recommend me new monitors in the 3K area - EVENT OPALS?

[dcb]

guys, i need your help. the event opals are coming out next week here in germany (finally...)

i have about 3000 € budget, im working with crappy yamaha hs 80,
and i feel, i seriously need an upgrade now.

i cant judge the highs, i cant judge the lows,
these speakers are just not doing it, esp. when listening to them at lower volume.

so : Should i go for the opals ?

Anyone using these monsters ?

(i only know of ERMZ, and he says the opals PISS on ... well basically everything )

 

[egan.]

I'm going to jump in right now and request that folks only reco monitors you have actually personally used.

 

[Fragle]

don't have any first hand experience with any monitor in that price range, but wow, interesting to see that you call the yammies "crappy". well i suppose stuff in the 3k range will shit all over them, but they're far from crappy i'd say.....i wonder how much room treatment you have in there?

 

[greyskull]

Adams p 22s is about that much i think
INCREDIBLE monitors
Avoid anything with mackie written on it and dont be suckered in by thinking more expensive is necessarily better.
One of my mates is selling a pair of questeds because the a7s and ns10s are so much more useable and translate better.

Id spend half on monitors and half on treating your room if you aint already done it

 

[Harry Hughes]

I don't think Ermz said so much they piss on everything, but they were worthy of being compared to more expensive monitors.

 

[AEL89]

Avoid anything with mackie written on it

HR824 IIs are fantastic monitors...

 

[greyskull]

no they aren't

 

[AEL89]

I have a pair and really like them - detailed, flat and I never find them fatiguing. Hadn't noticed you work at Invincible studios before...I guess you're Guy. I'm Alex by the way...we met at the farm whilst Sam was tracking articles. I'll be down there on Saturday with my HR824 IIs if you want to hear how good (or not in your opinion ) they are, helping out with some Outcry stuff.

 

[colonel kurtz]

guys, i need your help. the event opals are coming out next week here in germany (finally...)

i have about 3000 € budget, im working with crappy yamaha hs 80,
and i feel, i seriously need an upgrade now.

i cant judge the highs, i cant judge the lows,
these speakers are just not doing it, esp. when listening to them at lower volume.

so : Should i go for the opals ?

Anyone using these monsters ?

(i only know of ERMZ, and he says the opals PISS on ... well basically everything )

is your room properly treated?

i haven't heard really anybody ever have anything bad to say about the HSM80's, and if you're having trouble mixing with them, i'm going to guess it's because your room is lying to your ears

 

[Ermz]

First of all, MAKE SURE you have adequate acoustic treatment. Unless that is taken care of, invest a considerable amount of your budget into it because it is MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR MONITORS. I'm gonna say this again just so nobody misses it: ACOUSTIC TREATMENT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MONITORS. Whereas on a frequency response curve of a pair of monitors you may get dips and rises in the range of a few dB, in an untreated room you can quite possibly get dips in the range of 30dB+. It is very possible to have a range of frequencies almost entirely nulled out, which defeats all point of attempting to monitor.

Provided your treatment is all sorted and your budget is solely for monitors then there are only two candidates worth considering in that price range IMO.

1) Event Opals.
2) Klein & Hummel O300s.

The latter are designed in your country so you'd probably get a great warranty with them.

I have not compared the two side by side, but I have listened to both extensively. They are both amazing monitors, and neither should conceivably limit you. Their tonal response is a little bit different from one another, so make sure to audition both before buying to see which you prefer. Make SURE that you take the room into account because it can cause massive variances in frequency response of the monitors you are auditioning.

From my vague memory, the impressions I have are that:

-The Opals: Have way more headroom and transient reproduction capabilities. Have a slight bump around 200hz, a scoop in the mids and edgier higher mids and highs compared to the O300s. They also have more solid imaging and a wider sweet spot than the O300s due to being upright instead of side-mounted (though they have the option to be rotated).

-The O300s: Are gentler, have more rounded and solid bass (infinite baffle instead of variable impedance porting) but suffer from lacking a lot of headroom. They are fairly easy to redline if you use them as tracking monitors or need to monitor LOUD with a lot of bass.

Once again, try both and make sure you take the environment you audition them in into consideration.

In my humble opinion you should avoid Mackie, Focal & Adam. These two near-fields are on a whole different level.

 

[crillemannen]

I really like my Yamaha Hs80. I've heard many different High end monitors but i still like them so...

