Speaking of Monitor Speakers...Does this Make Sense?

[Anderton]

I talk a lot with the Gibson Brands product specialists to get the pulse on what goes on in the real world of retail...fascinating stuff. Recently we were talking about the high and low frequency trims on monitor speakers. Aside from using them to compensate for acoustics, which is only marginally effective anyway, I always called them "client knobs" because you could boost the highs and lows on playback so clients could hear what music would sound like on today's hyped systems. However, what the guys in the field are saying is people are using them to adjust the sound to their liking when mixing.

 

I don't get it...if you boost the highs and lows, then those frequencies are going to be under-represented in the mix because the speakers are changing the mix, not you. I suppose one justification would be if you're mixing at low volumes, you can emulate what response your ears would hear if the levels were up higher. But I prefer just to mix at low levels, and crank it up periodically as a reality check.

 

So it at least seems to me that if the speakers are flat (and I've sure learned a lot about which are which aren't lately), those trims need to be left alone. Am I missing something?

[Goober(s)]

i agree.

 

generally, i've thought of those knobs as an aid to compensate for room acoustics, or a deficiency in the speakers themselves, but all in the service of flatness, not to pervert it.

 

i have this one pair of high end speakers that are painfully flat, but are not known for a big bass end that "Americans tend to like." so for a couple days I boosted low frequencies... but then thought, nah, that's just stupid, and put everything back to flat.

[Ernest Buckley]

Considering most people are listening to music on headphones, I no longer subscribe to the school of flat and honest monitors. I think its important to work on monitors that are pleasing to ones ear but also realize how those monitors are affecting the mix so the mixer can adjust.

 

I use Equator D5s. They`re a bit bright in the mids but knowing that allows me to compensate. I also mix on them 40%, 40% on headphones (ATH-M50s), and the other 10% on Bose Soundlink minis...

 

 

[Anderton]

Considering most people are listening to music on headphones, I no longer subscribe to the school of flat and honest monitors. I think its important to work on monitors that are pleasing to ones ear but also realize how those monitors are affecting the mix so the mixer can adjust.

 

I don't think very many people have the analysis equipment to know how monitors affect the mix. For example, a lot of monitors dip a bit at 1k to reduce "honk." If they like the sound of those speakers because they don't have honk, then they'll tend to mix 1k hotter than it should be unless they know how much to compensate.

 

I use Equator D5s. They`re a bit bright in the mids but knowing that allows me to compensate.

 

This is what I don't understand. If you like the bright sound. then it seems the way to compensate would be to boost the highs a little bit in the mix to compensate for playback over systems that aren't a bit bright in the mids...but then you're hearing something "double bright" when you mix. I guess it would make sense if that's what you want to hear, though.

 

[MikeRivers]

Recently we were talking about the high and low frequency trims on monitor speakers. Aside from using them to compensate for acoustics, which is only marginally effective anyway, I always called them "client knobs" because you could boost the highs and lows on playback so clients could hear what music would sound like on today's hyped systems. However, what the guys in the field are saying is people are using them to adjust the sound to their liking when mixing.

 

I think that these days the manufacturers say that those controls are to adjust for room acoustics because that's what the customers expect - because that's what the manufacturers tell them. There's of a lot of hand waving, but people these days are setting up their control rooms differently than when we were kids. Used to be that in a reasonably sized room that just happened to have more than an average amout of absorption, like a living room with a couple of couches and heavy drapes on the windows, a little treble boost can shoot out a few more highs that the room will soak up. But in a small room where the speakers are necessarily placed close to walls, a high frequency boost can only make matters worse, as can a high cut - unless the speakers are really crummy and need that adjustment to flatten out the near field response - in which case you wonder why the manufacturer just didn't build them pre-corrected for problems with the drivers or crossover.

 

There's some validity to a low frequency cut. Most speakers are calibrated for free field radiation. Since lows go in all directions and get reflected pretty much in phase when the spreakers are placed close to a wall, cutting the lows helps to compensate for that boost. It can work.

