Studio Monitoring or Are You Just Not Listening?

[brandondrury]

Here's my latest article:

<a href="http://www.recordingreview.com/artic...ying.html">Are Your Studio Monitors Lying? Are You Just Not Listening?</a>

Let me know what you think.

Brandon

[dach]

After coming from NS10's it has take me forever to learn the Mackies. I'm still learning them.
I've found that they work best in my room on their side pretty close together.

Something else I've learned is not to force my mixes to sound like anything else... The sounds and timbres were decided during tracking and the mix will develop into what it is. If you are listening to a commercial cd... don't force it to have a timbre it doesn't have. I have fought that for a while and now have better results. You may be better off eq'ing a dB or so on the 2buss... or leaving it for a ME.

make it at least two references that are totally different. Lately I've been using tha latest Sarah McLaughlin and Jeff Buckley "Grace". Both are brilliant but couldn't be more different as far as frequency content goes.... and match the level of everything you listen to !

just my 2 cents and it certainly won't work for everyone.

[brandondrury]

As always, great points Dach.

I probably should have mentioned that it's generally a bad idea to attempt to clone another cd as far as tones are concerned, especially in the mixing process. I've tried that several times and it's never really worked. That's why I mentioned listening to 10 seconds of 10 different bands. You'll hear enormous differences in production styles most of the time, but there will still be some sort of "theme" that will effect how you mix your record.

How do you mix on NS10s? I posted a blog on this the other day.
http://www.recordingreview.com/artic...tors-YUCK.html
Are you experiences similar to mine?

Brandon

[Andrew07]

First off, Dach, I love your Rupert avatar.

I'm actually in the opposite boat you are in. I've switched from my HR824's to a pair of NS-10's and I LOVE them. As you've said before Brandon, everything just sounds so good on the Mackies. My NS-10's have taken me a few months to get used to but last week as if a switch had been flipped, I "got it." It was wierd after listening to so many commercial cd's on them I knew how my mixes should sound. I even went through a bunch of old mixes and re-did 'em.

The NS-10's are really thin and kinda crappy sounding by themselves, but I paired it with a yamaha sub I got for a couple hundred $$ at Best Buy and it's perfect for me. To me the Mackies smear the bass and mids together...there's no distinction. With the NS-10's it's mostly high mids and highs while the bass takes care of the rest. So for anyone who has some unpowered monitors, I strongly strongly suggest trying out a sub with them. You can always return it to your audio store, and hey if you don't like it for recording just use it on your tv and get a nice setup there? ;D.

[brandondrury]

I'm glad to hear that you are liking the NS-10s. As I wrote in a recent blog, I hated the NS-10s just from being there mixing and then hearing the final results. There is no way I could ever force myself to make a mix harsh enough to sound modern in the NS-10s. The guitars, for example, sounded mega harsh in the Yamahas but the resulting songs sounded "creamy"

Of course, every ear and room are different.

Brandon

[dach]

I'm looking for a pair of NS10's again - reasonably priced.

When I used to be on the 10's, it took me a long time to learn them. I also had a lot of ringing in the ears at the end of the day. I eventually did well with them... I used them in conjunction with some soffit mounted Urei 809's - the phase aligned ones.
If I only knew then what I know now....

When I first heard the Mackies, it was almost like a dream come true, sounds nice and I can hear bass... but learning to mix on them has been one of the toughest things. I eventually want to end up with some NS10's and some Adams... I'll keep the Mackies for another room or for my home stereo or something....

[brandondrury]

Adams

The Adams studio monitors were fun. Wagener had a set of them. They weren't incredibly loud, but Wagener isn't the kind of guy to just blow your head off at mixing. They translated way better than the NS-10s seamed to (again, I had never heard either monitor before).


Back to the NS-10s. Did you guys have to make your mixes sound extremely brittle?
The rock kids today want brittle sound records anyway. I couldn't imagine trying to get this on the already brittle NS-10s. Again, my experience is limited to one room and two songs.

Brandon

[dach]

Back when I used them day in and out, the loudness war had not firmly taken hold and things either seemed to sound good or not good... also since I did more post than music it was a little different... but you know when you are eq'ing and it's coming together... unlike some other monitors I've used.