its that damn monitors question (again..)

mr_faster

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i am thinking bout investing in a pair of mid-range monitor speakers,
I have narrowed it down to

Genelec 8030A
8030a.jpg


Mackie HR624
top_hr624.jpg


or

Tannoy Reveal 6D

Reveal6A_350px.jpg


I am very tempted to go with the Tannoy's as these are in my price range, and have a good frequency range, the Genelecs and Makie are a bit too much :iyes:

what do you guys think??
 
How about getting some 2nd hand? that'll let you get loads better quality for the same cash :Smile3: Check out the Sound On Sound website - there are always loads of 2nd hand monitors for sale. I picked up some Tannoy600A's in mint condition for £300 :Smile3:
 
Oooh. I want those Genelecs. :Grin:

Can't really tell you what the others sound like as I haven't heard them. Best way is to listen to them! Take a track you know really well and see if you can pick out all the part and compare between them.
 
You should definetly go 4 the Mackies even if u can't afford it! U just can't go wrong with those babies, u should also check dynaudio's speakers they are on par with the Mackies but not as expensive as the Genelecs.

Monitors are so important u shouldn't worry about spending a little (or a lot!) extra.

:Grin:
 
Sorry Mr Faster if I hijack your thread slightly:peace:

Ott uses Yamaha NS10, 'course he doesn't make trance as he does some sort of dub influenced electronica, apparently :irazz: but I'd like to ask him if it is worth to have a look at them for trance too.

I understand it all depends by how you know your own monitors and that, and also it's down by what music you make and personal taste. But Ott please tell us what you think of them. I know they are the monitors you are, probably, more used to work with.

I make ambient stuff but with low end kicks, would you reccomend them.

Thanx and sorry again Mr Faster
 
Andrea said:
Ott uses Yamaha NS10, 'course he doesn't make trance as he does some sort of dub influenced electronica, apparently :irazz: but I'd like to ask him if it is worth to have a look at them for trance too.

I understand it all depends by how you know your own monitors and that, and also it's down by what music you make and personal taste. But Ott please tell us what you think of them. I know they are the monitors you are, probably, more used to work with.

I make ambient stuff but with low end kicks, would you reccomend them.

OK, fairly obviously I'm not Ott, but I also have a bit of a thing for Yammie monitors - mainly because I spent a lot of time working with NS10s during my dodgy indie band days, and we used a pair of them in school. :Smile3:

I actually use MSP5s - because actual honest-to-goodness NS10s are pretty hard to come by these days, (though IIRC StudioSpares make some rather spiffy clones), and the MSP10s are just a wee bit on the dear side.

The downside of the Yammies is a lesser bass response than the Mackies, and what some would consider an idiosycratic frequency response. However it's not exactly a biggie to factor that in when you're listening - and I like the frequency response (slightly over-stated in the area in the centre of the Fletcher-Munson curve) because it becomes easy to tell if you're making something that will be fatiguing to listen to long-term.

At the end of the day it's best to have a listen and see what you can put up with listening to for hours on end... :Smile3: Remember that monitors are less about sounding good than giving an honest picture of what you're doing - which is why it's useful to take a CD of stuff you think/know is mixed well to listen to when you try different speakers out. :Smile3:

J.
 
^yes yes & yes!

the hardest thing imo is trying to figure out what monitors will be best for you to live & work with. this is obviously something of a leap of faith, so i try to read as much opinion on forums like this one, soundonsound's, and http://www.studio-central.com/ etc. etc. as possible :Smile3:

good luck & enjoy the search!

(as an aside, take a couple of different albums along - i took Rage Against the Machine's debut, a really really good Berlin Philharmonic recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, and Shakta's doubleCD with me & each revealed different differences between the monitors, if ya know what i mean)
 
What are they going to be used for, and what kind of room are they going into?

On the subject of 2nd hand speakers, I managed to pick up a passive pair of Tannoy system 800s and a hafler amp from ebay for a total of around £400. Can't fault them either, and I personally much prefer them to the reveals, which are basically Tannoy's hi-fi speakers in a pretty cab (although that's not necessarily a bad thing)
 
Purusha said:
The Mackies are superb. Buy 'em!

:Wink3:

I went for 624s too. Love 'em to bits, though still finding my way round 'em after a year of use.
A friend of mine has the alessis mk1 actives, has had 'em for a few years, and gets fantastic results with 'em.
 
Andrea said:
Ott please tell us what you think of them.

I swear by my NS-10's but I spent 10 yrs as a freelance engineer and as a consequence ended up sitting in front of a set of them almost every day during that time.

You're bound to develop an affinity for a type of speaker if you use them that regularly, and as they are what every commercial studio uses as their main nearfields, thats what I ended up getting used to. I wouldn't necessarily recommend them to everyone because they do require a bit of "learning" - but it pays off in the end. Once you know them you can mix with a confidence that not many speakers give you.

They are a pretty remarkable design - never equalled in my opinion.

They lack the low-down "woof" of a ported or passive radiator design, but what bass they do reproduce is clear and defined. Ported designs may give the impression of a bigger bottom end, but in effect what you get is a vague, smeared low frequency response which is far more reactive to room acoustics and which generally causes more problems than it solves.

Imho, of course.