 

I don't get it...if you boost the highs and lows, then those frequencies are going to be under-represented in the mix because the speakers are changing the mix, not you.

 

Speakers are better than they were 20 years ago, even inexpensive ones. It would really be better if people who don't have anything but their own preferences to go on didn't muck with them, but just did what we used to do and get used to the sound of a speaker that we're using as a mixing reference. It takes some time and effort to learn. People didin't learn to mix on NS-10s or Auratones or 4311s overnight.

 

I suppose one justification would be if you're mixing at low volumes, you can emulate what response your ears would hear if the levels were up higher. But I prefer just to mix at low levels, and crank it up periodically as a reality check.

 

That's the smart way to do it - assuming that the speaker is linear enough so that its response or radiating pattern doesn't change when it's cranked up. People didn't judge the bass level at high levels by listening to their NS-10s cranked up, they cranked 'em up, sure, but watched the woofer cones to see when they started doubling. And then they put tissue paper over the tweeters to correct for a phase shift issue that caused some high frequency harshness. It wasn't about reducing the tweeter level, so say those who made measurements.

 

So it at least seems to me that if the speakers are flat (and I've sure learned a lot about which are which aren't lately), those trims need to be left alone. Am I missing something?

 

No, you aren't missing anything. With the trend toward designing drivers, amplifiers, and DSP in between them and putting them all in one box, the manufacturer has an impressive amount of control to make a flat or twisted frequency response. Sure, they give you controls to fiddle with it a little, but if you don't like the sound, you should just buy a different speaker.

 

Equator took an interesting approach, for better or worse. On the D8, and Ernest's D5s as well, they don't have low and high frequency adjustment knobs, they have a switch that's labeled "Boundary." That suggests the compensation for bass boost close to a boundary, but it's something different. They passed out speakers to a few trusted mixing engineers (who have remained namelss) along with the tools to make some adjustments and told them to tweak them so that mixes that they knew well sounded right. Then, they implemented the favored response curves with the switch. None of the settings are completely unprocessed though one is pretty close. It turns out that most people find that they like one or the other of the more tweaked settings.

 

Michael Cooper has a pretty good analysis of these in his review of the Equator D8 in the December 2014 issue of Mix. Based on his findings, I don't think I'd like them as much as whet I've been using for the past 30 years, but then he was probably listening to different kinds of music than what I work with.

 

Just my humble opinion, but with the paint job Gibson did on those monitors, I don't think anyone can listen to them objectively.

 

By the way, did you hear the interview with Henry J on Marketplace recently? Did you coach him for it?

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/corner-office/gibson-ceo-were-so-much-more-guitars

 

[MikeRivers]

 

I don't think very many people have the analysis equipment to know how monitors affect the mix. For example, a lot of monitors dip a bit at 1k to reduce "honk." If they like the sound of those speakers because they don't have honk, then they'll tend to mix 1k hotter than it should be unless they know how much to compensate.

 

If those are the kind of speakers that you can afford, then you just have to learn how to use them. That's the cheap way to make a bad speaker sound less objectinable. The better way is to use better drivers.

 

You can learn how to mix on a $300 set of monitors, but it won't be what you want to hear when you kick back to enjoy the music. Or if you do enjoy it, your ears are probably shot from standing too close to the drummer for too many years.

 

I don't think every studio needs $20,000 Wilsons (the audiophile speaker found in a lot of mastering suites that are worthy of being called "suites") but you can get good honesty and accuracy for a couple of grand. You pay that much for your guitar, why not the speakers that you record and mix it on?

[Anderton]

By the way, did you hear the interview with Henry J on Marketplace recently? Did you coach him for it?

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/corner-office/gibson-ceo-were-so-much-more-guitars

 

Henry's the last guy who needs coaching, he's very effective in scenarios like interviews, panel discussions, etc. Unfortunately with many interviews, a lot of what he says gets left on the cutting room floor.

