Tell Me About Studio Monitors
My pops really wants me to be a musician. And I sort of am, although I'll never be more than a meddler.
First he bought me a really nice Telecaster which is more guitar than I'll ever need. Now he's bought me a pair of Yamaha HS 50M near-field monitors. So I can mix all my crappy loops in Garageband, you see.
I've got them hooked up to the Macbook Pro at the moment, listening to some high bit-rate MP3s. They sound sort of incredible. I'd forgotten how nice a decent pair of stereo speakers can sound, having used surround sound kit for quite a while.
But I don't know much about audio, really, especially something like studio monitors. Is there anything I should be doing to maximize the audio output of these things? I understand that they're not exactly designed for listening to music, but let's be honest—that's mostly what I'll be using them for. They have some switches on the back to handle frequency trim and the like, but it seems like in a standard stereo setup with no subwoofer they should basically be left flat.
One concern: Yahama advises that each monitor have a five-foot space around them for maximum fidelity, but there's no way I can do that in this room without rejiggering my whole desk setup. Is there anything I can do to mitigate the weird bounces I'll get by sticking one in the corner?
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Unfortunately, many of us are relegated to our headphones in our workplaces. There's really something to be said for a nice pair of stereo monitors.
I'd advise just making sure they're more than 5 feet apart from each other. A 5 foot space around each is a bit much to ask for, even in many of today's studios (which are increasingly smaller with the innovation of Pro Tools).
If you can find some acoustic absorption foam to put behind the one in the corner, that might help a lot. You'll want to do that for both speakers, actually, to preserve balance as much as possible.
No foam needed for the subwoofer, if you have one. (In case that wasn't obvious.)
If you're using them to mix:
The tweeters should be at ear height or below. The two speakers and your head should describe a roughly equilateral triangle. have them pointing at your head.
weird bounces? if you're talking about the sound reflecting, you can deface your walls with audio absorbing foam tiles. groovy!
Being against a wall or in a corner boosts the low end. You will possibly have a 3db or 6db rolloff switch on the monitors. You might do that to the one in the corner. It will either be better or worse. Symmetry is good, you will be choosing the lesserof two evils.
I second the triangle comment and the balance comments.
making sure that both speakers sound the same on each side and are equally spaced apart from you and each other is kinda tricky to do in a tight space.
Keep in mind that over time you will get used to how they sound and you will want to leave them set once you get them into position. Other wise you will just constantly be changing things.
It would be best to get them as close as possible to and ideal set up and then just leave them.
If you want to reduce vibrations, you should get some spikes, for example: www.amazon.com/Dayton-DSS4-BC-Black-Chrome-Speaker/dp/B0002KR8H6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1202498371&sr=8-4 They can uncouple the speakers from their sourrounding.
I don't know that much about speakers either, but I think I remember that most compact audio speakers (those that you place in your shelf and not on the floor), in contrast to studio speakers, are trimmed to sound better with some surrounding as a resonating body. That's why I think spikes would be quite a nice enhancement for your configuration, and they don't cost that much either.
Studio monitors have a distinctly different purpose than regular stereo speakers. While ordinary speakers are supposed to make music sound pleasing to the ear, studio monitors are geared solely toward sonic accuracy. A well designed monitor will reveal the ugliness in a bad mix so the engineer can fix it.
If you plan on using them for mixing, I wouldn't worry about the 5' requirement too much, but I'd try to place them on the same level and keep them equidistant from the listening area. If you want to acoustically isolate them, you can put a small piece of packing foam under each of them, or spend a little money on isolation pads like these: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MoPAD/
If you're just going to use them for mp3 playback, you can probably put them wherever you like.
The problems you create by putting speakers close to a wall a primarily bass-based...(bassed?) you get around a 6db lift in bass (below 300hz) for each surface a speaker is near. So that's anything up to 18db if it's in a corner on the floor. So getting the speakers on stands away from walls would be really cool. If the speakers are ported, experiment with filling the ports with foam to allow for the extra bass from the walls.
Next thing is to try an minimize reflections. Acoustic tiles behind the listening position could really help - mine are mounted on boards that I hang up when I need them, and stop the immediate bounce back of higher frequencies from a wall that's too close behind me.
The advice above about getting used to monitors is well given; it's a good idea to play the music you know best through them. Get a feel for what they're doing to the sound. This means that eventually you'll be able to allow for any idiosyncrasies when you're mixing.
Good luck with it!
oh, and check out http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul98/articles/acoustics1.html
I learned as much from that magazine as I did from my degree...
It is also important to remember that the large magnets in these speakers can damage computers, especially the monitors, if placed too close. Some manufacturers have taken this likely proximity into consideration in recent production, integrating an insulating layer around the magnets to reduce the effects of use within normal close range.
