It might appear that I had either a brain flatulence or a temporary ocular one, because a few minutes ago I extended my tape again and it’s actually 2 feet to the base of the speaker.
So I ordered these two things:
There was another model with just one arm, but it was more expensive and much taller, which in this case I don’t need.
I like these stands because they don’t only have the system to hold the speakers from the sides at whatever width they need (T7Vs have a width of 8.3” and these go as wide as 11”), but also the front part that keeps them from falling if the supports get loose.
I also ordered a tape of industrial velcro, because that thing can hold an elephant if you use enough. I actually have my center speaker held to a large plate using nothing but several strips of industrial velcro.
I had mentioned before, maybe you missed it, that there are wall mounted monitor stands. You can generally screw into a stud, so they should be very secure.
Oh thanks, that would be a good choice, but in my case I don’t have the desk against a wall. The wall is behind me, because I’m a videographer so I have the desk in a place where I can look to the right and see my TV set to monitor with a better degree of accuracy what I’m doing.
But thanks for the advice anyway. I do have my home theater rear speakers with wall mounts actually.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to those of you who don’t mind helping me learn something, to spend 5 minutes listening to my current project, which was mixed and mastered with my aforementioned setup, although today it was done in the Sansui, and giving me your opinions on it.
When I get the T7Vs and I (hopefully) hook them up, I’m going to save the project as a new version and mix it with the new speakers to see how different they are, and then I’m going to upload it as well.
I mastered this in Wavelab Pro 12, without using Ozone 11 or similar plugins that listen to the loudest part of your song and spit out what they think is a great master, because in my experience, Ozone 11 (and that is the only plugin of that class that I have), completely changes what you spent hours or days mixing into something that is very different. Sometimes it sounds better, sometimes it sounds awful and anywhere in between. But what it always does is to max everything to where the loudest parts sound distorted, and the noise floor is elevated too much for my taste.
I rendered to both WAV and MP3 320 Kbps, but the MP3 file was too large for the forum, so I just uploaded both to my Google Drive and you’re welcome to download them from there:
To me this sounds great but with some things here and there that I want to improve. Don’t be concerned about giving me straightforward criticism. I’m not looking for flowers, I’m trying to learn.
Taking into consideration of your room layout limitions and restrictions in regards to speaker placement and acoustic treatment, have you considered the option of purchasing a good quality set of headphones and pair them with an application that can do crossfeed emulation ?
This would be much easier to setup and might be better value for money considering your circumstances. A good pair of headphones will most likely allow you to hear more detail / resolution in the sound compared to the T7Vs in your room.
This is just a suggestion, ultimately you should get whatever you want and are most comfortable with.
The google link you have provided isn’t linked to any file.
Hi. At any level of critical audio reproduction, the choice of, and positioning of speakers is the number one consideration, when ‘building’ your studio room.
The number two consideration is room treatment.
Everything else is then addressed, including your workstation design and ergonomics - but this must not interfere with the first two considerations.
A long time ago, I discovered that LINEARITY is the most desired attribute of any component of a musician’s ‘kit’. From guitar strings and picks, valves, amps, cables etc - all the way to your monitors.
The idea is to develop the purest signal path and flattest response, so that your system will readily display any and all anomalies, which you can then hopefully address before finally committing to tracking, or even mix something you might eventually call a ‘Master’.
This means that every component of your system should be evaluated fully. Firstly in it’s own right, then secondly as a part of your system. The response must always be linear.
I split the audible frequencies into 4 main areas. Bass, Lo-mids, Upper mids, and Treble. These areas must always be plainly distinct from each other, and co-exist in a linear fashion, with nothing occurring to the detriment of something else in your audible spectrum.
The 4 areas have their own effect on proceedings, and I like to narrow this down to a simple function.
Bass - Width and possible Gravity.
Lo-mids - Body and Punch
Upper-mids - Proximity and Vocality.
Treble - Sparkle and Airiness.
The ears must be trained to have flat-response expectations. This is not an overnight process, but once attained, it is easier to distinguish those 4 areas, and only then can you successfully manipulate your sound sources into a rewarding, non-interfering composite.