Obviously with passive monitors, amplification is 50% of the story and while the Hafler 1800 thing I use is adequate [considering the ropey acoustics of my studio] I would dearly love to shell out £1400 on a Bryston amp. One day maybe.

If I were in the market for a new set of nearfields [which I am actually - I fancy a set of active speakers to complete my laptop-based mobile studio setup] I would probably go for a set of Yamaha MSP-5's as they are nice and portable, and sonically they are a short hop from my beloved NS-10's.

I've tried Genelec [yuk!] Dynaudio, KRK, Tannoy, Alesis, etc etc over the years, and found them all to be a bit useless in a studio situation. Its horses for courses obviously, but none of them made me feel that I could mix with confidence and know that what I was sending out of the studio was any good.

The only other set of speakers I have heard in the last few years that I would confidently recommend are the Mackie HR824. They sound pretty remarkable considering who makes them - never been a huge Mackie fan - but then I would fucking hope so at £1000 a set. They sound conspicuously clear and flat and uncluttered, and the passive radiator design provides a bottom end that remains defined and useful even at quite high volume.

I did try out the 624's but I wasn't nearly so impressed with them. They sounded like all the others and I mentally lumped them in with all the other mid-range speakers mentioned above.

Like somebody else said, your speakers are probably the most vital piece of equipment in your studio so it makes sense to get the very best you can - even if it means not buying that big shiny mega-synth you had your eye on. £1000 isn't much to spend on speakers and amp that will last you a lifetime and sound way way better than anything else.

Makes sense if you think about it.

The only reason I'm not considering them is because i already have a set of studio monitors that I trust implicitly, and for my mobile setup, the Mackie 824's would be far to big and heavy.

Beg, steal or borrow - do whatever you have to do to get the Mackie 824's and I promise you'll never regret it.

Scrimp on £500 now and forever regret settling for mediocre sound.
 
I got the music shop to let me try various monitor solutions, all coming in at around the £1000 mark (this was a few years ago). I was on very good terms with the shop.

After trying several alternatives, I thought the HR624s easily blew away the others. Much better bass response (clearer and more range) than the rest, but also I thought they had the *flatest* overall frequency response too. The other main contenders were a pair of Genelecs, which I almost got, but put them side-by-side with the Mackies and there was no competition.

Not sure if that would still be the case since I'm not up on newer models.

What I wanted was - something that would let me hear everything that was going on in a track, rather than having something to produce the final mix with. I thought the Mackies did / do that job very well. *Transparent* I thought.

I personally think it's worth having the option to listen to your material through various set-ups. I'll usually burn tracks to CD and listen to them in the car. I'll also put them through my BlueRoom MiniPods (Rotel amp) which gives a good indicator. Also headphones are useful for a different angle on things. As many different environments as reasonably possible are good I guess.

BTW - Looking forward to the collaboration I have lined up with a certain *very* well known producer (and a personal favourite of mine). We're just looking for a mutually agreeable long weekend and we're away!
 
Mackie HR 824
£650

there are the ones :Smile3:

gonna take a chunk out my first wage packet and go for the better ones (thought too much, but £650 is a v.good price!!)

lets hope i can still get 'em :Smile3:

thanks for the help guys, you strengthened what i already thought and told me to gt the speakers i have been drooling at *thumbs up*
 
Purusha said:
BTW - Looking forward to the collaboration I have lined up with a certain *very* well known producer (and a personal favourite of mine). We're just looking for a mutually agreeable long weekend and we're away!

ooh er you tease!!! :Wink3:

sounds... as promising as it can sound without knowing more?!? congrats! :Grin:
 
Ott^ said:
Scrimp on £500 now and forever regret settling for mediocre sound.

A couple of years ago I got Alesis M1's for a steal from a dodgy mate who worked in a music shop. At the time I congratulated myself on getting such a bargain.

Stupid stupid move because they are shite. I've finally got used to them and I can get reasonable mixes out of them, but I wish I'd bitten the bullet and spent double on something good instead.
 
AEON said:
ooh er you tease!!! :Wink3:

sounds... as promising as it can sound without knowing more?!? congrats! :Grin:

Well - I was talking to him (or maybe its a her), saying I wanted to improve my production skills and could I sit in on a session and watch him (or her) work.

But he (or she) suggested a better bet would be for us to write a track or two together.

Can't really say who it is I'm afraid since it's only going to happen if we can find the right weekend.

I'm rather chuffed though since it's someone I have a huge amount of respect for. Fortunately, he (or she) likes my DJing, so I'm not starting out with absolutely no cred at all.

:Wink3:
 
I think the Mackies are the best option given your depth of pocket factor.


Just a thought on NS10s.

Like many people who came up the conventional recording route, I subscribe to the view that "if it sounds OK on NS10s, the mix will work anywhere". This argument largely applied to the home listening scenario, and also concerned material based around conventional instruments working in a frequency range of, lets say, 80Hz to 16KHz. But many genres of dance music rely on more extreme sounds - subs which sound like whale song, snares which sound like hitting a crisp packet. Psy in particular involves aspects of sound design very early on when building a track - many parts in a tune involve playing the sound rather than a melody. For this reason I think a decent pair of actives will serve up the vibey sounds better than NS10s or any other cheaper passive nearfield monitor.

Of course, you can use anything you like so long as you have the skills and few good ideas, but if you are in a position to get a quality pair of actives, then they will serve you very well.
 
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