Studio Monitors - Yes or No?

[drew_drummer]

A sub is a waste of money if you're room is not treated. You could be sitting in the middle of a giant fuck-off standing wave!!

 

[crillemannen]

This thread was gold

 

[jipchen]

Not yet. But I will...probably next month when I renovate my room.
Anybody can suggest a shop in europe where I can buy nice looking bass-traps and absorbers?

Yeah actually I can: Every DIY store (Baumarkt, Obi, Hornbach,...). You can get five 80mm thick glaswool boards for 15€. That's five broadband absorbers, better than ANYTHING you will find in the stores for about 1000€/absorber. They're ineffective and ridiculously expensive.

You'll just need a bit of wood framing and some fabric (der Stoff bei Ikea kostet wenige Euro, zum Beispiel) to cover the absorber and you're done.
Takes about 20 minutes and is very effective...
Even better would be if you buy a lot of these glaswool plates, cut them in half and then cut the two parts diagonally in half again, so they are triangles. Then stack them in the corners until you reach the ceiling, build a frame out of wood (24x48 mm's), cover it with fabric and you're done.

 

[John_C]

A sub is a waste of money if you're room is not treated. You could be sitting in the middle of a giant fuck-off standing wave!!

The more i learn about acoustics and the more treatment I do, the more i come to the conclusion that unless you're very dedicated and spend lots of time treating a room, you'll still have a ton of standing wave problems after treatment. The amount of rockwool needed to treat effectively below 100hz is simply enormous

 

[drope934]

do like me, and mix outside in the middle of a field.

 

[jipchen]

do like me, and mix outside in the middle of a field.

Make sure the field is covered with snow, though. The first reflections will fuck up your nice "room" otherwise

 

[drew_drummer]

The more i learn about acoustics and the more treatment I do, the more i come to the conclusion that unless you're very dedicated and spend lots of time treating a room, you'll still have a ton of standing wave problems after treatment. The amount of rockwool needed to treat effectively below 100hz is simply enormous

From what I've read, Superchunk corner bass traps will absorb down to 20hz, if constructed correctly, and in addition to broadband panels.

 

[silvermaples]

Just throwing out my story:

I was mixing through some logitechs for the first couple of months while I saved up my money. A friend of mine said to go ahead and save a little more and go for the dynaudio BM5A's (Mine are the MKI). The day I got them my life changed lol. It was like driving at night with sunglasses on, sure you can do it but its so much clearer when the shades are off

So if you can swing it definitely get some nicer monitors, I was tempted to go for the 300$ for a pair range but ultimately I don't think I would have been happy.

But whatever you decide I'm sure will be much better than what you are using now.

Cheers
-Cory

 

[Jan [MTW]]

@jipchen : Thank's for the info! Didn't think that it would that cheap. Would it be possible to upload a picture of those DIY absorbers?

 

[elmoe]

I just bought a pair of Adam A5Xs. Before that i was "mixing" on Hifi speakers as well. Best purchase i did in a long time. Not only my records improved, but listening to music with these is awesome too. I checked out other monitors in the same pricerange (yamaha, krks) in my shop, and i prefered them adams by far.

 

[zirkonflex]

As long as you have a certain sound "quality", the gear (monitors/Headphones, room and everything) are not that important IF you are able reference your stuff to something.
You'll never reach the stars, but its workable.
If you've listened on some ... pretty crap headphones for a year or so, you are in theory able to pull off a cool mix with them because you know what your stuff is supposed to sound like thru the crap gear compared to well mixed albums you listened to on the crap gear.
If you wanna do anything serious and original you'll need a good soundsource and (if speakers) a treated room.

In the beginning I'd totally gravitate towards decent headphones, that way you can take the room and everything out of the equation and just mix pretty "true".
A/B ing that with speakers then should get you something where there should only be a small "AHA" effect once you get some dope monitors and basstraps.