 

The funniest interview he did was when Fox wanted to talk to him about the wood fiasco. So I sent them a bunch of background material, like how Gibson got most of the wood back eventually, which obviously no one read because the first question they asked him was how he felt about being targeted by the IRS. In the nicest way possible, he said "Well I never was targeted by the IRS,.the raid was by the Fish & Game Department." There was a very awkward silence when the hosts realized their whole agenda, which was to talk about abuse of power by the IRS, wasn't exactly going to pan out in a way that fit their agenda.

 

[thankyou]

 

Henry's the last guy who needs coaching, he's very effective in scenarios like interviews, panel discussions, etc. Unfortunately with many interviews, a lot of what he says gets left on the cutting room floor.

 

The funniest interview he did was when Fox wanted to talk to him about the wood fiasco. So I sent them a bunch of background material, like how Gibson got most of the wood back eventually, which obviously no one read because the first question they asked him was how he felt about being targeted by the IRS. In the nicest way possible, he said "Well I never was targeted by the IRS,.the raid was by the Fish & Game Department." There was a very awkward silence when the hosts realized their whole agenda, which was to talk about abuse of power by the IRS, wasn't exactly going to pan out in a way that fit their agenda.

 

LOL

[Beck]

Speaking of Monitor Speakers...Does this Make Sense?

 

 

I don't think you're missing anything; I think we just have fewer and fewer recodists that understand basic recording 101. People don't understand very simple concepts like the difference between tweaking the monitors and tweaking the mix. Everyone used to know this stuff. But today with everyone and their grandmothers trying a hand at recording very few people understand how crucial a flat monitoring system is to the outcome.

 

And it's still just important today (earbuds or not). It's impossible to create a mix that sounds "Right" on every listening device, so IMO mixing for hi-fi is still the way to go. Let the listener do some tweaking on his end. When listeners don't get the full impact of a well mixed song then that's their problem. But that's always been the case. For example AM radio was just a tease and we all knew we had to have a decent sound system to get the whole experience and to fully appreciate the work that went into mixing an album.

 

Crapy headphones, earbuds, and chintzy mono Bluetooth speakers are a passing fad. I won't mix for them. When high fidelity comes back into vogue anything mixed to compensate for crapy listening systems are going to sound like... well... crap on better systems.

[mister natural]

couple of weeks ago, I was in a similar conversation over at another forum (which will remain nameless).

- lemee summarize many of the replys :

"why spend thousands on accurate big $ monitors when no on listens on decent loudspeakers?"

"I don't care if my mix is accurate, I only mix for ME"

"Most people listen on crappy iBuds or Beats; doesn't matter what I mix on"

etc

 

for me; I try to make my recordings sound pleasant on my Wharfedale 8.2a's AND my AT M50s AND my Shure earphones. The only formats I don't check are my Volkswagon and Club PAs :=)

 

peace

[Anderton]

For the same reason people mix on multiple speakers, to get a reality check for headphones I audition through four separate headphones:

 

ATH-M50 - nice balance overall, but somewhat shy of upper mids and highs

Beatz - great for finding out what's happening with the low end

Ultrasone - really bright, let you know if the highs are out of control

KRK KNS-8400 - a little crispy in the upper mids, but otherwise accurate. They're what I use when I listen to each track in a song to check for glitches or gotchas, as well as listening for pleasure

 

I've found that mixing over really flat speakers gives the best "compromise" result on all the different headphones.

[Ernest Buckley]

I don't think very many people have the analysis equipment to know how monitors affect the mix. For example, a lot of monitors dip a bit at 1k to reduce "honk." If they like the sound of those speakers because they don't have honk, then they'll tend to mix 1k hotter than it should be unless they know how much to compensate.

 

 

I had my room measured several years ago so I`m aware of the dips and valleys but I also mix at very low levels so the room does not play around much with the mix. I also use phones…. and a Bose Soundlink mini…

 

This is what I don't understand. If you like the bright sound. then it seems the way to compensate would be to boost the highs a little bit in the mix to compensate for playback over systems that aren't a bit bright in the mids...but then you're hearing something "double bright" when you mix. I guess it would make sense if that's what you want to hear, though.

