Adam T8V Studio Monitor Review

[Alchemist_]

Of the actives I own, the JBL 308p are the worst(hissiest) by far. The Genelecs can still be heard up close when the AC is off, but I doubt they'd bother you.

Not sure which is quieter between the two Genelecs I own. Pozz's list says the 8030c is quieter, but I'm not so sure.

308p MK2 or MK1?
I noticed that the JBL has an input sensitivity toggle and a volume knob. Do these controls affect the noise level?

 

[richard12511]

308p MK2 or MK1?
I noticed that the JBL has an input sensitivity toggle and a volume knob. Do these controls affect the noise level?

MK2. I've never messed with the input sensitivity.

 

[Robbo99999]

308p MK2 or MK1?
I noticed that the JBL has an input sensitivity toggle and a volume knob. Do these controls affect the noise level?

Nothing effects the hiss level of the 308p Mkii, it's the same throughout the volume range and also in relation to input sensitivity switch. The one exception is when you turn the volume dial to position zero then there is no hiss, but also no sound, that's min volume level (ie no volume).

 

[digicidal]

Yep same in my case. FWIW the MK1 is much better than the MK2 (at least mine are). I went tried a few of the 306's locally when just released - then gave up...
Buuuuut then they had that ridiculous 1-day holiday sale at adorama - and I decided for less than $80/ea. (with 2 "free" XLR 2m cables) I could deal with the hiss on a tertiary office system. My wife has yet to complain about the quality of her YouTube audio. LOL!

 

[audio2920]

New here, but just been playing with a T8V so thought I'd resurrect this old thread!

[Quick background, I'm a TV/Film/Games sound mixer. In the process of upgrading my home studio I got distracted by talk about the way Adam's ribbon tweeter "presents" the sound and decided I need to dip my toe in and try their T-series. So, I got hold of a T8V knowing it wasn't really going to be something that stayed in my studio, but was curious to see (a) if there was any truth in the whole tweeter thing and (b) just to get a feel for what progress has been made with entry level speakers recently.]

Obviously Amir & others have posted tons of measurements made with a lot of finesse with regard to "quality" and my more crude measurements here tally as much as you'd expect. But, since a fair chunk of my day job involves melting drivers with explosion FX at 85dB ref, all the red lights on the meters etc. it's actually power handing that really limits my choice of monitors. In some ways I'd be better off mixing on a PA system (Well, in a sense, that's what a JBL ScreenArray is IMHO, but anyway....)

So here's a T8V with the sweep levels & THD being pushed up and up, at around 2.8m from the speaker. Mostly seems to run out of go at around 100 cycles before anywhere else*. I wasn't totally sure if this was the driver; it sounded like it might be DSP limiting but I only ran it once, cos, ya know, I don't need to add to my LF driver death toll unnecessarily... Also the top octave seems to roll over too.

Given this is at nearly 3m from the speaker, this is really really impressive to me in a budget monitor of this size!! The most obvious thing is that distortion up at like 4.6k though.

[*Edit: I think I had a bit of a room correction in from 80Hz down. Can't remember the frequencies or what I did now as it was just a lash up to get it working, but I suspect there was some PEQ cut going on, which could explain (a) why it has a bit more apparent headroom below 100Hz and (b) the distortion peak around 68Hz. I thought the issues in that room were lower than that, but maybe not.... oops.]

In terms of my perception of the T8V's sound, I guess of note is that before I found the review on ASR, I put the T8V up and just EQ'd it by ear to sound as "natural" as I could without taking measurements. Interestingly that involved a broad Q (well, medium Q I guess) push around 1.9k. I also felt something wrong around 5k which I couldn't fix with EQ, which I guess (now having more info, thanks ASR!) is actually a bit lower and is likely the 4.3k-ish(?) thing that's already been identified on this thread. So, I'm gonna say, in line with everyone else's more scientific observations, that measured 2kHz dip is clearly audible in real world use, but also fixable to some extent.

Comparing to some Dynaudio BM15s (which I know aren't state of the art, but it's a reference point I know and love, having mixed on them for 15 years or so) the T8V feels a bit "hifi" to me, whereas the BM (rightly or wrongly) gives me more insight in the mid range. Trying to match the T8V to that BM15 sound with EQ/FIR does bring it closer, but there was always something I couldn't quite get comfortable with - in many ways [to my ear, in my room] - The T8V's at it's best with the 2k PEQ'd only and don't touch anything else.

