So... Without getting into the nitty gritty, a mate of mine has decided to leave music behind, entirely, and just enjoy life without the stresses of his old band and recording etc. To me.. That's a day I pray never comes for me, however this happened to him, and he offered me a price on his Event Opals that well, you'd be fucking deadset mental to refuse...
My room treatment is mild/ average currently, bass trapping in all corners and some early reflection treatment around the room but that's it, it's not great so these puppies aren't shining quite yet, however, they are fair game comparison as a straight up A/B in what I had vs what I now have.
Despite the shitty room, the qualities I love about these monitors after hearing them in well treated/ fairly well treated rooms still manages to come through in my shitty space. And quite impressively too.
I set up the front panel to compensate for my room's failures and it immediately made a difference to some of my previous struggles in here. So kudos to Event for such a well thought out set of options, I'm damn impressed.
So I started pulling up a few mixes I love, Nickelback - All The Right Reasons, In Flames - Clayman/ Come Clarity, Testament - The Gathering.. and Ermz' Untruth E.P hehe.
Immediately the difference to what I was working with (fairly average monitors at best, if we are being nice) was staggering. The mids are so stupidly detailed, I immediately starting hearing content I didn't really know existed in these mixes before this. Really being able to hear guitar tones across the full mid spectrum is honestly a first for me and it was amazing at what nuances I picked up from just the clarity presented to me. It already got my mix-boner hard and ready for something to work on.
I chucked on some heavily symphonic and orchestral stuff with lots of violins and cellos etc and it was amazingly rich and fullband. The highend clarity is amazing but never ever at all fatiguing/ exaggerated or anything I'd describe as something worth compensating for. It's always exactly what I keep noticing about them, what you hear is what you get. The highs don't seem 'exciting' but personally I like that, they just sound clear and honest. I don't know enough about the technical side of it, but maybe that's a bi-product of the extremely low distortion they have? Someone will correct me.
Listening to my fave 'lowend' mixes like Come Clarity, Clayman, In Absence Of Beacons and The Way Of All flesh was also really astounding. My old monitors really had no lowend/ sub, the lowend they had was exaggerated in the bass/ mid bass (at least in my room) and loose/ boomy sounding at best when I tried to have them in perfect position as possible.
The Opals' extension is currently beyond what I can properly comprehend due to again... not having a well enough treated room, but the effects are still notable. Tight extremely well extended lowend which even now feels like a fantastic representation of just exactly what's going on down there. I can see the point Event made in, 'Not needing a sub if you have Opals'. It's really the case. Nothing overwhelming or anything like that, just a clear sub response. (took me a while to find the sweat spot... or close to it, in my room to have it sound uniform)
So after aurally jizzing for a few hours... I decided to do what I was dreading since unpacking them... Putting on a mix of my own...
I put on a mix/ master I had recently completed. I really did bust my arse on that project and I was fairly pleased with myself and so I threw it on.
Highend.. bam, smoothed out thank god and pointed a few things I never remembered hearing in the mix before, but nothing too bad, just tiny things.
(My current monitors are fairly exaggerated in the highend.. May as well be a set of Denon headphones
)
The mids... Not too bad, I spent a lot of time referencing when mixing this, but I can hear now that a few cuts hear and there in the guitars would have done a nice job. Again, nothing tooooo bad, but noticeable.
The lows... This is where the difference was clear. Now, this was mixed on my old monitors and through my M50's. I got it to where I felt was safe and not overboard with the lowend and the bas/ kick sitting fairly low down, not too bass/ mid bassy. But the Opals did there thing and OH look at that, suddenly I hear BELOW what before felt like sub bass... And I definitely, if I was able, would go back and fiddle with the lowend for half a day. What I heard was almost a shift, where the floor had dropped another story below showing me a chasm of space that was empty, and the part I had filled was a little too full...
heart broken just a little bit I opened one of the mixes I'm currently working on.. BAM, I went to work on it and within an hour I can confidently say the mix became 20% better. The guitar tone which before was a bit grating in the high mids was subdued and where it was a little lax in the core mids was fixed too. Then the kick bass relationship etc.. and by the end (1:30am) I realized I was already comfortable and relating to these monitors perfectly.
There really wasn't a getting used to bit, it was like.. SHIT, now I hear all THAT SPACE that wasn't there before, and it's so crystal clear, how did I miss all this stuff. And just worked until the mix sounded good. So for reference I threw it through my phones and 2.1 consumer reference speakers JUST IN CASE and the result was immediately obvious.
I already mix better on the Opals, irregardless of room treatment not being perfect, the quality is there with these monitors and I think I'm going to switch of completely in the coming weeks...
I look forward to growing a bit more into them and improving my treatment to really take advantage of the quality I'm lucky enough to posses... so for now! Wish me luck!