 

When I say compensate, it does not mean to add. Most of the time when I`m mixing, I`m taking stuff out of the overall mix to give everything room.

 

[nat whilk II]

There's a transition you have to make from listening for pleasure and listening for mixing. The market for monitors is being driven by large numbers of younger people getting into the game and that crowd is spread out along that transition line. "Flatter" or "flat" - if you know what I mean.

 

I was the same way - my first studio monitors, the big deal for me was simply "wow! they sound great - I love listening to these things!" as if they were just an upgrade in a home hifi system for the living room.

 

Had I been more educated in mixing, I would have run the monitors through their paces using reference CDs, white/pink noise tests, tweaked the room and the speaker positioning, identified any port resonance points, all that stuff, and then, if they still passed muster for mixing, say, "and hey, they just sound good, too!" as a bonus.

 

nat whilk ii

 

[gubu]

I remember setting up my friend's new Genelecs, about 10 years ago (8020's maybe), and we came across the frequency controls on the rear panel. The conversation went, "well, we won't be touching those anyway." "Ya." End of. That said, I know people who absolutely swear by the room correction software that comes with the newer JBL's. So I suppose you've gotta use whatever method works for you. Having basic tone controls on monitors, as outlined in the OP, seems to be something aimed at hobbyists though. Ymmv

[LeBassist]

I always go to the car.

[Phil O'Keefe]

KRK KNS-8400 - a little crispy in the upper mids, but otherwise accurate. They're what I use when I listen to each track in a song to check for glitches or gotchas, as well as listening for pleasure

 

I've worn mine so much that I've worn out the ear pads - I need to order a new set; they're really cool headphones.

[WRGKMC]

Whatever monitors lack, you'll have too much of in a mix when its completed.

Whatever monitors have too much of, you'll lack in a mix when its completed.

 

They are inversely related. If you mix downs are too harsh, then then your monitors lack those same frequencies and you're adding too much of them to a mix to compensate for what's not there. A mix with too much bass, then your monitors likely lack bass response so you're adding too much in the mix.

 

I don't understand why someone would install adjustable crossovers in studio monitors, especially with many being biamped today. If the tweeters are too hot they should be attenuated to proper standards when they are designed. I know why they do it but its still a bad idea. For home hi fi stuff or older gear where the component SPL levels needed calibration, then you'd need to have some kind of attenuation to balance their outputs. This is for the end users comfort listening to various mixes, not the mixer creating those mixes.

 

Using wire wound resistors seem to be a better choice however. Not only because the overall level is properly set, but the side to side imaging is proper. Maybe if you're partially deaf in one ear it might be helpful, but the cross talk to the other ear would be off so you're screwed using a pot to compensate for hearing.

 

If you're goal is to use a fixed standard, Monitors are supposed to be the fixed baseline for building everything else upon and even bad ears have to work by that standard. Making what you hear comfortable should be done in the mix. If you don't like how commercial mixes sound from them then its likely a bad match of monitors for your set of ears to work with. From there you either fix your room acoustics or fix the mix you're working with.

 

Having tweakable tweaters kind of reminds me of my wife does. She sets the bedroom clock ahead so she isn't late for work instead of setting the clock for the right time and just getting up on time.

 

A flat response is similar to how a painter works. They use a white canvas as a background color to work off of. If the canvas is shaded then all of his colors will be equally tinted. Or if he works in dim light, the colors might be overly bright once that picture is properly shown. You cant blame the paint because the canvas isn't white or the lighting is poor.

 

The item here not being touched on however is dynamic response curves.

 

Sure you may get a flat response at 85db pumping white noise. That's not that hard to do with even cheap drivers. The key is how does the frequency response taper with different volume levels and how quickly do the drivers respond to transients. That's where the better monitors do what others cant.