 

[greyskull]

ahh alex from vk? hohoho! I feel bad for being so self righteous now! Yes you busted me. I am indeed he

yeah i was sposed to do it but got busy busy busy. sadly wont be able to make it down! I worked somewhere else (you know what i'm talking about... the place that shall not be named) with sam on the old 824s and hated them. with every inch of my ears. not so keen on the new ones either!!
but hey monitors are like girlfriends.
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. or ear. and the mackies have a HUGE dip in the crossover point. .... to me that is.

have fun on saturday! send me the results.
or we could have a mix off or something!
take it easy

 

[colonel kurtz]

In my humble opinion you should avoid Mackie, Focal & Adam. These two near-fields are on a whole different level.

so are their pricepoints...excluding some of the top-end adam's

 

[AEL89]

ahh alex from vk? hohoho! I feel bad for being so self righteous now! Yes you busted me. I am indeed he

yeah i was sposed to do it but got busy busy busy. sadly wont be able to make it down! I worked somewhere else (you know what i'm talking about... the place that shall not be named) with sam on the old 824s and hated them. with every inch of my ears. not so keen on the new ones either!!
but hey monitors are like girlfriends.
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. or ear. and the mackies have a HUGE dip in the crossover point. .... to me that is.

have fun on saturday! send me the results.
or we could have a mix off or something!
take it easy

Haha 'the place that shall not be named' - nice. Yeh it should be really good, I'll let you know how it goes, I'm sure Sam will show you the results anyway and I doubt he'd care in the slightest if I hit you up with the session. I was considering selling my mackies a while back but then I got my room sorted by GIK acoustics and I changed my mind.

 

[dcb]

thank you guys!

and no offense, dudes ! ;-) not gonna say they are the worst monitors evaaa!

my room is not treated, thats true.
i did measurements with sine waves here though,
and i know where the problems are.

but anyways i'm mostly complaining about the hs 80,
because they sound a little "cloudy" at lower volume...
leading to way too much highend information in my mixes.
ive had these for almost 3 years, and i really need
something, that is not as ear fatigueing as the yamahas.

i really want something more highend,
that gives me a truer represenation of what i'm doing.

the k&h are interesting, and yeah, they're being made over here.
maybe will try those as well, if they are in stock at my local dealer.

ERMZ : are you still working with the opals ? any mixes available you did with them ?

 

[Fragle]

man.....i strongly suggest you start treating your room BEFORE shelling out that kinda money for monitors!

the hs80m are far from cloudy sounding...also check the settings on the back panel, maybe you have one of the switches engaged.

even 10k worth of monitors won't give you a true representation if your room is not treated.

 

[Ermz]

^ That's very true. Once again, the acoustic treatment is much more important than upgrading to new monitors. The HS80s are quite fine.

In regards to mixes, the last released product to come of the Opals is this: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/285689/Music/Untruth - Drones.mp3

Other than that I only have mixes in progress or rough mixes. Like this mellow thing with bass that's too tubby (didn't get around to tweaking it, but you get the idea): http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/285689/ermz-jamontoastmix-nomaster.mp3

FWIW I believe my mixing improved the instant I moved over to these monitors from the ASP8s.

 

[updog]

The guys at Future Music currently rate the Event Opals the best monitors, if that helps at all.

But first I'd advise you to go out and listen to the HS80m's at a store that has a properly treated listening room, to hear if the HS80M's sound as bad as wherever you work with them. You probably don't want to spend 3K to see the Yamahas and Events sound the same in your room.

 

[Soundlurker]

my room is not treated, thats true.
i did measurements with sine waves here though,
and i know where the problems are.

A frequency response graph or similar does not provide enough information as to how much you are suffering because of bad acoustics, believe me. I won't be surprised if you're fatigue is due to room interference, I can't stand listening to speakers in a poor acoustic environment. Everything is so smeared unbalanced and boomy in a bad room. You won't believe it's the same monitors if you treat your room properly. I know it's not as exciting as having expensive monitors but there's a reason everyone's recommending it.

 

[dcb]

ERMZ : amazing. this mix is one of the best mixes i have heard here.

i'm gonna get the opals on friday, will test them and see if its worth the money, or if ill have to treat the room.

again, i dont think that my room is that bad, but i will keep that in mind and tell you, if there is a huge difference between both monitors
in the same place here.

cant wait!

yamaha hs 80 - maybe cloudy is not the right word, its actually ok sounding on the high end,
but it somehow makes my mixes a little to 3 khz... a little to harsh.

but :if the opals do not do, what they are supposed to do
then i will return them and treat my room - i know the guys from the store,
so that want be a problem.

i promise

ill keep you updated, thanks for helping!