ok, not that these may or may not be the best monitors ever. thats not the point
Point is, I havent listened to music thru speakers in years lol. Except for whatever time I spend in my car its all been headphones and laptop speakers.
First vid I watched…one I just ran across a few hours ago.
Already the monitors point out something to me I may not have noticed on 'phones. New music mixes are WAY louder than stuff I grew up on. At least that vid is loud. im a decent fan of Deep Purple/Rainbow and have listened to those songs thousands of times
That new song (2013?) is WAY louder and especially the bottom end compared to these older ones.
Who knows, maybe if corrected for the volume, the bottom end might be similar
So now I have to go back thru all my standards and get my ears calibrated to true stereo etc etc lol. Whitesnake, VanHalen, Led Zep, Priest…here we come. Gotta watch that I dont blow my neighbors below me away with bass thumping thru the floor. Id hate to think if I hooked up a sub
My only other piece of advice…listen. Just listen to as much as you can on them. I use mine for everything from the morning news, to youtube videos, to music, to random articles on the internet. If they have tone controls on them, I’d recommend setting them flat until you’re certain you know where the problems are in the room or the frequency curve.
yeah, I can see it will be a learning curve because now I sort of have to figure out if what im hearing from the monitors is really legit.
So far im hearing lots of bass and vocals but it seems the guitars are non existent lol. Im so used to headphones. Headphones give a type of bass but also lots of guitars come thru on 'phones.
on some songs ALL im hearing is bass lol. Im recognizing the songs from the bass line but I hardly hear some of the other stuff. my stands didnt come in yet so I still have to decide on a good listening position etc
Id say the monitors are closer to headphones than to laptop speakers though. lappy has no bottom or low mid at all
One thing for sure, it adds a lot of fun to just LISTENING. Like I said elsewhere, just experiencing stereo imaging again is sort of a trip in itself
only the last one I was posting about, which by the 4th and 5th mix was sounding a little better anyway. Heard lots of bass. Turns out the 4th mix was fairly close as far as bass level
The stands for the speakers didnt come in yet. So the speakers r at the foot of my bed sitting on top of a footlocker thingy…which isnt high enough. So as I look down at the speakers im only seeing the tweeter and maybe the top 1/2" of the woofer. Sooooo, I dont have line of sight to my ear from the woofer so I am assuming im not hearing a lot of the higher midrange stuff.
In essence i am hearing lotsssss of bass and then high stuff…but guitar and some keys are way too quiet.
When I do get them set up right and listen to my stuff, i will probably hear what everyone else has heard. Bloated lower midrange, missing kick etc etc lol
I do have some cool stuff with lotsssss of vocal overdubs though…that will be cool to hear with the stereo imaging
Whenever I thought I had it down on my phones it sounded very hollow in the midrange, and there was lots of low frequency energy with no meat to it. It made me realize how much time I was wasting “perfecting” things on headphones, only to basically throw most of it away. I have Sennheisers too, which are great for listening, but not so great for making music.
Well its that and also i just am not THAT trained at hearing specific frequencies. I dont think its all that natural to hear stuff at like 60-70 hz etc. I think thats probably more of a learned thing whereas its pretty natural to hear stuff more in the 200-400 range
I do feel I learned a lot in the last few days even on the headphones. Hopefully i’ll have a mini quantum leap soon lol
Its probably a good time for me to go back and remix some of my stuff from the ground up. Some of it is decent songwise but obviously the mixes have been weak
I was cranking them up when I got some fancy 6" monitors way back. They could produce lows but only at high sound pressure levels. I bought some $200 5" ers and added a sub and I can get into my music at a much safer level. Hearing damage is cumulative and it sneaks up on you.
One time I was in bed and this sound came in my head like a high pitched whine and just stayed there, not fun, how can you do anything with that going on? It went away next day but I was scared straight.
Very protective on my hearing since then.
JJ, I just picked up this piece of software called Train Your Ears. It’s really good and useful for doing exactly what you’re talking about. It’s currently on sale at Audiodeluxe.com for $49, and after just a couple of sessions with it I am already making serious progress. It allows you to use both pink & white noise test patterns and your own library of music, you just drag and drop songs into the interface window. This allows you to experience the range of increasingly challenging tests and assessments on material that you are intimately familiar with. I strongly recommend it for anyone needing to get that kind of experience.
I remember this from a CLA interview in Sound on sound:
But most of all," he reveals with a smile, "I listen really quietly. When you’ve been doing this job for a while, you tend to listen at such a low volume that in order for it to hit you in the face, you have to really push it. I listen on [Yamaha] NS10s, the original ones with the covers, plus an old Infinity 12-inch subwoofer that cost me $300, so I can hear the ultra-low end. Listening at low volumes prevents fatigue and you can hear better what’s going on. When you turn things up, after a while all your moves become a smear. So when you’re doing really critical moves, do them at a low level. - See more at: http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/secrets-mix-engineers-chris-lord-alge#sthash.rN5zFEFK.dpuf
This!!! I would say this is one of the very biggest things that made a huge difference in my mixes. If I have to raise my voice at all to be heard over the speakers as I’m dialing things in, I know I’m too loud. I definitely love to crank it up a bit when I’m checking things later, but mixing at low volumes has done wonders for me.
I tend to mix pretty low too. I track just about everything at a normal volume level, except for guitars. For some god-knows-whatever reason, I have to have that kick and snare all over the place when I’m tracking electric guitars. Even using an amp sim…still need em loud. But I’m reminded now and then, that there are things you sometimes need to hear that you can’t at lower volumes.
I’d also be curious to see what CLA defines as low volume.
of course I basically use low volume for everything since I live in an apt. Every guitar I have ever recorded is basically at conversation level. cest la vie
simply not the case in my situation lately. I had stuff torn down and only more recently started back up. I still haven’t put room treatment up. I’m just more aware of what to listen for in my monitors from listening to them so much. I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination.
