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Even listening to ruler flat monitors in the near field doesn't save you from your room modes, especially in a really small room with similar dimensions.
Quite a while back, I bought a pair of Mackie HR824 powered monitors. I took one to the anechoic chamber here at the university where I work, and hooked it up to our B&K analysis system. Frankly, I was really skeptical of Mackie's claim that the 824 was flat plus or minus 1dB from (if memory serves) about 40 Hz to 16kHz.
The results from testing in the anechoic chamber matched very closely with the strip chart Mackie provides with every monitor. The 824 really is extremely flat!
However, when I installed the monitors in my small control room, the measured response I got (borrowing the B&K mike from work, sorry boss) and using JBL Smaart on my home computer showed a very different story. The figure below shows the SMAART analysis for one speaker recorded at the equilateral midpoint between monitors. Note the scale on the Y axis to see how truly horrible the room response is.
So the answer is, there's really no shortcut. You need monitors as flat as your budget allows, and a good room to listen in carefully treated to reduce the room modes. (For advice as to the latter, see any post by Ethan Winer).
Otherwise, you'll be playing "guess the EQ, run out to the car, and then guess again."
Terry D.
Quite a while back, I bought a pair of Mackie HR824 powered monitors. I took one to the anechoic chamber here at the university where I work, and hooked it up to our B&K analysis system. Frankly, I was really skeptical of Mackie's claim that the 824 was flat plus or minus 1dB from (if memory serves) about 40 Hz to 16kHz.
The results from testing in the anechoic chamber matched very closely with the strip chart Mackie provides with every monitor. The 824 really is extremely flat!
However, when I installed the monitors in my small control room, the measured response I got (borrowing the B&K mike from work, sorry boss) and using JBL Smaart on my home computer showed a very different story. The figure below shows the SMAART analysis for one speaker recorded at the equilateral midpoint between monitors. Note the scale on the Y axis to see how truly horrible the room response is.
So the answer is, there's really no shortcut. You need monitors as flat as your budget allows, and a good room to listen in carefully treated to reduce the room modes. (For advice as to the latter, see any post by Ethan Winer).
Otherwise, you'll be playing "guess the EQ, run out to the car, and then guess again."
Terry D.
Vat,
Yes, in an ideal world. This is Terry's entire point. And note that each major division represents a deviation of 21 dB! This room is actually pretty good. You should see the response of your room!
You can buy speakers that cost as much as a car, but put them in a typical room and the response ends up as shown in that graph. Often it's even worse.
Possibly the distance from the listener (measuring mike) to the rear wall. That's the main factor that dictates where the peaks and nulls occur.
--Ethan
Yes, in an ideal world. This is Terry's entire point. And note that each major division represents a deviation of 21 dB! This room is actually pretty good. You should see the response of your room!
You can buy speakers that cost as much as a car, but put them in a typical room and the response ends up as shown in that graph. Often it's even worse.
Possibly the distance from the listener (measuring mike) to the rear wall. That's the main factor that dictates where the peaks and nulls occur.
--Ethan
Originally posted by Ethan Winer
Yes, in an ideal world. This is Terry's entire point. And note that each major division represents a deviation of 21 dB! This room is actually pretty good. You should see the response of your room!
Right! This is the response after hanging a huge tube trap to kill the 93 Hz mode I have. Also, the speaker has been switched to compensate for being in front of a wall.
You can buy speakers that cost as much as a car, but put them in a typical room and the response ends up as shown in that graph. Often it's even worse.
Yep. It's the cause of the classic problem of mixes that don't translate to other systems.
Possibly the distance from the listener (measuring mike) to the rear wall. That's the main factor that dictates where the peaks and nulls occur.
The distances are the wavelengths associated with the problem frequencies. They help to visualize the room problem and verify the graph, since they're closely associated with the room dimensions.
Note that the wavelength above the 183 Hz mode is in error, it should be around 6 ft. I'd fix the error, if I could find the original PowerPoint file.
These numbers make sense, because one of my room dimensions is 9 ft (yuck) and the room has an 8 ft ceiling (yuck).
Note also that the frequency response graph is not temperature compensated. The wavelengths are very close to right, though. Except for the one I mentioned above.
Terry D.
P.S. See my thread about using a combination of mega-LENRDs and RealTraps to improve things.
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