressed by the first second i listened to them and after the first couple of days, i still am.
for me these nearfields are worth every cent their purchase has devoured from my wallet and i can hereby fully recommend them for anybody looking for decent monitors for smaller listening environments.

oh and btw: when it comes to mixing and mastering i finally noticed how shit my mixes sound compared to professional ones. the difference has never been that obvious for me even though i still don’t know what exactly is the cause for this, but i think it’s mainly the EQ’ing which i still gotta improve a lot on.

Well done on the purchase! :D Much fun awaits…

what saying about use TAPCO S8 or S5?

i usually make my tracks with my headphones on,but now i finally got my skytronic pa-speakers connected to my external soundcard,(not ideal,but i only use them for reference)

I realize people tend to differentiate hi-fi speakers from monitors, but at the end of the day they both attempt to reproduce recorded material accurately. Monitors are used partly because they take up less desk space. You can call a speaker a monitor all you want, but the fact is if the frequency response is flat, it can be used as a monitor.