Yo guys!
My old Event TR6's broke down (atleast, one of em), and i wasnt happy with them to begin with. So I'm thinking of buying focals. Thing is i dont know which ones i should get, and there are some things for me to consider, so i hope you guys can help me with that!
The room i am in at the moment is the attic of my house, it is untreated and has a triangle shaped roof.
Ive been hearing alot of good stuff about the performance of the cms 50, even in untreated rooms. So these sound like a good choice. However, i'm making dance (mostly techno/minimal) music, so on the other hand i do feel i need a bit more bass than the 50's... So maybe the 65's then? I've also heard that the solo's have a real club feel. How do they perform compared to the other focals (and monitors in particalur) (in untreated rooms in particular).
It might also be the case that there is one monitor that im overlooking that would be perfect for my situation, if so let me know.
Appreciate the help!
Cheers
Untreated room, Focals, or else? help me guys!
the thing with treatment is that, apart from some stuff that is in the room which i cant move. My roof is triangular > /\.
al the room treatment articles i have found so far were about cubicle rooms.
Ive been hearing alot of good stuff about the performance of the cms 50, even in untreated rooms. So these sound like a good choice. However, i'm making dance (mostly techno/minimal) music, so on the other hand i do feel i need a bit more bass than the 50's... So maybe the 65's then? I've also heard that the solo's have a real club feel. How do they perform compared to the other focals (and monitors in particalur) (in untreated rooms in particular).
It might also be the case that there is one monitor that im overlooking that would be perfect for my situation, if so let me know. Like genies? i hear sometimes are widely used 9with succes) in minimal- or untreated rooms
Appreciate the help!
Cheers
al the room treatment articles i have found so far were about cubicle rooms.
Ive been hearing alot of good stuff about the performance of the cms 50, even in untreated rooms. So these sound like a good choice. However, i'm making dance (mostly techno/minimal) music, so on the other hand i do feel i need a bit more bass than the 50's... So maybe the 65's then? I've also heard that the solo's have a real club feel. How do they perform compared to the other focals (and monitors in particalur) (in untreated rooms in particular).
It might also be the case that there is one monitor that im overlooking that would be perfect for my situation, if so let me know. Like genies? i hear sometimes are widely used 9with succes) in minimal- or untreated rooms
Appreciate the help!
Cheers
I think you're quite misunderstanding the nature of your problem.
or that maybe you're trying to find an easy way out that doesn't exist.
it's not like there's only treated rooms at one side, and untreated at the other side.
every untreated room is different.
in fact, every room, treated or untreated, is different.
they don't make monitors aimed at untreated rooms, you know.
that would simply be impossible too, cause every room is completely different anyway.
monitors are aimed to produce 100% what comes out of your gear,
thy're not designed to colour the output so that it sounds better in untreated rooms.
eventually, your room will colour the sound you hear, since naturally,
you will always hear it in some kind of space.
(no sound in outer space, forget all the drones you hear in Battlestar Galactica or any space series when you hear a ship passing, no air means no sound, simple as that)
so simply put : or you just go for the best monitors your budget can buy,
meaning the flattest sounding monitors, and then try not to worry about your acoustics.
or you treat your room, and get better results (combined with good monitors, of course).
also, it's not just the room itself, but also what is inside the room.
last january, I rebuilt my whole studio. new wall on one side, new floor, new windows, nice colours on the walls, new electricity.
and I threw out all the crap like shelves that contained non-related music stuff.
before I did this I just had reasonably ok gear, in an ok sounding room by nature.
after I had finished, my whole room had a big annoying reverb it didn't have before.
same room, only the crap was taken out, so no absorption nor diversification.
so I was forced to treat my room.
and fast, cause a 909 kick was sounding like a djembe-hit.
it was annoying me like hell.
walls are usually more important than ceilings or floors, as long as you don't have highly reflecting material on your ceilings or floors.
and a floor you can just put a big carpet on if you don't have the budget.
