Are studio monitors overrated?

[sigbergaudio]

@FireEmblem

There are some common arguments here that (with respect) doesn't really hold true (or at least only partially), both from yourself and from Tom Holkenberg.

Let's me try to paraphrase:

You have the argument: "Consumers will have flawed speakers, so me as a producer should have flawed speakers too"

And then you have the argument "Consumers will have a flawed room, so me as a producer should have a flawed room too".


The problem in both instances is that your speakers won't have the same flaws as any given consumer, and your room won't have the same flaws as any given consumer.

So your mixes won't magically even out to work well for everyone else.

Since sound engineers and producers and people in general are good at adapting, it's certainly possible to do good work on poor speakers and in poor rooms, but it's not inherently better, and it's certainly not easier. The only ones saying this are those who haven't actually tried the alternative.

 

[Purité Audio]

In my admittedly small sample of ‘pro’ customers, I have found the majority have very little technical knowledge of loudspeaker design and subsequently are just as prone to subjective marketing as any ‘audiophile’.
Keith

 

[Tovarich007]

This is probably the case. A very good musician/arranger/mixer friend of mine (sadly passed away a few years ago) was not a technophile nor audiophile at all. His pro gear wasn't bad at all anyway. Genelec first generation 1040 monitors : he bought them because they were the most well known good compact monitor at that time, after talking with vendors and more technophile pro friends than him, without listening to them nor studying their specs (they are always very good speakers nowadays), a RME Babyface interface, bought the same way, a pretty good interface too, a few various mikes not expensive, except one Neumann bought second hand, a Yamaha electronic keyboard, his guitars and Protools.
For his own pleasure, he preferred listening on vintage JBL speakers from the 70s powered by a vintage TEAC amp and a cheap CD player or vintage small Thorens turntable.

His lack of technical knowledge for audio gear doesn't prevent him from doing excellent recording, mixes and musical arrangements.

As for mixing, I think pros and amateurs alike are doing some terminologic confusion leading to misinterpretation and sometimes uncomplete appreciation of their own works. Producing good reliable mixes on most systems is necessary, it can't be denied. But good reliable mix doesn't mean good sounding.
it just means you can listen approximately the mix intended by the mixer on any kind of systems or so.
It doesn't mean, first that the mix is pleasant for everybody (as for me, I can't count anymore the number of mixes of music and soundscores which please the whole audio industry, including musicians, especially in the fields of rock-pop-hip hop or movie blockbusters, and sound awfully agressive or artificial for my taste).
And secondly, moreover, it doesn't mean at all that the quality of sound of a small cheap desktop speaker which was used for a mix (why not after all), sounds the same nor as good as a Neumann or Genelec high end monitor.

That's two very different things indeed :
1- the result of works, which can satisfy the professionnal, and make him proud of his works, because they please the people for whom he or she is working for ;
2- the sound quality obtained in every nuance, from a good monitor or hifi speaker (not necesseraly super expensive nor very large, I definitely agree with Keith on this point).

So the question of this thread "are studio monitors overrated ?" is biased because of the confusion of two very different concepts and sound perception.

 

[Tovarich007]

P.S. There is anyway one point on which I agree with Fireemblem : the fact that the human hear -the human brain and mind, more exactly- can compensate a lot of flaws in sound perception (lack of linearity, lack of space, to some extent even some amount of distorsion and room modes). But of course the human brain is not capable of compensating everything, far from it. But it's true that our mind , with experience and concentration, can do marvels to some extent.

The problem is that Firemeblem is pushing much too far his assements, first because of the conceptual confusion he's doing, and secondly when he writes, for example, that EQ are finally not necessary nor actually useful.
But of course they are ! All of my friends musicians or pros use EQ to some extent. They don't offer magical solution but they can help, even if experience can compensate partly their absence.

 

[Jiraya369]

In my admittedly small sample of ‘pro’ customers, I have found the majority have very little technical knowledge of loudspeaker design and subsequently are just as prone to subjective marketing as any ‘audiophile’.
Keith

my friend, you are one friggin wise fella

You said exactly what i was thinking! All these pros with their expensive ahh equipment usually end up going for the less accurate monitors and calling them "accurate but musical" and all other variations of this shi. It's infuriating seeing them call Genelecs or Neumanns "bland" or "boring" and stuff and saying that they don't really do much. Ridiculous stuff like that made me trust only ASR and Erin for anything speaker related because you literally can NOT trust anyone, not even the pros.

 

[Waxx]

Mixes need to translate to all systems, and that is easier with neutral low distortion speakers, but not inpossible with others if you know them well. I also mixed a lot (mostly remixes for dj's) on mark audio fullrange speakers that I know inside out at home and the do translate well to high power dj systems where they are used.

But for serious paid work, i prefer a good studio setup in a treated room and with neutral speakers. It's just easier to make it work. And as i don't own a studio, a neutral monitorint setup is needed in the studio's i did use in the past for that. I'm out of the bussiness (it was always a side bussiness) now (already for a while), and hardly mix anything anymore. Mainly because i'm out of sight when i left the city and moved to the middle of nowhere. But if I had to start again, i probally get some Neumann monitors, and don't mix most on my beloved mark audio fullrange speakers (or at least not only on them) and treat my room. It just makes the job easier.

