Yes, it's a bad joke, right? Just the term "studio monitor" or "reference monitor" put on a speaker has been mainly a joke, by the numbers, appearing more on hot glued flakeboard boxes more than anything else over the years.
Just so no one gets confused: right now I'm on the path to an OB sub setup. This is by no means final -- just the thing that seems to line up best with all my constraints/objectives.
I.e. this thread is about ideas for diy subs for LF critical listening on a budget, to be paired with ProAc 100a's in an acoustically treated space.
Totally open to other designs i.e. Bob's, which sounds right up my alley. It seems like the 8s, with a fs of 30 might be best here (?)- which does put me over budget. But I'm really looking to set something up I can trust long term, a little extra dough isn't necessarily out of the question.
The off-the-shelf options I was looking at in my price range were fairly dismal. I feel like with a little elbow grease and help from folks around here, I can come up with something better.
Finally, I've got high quality dsp for crossover and LF compensation if necessary.
oh, also, here's a list of the monitors I encounter most frequently working in other studios -- might be illuminating:
NS-10a's, sometimes with sub, sometimes not
Genelec 8040s
Barefoot MicroMains
Auratones or Avantone mixcubes
'crappy speaker' reference: boombox, computer speakers etc.
Adam A7 or A8xs etc.
The occasional Augspurger or ATC main
The occasional KRK, various models
*edit forgot dynaudio BM5a, BM6a, BM15
NS-10a's, sometimes with sub, sometimes not
Genelec 8040s
Barefoot MicroMains
Auratones or Avantone mixcubes
'crappy speaker' reference: boombox, computer speakers etc.
Adam A7 or A8xs etc.
The occasional Augspurger or ATC main
The occasional KRK, various models
*edit forgot dynaudio BM5a, BM6a, BM15
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No it isn't. Some of the most popular monitors are very notoriously not flat. I've read several articles on why the studios choose these, specifically because they are not flat and are indicative of what they think the average consumer's sytem will be like. Some of these models have been available for decades are are particularly famous and sought after. Toole's recent book talks about this issue specifically in chapter 2, and if he's talking about it that early in the book it's a HUGE issue, part of what he calls the "Circle of Confusion".
Even if it was standard practice to eq flat on axis, most of these little monitors have serious issues with dispersion and that can not be fixed with eq or any other method.
Even in the pro community there are lots of people that aren't very good at what they do and there are a lot of terrible studio monitors in very high end studios. There is no standard.
While I would certainly agree that perhaps most recording studios are technically sloppy, and often not real well educated, I still say designing for flat gives you consistency, and the best chance of a playback system being able to reproduce the music faithfully. Playback systems will have technical inaccuracies due to many things, not the least of which is listening room acoustics. Every system/room will be different. It's therefore very difficult to guess at what frequency anomolies a playback system will have and try to design for it. Having said that, coloration in any form is part of the artistic process of mixing.
NS-10s and Auratones would be two good examples of the above. I will say that when it comes to built ins, or mains, a lot of nicer studios go out of their way to get something flat -- and that records are often mixed referencing several different speaker systems.
The common theme I've heard in interviews, and from mentors is: 'Know Your System'. Good mix engineers seem to have an uncanny ability to project what their mix will sound like in the real world, across many systems, based on what they hear off their system.
Let's not forget about mastering engineers, who generally have purpose built playback systems that are incredibly flat, costing tens of thousands of dollars, in acoustically designed rooms. They're the last quality-control step before stuff gets manufactured.
I agree with that (and I think Toole would too) but I'd take it a step further and say that controlled directivity is important too. You can have perfectly flat on axis response and it still won't sound flat if the directivity is a mess (unless you are listening outside or in an anechoic chamber).
It's impossible to guess but it can be easily measured. The problem here is that the measurement will be different at every different location in the room. There's only so far you can go with that unless you want to listen outside or in an anechoic chamber. Designing the system to be the inverse of the room's response and adding room treatments will go a long way but they can't go all the way.
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