I decided to get a cork floor and never regretted that, but cork costs a lot of course.
sound comes in waves, these waves bounce against every object they run up against, or bump against your wall (if they get that far) and bounce back.
because these back-bouncing waves cross the new waves, you'll have frequencies that will be augmented, and frequencies that will almost be annihilated (if 2 crossing waves are exactly each others opposites, they'll cancel each other out completely, so you won't hear anything on that frequency)
so every room is different, cause every room has a different built.
not just how many walls, and how big, but also which materials were used, and what kind of stuff is inside the room (objects, furniture, curtains,...)
pt 2 coming
or that maybe you're trying to find an easy way out that doesn't exist.
it's not like there's only treated rooms at one side, and untreated at the other side.
every untreated room is different.
in fact, every room, treated or untreated, is different.
they don't make monitors aimed at untreated rooms, you know.
that would simply be impossible too, cause every room is completely different anyway.
monitors are aimed to produce 100% what comes out of your gear,
thy're not designed to colour the output so that it sounds better in untreated rooms.
eventually, your room will colour the sound you hear, since naturally,
you will always hear it in some kind of space.
(no sound in outer space, forget all the drones you hear in Battlestar Galactica or any space series when you hear a ship passing, no air means no sound, simple as that)
so simply put : or you just go for the best monitors your budget can buy,
meaning the flattest sounding monitors, and then try not to worry about your acoustics.
or you treat your room, and get better results (combined with good monitors, of course).
also, it's not just the room itself, but also what is inside the room.
last january, I rebuilt my whole studio. new wall on one side, new floor, new windows, nice colours on the walls, new electricity.
and I threw out all the crap like shelves that contained non-related music stuff.
before I did this I just had reasonably ok gear, in an ok sounding room by nature.
after I had finished, my whole room had a big annoying reverb it didn't have before.
same room, only the crap was taken out, so no absorption nor diversification.
so I was forced to treat my room.
and fast, cause a 909 kick was sounding like a djembe-hit.
it was annoying me like hell.
walls are usually more important than ceilings or floors, as long as you don't have highly reflecting material on your ceilings or floors.
and a floor you can just put a big carpet on if you don't have the budget.
I decided to get a cork floor and never regretted that, but cork costs a lot of course.
sound comes in waves, these waves bounce against every object they run up against, or bump against your wall (if they get that far) and bounce back.
because these back-bouncing waves cross the new waves, you'll have frequencies that will be augmented, and frequencies that will almost be annihilated (if 2 crossing waves are exactly each others opposites, they'll cancel each other out completely, so you won't hear anything on that frequency)
so every room is different, cause every room has a different built.
not just how many walls, and how big, but also which materials were used, and what kind of stuff is inside the room (objects, furniture, curtains,...)
pt 2 coming
Thanks all.
Especialy Hades for the long post!
i just cant treat my room at this point, maybe when i move. But now its out of the question. period.
Altough i knew allmost all of what you said, it was good to have read nonetheless. You made me see that the question of which monitor to buy for my room is simply a non-question because it cannot be answered. My untreated room is not someone elses untreated room.
However this is also where the exact problem for me lies with choosing a pair of monitors. Even if i would be event opals or focal twins. I'd still be sitting with this large -30db cap at 100hz right where im sitting.
So now what? should i not buy expenisve monitors at all because they are useless in my room? should i just buy crap monitors for the time being?
No ofc no crap monitors, i have those, and hihats which sound good through them sound like utter crap when i listen to them on other systems/headphones.
So i'm in a pinch here...
On the other hand, I've been watching alot of videos of top dance producers in their studio's and what strikes me?! They all have Gen 8050, bm6a's and other relatively good monitors. but NONE i have seen, yes NONE had any treatment it their rooms as far as i could see.. Like WTF?!
So now im at the point where im changing my mind literaly every hour as to what i could best do with my 2000 euro's. to get the best sounding mixes i can possibly get at this point. Ive even thought of buying the KRK ergo room correction. heck every few hours im even deciding to just buy a good pair of headphones to mix in and use some less monitors to A/B with.
spending days on fora like these, i know them all like the back of my hand, and it only makes the choice harder lol (*cry* actualy)
Especialy Hades for the long post!
i just cant treat my room at this point, maybe when i move. But now its out of the question. period.
Altough i knew allmost all of what you said, it was good to have read nonetheless. You made me see that the question of which monitor to buy for my room is simply a non-question because it cannot be answered. My untreated room is not someone elses untreated room.
However this is also where the exact problem for me lies with choosing a pair of monitors. Even if i would be event opals or focal twins. I'd still be sitting with this large -30db cap at 100hz right where im sitting.