 

[EngineerNate]

In my admittedly small sample of ‘pro’ customers, I have found the majority have very little technical knowledge of loudspeaker design and subsequently are just as prone to subjective marketing as any ‘audiophile’.
Keith

Buddy of mine has worked at one of the studios Sinatra recorded at and the folks there have a near spiritual reverence for the interconnects and built in wiring that’s been there since that time.

Humans are silly.

 

[Ropeburn]

Buddy of mine has worked at one of the studios Sinatra recorded at and the folks there have a near spiritual reverence for the interconnects and built in wiring that’s been there since that time.

Humans are silly.

At least they don't replace the perfectly fine old cables with snake oil.

 

[FireEmblem]

i literally used a pair of adam t5v on my desktop in my untreated, reflective room.

Then tell me how you believe this is delivering

the thing about monitors is that there's no learning process, you do something and it translates instantly.

this.

It doesn't matter whether the coloration, artifacts, resonances and everything else that could possibly confuse you come from your room reflections or from the speakers, in both cases you're not having a signal representative of the actual, unaltered source, so that it will "translate instantly" as you claimed.

So I stand by what I said: Unless you're sitting in an acoustically perfectly treated room, and probably as well measured and perfectly calibrated / EQ'ed speakers, you're not having the crazy gains of "hearing everyting truthful" as you try to make it out to be.

So whether you get used to the out-of-the-box-coloration that your T5V provide together with your room reflections, or if you get used to the out-of-the-box-coloration from a consumer system and your room reflections does literally not matter. It's the same process, and in the end you'll be able to understand how good sound sounds like in your room and make the correct decisions. Because either way isn't adding so much that you can't tell apart 1 and 2 anymore.

Your subjective experiences aren't wrong but the conclusions you're drawing are, headphones struggle above 1khz, that's a fact. Look at a headphone graph and a speaker graph

Maybe you're looking too much at graphs, which is basically what my OP is about. I don't care what the graph says, whatever I mix on my Superlux HD681 sounds exactly the way I wanted on every other system, from the smallest bluetooth box up to professional studio gear.

That's the point of my post, people stress too much about graphs and minor dB discrepancies that hold little to no value as a problem irl.

Like, why learn a flawed system when you can just forget about the system part and let your monitors just act like a window to the mix, allowing you to learn the mixing process instead of having to think about the system?

The confusion in your assumption comes from the fact that you believe your two Adam T5V on your desk are somewhat a not-flawed system compared to a consumer system. Hence I highlighted that your dream scenario that you seem to take for granted for just everybody who's throwing a pair of $300 into their untreated room is galaxies apart from what you believe.

And then there's even a huge difference between different high-end mixing rooms that all have been measured, calibrated and acoustically treated and the mixes that come out of them will still all sound different. The search for perfect linearity or the perfect representation of all frequencies without other issues caused by absorbers, elements in the room you can't change, measuring mistakes and whatnot could possibly go on forever, without ever reaching the end goal.

So what really matters is the question, how much of all of that is really required and where the point is, where people could mix perfectly fine, whether or not they believe in it. I'm saying that this point is very early in the grand scheme of what people believe is required.

Expensive gear is mainly purchased in hope for a shortcut that will just skip a couple of months or years of hard practice, which it doesn't. Just like people spend another 5k on virtual instruments during black friday which they'll never actually use, hoping that it will improve their compositions without having to spend months just practicing with what they have.

Again, you do you bud, but just cool it with the weird ideas that you're trying to shove down others' throats for no reason.

Nobody is shoving down anything your throat "for no reason", this is a forum for discussions. You're free to leave the thread and do something else if you're not interested. But walking into a pizzeria over and over again while complaing that you dislike the smell and that they should stop pushing pizza on you is kinda weird. Try making use of free will.

 

[EngineerNate]

I mean…

The entire thing with near field monitoring is the direct sound dominates and room stuff isn’t as impactful right?

In any case, layering bad room performance on top of bad speaker performance is strictly worse than having just one or the other. Sound degradation is additive.

 

[Jiraya369]

Then tell me how you believe this is delivering



this.

It doesn't matter whether the coloration, artifacts, resonances and everything else that could possibly confuse you come from your room reflections or from the speakers, in both cases you're not having a signal representative of the actual, unaltered source, so that it will "translate instantly" as you claimed.

So I stand by what I said: Unless you're sitting in an acoustically perfectly treated room, and probably as well measured and perfectly calibrated / EQ'ed speakers, you're not having the crazy gains of "hearing everyting truthful" as you try to make it out to be.

So whether you get used to the out-of-the-box-coloration that your T5V provide together with your room reflections, or if you get used to the out-of-the-box-coloration from a consumer system and your room reflections does literally not matter. It's the same process, and in the end you'll be able to understand how good sound sound like in your room and make the correct decisions. Because either way isn't adding so much that you can't tell apart 1 and 2 anymore.




