Share your experience upgrading to more expensive monitors..

[cH@dR0kcy]

I primarily use NS10s and an Avanton Mixcube as my primary monitors, but also reference on KRK 8s. Though it takes some trial and error, I can get my mixes to translate, but I'm wondering if it would be easier / quicker to dial in mixes with higher end monitors? I'm looking at the Unity Mini Rock pair on sale right now for around $1700. This would be the most I've spent on monitors (so far). Of course, I know learning the room and treatment plays a vital role too - which is something I've addressed to the best of my ability. Anyone here using them or can share their experience when upgrading monitors only and nothing else?

EDIT:
I hope I didn't post in the wrong forum. It seems that this place is geared more to DIY building. Apologies if so.

Thanks!

 

[ruffrecords]

These days there is a huge choice of monitors but when they are discussed, two things puzzle me.

1. Rarely if ever is the acoustic of the room or the siting of the speakers discussed. Both have a profound effect on the overall sound.
2. Why don't more people mix on headphones. Apart from eliminating the room acoustic problem, it is how the vast majority of music is listened to these days.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Michael Tibes]

In my opinion room treatment and speaker tuning are way more important than the price of the speaker. If the room sucks, your listening will suck - even with 20.000$ speakers. Think of your whole chain, including the room, as your listening system. I'm mostly using nearly 30 year old Genelec 1030 with a subwoofer. I achieved the biggest leap in mixing quality when I took about 4 weeks to set up, measure, eq, change placement, finetune, think, start over and so on. This time spent was for a pair of diy 'big speakers' and my set of nearfield speakers. Before I used to use several nearfield speakers, but ditched all but the 1030s in the process because even placing a pair next to them clearly made them measure and sound worse.

The whole process is obviously very complex and one could certainly write a book about it. My room is already an acoustically very well designed control room, nevertheless all the fine tuning was necessary. The console, furniture and everything in the room interacts acoustically.

I recently purchased a pair of iloud MTM speakers which surprised me positively. Speakers actually have made very serious improvements over the past decades, I wouldn't go for anything vintage. I also find the concept of directional speakers at low frequencies very interesting. It should improve the performance in acoustically less treated rooms, but I have no experience with it.

Luckily we have freeware acoustic measurement software and measurement mics can be bought for cheap. I have used Behringer, IK multimedia and Sonarworks and they all seemed practically identical in the results when interchanged. A slight movement of some centimeters might have a bigger effect on the measurement than the mic itself.

I hope, this gives some inspiration.

 

[Whoops]

but I'm wondering if it would be easier / quicker to dial in mixes with higher end monitors?

For sure with any modern monitors above $1000 you will be able to dial better mixes than with the ancient and limited NS10

Not really a fan, they lack the 2 lower octaves and the last upper octave. They are very outdated for modern records and productions.
They were never that good anyway, just got famous in the past because it was trendy to have it. But Trends are just trends they are not necessarily connected with quality

just my 2 cents

 

[Whoops]

I also agree with Michael that you don’t have to go over the top in spending huge amounts of money in expensive monitors.

I would organize things this way

1) size the monitors to the size of your room. If it’s a small room some big monitors will not be adequate.
If it’s a very small room get some small monitors like Genelec 8020 ou Adam A7. If it’s a Mid sized room get some mid size monitors…

2) check options from Genelec, Adam, Focal.
I’m not a fan of Focal voicings, they don’t work for me, but some people really like them and they have offers for different sizes. I would get something from $1500 to $2500, maybe try even to buy some good 2nd hand speakers.
ATC speakers are also quite good, but those are much more expensive I guess.

I personally use ProAc Studio 100, I’ve been using those for 15 years so I’m pretty used to them and like them a lot. I use them with a consumer hi-fi KEF subwoofer, and power them with a modified Quad 405. I would like to upgrade the Amp but still didn’t get money for a Bryston.
I also have the Genelec 1030 as 2nd monitors that I like a lot because they fit well in my room size.

3) without acoustic treatment no monitor will sound good enough or trustworthy to mix.
There’s a lot of misconceptions about acoustic treatment, you dont need to go over the top to have a controlled room neither you have to spend huge amounts of money.
Acoustic panels and bass traps are cheap if you do them yourself, it’s just wood for the frames, Rockwool and fabric and those are very efficient.

Start by doing Bass Traps at all corners, then absorptions panel in the side walls to absorve first reflections, acoustic panels for a Cloud on top of mixing position, then maybe diffusion or abaritona in the back wall, that’s it. That will get you to a pretty good spot already, then listen and measure and check if you need to retouch or add something more.

4) get some Sonarworks acoustic correction and calibration software. It comes with a measuring mic, you do all the measuring process, it will give you and EQ to apply for correction, and you can change and tune that EQ to taste

5) then for last but as highly important as all the other steps above you need to get to know to your place very well. You need to get used to it.
So mix a lot there and at some point you will get so used to the way things sound in your room that you already naturally do the mental compensations for it while mixing.
This will have to happen in any room , in any studio, there’s no acoustically perfect studio or monitors, you will have to get to know and get used to how things sound in that specific place.

I produced a record in Abbey Road studio 3, we were there for 3 days. Although we were in the most popular studio in the World I couldn’t make any decisions in that control room, I had no idea what I was listening back and couldn’t trust any judgement, I was lost really. So I ended up using my cheap Sony headphones for 3 days in a very expensive studio, it seems ridiculous but it was the only way of making decisions based on a monitoring system that I knew.
It’s not that the control room was bad, simply I was not used to it, it was very very dry, and I was used to mix in a Dead End Live End control room, quite the opposite, so everything sounded weird to me.

Talking about headphones, I know my Sony headphones so well and been using them for so many years that I can mix a full Album just on them and it will sound pretty good, and if I have to do that I don’t even miss any of my monitors, it’s completely fine.
After you know your monitoring for so many years its starts to be printed automatically into your brain.

We listen with our Brain not with our Ears


Hope this boring post helps
Best regards

 

[scott2000]

Though it takes some trial and error, I can get my mixes to translate

That's a good thing