I'm not sure if the Yamahas your Dad bought you will have this feature (it's likely), but it's worth checking as you set up you desk.
Just to clarify, so we don't confuse visual monitors with audio ones, I meant to say: the magnets in the speakers are very powerful and can permanently damage your computer screen if too close. Nuf said.
Nothing beats the sound reproduction of the actual recording, especially when you can position your head directly in the sweet spot and get a true stereo effect without headphones on.
Send your question to www.audiokarma.org. Post in the Loudspeakers forum or General Audio. You will likely be given a detailed answer to about any question you could ask.
(Not a troll. Just a fan.)
Gong, magnets don't damage LCD screens. (Joel mentioned that he uses a Macbook pro.) They also shouldn't damage the computer unless you put the hard drive right up against the speaker magnet. A magnetic field falls off inversely with the cube of the distance from the magnet's center, so more than a few inches from even a large magnet and you've got a pretty weak field.
Cardboard cylinders stuffed with some fiberglass or paper insulation work well for avoiding the bass imbalance that can result from corner placement. Cheap, easy, and you can dress 'em up easily with a bit of fabric.
Better than that... Send them a good signal. A good receiver or amp between your sources (laptop, phono, radio, CD player) and you speakers is *the* way to go. Cheap-o amps and receivers will negate a lot of the good engineering that goes into high quality speakers.
DCulberson, these are good points, especially where Joel's Macbook Pro LCD screen is concerned. Maybe someone else with other types of screen(s) might find the info useful. Is there another reason why manufacturers now sometimes provide shielding, or is it just for marketing purposes?
#4 is right on the money. You have to get the relative positions between the speakers and your head right, otherwise everything else is pointless. Once you've set the speakers up following the good advice above, the next thing you should probably do is hook them up properly, i.e. not to the laughable headphone jack on your notebook. Some sort of external audio interface should be right for you; FireWire is popular, but if you just want to output 2 channels and not record much, USB 2.0 should be just fine as well.
For listening to other people's music, treat the corner with some of the DIY ideas mentioned here, or just don't put them in a corner if you can avoid it. If you go too far with tuning your apartment with bass traps, hanging acoustic panels and mass damp vinyl, then it can look really ugly.
You can also either buy some sort of real time analyzer (RTA) on ebay or hire some dude to come in and tune your room/make adjustments to the EQ on each amp channel to compensate for this too. (or just listen to a record you know well and bugger with the eq on each channel yourself.
This route has fallen out of favor though, because it gets you very localized results. If you move a few inches one way or the other, the results begin to vary wildly. So it doesn't work well if you don't do your listening in exactly the same spot every time, but it might help a little in combination with a homemade bass traps in that corner.
For your recording purposes, it doesn't sound like you are recording a bosendorfer with a stereo Neumann into a Neve or API desk, so just get the rig sounding OK on a record that you already know well. Then get a pair of crappy speakers and a pair of crappy earbuds so that you can simulate how it will sound on people's computer speakers or ipod headphones--the most prevalent listening environment for city-dwellers. Always use several different monitors when mixing. You stuff might sound great on some nice speakers, but then might not translate well to the white ipod buds. In the "industry" Mastering engineers work to avoid this, but I assume you are doing it all yourself on your laptop, so...
My best solution using M-Audio Studiophile DX4s and a PowerBook G4: Turn the laptop volume all the way up, then one click down, this gets as much signal to the speakers as possible while limiting the chance of clipping. The monitors should be set to flat, but if other settings sound good to you go ahead and change them. One of my speakers is near a wall, but since it's also near a window I just put up some curtains from IKEA to tame that side's volume.
Pretty much, if it sounds good to you... it is!
-YR
ps. Most monitors are shielded so you don't need worry about their proximity to computers.
Hey, I have those exact same speakers. I have a tiny office space and they're right up next to the wall. Along with the other comments, they have bass roll-off switches. When actually mixing, I move the bass switches on both monitors to the far side. But most of the time I'm just jamming, and I get this wonderful, subtle rumble when all of the settings are left flat. They sound amazing.
HOWEVER, some songs I play have the worst (best?) resonance to rumble the washer/dryer in the other room. Plopping a blanket down on both solves that problem.