On the plus side I would say the T8V's bass is more extended, should you want it, and it sounds much more point-source than the BMs. I didn't try them as a pair, nor do much off-axis measuring, but I'd imagine the stereo imaging would be pretty decent? Overall, I'm properly impressed by what a monitor at this price point can do these days! While there's nothing about this that makes me want to rush out and buy a more expensive ADAM over and above Dynaudio or JBL's offerings with which I'm familiar, I could totally mix on T8Vs given a mid-range EQ push to un-mask that region a bit.

Oh, here's a weird thing - if I use Dirac in my room it always totally lunches the T8V and it sounds terrible, whereas it hardly touches the sound of the BM15 or other Dynaudios, including some cheap Emits. Dirac is always a bit unwieldy of course, but I don't have an explanation for this.

 

[Alastair]

I’ve not heard the T8V but have the T7V, which similar to yourself, I wanted to see just how ‘bad’ these cheap actives are.
I love them! The Law of diminishing returns really hit me when I compared to some old/larger hi fi active speakers.
I did make the internal cabinet resonate at high volume with some solo piano but frankly I was playing much louder than normal. Overall, very happy to haven taken a punt on these.

 

[CumSum]

Oh, here's a weird thing - if I use Dirac in my room it always totally lunches the T8V and it sounds terrible, whereas it hardly touches the sound of the BM15 or other Dynaudios, including some cheap Emits. Dirac is always a bit unwieldy of course, but I don't have an explanation for this.

You are doing something wrong if DIRAC turns any speaker into something that sounds worse. Either your measurements are bad, be it a poor mic or poor positioning or your target curve is to blame.

 

[AdamG]

New here, but just been playing with a T8V so thought I'd resurrect this old thread!

[Quick background, I'm a TV/Film/Games sound mixer. In the process of upgrading my home studio I got distracted by talk about the way Adam's ribbon tweeter "presents" the sound and decided I need to dip my toe in and try their T-series. So, I got hold of a T8V knowing it wasn't really going to be something that stayed in my studio, but was curious to see (a) if there was any truth in the whole tweeter thing and (b) just to get a feel for what progress has been made with entry level speakers recently.]

Obviously Amir & others have posted tons of measurements made with a lot of finesse with regard to "quality" and my more crude measurements here tally as much as you'd expect. But, since a fair chunk of my day job involves melting drivers with explosion FX at 85dB ref, all the red lights on the meters etc. it's actually power handing that really limits my choice of monitors. In some ways I'd be better off mixing on a PA system (Well, in a sense, that's what a JBL ScreenArray is IMHO, but anyway....)

So here's a T8V with the sweep levels & THD being pushed up and up, at around 2.8m from the speaker. Mostly seems to run out of go at around 100 cycles before anywhere else*. I wasn't totally sure if this was the driver; it sounded like it might be DSP limiting but I only ran it once, cos, ya know, I don't need to add to my LF driver death toll unnecessarily... Also the top octave seems to roll over too.


View attachment 131123

Given this is at nearly 3m from the speaker, this is really really impressive to me in a budget monitor of this size!! The most obvious thing is that distortion up at like 4.6k though.

[*Edit: I think I had a bit of a room correction in from 80Hz down. Can't remember the frequencies or what I did now as it was just a lash up to get it working, but I suspect there was some PEQ cut going on, which could explain (a) why it has a bit more apparent headroom below 100Hz and (b) the distortion peak around 68Hz. I thought the issues in that room were lower than that, but maybe not.... oops.]

In terms of my perception of the T8V's sound, I guess of note is that before I found the review on ASR, I put the T8V up and just EQ'd it by ear to sound as "natural" as I could without taking measurements. Interestingly that involved a broad Q (well, medium Q I guess) push around 1.9k. I also felt something wrong around 5k which I couldn't fix with EQ, which I guess (now having more info, thanks ASR!) is actually a bit lower and is likely the 4.3k-ish(?) thing that's already been identified on this thread. So, I'm gonna say, in line with everyone else's more scientific observations, that measured 2kHz dip is clearly audible in real world use, but also fixable to some extent.