 

Really good drivers will taper their outputs similar to the ear as volume changes. Ears are anything but linear when it comes to hearing frequency responses. Here's a graph from The American National Standards Institute that shows the difference in hearing between 60db and 90db. Its obvious the bass response of ears are much better at the higher db level. https://law.resource.org/pub/us/cfr/...003_024_01.jpg

 

Higher DB levels cant be used. The ears actually shut themselves down with a reflex response designed to protect them. Long term prolonged exposure to loud noise can not only cause this reflex to occur when it shouldn't need to but you can also damage the nerves. ~~All you wind up doing is feeling the music and that's not a trust worthy method of mixing. If it was everyone would have a bass shaker installed in their studio chairs.

 

Designing monitors to remain flat to the ears at different volume levels is not possible. It never has been and thinking its possible is an illusion many people prefer to believe over the actual reality. Many monitors do a much better job then others however. Good Drivers have to have dynamic response curves that compensate for what the ears (and the grey mass between them) perceives as a flat response. When you turn them down, you'd would likely need the tweeter to taper off before the bass does, but you still need a flat standard at normal mixing levels. Its the reason good monitors are so expensive. The drives used are the best of the best.

 

Using deficient monitors may work well enough running at exactly 85db with everything compressed so the music is dynamically flat, but good luck trying to mix a good symphonic performance where the dynamic levels change drastically. Beyond that it simply comes down to working with the gear long enough to know its deficiencies and tweaking things to compensate. If you know your final mixes sound good on your monitors yet have an edge that's off on everything else you play the music on, Identify the frequencies. They shouldn't change much between mixes. You may even be able to built an EQ preset to fix those deficiencies and use it mastering instead of searching for it every time you mix something and winding up with pot luck.

[Ernest Buckley]

Whatever monitors lack, you'll have too much of in a mix when its completed.

Whatever monitors have too much of, you'll lack in a mix when its completed….

 

...it simply comes down to working with the gear long enough to know its deficiencies and tweaking things to compensate.

 

Yup.

[Anderton]

 

 

I had my room measured several years ago so I`m aware of the dips and valleys but I also mix at very low levels so the room does not play around much with the mix. I also use phones…. and a Bose Soundlink mini…

 

I was talking about how the monitors affect the mix, including the dip at 1 kHz...not the room. I still maintain most people would not be able to measure these kind of speaker characteristics. I still can't. The only difference is that I can get data from tests run at KRK.

 

[Anderton]

The key is how does the frequency response taper with different volume levels and how quickly do the drivers respond to transients. That's where the better monitors do what others cant.

 

I'm discovering what a huge difference really good transient response makes. What it sounds like to me is a whole lot more detail in the midrange, as if each instrument had its own audio stream.

 

[Ernest Buckley]

 

I'm discovering what a huge difference really good transient response makes. What it sounds like to me is a whole lot more detail in the midrange, as if each instrument had its own audio stream.

 

 

Thats what I love about the Equator D5s.

[WRGKMC]

 

I'm discovering what a huge difference really good transient response makes. What it sounds like to me is a whole lot more detail in the midrange, as if each instrument had its own audio stream.

 

Exactly. I sum it up as the monitors being able to produce a good three dimensional sound. Height, Width and Depth. Height and width aren't that hard to get on even crap monitors, kind of like drawing stick figures on a flat plane. drawing a three dimensional picture is an illusion using shadows and size perspectives, except in sound its done with frequency which generates size and time base effects which produce the shadows.

 

High quality monitors provide a HD contrast to those small audio elements just like a HD Video monitor provides a high contrast to the eyes. If those small elements, shadows and illusions sound great with studio monitors, any coloration or loss of detail shouldn't be missed on lower consumer playback gear. The end user may never appreciate how good the mix can actually sound on high end gear, but they should be able to rate it by both the musical performance, musical composition, and using A/B comparison to other tunes played back on the same low end consumer gear.

 

Back when I was a kid, all Rock and pop was played on mono AM radio which is one of the worst mediums around with all its static and limited frequency response. You knew if the music rocked through a single 6X9" speaker it wound only sound better when you bought the album and played it on a good Hi Fi system. Not a whole lot has changed since then besides the technology and gear we use to get there.

