The OP was apparently banned last year for using more than one forum account--a completely different matter.
As such, this thread is "OP-less"--so no worries.
Chris
All is well then! ;-)
Didn't know of the OPs ban, just reacted to somebody's comment.
Had not expected this to carry on this long...
Studio monitor is a denotes an application more than a specific type of speaker.
You can if you so desired stick any speaker in a studio and it becomes a monitor. It could be active, passive,small or huuuge, co-axial, 2way, 3way, 4way etc.
Anything except planars may be, I think they wouldn't survive someone dropping a live mic. And that WILL happen.
Haven't seen any OBs either but I know of at least one engineer who uses them.
Didn't know of the OPs ban, just reacted to somebody's comment.
Had not expected this to carry on this long...
Studio monitor is a denotes an application more than a specific type of speaker.
You can if you so desired stick any speaker in a studio and it becomes a monitor. It could be active, passive,small or huuuge, co-axial, 2way, 3way, 4way etc.
Anything except planars may be, I think they wouldn't survive someone dropping a live mic. And that WILL happen.
Haven't seen any OBs either but I know of at least one engineer who uses them.
I rarely read clear explanations of why some forumers still uses tiny cheap fullranges in large and complex enclosures.
Perhaps some people are laughting loud inside, when technically well implemented and despite of severe limitations and drawbacks, they are garant of a global parameters equilibrium that is hard to reach with others configurations without a very high level of technical skills and years of experience.
Hi Earl,
Interesting test and results.
I can imagine, to some extent, that all 15" drivers, driven at low levels and EQ'd to the same frequency response, ought to sound similar.
However, that doesn't play well with those claiming some drivers have better low-level detail retrieval than others. Take the 3" Vifa wideband as an example. Some people rather like it. It's usefully flat over a fairly wide range. However, some say that a Mark Audio Alpair driver gives a considerably more detailed presentation, allowing the listener to hear more "into the recording". That could be a 10kHz peak in the frequency response, but I trust those that've heard both (Planet10, among others) to know the difference.
There's another caveat to the test you mentioned, too - high power levels. A £50 15" driver will not take 2KW peaks the way a £500 15" will. The £50 one likely wouldn't even survive that once, while the £500 one would take that hammering every day for 10 years.
I get that it's an unlikely situation in home HiFi, but I think its still worth noting.
Chris
Studio monitors are supposed to have better frequency and phase response than the typical home or car set-up, and be neutral sounding. Many are built for the nearfield and wouldn’t work well in a large living room. Some are built into the studio walls. Also, they are built to take more abuse, like a cymbal falling on an open microphone. You can use studio monitors in the home, JBL sold theirs to the hifi market.
Is that all? If I pick a speaker with a freq resp @ 22KHz -1dB, this means is a better studio monitor than the one who can only do 20KHz -1dB?
What about energy storage? or polar response?
Yes, there is more to the story and different drivers do make a difference, but not because of their THD and the like, that's my point. Power handling and reliability are big factors, which is why I use pro drivers, because they excel at those characteristics. But all of the pro offerings are pretty much equal in performance, no one company stands out in my mind.
I choose large drivers for their directivity - their massive power handling is simply a bonus.
There is an apparent dichotomy in the marketplace...with "accuracy" in one camp--represented often by brands like Genelec, Neumann, etc. These tend to be these used more for serious music production--like classical and perhaps small group jazz (bebop, etc.).
The other camp is representative of typical [i.e., bad] consumer loudspeakers, including the auto full-range cones of the 1960s. This is the Auritone and Yamaha NS-10M camp and is typical of the more pop music production studios. The basic idea is that you use a bad monitor for "translation", but one that's purported to be a median of most bad loudspeakers, you'll sell more recordings. YMMV.
Most of the larger horn-loaded models developed in the 1970s and earlier, e.g., JBL, UREI, etc. have somewhat fallen out of fashion in studio work--due in no small part to the downsizing of many of the studio rooms themselves and the shift to multichannel mixing and mastering which requires more real estate.
The increased efficiency of horn-loaded monitors leads to not-so-subtle differences in mixing and mastering preserving more dynamic final products and producing less strident music tracks--in my experience. Westlake markets horn-loaded mid-high driver monitor models in their Reference series, as does JBL in their newer M2, etc.
I recommend Philip Newell's book on Recording Studio Design for much more detailed information on this subject. Toole also talks about this subject briefly in his 3rd edition.
I had a very similar discussion with a recording engineer just last night. Something like 70-80% of music is listened to in a car - we spend a lot of time in our cars. So producers often (usually) target their mixes so that they sound good in that environment, i.e. poor speakers , heavy compression.
That it is totally wrong to do this in the media rather than the car playback system seems lost on the producers, so we all get to live with this mistake and the poor quality of the recordings that result.
That it is totally wrong to do this in the media rather than the car playback system seems lost on the producers, so we all get to live with this mistake and the poor quality of the recordings that result.
Philip Newell has this discussion in chapters 15 and 19 of his 2nd ed., linked above. My own thinking on this subject (in case anyone actually cares) is not unlike your statement above. In fact my opinions fall much closer to the thoughts expressed by Newell.
One thing that has always occurred to me: if the mastering studios (and especially the A&R suits at the major record companies) stopped "making music that sounds good on bad loudspeakers", then perhaps the loudspeaker industry would produce many fewer bad-sounding loudspeakers, and the situation would right itself.
I guess my simplistic thinking on this subject is also much too naive in terms of addressing the real economic drivers that keep the situation as-is. And I've found that enumerating those factors, for almost any domain of interest, becomes extremely unpopular once the veneer of "putting a positive spin" on those factors is stripped away.
Chris
One thing that has always occurred to me: if the mastering studios (and especially the A&R suits at the major record companies) stopped "making music that sounds good on bad loudspeakers", then perhaps the loudspeaker industry would produce many fewer bad-sounding loudspeakers, and the situation would right itself.
I guess my simplistic thinking on this subject is also much too naive in terms of addressing the real economic drivers that keep the situation as-is. And I've found that enumerating those factors, for almost any domain of interest, becomes extremely unpopular once the veneer of "putting a positive spin" on those factors is stripped away.
Chris
It is a little bit awkward to see that the worst conditions are more taken in account than good ones.