Comparing to some Dynaudio BM15s (which I know aren't state of the art, but it's a reference point I know and love, having mixed on them for 15 years or so) the T8V feels a bit "hifi" to me, whereas the BM (rightly or wrongly) gives me more insight in the mid range. Trying to match the T8V to that BM15 sound with EQ/FIR does bring it closer, but there was always something I couldn't quite get comfortable with - in many ways [to my ear, in my room] - The T8V's at it's best with the 2k PEQ'd only and don't touch anything else.

On the plus side I would say the T8V's bass is more extended, should you want it, and it sounds much more point-source than the BMs. I didn't try them as a pair, nor do much off-axis measuring, but I'd imagine the stereo imaging would be pretty decent? Overall, I'm properly impressed by what a monitor at this price point can do these days! While there's nothing about this that makes me want to rush out and buy a more expensive ADAM over and above Dynaudio or JBL's offerings with which I'm familiar, I could totally mix on T8Vs given a mid-range EQ push to un-mask that region a bit.

Oh, here's a weird thing - if I use Dirac in my room it always totally lunches the T8V and it sounds terrible, whereas it hardly touches the sound of the BM15 or other Dynaudios, including some cheap Emits. Dirac is always a bit unwieldy of course, but I don't have an explanation for this.

Welcome Aboard @audio2920.

 

[amirm]

Oh, here's a weird thing - if I use Dirac in my room it always totally lunches the T8V and it sounds terrible, whereas it hardly touches the sound of the BM15 or other Dynaudios, including some cheap Emits. Dirac is always a bit unwieldy of course, but I don't have an explanation for this.

Dirac seems to try to fill the dips which in a powered monitor, will be a disaster as they don't have the amplification headroom for such boosts.

 

[thewas]

Dirac seems to try to fill the dips which in a powered monitor, will be a disaster as they don't have the amplification headroom for such boosts.

Dirac can fill dips depending the placement of the target curve for several dB which of course reduces the possible max SPL. But I think in most cases the problems appear even at lower levels as filling bass dips related to room acoustic issues often just muddies up the sound, which is why for example Genelecs GLM doesn't do it https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...h-the-eq-rather-than-boost.17728/#post-575418
Myself experimenting with room correction since a decade I also have stopped filling such as it sounds better although the frequency curves might look less flat, our hearing doesn't work and interpret as a mic and steady state response measurement.

 

[richard12511]

Dirac can fill dips depending the placement of the target curve for several dB which of course reduces the possible max SPL. But I think in most cases the problems appear even at lower levels as filling bass dips related to room acoustic issues often just muddies up the sound, which is why for example Genelecs GLM doesn't do it https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...h-the-eq-rather-than-boost.17728/#post-575418
Myself experimenting with room correction since a decade I also have stopped filling such as it sounds better although the frequency curves might look less flat, our hearing doesn't work and interpret as a mic and steady state response measurement.

Is this true with all dips? I've noticed that Dirac completely ignores some dips(no matter what the target looks like), while filling in others. I'd love to understand the logic of how it makes that decision. Subjectively, I haven't noticed a huge difference either way. There was one 54Hz dip I had in one of my previous configs. That one definitely sounded wrong when I filled it in with a Roon filter.

 

[CumSum]

Dirac can fill dips depending the placement of the target curve for several dB which of course reduces the possible max SPL. But I think in most cases the problems appear even at lower levels as filling bass dips related to room acoustic issues often just muddies up the sound, which is why for example Genelecs GLM doesn't do it https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...h-the-eq-rather-than-boost.17728/#post-575418
Myself experimenting with room correction since a decade I also have stopped filling such as it sounds better although the frequency curves might look less flat, our hearing doesn't work and interpret as a mic and steady state response measurement.

That's why the user really needs to understand the limitations of any room correction software when inputting a target curve.

These limitations is also why it is important to get rid of most bass nulls using multiple subs. Before running DIRAC, I've already optimized my LF response to have as few dips as possible. And then I run my subs extra loud compared to the speakers, so when I get into the target curve, I can cut the frequency response, while boosting very little.

Here is an example with my Adam T5V's and Rythmik F12's. But even without subs, you can still design a curve that does not end up creating a +10dB boost filter on a speaker that can't nor shouldn't handle it. In the same room with LSR305's, no subs, and DIRAC 1.0, I had great results, so much so I joined the DIRAC cult.

