I knew there is some dirty trick… No, right, thanks guys. I can’t believe I found a store not too far away, gonna drive there now.
Yeah but watch the scale the graph is set to. A flat graph shown on a 1:25 scale doesn’t necessarily be a better set than one that shows a few bumps or valleys on a 1:1 scale. Manufactureres often scale graphs to make them look better than they actually are.
Just my 2c here - to this day I still produce everything with my cheapo entry level Alesis M1 active MK2. 
A wise music production teacher once told me, if you’re on a tight budget, almost any 2 way monitors will work nicely once you “learn” their sound and listen to a lot of reference material with them etc. Once I manage to earn my first euros with making music, I’m gonna get new ones though heheh.
Anyway, if the room/placement is good, these things are magical for the prize imo (I did quite a lot of comparing back in the day, even with Genelecs and such, considering the prize the Alesis performed amazingly!) but then again, in small boxy rooms with concrete walls I never really found any trick to make these things sound right. Annoying boomy frequencies all over the place even when placed well. 
I could be completely wrong with this, but I have a feeling the Behringers are really good entry level speakers, although they “flatter” some frequencies a little as many monitors in this prize range seem to do. A couple of my friends have these cheap Behringers and they generally seem to encounter a lot less problems in different rooms, even smaller ones. One such friend has them on proper speaker stands in a very large room, and they sound Really good. Behringers also have some settings to lower the bass unlike the Alesis, I don’t know how well those settings work, though.
And yes, the Alesis monitors indeed have the akward production fault, where after a few years of use a certain capacitor in the power supply will blow - no way to prevent it as far as I know. A flashing blue light while powering up indicates this is about to happen and after a few weeks they don’t power up anymore. It’s a relatively easy fix though (just replace a capacitor in the PSU, a new one costs nothing and doesn’t require guru level soldering skills) and after that they seem to be better than new cause you can use one with better heat tolerance and placed a bit further away from the circuit, I’ve had to fix both of mine - the other broke down just last summer. I have a good txt-file here somewhere, explaining which part to replace, if anyone should need it btw.
(If you haven’t encountered this with yours yet, I suggest you don’t stuff socks in the bass ports or anything trying to limit the bass responce, cause any overheating is bad with these)
These do a great job imho, though i have a complete wooden walled room and the isolation material behind the wall is absorbing some of the sound, i can’t go too loud.
I have them on resonance-free standpoles though so the resonance through the floor (which is also wood 
) can only go through air.
But i can’t say everything too fairly as my PC’s fan is making a lot of noise unfortunately so i use my headphones anyway most of the times. But for reference playing they are fabulous in all cases.
Could you pm me the txt-file?, though i hope they nowadays have replaced this capacitor with a better one and used a better print layout. I believe i have them for 3 quarters of a year now…
Didn’t think the Alesis M1 Mk2 had been in production for a few years now, replaced with the range including the M1 520 mentioned earlier. Seems everybody has them in stock new again so either I was mistaken or they restarted production due to demand (they are far better than the others with the M1 name.)
I’ve had my pair for 6 years now, very rarely turn them off and not had any problems. I do know others who have suffered with the burnt out capacitor though and from all reports it’s an easy fix.
They are quite boomy in the low end and you will want to avoid putting them too near corners of a room. They have no EQ adjustments on the back, unlike some other monitors, so it can be hard to adjust them for your listening space.
I think I would still say they are the best I have heard in that price range though and don’t regret my purchase for a minute, even though they get little use these days.
A powered pair of Numark NPM5s are not hard to find for about 85 bucks. Not on an anti-Behringer bandwagon, just saying.
Yeah you can get them new still with 3 years warranty, these boxes have a good name so i guess Alesis most likely has worse sales figures with the newer model.
So perhaps the capacitor problem has been resolved meanwhile. I don’t think the manufacturer produces new stuff with known problems. (At least it takes aproximately a second before audio comes out after turning them on so the capacitors might perhaps be charged in stages now)
Well, 3 years warranty, i’ll have a while before i need to use the soldering iron myself.
i wanted to upgrade my monitors also, but after seeing this video i have doubts if i should and perhaps go this route instead, what you guys think?
Hey, I get this: “The member vV cannot receive any new messages”
You can also PM me ure email address if you like and I’ll send an attachment.
I think this gadget does a swell job on getting at least an idea how your mix is doing on multiple speakers.