In conclusion.. These monitors fucking rock, and I really can't see myself ever changing or moving to something else unless it's purely a taste change etc
My room treatment is mild/ average currently, bass trapping in all corners and some early reflection treatment around the room but that's it, it's not great so these puppies aren't shining quite yet, however, they are fair game comparison as a straight up A/B in what I had vs what I now have.
Despite the shitty room, the qualities I love about these monitors after hearing them in well treated/ fairly well treated rooms still manages to come through in my shitty space. And quite impressively too.
I set up the front panel to compensate for my room's failures and it immediately made a difference to some of my previous struggles in here. So kudos to Event for such a well thought out set of options, I'm damn impressed.
So I started pulling up a few mixes I love, Nickelback - All The Right Reasons, In Flames - Clayman/ Come Clarity, Testament - The Gathering.. and Ermz' Untruth E.P hehe.
Immediately the difference to what I was working with (fairly average monitors at best, if we are being nice) was staggering. The mids are so stupidly detailed, I immediately starting hearing content I didn't really know existed in these mixes before this. Really being able to hear guitar tones across the full mid spectrum is honestly a first for me and it was amazing at what nuances I picked up from just the clarity presented to me. It already got my mix-boner hard and ready for something to work on.
I chucked on some heavily symphonic and orchestral stuff with lots of violins and cellos etc and it was amazingly rich and fullband. The highend clarity is amazing but never ever at all fatiguing/ exaggerated or anything I'd describe as something worth compensating for. It's always exactly what I keep noticing about them, what you hear is what you get. The highs don't seem 'exciting' but personally I like that, they just sound clear and honest. I don't know enough about the technical side of it, but maybe that's a bi-product of the extremely low distortion they have? Someone will correct me.
Listening to my fave 'lowend' mixes like Come Clarity, Clayman, In Absence Of Beacons and The Way Of All flesh was also really astounding. My old monitors really had no lowend/ sub, the lowend they had was exaggerated in the bass/ mid bass (at least in my room) and loose/ boomy sounding at best when I tried to have them in perfect position as possible.
The Opals' extension is currently beyond what I can properly comprehend due to again... not having a well enough treated room, but the effects are still notable. Tight extremely well extended lowend which even now feels like a fantastic representation of just exactly what's going on down there. I can see the point Event made in, 'Not needing a sub if you have Opals'. It's really the case. Nothing overwhelming or anything like that, just a clear sub response. (took me a while to find the sweat spot... or close to it, in my room to have it sound uniform)
So after aurally jizzing for a few hours... I decided to do what I was dreading since unpacking them... Putting on a mix of my own...
I put on a mix/ master I had recently completed. I really did bust my arse on that project and I was fairly pleased with myself and so I threw it on.
Highend.. bam, smoothed out thank god and pointed a few things I never remembered hearing in the mix before, but nothing too bad, just tiny things.
(My current monitors are fairly exaggerated in the highend.. May as well be a set of Denon headphones
)The mids... Not too bad, I spent a lot of time referencing when mixing this, but I can hear now that a few cuts hear and there in the guitars would have done a nice job. Again, nothing tooooo bad, but noticeable.
The lows... This is where the difference was clear. Now, this was mixed on my old monitors and through my M50's. I got it to where I felt was safe and not overboard with the lowend and the bas/ kick sitting fairly low down, not too bass/ mid bassy. But the Opals did there thing and OH look at that, suddenly I hear BELOW what before felt like sub bass... And I definitely, if I was able, would go back and fiddle with the lowend for half a day. What I heard was almost a shift, where the floor had dropped another story below showing me a chasm of space that was empty, and the part I had filled was a little too full...
heart broken just a little bit I opened one of the mixes I'm currently working on.. BAM, I went to work on it and within an hour I can confidently say the mix became 20% better. The guitar tone which before was a bit grating in the high mids was subdued and where it was a little lax in the core mids was fixed too. Then the kick bass relationship etc.. and by the end (1:30am) I realized I was already comfortable and relating to these monitors perfectly.
There really wasn't a getting used to bit, it was like.. SHIT, now I hear all THAT SPACE that wasn't there before, and it's so crystal clear, how did I miss all this stuff. And just worked until the mix sounded good. So for reference I threw it through my phones and 2.1 consumer reference speakers JUST IN CASE and the result was immediately obvious.
I already mix better on the Opals, irregardless of room treatment not being perfect, the quality is there with these monitors and I think I'm going to switch of completely in the coming weeks...
I look forward to growing a bit more into them and improving my treatment to really take advantage of the quality I'm lucky enough to posses... so for now! Wish me luck!
In conclusion.. These monitors fucking rock, and I really can't see myself ever changing or moving to something else unless it's purely a taste change etc