 

[thewas]

Is this true with all dips? I've noticed that Dirac completely ignores some dips(no matter what the target looks like), while filling in others. I'd love to understand the logic of how it makes that decision. Subjectively, I haven't noticed a huge difference either way. There was one 54Hz dip I had in one of my previous configs. That one definitely sounded wrong when I filled it in with a Roon filter.

Guess not with all dips and so it depends also on the room and other characteristics. Would also like to know that answer on that Dirac algorithm which I have to admit works quite well on many cases.

 

[thewas]

That's why the user really needs to understand the limitations of any room correction software when inputting a target curve.

Exactly, that's also the reason why people with automated room correction products are often not satisfied with the results.

These limitations is also why it is important to get rid of most bass nulls using multiple subs.

Yes, room correction isn't a healing for bad room acoustics and/or flawed placements but only the icing on the cake when physical properties have been considered and optimised.

 

[CumSum]

Is this true with all dips? I've noticed that Dirac completely ignores some dips(no matter what the target looks like), while filling in others. I'd love to understand the logic of how it makes that decision. Subjectively, I haven't noticed a huge difference either way. There was one 54Hz dip I had in one of my previous configs. That one definitely sounded wrong when I filled it in with a Roon filter.

I've noticed that to. Of course DIRAC's "estimated" after correction response looks to good to be true, so you might be inclined to believe it is filling up a 10-20dB null, but with some REW measurements you'll see the dip still exists. And as frequency goes up you'll notice how less aggressive DIRAC's correction becomes, which is a great thing.

I do believe DIRAC has ways of determining whether something is correctable or not. What are all the 9, 13 or 17 measurements for anyways if they can't figure that out? And of course they know more than most that shoving a boost into a null accomplishes nothing.

 

[richard12511]

I've noticed that to. Of course DIRAC's "estimated" after correction response looks to good to be true, so you might be inclined to believe it is filling up a 10-20dB null, but with some REW measurements you'll see the dip still exists. And as frequency goes up you'll notice how less aggressive DIRAC's correction becomes, which is a great thing.

Haha yeah just to be clear, I'm talking about measured results with REW post EQ. I don't know why Dirac shows that +/- 0.1dB "predicted" response like they do. It's a wee bit optimistic, as you say .

 

[YSC]

New here, but just been playing with a T8V so thought I'd resurrect this old thread!

[Quick background, I'm a TV/Film/Games sound mixer. In the process of upgrading my home studio I got distracted by talk about the way Adam's ribbon tweeter "presents" the sound and decided I need to dip my toe in and try their T-series. So, I got hold of a T8V knowing it wasn't really going to be something that stayed in my studio, but was curious to see (a) if there was any truth in the whole tweeter thing and (b) just to get a feel for what progress has been made with entry level speakers recently.]

Obviously Amir & others have posted tons of measurements made with a lot of finesse with regard to "quality" and my more crude measurements here tally as much as you'd expect. But, since a fair chunk of my day job involves melting drivers with explosion FX at 85dB ref, all the red lights on the meters etc. it's actually power handing that really limits my choice of monitors. In some ways I'd be better off mixing on a PA system (Well, in a sense, that's what a JBL ScreenArray is IMHO, but anyway....)

So here's a T8V with the sweep levels & THD being pushed up and up, at around 2.8m from the speaker. Mostly seems to run out of go at around 100 cycles before anywhere else*. I wasn't totally sure if this was the driver; it sounded like it might be DSP limiting but I only ran it once, cos, ya know, I don't need to add to my LF driver death toll unnecessarily... Also the top octave seems to roll over too.


View attachment 131123

Given this is at nearly 3m from the speaker, this is really really impressive to me in a budget monitor of this size!! The most obvious thing is that distortion up at like 4.6k though.

[*Edit: I think I had a bit of a room correction in from 80Hz down. Can't remember the frequencies or what I did now as it was just a lash up to get it working, but I suspect there was some PEQ cut going on, which could explain (a) why it has a bit more apparent headroom below 100Hz and (b) the distortion peak around 68Hz. I thought the issues in that room were lower than that, but maybe not.... oops.]

