Can your speakers keep up?

[DJNUBZ]

I went to audition studio monitors yet again today. I do this every so often to compare what I have to what is new. Today I heard a blue sky monitor one setup. After listening to this setup I realized that it's time for a easily accessable refrence setup, at least for me. I like the idea of using this as a refrence because it includes a matched sub and is fully active. This way I can listen to a whole setup that never changes and I can go to just about any proaudio store and compare what I have or what I have built to a standard. Does anyone else here do something similar?

I also want to say that after listening to this setup that I realize how many bad speaker and amp combo's I have heard. The blue sky isn't the end all be all but it showed me just how poor many consumer and diy setups are that I have heard. Especialy considering this is a 2.1 active setup for $1500.

I also want to say that I have looked for DIY answers to studio nearfield monitors and know that there is a lack of designs and kits. Is this because most DIYers don't have the necessicary tools available to build speakers that require so much planing? If not, could it be that there just arn't that many people looking to remove the speaker from the audio system equation? What do you guys think?

[morbo]

I also want to say that I have looked for DIY answers to studio nearfield monitors and know that there is a lack of designs and kits. Is this because most DIYers don't have the necessicary tools available to build speakers that require so much planing? If not, could it be that there just arn't that many people looking to remove the speaker from the audio system equation? What do you guys think?

Why are there so few DIY studio monitor projects? Probably because the people who would have the most use for studio monitors (sound engineers) are professionals who look at the monitors as a tool they use to do their job. Thus they evaluate it like any other tool - that is, they aren't willing to spend the hours needed to design and test something which will at best give a marginal improvement to their financial bottom line. I suspect they feel that spending $1500 on a perfectly good tool is cheaper than DIYing a similar tool for say, $500 and 40 hours of their time. Not the mention the hassle they would get from other professionals over not using 'industry standard' tools.

Taking this line of argument even futher, treating the speaker as a tool whose only purpose is to reproduce the input signal as accurately as possible makes the design of studio monitors much less suspect to the idea that designing speakers is some sort of magical art, rather than an engineering based craft. The end result is that very few studio monitors are sold based on aesthetics, contrarian engineering practices, or the kind of silly exotic component fetishism that are prevalent in the 'audiophile' world (and yes, the DIY world as well). No one who is looking to buy studio monitors is going to be impressed by things like using a rare endangered wood for the box to provide a more 'rich' sound, or the fact that it uses solid platinum internal wiring, that the tweeter uses holy water instead of ferrofluid, that it looks 'sexy' or has high WAF, nor will they be impressed by any floobie dust type tweaks like intelligent chips or brilliant pebbles. Because they are mostly evaluated on demonstrable performance, and the BS threshold is lower, it is much cheaper to get 90% of the way to the very best than in 'audiophile' speakers, which in turn makes DIYing them less attractive from a 'cost savings' point of view than DIYing 'audiophile' speakers.

As a somewhat off-topic aside, there is a school of thought along these lines in the audiophile world as well, but it is quite unpopular, IMHO largely because it takes so much of the romance and mystery out of audio. Very few people get the same warm fuzzy feeling from measuring, modelling, and testing as they do from swapping big, sexy, expensive components and cables into their system and waxing poetic about the resulting synergy or lack thereof. Personally I feel this has to do with the extent to which many of us (self included) are addicted to playing with our gear: an engineering/measurement/reproduction approach would lead us to only upgrade gear that makes quantifiable improvements to reproduction, or in some cases, functionality. After reaching a certain objective level of performance however, we would have to admit to ourselves that rationally, the expenditure/effort to move further up the diminishing returns curve is so huge that pursuing it would be hugely illogical, and would essentially be inventing reasons to try/buy new gear. An art/subjective/euphonic approach however, lets us keep upgrading, downgrading, 'sidegrading', swapping in and out all sorts of components, in search of the magical 'absolute synergy' that can never be reached. In essence, it gives us a reason to perpetually be buying, saving for, planning for, or evaluating new gear. Basically, it is a much better 'enabler' for guilt-free indulgence in what we don't want to admit to ourselves is an addiction, albeit a very mild one, in most cases

[ShinOBIWAN]

I'm another one that loves the 'monitor' sound.

I used to have an all Mackie HR626 surround setup with their matching HRS120 sub and when I consider exactly how much they cost me and the performance on offer, it was embarrassing to think of all the money I spent before them on both DIY and commercial.

These speakers stopped with me for nearly a year, which for me is a looong time. Then of course I got the itch and started to plan a no holds barred DIY studio monitor with digital active xo's and tri-amping. It took me 8 months to perfect the design and with a substantial financial outlay. The design, building and testing process was arduous and, at some point, I ended up swapping virtually every aspect of the system from the active xo's through to the cabinets, amplification and drivers, infact the only thing that didn't get swapped around was the tweeter. Like I said a fair bit of money spent trying to strive for something out of the normal. But what matters is I have a pair of very decent sounding speakers that will keep up with 5 figure designs easily.

I feel almost certain that had I known just how long these would take to construct(they're still not completely finished) and the amount of effort needed to pull it all off I would have not bothered. I suspect many others would have done the same, including studio engineers.

With regards to references whilst tweaking designs, I believe good headphones to be the best and cheapest option. For $400 you can buy yourself a pair of top-end phones. The only problem is that imaging and soundstage on headphones don't translate well to loudspeakers for obvious reason. The big bonus is that the room's acoustics doesn't influence the tonal balance and detail though.

If your really interested in studio monitors be sure to try and check out ATC's SCM series, especially the larger ones such as the SCM50 and up. Spectacular sound and rather cheap for the quality on offer.

As a controversial aside:

I believe passive designs to have had their day when it comes to reproducing digital formats. Competant studio monitors like the Mackie HR626 beat them out in every area of sound for me. Comparing a pair of monitors that cost £1000 to a set of passives that cost £3000 + £1200 worth of amplication and then to have the monitors win out in all the important areas is just plain embarrasing and hard to swallow.

[DJNUBZ]

"I suspect they feel that spending $1500 on a perfectly good tool is cheaper than DIYing a similar tool for say, $500 and 40 hours of their time. Not the mention the hassle they would get from other professionals over not using 'industry standard' tools. "

You would be surprised how many DIY recording engineers are out there that would be willing to spend the $1500 to build a set of monitors if they felt the would be more accurate then buying a pair of monitors at $1500.

http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/ind...be0cf621795b8b

Is the site I mentioned earlier.

Shinobiwan, have done an online writeup of your build? If so could you post a link.