Sorry about that. I had linked to the folder with permissions for anyone with the link. I now changed that to a link to the WAV file. While it loads and can play in the browser, I think it’s better if you guys download it and play it in your preferred player.
What headphones do you have in mind? My favorite ones are the Audio-Technica ATH-MSR7bBK, which are very different from the typical Audio-Technica ATH-M50x that you see everyone and their mother with. Those are not bad at all, I do have them and their little brother the M40, but they’re no match to the ATH-MSR7bBK. When connected to a Qudelix 5K or T71 amp, their clarity and sound quality are exceptional. I’m editing this post because I failed to mention that while I use either Qudelix when listening to music for pleasure, when I’m creating music or mixing it, I use a FiiO Q3 that connects to the Behringer audio interface (meaning 6.2mm output of the Behringer to the FiiO 3.5mm input) and the headphones are connected to the 4.2mm balanced audio output in the FiiO. This amp doesn’t have any EQ at all except maybe for a bass enhancer that I keep off.
Also, what is crossfeed emulation? I have a Waves Abbey Road plugin that supposedly lets you mix on headphones as if you were mixing at the studio. To be honest, to me it doesn’t sound like I’m listening to speakers. There is just no way to emulate with headphones sound that is coming from front speakers. The best headphones can pretend to be are speakers that would be at your sides, which is usually not the case.
Your idea is not bad. I’m getting the T7Vs today, but I think they might be going back to uncle Jeff because they might be a little too large, and I might get the T5Vs instead. Not a huge difference except for 1.3” in width, and that could make a difference for me. But I’ll have to see them in person to see what to expect.
Thanks, Solar, very valuable advice in all your posts. I’m considering giving away the bed I have in the guest room since I never have guests, and make that a more dedicated music room, in which case all this trouble with speaker supports could be avoided because I could have a large desk wide enough for all the music gear, and being able to be in a more center position in the room as opposed to against a wall like I am now, because the home theater takes priority.
This sure looks pretty as an example of monitor fronts flush with a large screen, but what would you say is an inherent big problem here, regarding speaker imaging and stereo field perception?
Let’s examine the pic first. What do you think the effect will be of having the speakers so wide apart, and canted in so much, when the working position is with the ears 3ft from the big screen?
Audio crossfeed is a process that blends the left and right channels of an audio signal to simulate how sound is heard from two speakers in a room. It works by mixing a small, delayed amount of the opposite channel into each earbud, which creates a more natural soundstage and can reduce listening fatigue.
Essentially it’s just something good to have if you’re going to do all of your mixing on headphones, it can help you to achieve better quality mixes on headphones that translate better across various different systems.
A pair of headphones combined with a correction software such as Sonarworks can allow you to setup various different EQ curves to suit your taste. So you could setup a EQ profile that sounds pleasant to listen to while working with audio.
It’s important to remember that all speakers and headphones that are marketed towards music studios are never completely linear / neutral across the frequency spectrum, but they are generally more neutral compared to Hifi systems.
Overall the main thing is to have an understanding about the frequency response of your device so that you have a better understanding where to compensate throughout the frequency spectrum while mixing.
This is why people always say that you can achieve good mixes on any system if you “know the speakers” or “know the headphones”.
For example, with a personalized EQ profile to suit your taste you may find that music is more pleasant to listen to, mixing is more fun to do on. This can lead to better quality mixes compared to using completely flat / neutral profile which you may find dull, boring, or lacks clarity. But you do need to know your equipment and have an understanding about it’s frequency response and where to compensate during mixing.
My concern is that without a acoustically treated room, speakers just generally do not sound good. Lots of echo, lots of phasing, lack of clarity etc. Plus you should always have a good quality pair of headphones anyway.
I’m sorry but permanently EQing an uncorrected system to personal taste, and then attempting to mix on it whilst also trying to take into account the additional frequency vices of the non-linear speaker, in order to emulate a translatable flat-response that you could have chosen gearwise in the beginning anyway - that’s simply insane.
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Headphones are categorically not a useful reference tool in any shape or form. Let’s not pretend that they are.