In terms of my perception of the T8V's sound, I guess of note is that before I found the review on ASR, I put the T8V up and just EQ'd it by ear to sound as "natural" as I could without taking measurements. Interestingly that involved a broad Q (well, medium Q I guess) push around 1.9k. I also felt something wrong around 5k which I couldn't fix with EQ, which I guess (now having more info, thanks ASR!) is actually a bit lower and is likely the 4.3k-ish(?) thing that's already been identified on this thread. So, I'm gonna say, in line with everyone else's more scientific observations, that measured 2kHz dip is clearly audible in real world use, but also fixable to some extent.

Comparing to some Dynaudio BM15s (which I know aren't state of the art, but it's a reference point I know and love, having mixed on them for 15 years or so) the T8V feels a bit "hifi" to me, whereas the BM (rightly or wrongly) gives me more insight in the mid range. Trying to match the T8V to that BM15 sound with EQ/FIR does bring it closer, but there was always something I couldn't quite get comfortable with - in many ways [to my ear, in my room] - The T8V's at it's best with the 2k PEQ'd only and don't touch anything else.

On the plus side I would say the T8V's bass is more extended, should you want it, and it sounds much more point-source than the BMs. I didn't try them as a pair, nor do much off-axis measuring, but I'd imagine the stereo imaging would be pretty decent? Overall, I'm properly impressed by what a monitor at this price point can do these days! While there's nothing about this that makes me want to rush out and buy a more expensive ADAM over and above Dynaudio or JBL's offerings with which I'm familiar, I could totally mix on T8Vs given a mid-range EQ push to un-mask that region a bit.

Oh, here's a weird thing - if I use Dirac in my room it always totally lunches the T8V and it sounds terrible, whereas it hardly touches the sound of the BM15 or other Dynaudios, including some cheap Emits. Dirac is always a bit unwieldy of course, but I don't have an explanation for this.

it looks amazingly flat for real life usage! and for bass everyone got to do some room correction so that's expected, but for anything up it looks amazing, though as Amirm says it may be too flat for real in room

 

[audio2920]

Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack this T8V thread with yet more Dirac talk, but I'll carry on as it's partially T8V relevant

You are doing something wrong if DIRAC turns any speaker into something that sounds worse. Either your measurements are bad, be it a poor mic or poor positioning or your target curve is to blame.

Generally I'd agree with that. So, I decided to re-run it. Turns out the USB extender I was using in the UMIK mic wasn't do the business. It's a 12m cable run to the machine room. I was just unlucky that in the three attempts I made, it messed up on the T8V every time and not the BM....! Different extender in place, but same procedure; results are much more similar. [I remember this happened to me years ago when I first played with Dirac. I recorded the mic's output and could clearly hear it glitching. Weird it doesn't throw errors in the OS/DAW but there you go. I probably picked up the same extender that's been on the shelf since then. And I'll probably fail to throw it out and do the same again in another 5 years time ]

For what it's worth, the main 7.1.4 monitoring chain in that room does include Dirac in the form of 2x MiniDSP DDRC88s and I'm happy with it. It took me a few goes to begin, through both trial and error of mic positioning and target curve refinement. I also tried Dirac and Trinnov when the room had 5.1 only. Trinnov was kinda the same deal. I do have a "No Dirac, Manual PEQ-only below 200Hz" preset, but I think while it's a more fun listening experience, I'm confident the filters the Dirac's made are a better reference point for mix translation.

Oh and yeah, I have no idea about Dirac's predicted response either. It looks bonkers. Whether it's the case or not, it makes me *think* it doesn't "understand" what's way outside of minimum phase and just tries to flatten the whole lot. Then when you measure the results, you still see the same nulls because, well, they're basically unfixable of course. I guess you could prove this by measuring electronically before and after without a room in the system. Amir says it does try to fill in response and I'm inclined to agree.

Anyway, back to the T8V. The BM15 and T8V, while spectrally "the same" post-Dirac, the BM still sounds more "open". This is now going a bit beyond what I set out to test now, the answers to which are: (1) The T8Vs sound great for this price point (2) They handle low frequency "abuse" (In my case, "use") better than I expected given the relatively low power amp ratings, but they'd really need another 6dB of go on them [in that room] to reproduce full dynamic, full-band at theatrical reference level, at 3m. [That's not a criticism, this is nearfield speaker...] In reality, even at that distance they'd probably be passable for most programme material at "85dB" ref but you could certainly saturate them doing bass drops and so on. There's not really a fixed reference level for Home Entertainment any more, but since it's typically it's mixed between 3 and 10dB down on theatrical, they'd definitely cope with that in real world use.

