Avantone Pro MixCube Monitor Review

[Robbo99999]

I totally understand your point. It is pure logic: you want flat converters, a neutral room, but f****d up speakers? It sounds preposterous but I'm of the current understanding that it's merely counter-intuitive. It's impossible not to bring up the subjective claims that, "Flat responses are too gentle, I need X speaker because it helps me mix," which you can read a-plenty around the net - specifically in the gearspace thread that I posted assuming it hasn't been totally sanitized of even those statements in addition to mine.

Like you, I use subjective terms like 'good' and 'bad' and, in this case, 'rubbish' but I want to expand to the other hemisphere of my brain and include metrical descriptions like 'series of three comb filtering-like, hi-Q 10dB peak-to-peak deviations from 3-6kHz'. I can't argue against 'rubbish' other than to say your rubbish might be a mixer's best friend. Believe me, I'm as opinionated as you and often want to say highly offensive things and just stick to my guns but that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I want to upgrade from HS50 to something that helps me make tracks which exude the utmost in sonic ecstasy and currently believe that opinions alone are not the best guide.

Similar to the far-field graphs Amir puts up, this speaker is not listened to in a vacuum or purely anechoic space. Its raw Klippel-magic'ed response is not what you get even 1m away. This is just to say that its response in room is not as wild as it looks and I posted my measurement in support of this claim. Again, we have certain suspicions but no actual peer-reviewed theory as to why mixers prefer Objectively 'Flawed' Speaker A vs Objectively 'Better' Speaker B. I think it would be a tremendous boon to the pro audio community to know this information.

Well I had put an EDIT at the end of my post saying "EDIT: to check you mixes on lesser ranged equipment you could just add various Low & High Passes to your flat anechoic speaker to emulate smaller sized speakers that don't have the low end or the high end."
So if I had the audacity to suggest to a music creator what equipment they make their music on then I'd say full range flat anechoic speakers, and then if you want to check the mix's compatiblity on lesser ranged gear then you can just whack in a few different High & Low Passes onto your speaker to take away the bass and the high end. So I don't think there's any necessity to use randomly rubbish speakers with random horrendous frequency response deviations.

 

[amirm]

@amirm is it possible in klippel to export the impulse response so all can hear how the master equipment for professionals sound with a IR loader

While klippel has demonstrated such, there is no export to wav function like that. I can export graph data but that would be very coarse dataset.

 

[badspeakerdesigner]

I find no real value in these sort of tools for checking mix translation. Just my experience.

This product is just hilarious to me. So it's like an intentionally crappy speaker, but it has a premium price, because it's a "special" kind of crappy lol. If the goal is to see how the mix translates to other less than good audio devices like a TV or bluetooth speaker, why wouldn't you just use those other devices that you more than likely already have? If you don't have them, go get one for much less than this speaker. Just seems kind of ironic to me.

 

[Geert]

Seeing how this discussion evolves, looks like I need to repeat what became a standard in recording studio's is the Auratone and not this Avantone clone. They sound different, the Auratone sounds more balanced while the Avantone sounds like crap. The only reason for the Avatones to exist is that the Auratones were not available for years.

 

[KSTR]

@amirm is it possible in klippel to export the impulse response so all can hear how the master equipment for professionals sound with a IR loader ?

You can extract the relevant data from the zip archive and load it into REW and generate a minimum phase impulse response from it which should be quite close to the published one in this case.

 

[audiofooled]

I am sorry, but this crappy monitor translation check was always wrong-headed. Don't care how common it became.

First off, various TV's, cars and table top radios were all bad in hundreds of different ways. Your mix translating on a Horror Tone in no way insured it would work well on other crappy speakers. My mix sounds good on one crappy speaker it will be fine on all the other ways of being crappy it should be obvious is flawed logic. What might have had some validity was checking mono, and on a reduced bandwidth speaker. So a really good speaker with roll offs on each end would do the trick. Many speakers back in the day likely had response rolling off below 200 hz and rolling off above 4000 hz or even dying quickly above that point. This business about transient goodness and all that is just a bunch of hooey. So if you wanted a secondary speaker maybe LS3/5a's and filtering both ends or some such.