So now what? should i not buy expenisve monitors at all because they are useless in my room? should i just buy crap monitors for the time being?
No ofc no crap monitors, i have those, and hihats which sound good through them sound like utter crap when i listen to them on other systems/headphones.
So i'm in a pinch here...
On the other hand, I've been watching alot of videos of top dance producers in their studio's and what strikes me?! They all have Gen 8050, bm6a's and other relatively good monitors. but NONE i have seen, yes NONE had any treatment it their rooms as far as i could see.. Like WTF?!
So now im at the point where im changing my mind literaly every hour as to what i could best do with my 2000 euro's. to get the best sounding mixes i can possibly get at this point. Ive even thought of buying the KRK ergo room correction. heck every few hours im even deciding to just buy a good pair of headphones to mix in and use some less monitors to A/B with.
spending days on fora like these, i know them all like the back of my hand, and it only makes the choice harder lol (*cry* actualy)
anyways, I'm no expert, I'm just telling from the experience I had from reading up tons last winter, when I had to treat my room.
I never had an ideal room to begin with, and I still don't have one now,
but at least it's quite good for just an amateur-studio.
and it looks great.
because you want to avoid these waves that bounce back of your walls,
you want absorption and diffusion.
for sound to get absorbed, you need the right materials.
a lot of companies sell these crap foam things.
I never quite got that.
First of all, 95% look like total sh!t.
There I was taking an effort to make a good looking room,
and then I was supposed to attach all these goofy looking colours to my walls ? And usually with some kind of over-priced super-glue stuff that was gonna make it rather hard to re-arrange stuff if necessary.
don't think so !
Secondly, foam doesn't absorb that great either compared to other stuff.
For absorption, you need mass as well, and foam doesn't usually come in thick masses.
Fibreglass works a lot better for absorption, and it sure looks a lot better too.
After a bit of looking around I went for primacoustics stuff.
I bought a room kit, which had a bit of everything, a nice combination of diffusers and absorbers, and they look great too.
plus they're a lot stronger than those foam panels.
I bought 4 extra bass traps that together costed me more than twice the whole room pack, but that was my decision I guess.
I got a room kit that was sold together with a room correction EQ plugin.
Basically, you get a software program + VST plugin + testing microphone,
and you gotta run some tests : the program will output some small bleeps that go from very low to very high (some programs do this with long sweeps, but this one did it with very fast bleeps), and it registers how these bleeps get reproduced in the room.
That way it can calculate how your room colours your sound, so it then offers a plugin EQ preset based on these measurements that you simply put into the master track of your sequencer and presto !
That way, you can produce more accurately and avoid the room colouring quite a bit.
And if your track is finished and you want to do a mixdown, you simply bypass the EQ, and that's it.
so even though now my studio is still far from perfect, it still sounds rather great, and I got an overview of what frequencies are a bit off, and an EQ-plugin to correct it.
some links :
the kit I got.
http://www.primacoustic.com/london.htm
but I got it in this version combined with th ARC EQ plugin, a quik google example of an example of how they sell this (I got mine from music store) :
http://ralaudio.com/primacoustic-broadw ... -3830.html
these were the bass traps :
http://www.primacoustic.com/maxtrap.htm
and I got these as well :
http://www.primacoustic.com/recoil.htm
I can't stress out how important these recoil stabilizers are.
at first I was very sceptic abouth these.
but they do exactly what the publicity says : clear bass, better defined midfield, bigger sweet spot.
they might look expensive, but these things are heavy
and very well built, and they automatically make average monitors sound like great monitors, and great monitors sound like excellent monitors.
if you don't hear the difference these things do, you're either in the worst room possible, or have sh!t for ears
I never had an ideal room to begin with, and I still don't have one now,
but at least it's quite good for just an amateur-studio.
and it looks great.
because you want to avoid these waves that bounce back of your walls,
you want absorption and diffusion.
for sound to get absorbed, you need the right materials.
a lot of companies sell these crap foam things.
I never quite got that.
First of all, 95% look like total sh!t.
There I was taking an effort to make a good looking room,
and then I was supposed to attach all these goofy looking colours to my walls ? And usually with some kind of over-priced super-glue stuff that was gonna make it rather hard to re-arrange stuff if necessary.
don't think so !