[MrKnobs]

The most important thing is being able to compensate for corner or wall placement, that should be part of the powered monitor controls. That's a huge thing!

 

The next most important thing *can* be done in your brain (still the finest audio computing device ever made) but it can be helpful if you have a gentle sloped hi pass (treble) EQ on the powered monitor to compensate for your age and degree of hearing loss. What sounds "bright" and "airy" to you might sound "harsh" and "piercing" to your 20 year old client.

 

Of course we're talking about speakers so we're assuming a room with controlled low frequency modes that has been made reasonably flat with a reverberation time (RT60) somewhere around 0.25s - not too dead, not too live. If your room is really bad the speakers wil be the smaller factor.

 

It's a good idea to play a favorite commerical mix that you know well through the system before mixing and a few times during and after. HarBal is useful for this too, seeing if you have any suspiciously over or underdone frequencies in your mix.

 

And that's if you have TWO working ears. My situation is considerably more complicated. Earbuds are a great help to me as I can dial in the reverse to my right ear hearing curve (dreadful) and get some slight semblance of binaural hearing while using earbuds.

 

Terry D.

 

 

[blue2blue]

I talk a lot with the Gibson Brands product specialists to get the pulse on what goes on in the real world of retail...fascinating stuff. Recently we were talking about the high and low frequency trims on monitor speakers. Aside from using them to compensate for acoustics, which is only marginally effective anyway, I always called them "client knobs" because you could boost the highs and lows on playback so clients could hear what music would sound like on today's hyped systems. However, what the guys in the field are saying is people are using them to adjust the sound to their liking when mixing.

 

I don't get it...if you boost the highs and lows, then those frequencies are going to be under-represented in the mix because the speakers are changing the mix, not you. I suppose one justification would be if you're mixing at low volumes, you can emulate what response your ears would hear if the levels were up higher. But I prefer just to mix at low levels, and crank it up periodically as a reality check.

 

So it at least seems to me that if the speakers are flat (and I've sure learned a lot about which are which aren't lately), those trims need to be left alone. Am I missing something?

Not to MY way of thinking -- but as a class, RE's and RE-wannabes kicked logic and clear thinking out of the CR long ago. Way too many people do things they hear that some 'famous producer' does.

 

As you suggest, there may well be some who notice that their mixes -- when listened to in other environments -- veer to a certain set of tonal faults and they may feel that by simply adjusting the PB curve of monitors they will 'trick' themselves into creating mixes that translate.

 

Does that make sense to me? No. I mean, I get the thinking. I just think it's a trap.

 

That said, what are NS10's but a very peculiar and tonally erratic 'quality filter'? -- Even as they deliver much better time domain performance than the overwhelming majority of modern, efficient, but resonant ported speakers.

 

Or as is often said at some point in almost any RE discussion: No rules, dude.

[JeffLearman]

I prefer flat, adjusting as necessary to sound flat in the room.

 

But the bottom line is really consistency. If you always set your monitors to some non-flat curve, and listen to commercial music in your comparable genres on the same system, and mix to make the mixes sound like what you feel are good commercial mixes, then you should be OK. It becomes a matter of preference.

 

Of course, if you're notching something out dramatically, then you won't hear it and can make mistakes you'd never catch.

 

And finally, I think it's better to just get used to flat than to tailor it to what your ears happen to expect when you get started. No doubt that's why folks like Craig and Mike like flat: they're USED to it, so it sounds good! A lot of us amateur homies come into it with ears poorly prepped by what we're used to listening to, which might be expensive and sound lovely, but might not be at all flat. IMHO, it's better to train yourself to enjoy and appreciate a good flat mix, than to tailor it to match what you're used to. It's pretty impressive how quickly we can retune our brains to a new "color-balance". (Maybe not so quickly for folks who've spent lifetimes working with high quality flat systems, though ... which I do not consider to be a flaw!)

 

But as long as you're not notching out, or bumping some parts up so much that you're losing other parts, it shouldn't matter terribly if you color your monitors a bit to taste.