Now the modern version, I'd say some coaxial KEF LS50's with a bit of filtering. OTOH, now you probably want it to work on ear buds. There are thousands of different ear buds and 90 % of them are all horrible in their own unique ways. Some have very unbalanced frequency response, but a lack of general bandwidth cannot be counted upon. It is a fools errand to think one reference bad speaker or earbud could be a good stand in for mix checks. It always was a fool's errand.

You are so right. But, if I may suggest this very interesting, highly dated 5 year old video:

With this in mind, can this little cube present a valuable tool to some people? Clearly it is designed at least not to break when abused, and who cares about on axis response if your job is mainly to "plant an earworm"?

 

[bennybbbx]

You can extract the relevant data from the zip archive and load it into REW and generate a minimum phase impulse response from it which should be quite close to the published one in this case.

thanks alot it work really good. it is possible to choose in REW import impulse response and select the txt file so phase and FR and impulse response is all in. thats another level in hifi heaven . now i can look at all speakers and can buy a speaker that is correct time aligned. with ERB smoothing it look not so horrible, the reduce at 4 khz is nice. I do this on my focal alpha 65 evo too to sound better. this have a peak at 4 khz which is only 1 db but give for me a horrible sound with distortion guitars not good for me.

 

[Spocko]

You are so right. But, if I may suggest this very interesting, highly dated 5 year old video:

With this in mind, can this little cube present a valuable tool to some people? Clearly it is designed at least not to break when abused, and who cares about on axis response if your job is mainly to "plant an earworm"?

If all you need is a good 15 second melodic earworm or riff to make $1 million, your job is done and time to move on to the next one.

 

[audiofooled]

If all you need is a good 15 second melodic earworm or riff to make $1 million, your job is done and time to move on to the next one.

Exactly. Others want to plant theirs too, and you must stand out. God help us all.

 

[dfuller]

I am sorry, but this crappy monitor translation check was always wrong-headed. Don't care how common it became.

I disagree, at some level. I don't own a pair of these, or of any grotbox for that matter - but I do see the value in it as a basic sanity check, an attempt to break the circle of confusion somewhat.

First off, various TV's, cars and table top radios were all bad in hundreds of different ways. Your mix translating on a Horror Tone in no way insured it would work well on other crappy speakers.

Sure. There's no indication that any grotbox was representative of all bad speakers, just that it was a bad speaker. It's a "does this not sound completely broken if it were to be piped into a department store's ceiling speakers or played on a really awful car stereo?" kind of thing.

So a really good speaker with roll offs on each end would do the trick.

Sure, and that's something basically any crappy speaker would do comfortably. Could you just have a bandpass set? Sure, but that might not behave exactly the same way. LS3/5a is not exactly in the same level of crappy and high distortion as an Auratone or a Realistic Minimus 7.

This business about transient goodness and all that is just a bunch of hooey.

Largely, yes. But not entirely. Lots of small ported full range speakers are an absolute mess in the low end.

It is a fools errand to think one reference bad speaker or earbud could be a good stand in for mix checks.

I mean, yes. It's better than nothing though.

In my experience, Auratones were used very sparingly, just for a few minutes. The mix was done on the main monitors and the nearfield speakers. Then a quick check that it didn't sound broken/weird on the Auratones. Sometimes they weren't used at all

Yep. I don't consider them as anything more than a sanity check. If you were to mix largely on them (or on NS10s, or any shitbox sanity check speaker) your mix would sound terrible.

 

[Spocko]

Exactly. Others want to plant theirs too, and you must stand out. God help us all.