And regarding the bass, this guy is right, it is very easy to have too munch punch and lows in your mix and you probably can easily filter that out a lot better with that utility.
I’d try bluesky media desktop 2.1 since I’ve seen them recommended on many places including by pros. A new pair seems to be heavily overpriced atm (due to age/stock?) but a used pair is fairly cheap.
I’ve spent about 50 hours producing on the Yamahas. They are amazing in my opinion, and if I wasn’t in a living situation where I can’t have monitors, I would buy them back from my brother in a heartbeat.
I used them primarily with the mid frequency adjustment boosted to emulate the ns10 ‘reverse disco smile’ eq curve. What I noticed is that when my sound creation, mix, eq, dynamics sounded good on the Yamas with the mid frequencies boosted, the resulting mixes would sound awesome on my home stereo, sennheiser hd280, sennheiser hd595, my car, iPod headphones etc…
It really forced me to cut cut cut frequencies, and always always throw a lpf and hpf on EVERY sound and tweak it to the mix. My mixes got so clean that I’m drooling wishing I had them back.
The negatives: I would get ear fatigue pretty bad with the boosted mid settings. We’re talking 2-3 hour sessions tops for me. And I’m pretty careful about keeping my levels low and only upping it to play the loop a few times.
But oh man, how they sound. I’ve spent about 2 hours with some KRK’s with no sub and I hated how boomy and loose the bass was. Sure there was ‘more’ bass than the Yamas, but gosh the Yamas were ‘tight’ or had defnition. So easy to cut the right frequencies and to get the kick and bass pumping with SC compression.
Highly, highly recommend the Yamas, in either size driver.
+1 Linus
I would love to hear from somebody who owns a pair of these… I have not heard anybody talk about these, but I saw the advert on gearslutz one day… I am still researching these, and I would like to get some sort of affirmative confirmation that they are everything the website claims: http://www.equatoraudio.com/D5_Studio_Monitors_with_DSP_300_Pair_p/d5.htm
Edit = “oh and btw, right now I am using Alesis M1, Mk2… Very good.” 
not, “dyna audio,” but whatever… still good.
Edit again = you know… if one day I am feeling like, “i’ve got $300 it doesn’t matter what I do with it. all my bills are payed and whatever.” I would probably take a chance and purchase these equator audio, even if I can not find confirmation that they are, “really good.”
Oh… Here it says on their site, “The D5 studio monitor is high quality, low in cost, sounds fantastic, offers amazing detail and imaging, and is backed by a 60 day money-back guarantee.”
** I do not know if that is available outside the USA… You guys have to read the website I linked very carefully!! Please…
Adam a3x - small but as precise as it gets.
But you can work on any one of these, you will have to take some time to learn them and their sound. Also, if you don’t have a good acoustics in your room, it’s better to have a decent headphones than monitors. When you learn them (and you need to learn how to best translate your mixes to other systems) you will have no problems making great sounds with them.
+1 on the Blue Sky 2.1s. I bought the Exos with the money I made selling my copy of Ableton when I switched to Renoise! 
I just got myself Focusrite VRM Box (thanks for the hint!). I hope it will help me, since I have big problems in creating mixes that would sound ok with every device.
I was just wondering if there are any other software that would help newbies with basic stuff (besides graphic EQ)? Something that would tell me for example:
- drums are a bit loud
- cut down the bass level
- guitars are missing mids
- your highs are way too loud
(note that I do not always trust my ears)
For example, does this kind of software work at all? Auto Audio Mastering System
hey,
i went with actual monitors after all, but i might still get the vm box, so please share your experience with it very keen to hear about it.
as for your question, thats a whole can of worms, learning HOW to listen is what matters most i feel. listen a LOT of music that is ‘professional’ , compare it to your own songs.
get second opinions (and third and fourth) here on the forum or in the #renoise irc channel. always nice to have backup ears and instant feedback ;]
curioza software, i feel it does a pretty good job, it can make a poor mix suck much less and make it ‘safe’, but it wont make it ‘perfect’ or personal. its interesting to see what it altered on your own original mix, you might find that you always make the same ‘mistakes’, then learn from that.
What about skipping speakers and getting a nice pair of In-Ear Monitors? For 300 you could get a darn good pair, ie: Etymotic ER-4
If you can listen to em, give the Tannoy Reveal 501a a listen. same price range, awesome little monitors.