But.... One observation of the very limited measurements I have here are that the phase measurement for the BM is smoother against the T8V, which is stepped. Dirac makes those steps wider and hence deeper. I wonder if this difference is an audible thing?

Here's a bit of an unwrapped graph (T8V in green, BM in blue). It's more obvious across the whole range but you'll get the idea... Side note, both speakers are just off-centre (one left, one right) and now behind an acoustically transparent screen as I wanted to see if that interacted with the HF in any different way between the waveguided T8V and basic soft domed BM... It didn't. Or rather, it didn't within what I can hear/measure.

Welcome Aboard @audio2920.

Thank you!! (So much knowledge here; great forum!)

 

[CumSum]

Generally I'd agree with that. So, I decided to re-run it. Turns out the USB extender I was using in the UMIK mic wasn't do the business. It's a 12m cable run to the machine room. I was just unlucky that in the three attempts I made, it messed up on the T8V every time and not the BM....! Different extender in place, but same procedure; results are much more similar. [I remember this happened to me years ago when I first played with Dirac. I recorded the mic's output and could clearly hear it glitching. Weird it doesn't throw errors in the OS/DAW but there you go. I probably picked up the same extender that's been on the shelf since then. And I'll probably fail to throw it out and do the same again in another 5 years time ]

You'll need an active USB extender at those cable lengths, especially since the UMIK-1 is USB powered.

Anyway, back to the T8V. The BM15 and T8V, while spectrally "the same" post-Dirac, the BM still sounds more "open". This is now going a bit beyond what I set out to test now, the answers to which are: (1) The T8Vs sound great for this price point (2) They handle low frequency "abuse" (In my case, "use") better than I expected given the relatively low power amp ratings, but they'd really need another 6dB of go on them [in that room] to reproduce full dynamic, full-band at theatrical reference level, at 3m. [That's not a criticism, this is nearfield speaker...] In reality, even at that distance they'd probably be passable for most programme material at "85dB" ref but you could certainly saturate them doing bass drops and so on. There's not really a fixed reference level for Home Entertainment any more, but since it's typically it's mixed between 3 and 10dB down on theatrical, they'd definitely cope with that in real world use.

Applying DIRAC to the same sets of speakers with the same curve definitely draws differing speakers closer together in sound, but there will still be distinct differences between them. I do find the Emotiva Airmotiv 5S and Adam T5V have similar qualities, and both outclass my JBL 306P's with or without DIRAC. And both go louder in a cleaner sounding fashion.

It might not be too fair to expect the Adam T8V to match the BM15 as they are much bigger and rated for much more SPL (10dB more). BM15 should sound much more dynamic from a mid-field setup. Especially without subs and a high-pass filter on the mains. I could surprisingly push my Airmotiv 5S to absurd SPL levels from 4M away with the help of my 18" subs. Of course my Stealth 8's take it too another level. But they are 4 times bigger in volume and have 4 times the amount of power

 

[audio2920]

You'll need an active USB extender at those cable lengths, especially since the UMIK-1 is USB powered.

Totally. Both were active as it happens, but I guess there's something about the "broken" one the system or the UMIK isn't happy about.

It might not be too fair to expect the Adam T8V to match the BM15 as they are much bigger and rated for much more SPL (10dB more). BM15 should sound much more dynamic from a mid-field setup. Especially without subs and a high-pass filter on the mains. I could surprisingly push my Airmotiv 5S to absurd SPL levels from 4M away with the help of my 18" subs. Of course my Stealth 8's take it too another level. But they are 4 times bigger in volume and have 4 times the amount of power

Absolutely. I never expected the T8V to compete with the BM15. But I am impressed how close it gets. Even in terms of SPL. I'm sure you're right that the BM15 blows the T8V out of the water in overall SPL, but cone excursion seems to be the short-term limiting factor for the BM's capability down low. In my in-room measurements the T8V was only a dB (or two, maybe) shy of it, below around 100Hz. is So, in a film mix the "apparent" SPL handling of the T8V is much closer than I'd imagined, as of course it's that low-ish frequency stuff where you run out of speaker [in any small slightly underspec'd room] before you run out of track on the recorder. ...Then I sit there pondering for just a moment, for 100th time that day, the merits and curses of dumping to the .1