Whats your ritual for new monitors?

[Soundlurker]

I don't agree that you have to work hard to get things to sound right. Your speakers and acoustic treatment should make things easy. Mind you, I'm not saying that they should sound awesome (or horrible for that matter) regardless of what you are listening to. What I mean is that your speakers and or room must not push you in a direction that is harmful for your mixes. How revealing they are is indeed very important but the frequency balance is just as important. You can compensate for this balance of course but in my opinion you shouldn't need to. Also precise lows/mids/highs are not that beneficial when they are so weak they get drowned in the rest of the spectrum.

I've been doing test mixes for a full-length I'm recording from before I got new monitors. My previous monitors manage to sound a bit dull and harsh at the same time and that was reflected by my mixes. Once I got the A7s the band told me it really showed because the highs in the new mix were "spot on". But the low end was all over the place. There were way too much sub lows and too little mid bass because naturally I mixed things so that they sound good to me and for the low end to sound good you need sub lows. Anyway, a couple of months later I got the Sub 8 for my Adams and sure enough the band called me upon hearing the new mixes to say the low end is also spot on. It took me ages to make a mix with decent and fairly balanced low end before I got the sub. It took me half an hour to make a way better one with the sub (not taking into account half a day of calibration and a couple of days of getting used to the sub listening to and mixing other bands)

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah, I'm definitely not disputing that having a full-range system is important, and eventually I want to pick up a matching sub for my Tannoys and plug the ports, but all I was saying is IME sub-lows just make everything sound so awesome because of the punch they have, but there's also the potential for one to be disappointed once they're taken away (as they will be for most consumer systems), so IMO it's important every now and then to either reference your mixes on speakers with a more castrated range or just apply a big ol' high-pass at around 80 Hz to your master bus to be sure the kick and bass especially are still sounding good. Obviously I don't think anyone needs convincing on the usefulness of reference monitors, but what I'm getting at is when I was in the market for my first pair of monitors, with a limited budget I felt like I'd rather go for the pair that seemed to have evenness and accuracy in a slightly smaller range of frequencies, rather than pairs of monitors that had a greater range but had to make sacrifices to get it! (and to keep the price competitive)

 

[Metaltastic]

Oh yeah, and my purchase was also motivated by the fact that for all of last year I lived in an apartment while at school, and the wall my desk was against was also the wall my neighbors bed was against, so too much bass wouldn't have been too smart (and now that I'm home, my parents turn in at typical parents hours, so excessive bass here would be...unwise as well ) And if you're in a smaller room with not much treatment, more bass from bigger speakers might do more harm than good! But I'm just sharing my thought process as to why I got these, so feel free to take it or leave it

 

[ahjteam]

I've heard others say leave the monitors at max and attenuate other ways as well though. YMMV. I have my BX8as at like 75% volume and use the knob on my 8Pre to control the level going to them.

I tried that with the Genelecs when I got them (I route everything thru a mixer) and I hated to keep the master volume fader on my mixer at like -40dB and the knobs barely open even with PAD engaged and I didn't see a single led lit when it was already blasting louder than I wanted, so I chose to put the volume on the speakers at like 55% and now I can actually open up the knobs and faders in the mixer so I can actually be more in control of the volume.

But to get used to the monitors I usually just play Metallica or Faith No More thru them.