Monitor Choice Help! So many to choose from O_O

[JamesNewmarch]

So yeah, Djoe is gonna shoot me for even asking this question. but im really unsure as to which monitors to go for. Everything ive heard says the D5's are the best but im not sure about them being 5inch and so small and im mixing mostly in a reasonably sized room thats untreated. So yeah, here are the choices, all roughly the same price. Gonna be using a Presonus Audiobox 1818vsl

Equator D5's - £350


KRK Rokit 6 - £300


RCY Ayra 6 - £300

[MRLEON83]

I have KRK rokit 5's and I really like them, but it's such a personal thing, you have to go and listen to them with your own reference material....

General consensus is that with an untreated room the monitors matter less.... and may be worth buying cheaper monitors and get some nice cans to cross reference....

[tehLORD]

The Equators are supposedly very good although I've not heard them. Rokits really aren't (and I had some).

Whatever you choose, it's important to get at least some room treatment in place as it makes a world of difference. You can do it yourself very cheaply with Rockwool RW3, just look for tutorials on Youtube.

JBL LSR2325Ps are very good too.

[ecc83]

There is fairly broard agreement among "top people" in the recording industry that you cannot get a truly accurate pair of nearfield monitors under £1000 and some would say £1000 each.

This is not the end of the world however, it just means you need to chose the ones in your price range that seem best suited to your main music interest...Problem is of course that there is no practical way for most of us to audition even 2 or 3 brands/marks, leave alone the scores that exist in the £300-£500 a pair range.

My answer was to read every review of everything that was within my (very low!) budget and especially useful was a monitor "shootout". Useful because at least all the speakers were listened to by the same group of people (blind) with the same music in the same room. The testers also had access to top grade music.

The top speaker by a country mile in my price range was the Tannoy 5a. Tannoy have been making monitors for longer than the CEOs of many monitor companies have been alive! They also do not make every other cheap electronic jimcrack on the planet.

So buy the best you can afford and, as others have said, learn to use them against known good material. Use the change to buy a sound level meter and calibrate whatever you get. Recieved wisdom is that we monitor at an average level of 83dBC but that is too loud for most of us due to social constraints (the average 32" telly starts to crack up at about 80dB) But so long as you HAVE a calibration point to return to when circumstances permit you can run at 70dB or so.

Dave.

[JamesNewmarch]

There is fairly broard agreement among "top people" in the recording industry that you cannot get a truly accurate pair of nearfield monitors under £1000 and some would say £1000 each.

This is not the end of the world however, it just means you need to chose the ones in your price range that seem best suited to your main music interest...Problem is of course that there is no practical way for most of us to audition even 2 or 3 brands/marks, leave alone the scores that exist in the £300-£500 a pair range.

My answer was to read every review of everything that was within my (very low!) budget and especially useful was a monitor "shootout". Useful because at least all the speakers were listened to by the same group of people (blind) with the same music in the same room. The testers also had access to top grade music.

The top speaker by a country mile in my price range was the Tannoy 5a. Tannoy have been making monitors for longer than the CEOs of many monitor companies have been alive! They also do not make every other cheap electronic jimcrack on the planet.

So buy the best you can afford and, as others have said, learn to use them against known good material. Use the change to buy a sound level meter and calibrate whatever you get. Recieved wisdom is that we monitor at an average level of 83dBC but that is too loud for most of us due to social constraints (the average 32" telly starts to crack up at about 80dB) But so long as you HAVE a calibration point to return to when circumstances permit you can run at 70dB or so.

Dave.

Ahh thanks for the reply man! I think ima go for the D5s as I can't find a single bad point about them online where as the KRKs seem to have a slightly bad reputation.

Any chance you could explain some more about using a level meter. I didn't really get that bit

[ecc83]

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Studio RatesClientsGearBioContactThe virtue of calibrating your audio system
September 30, 2009 By diamondjim Leave a Comment
It’s amazing what you can learn about the short-comings of your studio setup when you take the extra step of calibrating your monitors and console. After a long several months of integrating an analog console (Soundtracs PC-MIDI 16) into my DAW setup, including installation of patch bays, cabling, and new audio interface (Lynx Aurora 16), and some nice used Genelec 8040a monitors, I finally got around to running some fairly simple and standard calibration tests.

So what is calibration for anyway?
When you are mixing an audio project you make decisions based on the frequencies and loudness of various tracks. Due to psychoacoustic factors (how the brain perceives audio) we are often led to make decisions based on loudness (louder often sounds better) that don’t always contribute to the overall quality of a mix. Many audio engineers agree that listening to mix at high loudness levels is not only bad for your ears, but may not result in a balanced, pleasing mix.

Bob Katz, the renowned mastering engineer (www.digido.com) has advocated the K-System of metering, and this involves among other things having a well-calibrated audio system where the maximum loudness of your monitoring system is set to a known value. Here is what I did last night to get my loudness levels set correctly.

1.Downloaded the -20 DB pink noise wave file from his site (www.digido.com).
2.Turned the volume control on my Central Station monitor controller all the way to the right (to zero db), and turned down the trim controls for my main monitors so I would not damage my speakers and ears.
3.Turned off the right speaker, so I would be calibrating one at a time.
4.Loaded the pink noise file into Wavelab (any DAW would do), and set it to loop continuously.
5.Pulled out my trusty Radio Shack digital SPL meter, set it to C-weighting and slow response (per Mr. Katz’s recommendations), and sitting in the listening position, pointed the SPL meter at the left speaker.
6.Adjusted the trim on the monitor left channel louder and louder until SPL read +83 dB. This becomes the calibrated listening level for maximum loudness, when my monitor controller is set to zero dB.
7.Turned off the left monitor, turned on the right one, and repeated steps 5 and 6.

The above is the general procedure. Come back if there is anything you don't understand.

The sound level meter does not need to be at all expensive (the important thing is that you HAVE a reference, the ABSOLUTE SPL a few dB either way matters not.) Check out www.cpc.cu.uk part# IN 05466 at about 15quid. The very same meter is available on the web and indeed at Maplins but do make sure it has the "C" weighting.

Small point. The meter is threaded for a standard camera mount and a tripod makes life so much easier!

Dave.

[Wonks]

If you've an iPhone there's a cheap SPL meter app by Studio Six Digital that would probably do the job. Only time I've actually used it in earnest was to check the sound level at a gig I went to. But, Dave, I might give that a go with my monitors tonight.