The pop music culture that enabled Good Vibrations and Hotel California are mostly dead, but there are still a few "pop" artists like John Mayer who do their own thing (who knew he was a guitar virtuouso??)

 

[Zensō]

You can simulate the axial amplitude response but many other metrics you cannot. Especially with regard to this use case, amplitude response is arguably overrated.

It’s not as if the speaker in question is even remotely close to simulating the overwhelming variety of transducers in use today. Software is clearly the far better solution.

 

[Robbo99999]

I disagree, at some level. I don't own a pair of these, or of any grotbox for that matter - but I do see the value in it as a basic sanity check, an attempt to break the circle of confusion somewhat.


Sure. There's no indication that any grotbox was representative of all bad speakers, just that it was a bad speaker. It's a "does this not sound completely broken if it were to be piped into a department store's ceiling speakers or played on a really awful car stereo?" kind of thing.

Sure, and that's something basically any crappy speaker would do comfortably. Could you just have a bandpass set? Sure, but that might not behave exactly the same way. LS3/5a is not exactly in the same level of crappy and high distortion as an Auratone or a Realistic Minimus 7.

Largely, yes. But not entirely. Lots of small ported full range speakers are an absolute mess in the low end.


I mean, yes. It's better than nothing though.

Yep. I don't consider them as anything more than a sanity check. If you were to mix largely on them (or on NS10s, or any shitbox sanity check speaker) your mix would sound terrible.

I don't agree with any of this for the same arguments that were made originally by a few people already and encapsulated very succinctly when @Blumlein 88 said: "My mix sounds good on one crappy speaker it will be fine on all the other ways of being crappy it should be obvious is flawed logic". I mean you can't refute that. Just take an ideal speaker (anechoic flat & full range) for your music creation and then High & Low Pass it to varying degrees to check it's still balanced and including enough "interest" on gear that can't reproduce the lows and the highs. Logically I can't see a more convenient and practical/valid way of doing it.

 

[Inner Space]

In my experience, Auratones were used very sparingly, just for a few minutes. The mix was done on the main monitors and the nearfield speakers.

I find no real value in these sort of tools for checking mix translation. Just my experience.

I agree. I remember them showing up way back when, just after a fad for running out to the parking lot with cassettes, to "evaluate" how your mix would sound in the car. Both were used as ways to demonstrate how cool and advanced you were, and how you went the extra mile. It was a performative fashion, and basically useless as far as mix quality or translation was concerned. I spent thousands of hours in dozens of places with Auratones perched in front of me, and never used them once - nor did I see anyone else use them. They were purely decorative credibility-claiming items, like the gold discs in the corridor. Or obligatory accessories, like the ashtrays.

 

[mhardy6647]

Oh, noes! The Horrorotones are back!

 

[anphex]

What people often misunderstand is there are actually monitors that are supposed to be trash in sound, giving you the "reference" of an average badly placed household speaker.
Well, it did a pretty good job with that, but you could just get an average badle placed household speaker instead, for 20 $.

 

[heflys20]

IMHO, seems like an outdated waste of money. I've never used one though.

 

[dfuller]

What people often misunderstand is there are actually monitors that are supposed to be trash in sound, giving you the "reference" of an average badly placed household speaker.
Well, it did a pretty good job with that, but you could just get an average badle placed household speaker instead, for 20 $.

Yeah, this is the real reason it's a tough sell. A Realistic Minimus (or literally whatever cheap computer speakers, doesn't really matter what) will get you in the same ballpark for 5% of the price.

 

[mhardy6647]

I don't know. They might be SUPER BAD.

Well, Quincy Jones espoused them. He was MJ's producer, wasn't he?
Seems to follow logically that they'd be SUPER BAD indeed.

 

[dasdoing]

Well, Quincy Jones espoused them. He was MJ's producer, wasn't he?
Seems to follow logically that they'd be SUPER BAD indeed.

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posted this link on page 6, but it seams nobody noticed https://www.quietnormal.com/pathetic-speakers/