Come to think of it, I'm probably not a very good person to talk to about monitors... but I fell in love with my HS-80M's and had to comment. :-)
Lots of good advice above, mostly directed from a technical standpoint. From a mix standpoint, unless you have "trained" your ears to mix from a flat eq source, I usually advise newbs to try a different technique: select several songs on CD (you remember those, right? OK, FLAC or other lossless will work too :-) - they should represent your musical taste which is hopefully close to the music you're mixing. While playing each song, using your master EQ, adjust the sound until it is pleasing to you. If you like bass, turn up the bass. This sets your room as your own personal reference space. Untrained mixers will tend to boost the frequencies they "think" are missing. When played back on other systems, it can sound out of whack. If you mix on a system tuned to your natural inclinations, you will not accidentally over compensate by boosting or cutting freq.s you perceive to be missing. This isn't always the best approach, but it yields better mixes more often than not.
Many speakers have switches to compensate for wall or corner placement. (Wall and Corner placement is sometimes called "Half Space", "Quarter Space", and "Eighth Space.")
Sometimes the switches are labelled "bass rolloff." In any case, choose the setting that sounds most accurate to you. Note that if you put the speakers up against the wall, and you have neighbors on the other side of the wall, they will not be your friends any more.
Also stuffing the ports with foam plugs (which probably came with) is another way to turn down the bass boost that wall or corner placement gives.
NFM speakers are designed to be OK with them 2-3 feet from your head, and 2-3 feet between. Don't be worried that you're too close. Putting them on the desk on either side of your MacBook is not such a bad thing, even if they are 4 inches from the wall behind and 2 feet from the walls aside.
If you are in a "booth," the soundproofing that will make your neighbors not hate you is also going to make the speakers sound better. But that's a lot of work and expense.
Also, these monitors are usually used to emulate "cheap home speakers," thus the slogan, "If Your Mixes Sound Good on These, They Sound Good on Anything."
Be that as it may, they are inexpensive and amplified. My Audio Guy friend says that you should buy a cheap ADC amp and a pair of used Tannoy concentric monitors. That will probably cost a bit more than this setup, but the sound, well, it's AMAZING.
If you're mostly going to listen to MP3s, then don't worry too much about the placement.
For best results try to keep them equally far out of corners, have the tweeters at ear height and try toeing the speakers in so you are looking straight into the tweeter (or close to that, try different toe-in angles until you like the stereo field.
Try to keep them a few inches away from the back wall and as far out of the corners as you can. They don't need to be set up very far apart, though. I have mine about 3 feet apart and set up with toe-in so that the stereo field is decent. I also have a bookcase a few feet behind my listening position and they make a high frequency diffuser.
They are very likely shielded and will not damage electronic equipment. These are nearfield monitors designed to be stood up against a computer screen.
As for the question about shielding, it makes the speakers less likely to damage things and makes the speakers less sensitive to outside interference. Pretty big points...
@7: Spikes do not uncouple the speakers from the floor. Quite the opposite. They give the speakers a firmer "grasp" of the floor, preventing them from rocking around. See this article and the comments following:
http://www.audioholics.com/education/loudspeaker-basics/speaker-spikes-and-cones-2013-what2019s-the-point
They do look cool though.
Stop worrying about it, dude, and get on with making music.
Monitors do not "emulate 'cheap home speakers'", they are designed to be as flat and transparent as possible, so you can hear as much detail as possible, which is the only way to give you all the information you need to make the perfect mix. This goal is not quite the same as making speakers that sound good, hence those for your home stereo are made a little differently.
Imagine you use crappy speakers for mixing that have zero output in the 10-30Hz range. You might include hum and floor rumble that annoys the heck out of everyone with a proper stereo, without even suspecting something might be wrong, because you never had a chance to hear the problem yourself.
Nice slogan, but it doesn't apply to cheap, low-quality speakers, and good monitors certainly don't emulate cheap speakers.@23
Actually, those particular spikes will help damp vibrations. See, they come with adhesive foam disks...
Kind of silly - if that's what you want, the foam alone would accomplish the same thing - but if you're looking for real coupling you can just not attach the disks. I ordered a couple sets of these spikes a while back. Unlike a lot of "audiophile" spikes, they're relatively inexpensive, and if nothing else they're an attractive way to get some more airflow between components.
Get a pink noise generator, a mic and a real time frequency analyzer. Gadget will show you the response of the system in frequency band. The pink noise produces a signal that is flat across the spectrum. Use the rolloff switches to flatten out the response or check if you need other mods like the absorbers mentioned. You will probably not like the response, but it is a good starting point. You may be able to rent the gear at a local music or audiophile store. I used to have one built into the graphic equalizer in my stereo.
@NEX, take your complaints up with Yamaha. It's their slogan, I'm just reporting it.
As for whether using cheap speakers for monitoring, well, people often like to "preview" their music on cheap speakers. But "monitor" them on cheap speakers? Again, take it up with Yamaha.
Joel, as someone else said, "Don't worry, make music."
