A monitors questions for James

Reverend Trudgill

Reverend Trudgill
Feb 3, 2005
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www.screamindaemon.com
Aha I can finally post!! Victory is mine!!!!

James, you mentioned on the sneap forum that you use a couple of KRK monitors on your mobile rig. I'm building a home studio in a converted attic and we were thinking of ns10s but I'd like to know about these KRKs of yours.
What model? active/passive? Do they have enough low end or do you use a sub too? are they flat and honest? How do they compare to ns-10s?
I'm trying to find a compromise between budget prices and brutally honest speakers (particularly round the mid freqs), and I'm fed up with trawling threads where everyone just recommends the ones THEY own and bashes everyone elses opinion.
I know studio monitors are very much a subjective matter of taste but I thought you'd be worth asking.

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Well sorry if I'm not James, and can't give you a comparison of the NS-10's to KRKs, but I CAN give you a comparison of the NS-10s to my Mann PMA6's.

We have NS-10's in two different studios at the place where I study. In both rooms (which are distinctly different to each other) I find the NS-10s to be way too mid-range oriented for my liking. I tend to not mix well with them. The PMA6s I use here at home are a lot more 'open' on the spectrum, but seem to be slightly over-present in the highs.

I'm sure the NS-10s can be great monitors... they were (and I guess still are?) an industry standard for a while, and as far as I'm aware Andy Sneap mixes on them and gets fantastic sounds on the mixes. I think it comes down to how well you know your monitors and what they exaggerate/attenuate and how that will complement your mixing style and consequently translate to other systems. If you can deal with a very present mid-range I'd say the NS-10s are a good buy.
 
cheers moonie,
yeah, i love a present but well sculpted mid range, fruity and tight round the low to low-mid range, and jagged and shreddy round the higher mids. I want to be mixing that bright 'scandiwegian' sound, like Immortal's 'sons of northern darkness'. The owner of my old rehearsal studios said mixing on ns-10's can cut your ears to shreds, and your mix may seem horrible, but if you can get a good mix on them you can bet it will sound sweet on home systems. however, he recorded a couple of my old band's rehearsals at his studio, through an 8 track mixer and burned live onto cd. these sounded ok through his amp and the ns-10s, but were flappy, muddy and dull when we got the cd home to listen to (maybe our backline sound was just shit haha, you can't polish a turd).

I was told that as a rule of thumb, whatever freqs your speakers exaggerate, your mix will lack, so really i want the flattest, most uncoloured speakers i can get for a couple of hundred quid or so. The speakers i like best are actually my hi fi speakers! old english 'kefs' from the 70's!
 
There is a reason that NS-10's are the standard for bigtime recording - they don't lie. If you mix on other monitors, then play your mix on NS-10's in an acoustically correct (or almost) environment, you'll hear all kinds of shit that'll make your face turn red. They are fantastic for guitars and vocals, too. Once you learn how to listen to NS-10's, there's really no turning back. It takes awhile. They will cause ear fatigue a lot quicker than most monitors, but with experience you'll be able to handle it. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone who isn't planning on making a living spending 12-14 hours a day behind a console, because they sound shitty to untrained ears. BTW - I use KRK's at the house, but I'm not that happy with them. They're OK, but I think that I keep trying to mix for 824's on them. I'm gonna sell mine soon and get some NS-10's. I'll probably get Event SP-8's for midfields, as well. I was never a fan of Event monitors (some engineers swear by them), but the new ones sound incredible from what I've heard. Aside from using the NS-10's, it is all about personal taste.