Monitors For My Bedroom

Zak Flaps

Hi. Wish to buy some monitors for my bedroom. It is untreated (and will probably remain so, it's a rented room).
Size is 14ft by 8ft by 8ft.

What size monitors would be suitable for the room?
I was thinking maybe of Adams A5x, Focal CMS 50 (or possibly 40) or Dynaudio BM5a.
The speakers will be against a wall also.

Am I wasting money on these good speakers as my room will remain untreated? Should I save money and buy cheaper speakers eg, Samson Rubicon r5a , M-Audio BX5a or JBL LSR 2325P ??

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Zak.

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Zak Flaps wrote: »

Hi. Wish to buy some monitors for my bedroom. It is untreated (and will probably remain so, it's a rented room).
Size is 14ft by 8ft by 8ft.



Any advice greatly appreciated.

Zak.

dont bother .

but if you insist , then ns10 with a good amp

but you are better of with good phones .

omen80

Better off with some flat frequency response headphones. An untreated room defeats the purpose of monitors.

Zak Flaps

thanks guys....

is there any sort of cheap treatment i can do without having to hammer anything into a wall? maybe i can treat it without damaging anything!

madtheory

Yes, you can buy 8 rolls of rockwool (about €20 each I think) and stand two in each corner. Cover them with some pretty fabric. Cheap superchunks. If that's all you can do, you'll still need to check your mixes on various systems, and you're well advised to get good cans too, for reference. It does make mixing easier though.

Y'know it's very easy to cover up nail holes when you move out- clawhammer, polyfilla, paint. Run it by the landlord first of course! So if you want to go that route, build 3 to 5 broadband traps- frames with RW3, densest you can get your hands on.

If you're feeling adventurous, a diffuser is only slightly more challenging to build and probably more appropriate than absorbers for such a small room, especially if it's all plasterboard walls.


If you need any advice let me know.

godfrey

Have a look online for a pair of used Genelec 1029's. They're an excellent nearfield monitor, meaning you mount them close to you, minimising the effects of an untreated or poorly treated room.

Headphones are not a good solution for mixing, nor are cheap monitors.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Genelec-1029a-active-monitors-speakers-/170672423213?pt=UK_ConElec_SpeakersPASystems_RL&hash=item27bcde812d

g

madtheory

The nearfield thing doesn't really work that well IME, still hard work to mix. A bit of treatment goes a long way. 1029s are great, no bottom end tho! Always had trouble with vocal level on Genelecs. That's just me though.

GTE

You can get a decent set of monitors for nice money these days and they will stay with you for when you can get a good mixing room so that is something to think about.

Those Genelec 1029a's are nice, I used them a lot but I agree with Madtheory that they lack low end. I use a set of KRK VXT6's at home and I find them to be quite good, a lot more low end which brings me onto my next point.

In my experience the important thing in rooms where you don't have treatment or good treatment is to learn how mixes from your room translate to other consumer/professional systems. With college at the time I was lucky to have 2 or 3 different models of Genelec, some Adams stuff and my mind goes black about the other two sets that we had. Every time I had a draft mix done in my room I would immediately see how it sounded on the better speakers in better rooms. I'd also start mixes in these rooms and see how they sounded in my room.

I found out that my room made the VXT's bass heavy (possibly the speakers are bass heavy to begin with mind you) but over the course of some weeks I was able to learn my system and what I should do to make it sound better on other systems. I was able to tweak the room control settings on the back of the speakers and eventually I was able to do most of a mix at home and know that it would only need minor tweaks after I checked it on other systems.

I don't believe you will ever have a perfect mixing environment. You can have better, great, fantastic and worse ones but at the end of the day I always find that you still have to learn at least a some aspects of the systems you use.

I also used the cars in the family to test mixes especially. TV's, hifi's. Computer sound systems next to my monitors. Though, I always had a set of good headphones near me. I use Beyerdymanic DT150's.

The combination of my monitors, headphones and testing against other systems has given me very pleasing results in the past.

Looking back I was lucky that I had a college with such an array of different monitors so the learning I could do was really effective. It will be your task to see how many different sets of speakers you can play your mixes on and really critically listen to them so you can decide what needs to be done. If a TV speaker makes your mix bass dead it doesnt mean you crank the bass on your mix.

I would get a song from your musical collection you know well and love lots, listen to it on as many consumer and professional systems as you can. It lets you hear what the speaker is doing to your prized Queens of the Stone Age album, for me anyway =D Use a number of different songs across different genres too. This will not just highlight problems in your own mixing room, but perhaps others too so when you bring a mix in there you will know, just off the top of my head, "these monitors are pretty harsh so they may over exaggerate the high end of my mix as they did with my reference song".

With that said, I dont want to be seen as saying you dont need or should neglect treatment if you have another mixing room with good acoustics to go to. I would still dish out the money for treatment if I was in the position to do so. Though I would still have to learn the room and learn how the speakers were reacting with the new treatment.

Its one big ass learning curve!

I got a great tip of sticking a stock in my VXT's off a member here a while back. Fantastic stuff! Got me into putting tissue on my little Tascam speakers to cut down the high end a tad.

Hayte

I've got Dynaudio BM5as and I hardly ever used them at home because like madtheory said its just more work than its worth.

They sound terrible without controlled acoustics and are worst in small rooms. You can move your head around a couple of inches and you can hear the bass and treble partially disappearing as a result of moving in and out of null points. So if you get up to scratch your ass and don't sit down exactly where you were before, your whole mix sounds different in an odd sort of way. Its kind of freaky.

As far as controlling acoustics go its not about covering every inch of your room with fiber glass paneling. You do need a tape measure and you do need to do a bit of math to work out your room modes and early reflection points. It helps to have an uncluttered room otherwise you will be falling all over your s**t trying to take measurements. The math isn't complicated but it does require you to have a plan.

But even if you have that, theres only so much you can do in small rooms. Headphones can be a good solution but you need to get used to mixing on them.

Zak Flaps

I can't see the point in forking out lots of cash for expensive monitors, when i just can't get my room treated...i have good headphones (Sennheiser 600HD), so I'll just get mid range monitors...thinking of M-Audio BX5a or Samson Rubicon r5a or JBL LSR 2325p....
that'll have to do!

madtheory

€160 for 4 superchunks, that you can re use in your next room?