Secondly, foam doesn't absorb that great either compared to other stuff.
For absorption, you need mass as well, and foam doesn't usually come in thick masses.
Fibreglass works a lot better for absorption, and it sure looks a lot better too.
After a bit of looking around I went for primacoustics stuff.
I bought a room kit, which had a bit of everything, a nice combination of diffusers and absorbers, and they look great too.
plus they're a lot stronger than those foam panels.
I bought 4 extra bass traps that together costed me more than twice the whole room pack, but that was my decision I guess.
I got a room kit that was sold together with a room correction EQ plugin.
Basically, you get a software program + VST plugin + testing microphone,
and you gotta run some tests : the program will output some small bleeps that go from very low to very high (some programs do this with long sweeps, but this one did it with very fast bleeps), and it registers how these bleeps get reproduced in the room.
That way it can calculate how your room colours your sound, so it then offers a plugin EQ preset based on these measurements that you simply put into the master track of your sequencer and presto !
That way, you can produce more accurately and avoid the room colouring quite a bit.
And if your track is finished and you want to do a mixdown, you simply bypass the EQ, and that's it.
so even though now my studio is still far from perfect, it still sounds rather great, and I got an overview of what frequencies are a bit off, and an EQ-plugin to correct it.
some links :
the kit I got.
http://www.primacoustic.com/london.htm
but I got it in this version combined with th ARC EQ plugin, a quik google example of an example of how they sell this (I got mine from music store) :
http://ralaudio.com/primacoustic-broadw ... -3830.html
these were the bass traps :
http://www.primacoustic.com/maxtrap.htm
and I got these as well :
http://www.primacoustic.com/recoil.htm
I can't stress out how important these recoil stabilizers are.
at first I was very sceptic abouth these.
but they do exactly what the publicity says : clear bass, better defined midfield, bigger sweet spot.
they might look expensive, but these things are heavy
and very well built, and they automatically make average monitors sound like great monitors, and great monitors sound like excellent monitors.
if you don't hear the difference these things do, you're either in the worst room possible, or have sh!t for ears
if these are top-producers : chances are big they work in rooms that are especially built for studio-use.Daeronb wrote:
On the other hand, I've been watching alot of videos of top dance producers in their studio's and what strikes me?! They all have Gen 8050, bm6a's and other relatively good monitors. but NONE i have seen, yes NONE had any treatment it their rooms as far as i could see.. Like WTF?!
these rooms are designed so they don't need to be treated.
the treatment is already in the material and placement of the walls.
I looked into getting one of these : at least 15000 euro's.
trust me : they wouldn't work in a non-treated room.
nobody's that stupid (or deaf if you like) if they make it that far.
if you can't treat your room, forget about the treatment partDaeronb wrote:Thanks all.
Especialy Hades for the long post!
i just cant treat my room at this point, maybe when i move. But now its out of the question. period.
So now what? should i not buy expenisve monitors at all because they are useless in my room? should i just buy crap monitors for the time being?
No ofc no crap monitors, i have those, and hihats which sound good through them sound like utter crap when i listen to them on other systems/headphones.
So now im at the point where im changing my mind literaly every hour as to what i could best do with my 2000 euro's. to get the best sounding mixes i can possibly get at this point. Ive even thought of buying the KRK ergo room correction. heck every few hours im even deciding to just buy a good pair of headphones to mix in and use some less monitors to A/B with.
(so there goes all the typing I just did
no honestly : then at least remember the advice when you do get to live somewhere where you can treat the rooms)
it's crap, but if you can't treat it, then you shouldn't focus on that either.
what's the point of buying a car if you're too young to drive one ?
so : focus on getting good monitors.
for 2000 you can get a very long way in monitor-land nowadays.
the ones that costed 800 each 5 years ago now usually cost around 500 each.
that means you can go for 800 each and have monitors that used to cost 1000 each just a few years back.
and please, oh please : get the recoil stabilizers
I'm not saying this because I'm some secret primacoustic salesman,
and frankly : if you get your fibreglass panels from them or from someone else or make them yourself, I don't care. All I wanted to say was fibreglass is way better than foam.
but primacoustic is the only company as far as I know that make these recoils.
and they really do miracles.