Well, I couldn’t tell you the problem from an educated perspective because I never studied sound engineering. I wish I had, along with music, but well, I’m trying to learn as best as I can on my own, since I couldn’t afford going to either music school or whatever school you study sound engineering at. Luckily these days you can do a lot from home, if you have a decent computer and spend some money on decent instruments and plugins.
But if you want my opinion on what’s wrong with that photo:
It’s a but hard to tell from the photo because it seems like a 80-100mm lens so distances are harder to guess, but it seems to me that she’s too close to them. If I were to trace an imaginary line forward from each of those speakers, the point in space where those lines would meet would be about 1 meter behind her, maybe even 2, but it doesn’t seem to me that she would get the best stereo imaging and even sound definition being so close to them.
Of course that’s kind of relative because I don’t know those speakers. They could have some kind of new technology that makes them produce excellent quality and imaging even in that situation.
I would never have a giant monitor so close to me. While not everyone may suffer from migraines as I do, that giant (49” screen) will probably give anyone a bad headache from that distance
If I was Superman or similar being that can’t possibly suffer from migraines, I still wouldn’t have a single giant monitor as opposed to, in that case with such a large desk, four 32” monitors (and some people with better vision might be fine with 27”). I like the way I work with three 32” monitors, being able to maximize this or that to each of them whenever I need. Also, if I don’t need to, I can use only one or two at times. When I use Cubase I use all three generally, because that’s very useful, but normally I use one, and perhaps two at times.
I don’t see a MIDI keyboard on that desk, and it’s a curved one, so it would have to be a curved MIDI keyboard (mental note: send suggestion to Arturia, NI and Nektar for a curved keyboard), because in the case of my NI Komplete Kontrol MK2 S88, if it even fits, it would take even more desktop space than in my 30” x 60” desk. And it takes a huge chunk of space. I would just use a typical music artist/sound engineer desk that is rectangular but larger than mine. Judging from the photo, she has to move back and forth between her two keyboards and the workstation, which I would find very annoying.
This is a matter of preference, but she’s using Logic Pro. An excellent DAW without a question, which I used for a while before moving to Cubase Pro 12 (and was in fact the reason why I started with Cubase because there was a promo for crossgrading that basically let me buy Cubase Pro 12 for just $215). Cubase may have a bug or two, but there’s no match for its MIDI editing capabilities, and it’s generally stable, crashing mostly when there’s a misbehaved plugin. Logic Pro, in my experience using it for about a year before Cubase, tends to have bugs that are just weird, random, and sometimes hard to reproduce. I was more than fed up with it by the time I switched to Cubase. Logic does have something I wish Cubase had, and I don’t understand why, which is to select a bunch of notes and scale them in time. It really puzzles me that Cubase doesn’t have this unless you scale the part containing the notes, for which you have to cut the part from the first note to the last to make its own part, scale it, then join all the parts again. It’s just weird.
No matter how hot you are, nobody dresses like that for work, unless you’re a singer on stage.
I get that, but at the same, what every sound engineer hears is not the same. Even if you put ten of them together with let’s say, the T7Vs coming from the same audio interface and DAW, they will all hear different sound signatures because their hearing will be from slightly different to very different.
Then in real life you will have several combinations of DAWs, audio interfaces and speakers, because Adam Audio is not the only company that makes those, and as far as I read when I was trying to figure out what to buy, those type of speakers don’t all have the same sound signature. Even within the same brand, they have this line for low budget and other lines that are far more expensive.
So how do we determine what is a really a “neutral” sound?
Music / audio is just as emotional as it is scientific. People make great music and mixes in imperfect conditions all of the time. It’s not insane at all.
If you find that a EQ profile is more enjoyable to listen to and more fun to mix with, and you understand how to mix around it than it’s possible to create an overall more enjoyable experience and great mixes.
If you want to go down the completely flat and neutral route setup you can do that too, it’s personal preference.
The main point I was making is that you have a lot of flexibility of how you would like to make your headphones sound.
This is my current profile for my Sennheiser HD600 headphones and this is what made them sound more enjoyable to me.