Ah. My audio recording expert friend explains it all: The Yamaha NS-10 speakers are the "king" of the "what your music will sound like on cheap speakers." (Some people use the speakers from their Ampex ATR-100 recorder, or Auratones aka "HorrorTones.")
So obviously the HS50M are intended to sell into that market, especially since Yamaha claims they cannot make NS-10s any more: http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/ns10nearfieldmonitors.htm
I've worked as an engineer in recording studios since the early 70's, and the funniest question I've ever heard is "What are the best speakers?" There is only one answer to that question, regardless of whether you have dog's ears like mine, or meet the criteria of the Active Listener as postulated by Brian Eno, or can make do on anything anywhere enjoying any quality or lack thereof in the chain. The best speakers are the ones you like, and every speaker takes some getting used to. That takes experience. Practically no two environments are ever the same either, so experimentation is absolutely necessary. Some things hold true in the process. If you have the luxury of being able to chose a sweet spot to sit, it's true that the speakers should be aimed very specifically at your head, but most engineers will aim the face of the speaker to point 1 foot above your head if they are 5' or more away. Try it if you can, and decide for yourself whether the details and spread in the sound field aren't actually smoother that way. It works for me. Separation helps expand the center. The easiest way to aim a speaker is with 2 equal lengths of string, knotted dead center and lightly taped to the middle of both opposing sides of the face frame. Don't trust your eyes. Unless you're a purist about keeping EQ curves ruler flat, it's probably wiser to simply listen to your favorite broad range music to make your choices with the EQ settings on the speakers. One thing I would try to avoid entirely would be using the headphone jack as an input source, even to the preferred external amp as a speaker driver. There are so many USB powered external sound cards available for a minimal investment, it's well worth the few dollars it takes to get a real Line Level Output that is quiet and provides a higher quality uncompromised signal source with less inherent ground noise to an amp. In recording anything to the computer you'll enjoy a much finer quality going in as well, with much less if any DC Offset in the waveforms you'll be digitizing. Without too complicated an explanation, DC Offset creeps in to most internal cards via the power supply and gets you samples that have audible clicks as artifacts between where tracks meet in the CDs you burn. The best low cost/very high quality interface for the money that I'm aware of is the Behringer U-CONTROL UCA202 USB-Audio Interface available for 30 bucks or less, Mac/PC compliant.
You've apparently never heard of Auratones, standard 5" studio monitor speakers that were designed to mimic "typical" home radio or tv speakers. They weren't designed to insure that everything would "sound great" no matter what you played it back on but as a double check to insure that the mix didn't sound like total un-intelligible crap on a radio or tv. Good mixers still check to make sure their mixes will sound good on something other that full range studio monitor speakers in a studio control room.
While you are right that you can't predict exactly what people's systems will sound like you are also wrong to suggest that you can't also "mix to the Auratones." One thing you can predict pretty reliably is that a high end studio monitor set up (especially with an acoustically engineered room) will always sound better that 99.99% of all home set ups. Already, a number of engineers mix with mp3 conversion in mind and are careful about relying on detail that may get lost in a medium bit rate mp3.
I have heard of Auratones and other stuff that was popular in past years (e.g. AM car radios), but, as you said yourself, you check your mix on such stuff; you're never supposed to use them to do the actual work of mixing etc. What was it again that was incorrect about my post above? I can't find the part where I suggested you can't "mix to the Auratones"; I only explained exactly the statement you quoted above.
I've read about engineers who claim to mix with mp3 in mind, though I don't know of any concrete step they've taken that would actually make sense, so I can't comment on that. It hasn't got anything to do with near-field monitors anyways; there was a misconception about those and I attempted to clear that up; I hope that this time I actually succeeded at doing so :-)
If you care about the unwashed masses hearing am acceptable approximation to your intended sound, Auratone-style checks totally make sense, though; nice that you mentioned that, it's a good addendum to what I had to say.
Everyone's pants were in too much of a tangle to notice, but if you want to 'maximise the output' of your lovely new speakers I'd recommend getting a small dedicated audio I/O , also called a 'soundcard' to use in place of your MacBoook's built-in one. While that will 'do the job', a dedicated one is likely to give you a much better 'upgrade' than bits of foam. (No disrespect to the foam of course...come check my 'rubber room'!). There are numerous soundcards available, usb and firewire, if your needs are simply home listening then something very basic should get you loving it even more. It's actually quite surprising in this data-flooded age of uber-high-tech, that the average quality of audio that a large proportion of people listen is actually probably degraded compared to a few years ago. Well-reproduced music on good speakers is truly a pleasure for the soul.
lie them both on the ground, speakers up... lie on top of them and crank the bass. works great for constipation. it's like a mini earthquake for the gut!
if they sound good to you, who cares what anyone else thinks or says. they're you ears, broseph!