Hey all you home recorders and otherwise
I am starting to record again and I have my old roland and boss and arion monitors.I use sony cans so those sound great but when I run my stuff through my mons it sounds real thin. These always sounded great with my analog gear, but now that I am partially digital I think I need something different. I would like some advice on some good,but not super expensive monitors. I was thinking of buying a carvin rig but there are lots of choices so I thought I would query you folks
thanks in advance.

Could it be a line level difference between your monitors and output source? Are your monitors powered?

Sorry i dont know too much about this stuff. There was a thread in the lounge couple of weeks back concerning usb interfaces. A lot of knowledgable home recorders chipped in there. You may be better off posing your question on that thread.

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No no and no

For home recording, I like the KRK Rockits :

http://www.bizrate.com/search__keyword- ... itors.html

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2 votes for KRKs. I'm saving up for a pair of Gen 2 Rockits.
I'll probably get the 5 in.

I agree the KrK's are good, I use Mackie HR824's (nwer versions are out now) but they are not cheap. You want a "true flat" response from your monitors...
In other words... the idea is to get a 'true to signal' in the air from your monitors as opposed to having the speaker project an EQ'd version of the original signal.
You can EQ the sound yourself... you dont want the speaker to "color" the sound by design... You want a monitor to project a true reference of the signal being recorded or mixed.

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explorationx

Three votes for the KRKs. I have the Rokit Powered 5 Generation 2s and they sound great for their size. They're pretty affordable, too.

I'm going to be the dissenting voice on KRKs.

They are hyped in the lows and the highs. That makes them sound
exciting, but also induces listening fatigue, and fools you when you're mixing.

WHen I hear a record with a huge build up in the mids, and too much verb on everything, I can always tell they were mixed on KRK's.

That said, you can learn to mix well on anything, because making good mixes is about 90% getting used to the quirks of your monitors (there are no flat transducers and few perfect rooms.) But I wouldn't recommend KRK's to anyone.

but, more important... why is this in the Strat forum?

Good. Then just to offer some alternatives...

I presume you are after active speakers for your digital setup, eyerish?

Yamaha are usually highly regarded in this field. Their current home studio model is the HS series. Look for a pair of HS50M speakers, or HS80M. Should be around €200 for the former, €300 - 350 for the bigger ones.

Tannoy are good for active monitors, too. Slightly more expensive than the Yamahas are Tannoy's Reveal 5A speakers, or their Reveal Active 8D model.

Some more options...

Cheers - C

These are fine monitors-

http://www.samash.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... rySA-10001

A lot of people diss them, but you'd be surprised at how much work you can get done on them. You could certainly get WAY better monitors, but at a substantially higher cost. If you're really serious about recording and mixing, it's worth it. But to get the headphones off your ears and out of your mixing equasion, the Behringers are excellent. Monitors, just like guitars, are a very personal preference thing. Good luck to you.

And yeas, why is this in this forum?! Let's assume you're at least recording with a strat! LOL!

Dan

Take a look at the Behringer's:wink:

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Greetings,
No matter what speakers you buy they need to be as flat as possible. You will still have to insert some Graphic EQ's because every room is not flat. Invest in a real time analyzer. The room you use will influence the sound you hear. What sounds good in your studio may not work somewhere else. That could be why your headphones sound so good. Bass frequencies need distance to develop. Try to use a typical live end dead end kind of set up also. Any acoustical reverb will also interfere with your mix. Invest in a couple of basic audio books.
I've been a sound engineer for over 30 years. I'm here because I have finally started to collect guitars. I saw so many beautiful guitars I could of should of bought. So now after so many years I decided to start my collection.
Good luck with you studio!

I agree with some of that. But a graphic eq won't fix the problems inccured with an acoustically untreated room. The solution is acoustically treating the room as best you can. The reality is that acoustic treatment should be considered before any monitors. Otherwise you won't properly hear what any monitor is telling you. And the solution isn't just buying 300 bucks in auralex foam, slapping all over the walls, and calling it a day. It's more invloved, but it is worth it if you're serious about hearing and mixing the best sound you can.

Read this site throughly. It's a learning experience, as well as some of the best acoustic treatment you'll find. I buy their stuff- I'm not selling here, I'm recommending-

http://realtraps.com/info.htm

Here is a small excerpt about eqing rooms-

Another common misconception is that equalization can be used to counter the effects of acoustic problems. But since every location in the room responds differently, no single EQ curve can give a flat response everywhere. Over a physical span of just a few inches the frequency response can vary significantly. Even if you aim to correct the response only where you sit, there's a bigger problem: It's impossible to counter very large cancellations. If acoustic interference causes a 25 dB dip at 60 Hz, adding that much boost with an equalizer to compensate will reduce the available volume (headroom) by the same amount. Such an extreme boost will increase low frequency distortion in the loudspeakers too. And at other room locations where 60 Hz is already too loud, applying EQ boost will make the problem much worse. Even if EQ could successfully raise a null, the large high-Q boost needed will create electrical ringing at that frequency. Likewise, EQ cut to reduce a peak will not reduce the peak's acoustic ringing. EQ cannot always help at higher frequencies either. If a room has ringing tones that continue after the sound source stops, EQ might make the ringing a little softer but it will still be present. However, equalization can help a little to tame low frequency peaks (only) caused by natural room resonance, as opposed to peaks and nulls due to acoustic interference, if used in moderation.

And about headphones-

Some people mix using headphones in an attempt to avoid the effects of their room. The problem with headphones is that everything sounds too clear and present, making it difficult to find the ideal volume for some tracks. When listening through headphones, a lead vocal or solo instrument can be heard very clearly, even if it is quiet, so you'll tend to make it lower in the mix than it should be. Listening with headphones also misses the physical impact of bass instruments, the part you feel rather than hear.

Like I said, read the site and be enlightened. Best of luck to you.

Dan

I was just giving general help. I wasn't trying to go into the building of a true studio. That is another Pandora's box. There are so many variables involved. I was just trying to help them to understand that when they sample monitors at a music store they will sound different in their studio. EQ's can help compensate for some of the room's acoustics. They will not fix things like standing waves created by parallel walls. I suggested he educate himself to learn about these inherent acoustical problems.
A Real time analyzer will help sort out problem frequencies in a room that are hard to hear. They have many uses if you know how to use them.
60 Hz is hard to reproduce in most small rooms. At sea level and 80 degrees Fahrenheit 60 Hz needs 18.83 feet to develop. The low E string on a bass guitar is around 42 Hz. That frequency needs 26.90 feet to develop. You could add too much bass frequencies by trying to compensate for what the room can not reproduce.
Now you know why you can hear a boom box car long before you see it. It is louder outside than it is inside the car.
There are so many variables. It is best to start any new project with an education. That's why I joined this group.

Scott

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Absolutely Scott. There's playing guitar, there's recording guitar, and then there's recording in a real serious way. Either of those three takes quite a lot of investigation, learning, practice, and practical application to get a handle on it. Having a thread like this in this forum perhaps brings up a need for a separate forum just for recording. There is so very much to learn about it, no matter what level you're starting at.

Dan

I wondered about that myself, but I was happy to see a thread on recording. There are very few threads about recording on the forums and once started they tend to die quickly. I would have thought more members would be interested in this stuff.