Maybe you're looking too much at graphs, which is basically what my OP is about. I don't care what the graph says, whatever I mix on my Superlux HD681 sounds exactly the way I wanted on every other system, from the smallest bluetooth box up to professional studio gear.

That's the point of my post, people stress too much about graphs and minor dB discrepancies that hold little to no value as a problem irl.



The confusion in your assumption comes from the fact that you believe your two Adam T5V on your desk are somewhat a not-flawed system compared to a consumer system. Hence I highlighted that your dream scenario that you seem to take for granted for just everybody who's throwing a pair of $300 into their untreated room is galaxies apart from what you believe.

And then there's even a huge difference between different high-end mixing rooms that all have been measured, calibrated and acoustically treated and the mixes that come out of them will still all sound different. The search for perfect linearity or the perfect representation of all frequencies without other issues caused by absorbers, elements in the room you can't change, measuring mistakes and whatnot could possibly go on forever, without ever reaching the end goal.

So what really matters is the question, how much of all of that is really required and where's the point where people could mix perfectly fine, whether or not they believe in it, granted they have the required skill level. And I'm saying that this point is very early in the grand scheme of what people believe is all required. And it's mainly driven by skill, not by gear. And no amount of expensive gear will act as a shortcut for learning these things.




Nobody is shoving down anything your throat "for no reason", this is a forum for discussions. You're free to leave the thread and do something else if you're not interested. But walking into a pizzeria over and over again while complaing that you dislike the smell and that they should stop pushing Pizza on you is kinda weird. Try making use of free will.

speakers above 1khz or the schroeder frequency send to your ears exactly what the speaker is producing, for the most part at least. Below that, the room dominates and shifts the sound. My room's schroeder frequency is 252.64 hz. And I can easily trust ANYTHING i mix above 500 hz. That's because the desk bounce creates some weirdness around 300 hz.

I still don't understand why you're yapping on and on about such a weird point. You're wasting your time as well as mine. You don't know much about speakers, headphones, iems nor about our ears and im starting to doubt if you even know much about mixing because you're saying weird things and my main point is still that studio monitors are not overrated.

Nobody is shoving down anything your throat "for no reason"

fella that's what you're doing here. You come to a Physics class and you're saying Newton is kinda overrated

 

[FireEmblem]

speakers above 1khz or the schroeder frequency send to your ears exactly what the speaker is producing, for the most part at least. Below that, the room dominates and shifts the sound. My room's schroeder frequency is 252.64 hz. And I can easily trust ANYTHING i mix above 500 hz. That's because the desk bounce creates some weirdness around 300 hz.

I still don't understand why you're yapping on and on about such a weird point. You're wasting your time as well as mine. You don't know much about speakers, headphones, iems nor about our ears and im starting to doubt if you even know much about mixing because you're saying weird things and my main point is still that studio monitors are not overrated.

fella that's what you're doing here. You come to a Physics class and you're saying Newton is kinda overrated

Let me know when you're able to adress the big dissent in your argument:

t doesn't matter whether the coloration, artifacts, resonances and everything else that could possibly confuse you come from your room reflections or from the speakers, in both cases you're not having a signal representative of the actual, unaltered source, so that it will "translate instantly" as you claimed.

So I stand by what I said: Unless you're sitting in an acoustically perfectly treated room, and probably as well measured and perfectly calibrated / EQ'ed speakers, you're not having the crazy gains of "hearing everyting truthful" as you try to make it out to be.

So whether you get used to the out-of-the-box-coloration that your T5V provide together with your room reflections, or if you get used to the out-of-the-box-coloration from a consumer system and your room reflections does literally not matter. It's the same process, and in the end you'll be able to understand how good sound sound like in your room and make the correct decisions. Because either way isn't adding so much that you can't tell apart 1 and 2 anymore.

otherwise you're just

wasting your time as well as mine

And if you don't like the thread,

Try making use of free will.

leave the thread and do something else if you're not interested.

Oh, before I forget it

fella that's what you're doing here. You come to a Physics class and you're saying Newton is kinda overrated

that's a bad analogy. It's actually coming into the physics class and discussing that people tend to over-interpret Newton and what they derive from it is overrated.

If there's a water company tricking you with marketing into believing that you'd need 10L of water a day or you're in cognitive disadvantage, and your human psychological patterns kick in and absolutely want you not to be in disadvantage, so you buy in and fight for your live that this purchase was absolutely necessary, you're not denying that humans need water.

 

[Jiraya369]

Let me know when you're able to adress the big dissent in your argument:



otherwise you're just



And if you don't like the thread,

i've eq'd the highs of my t5v down, what other coloration is there above 500 hz?

 

[FireEmblem]

i've eq'd the highs of my t5v down, what other coloration is there above 500 hz?

Perhaps your

untreated, reflective room.

?

 

[Rick63]

NO, studio monitors are not overrated. If anything, they're underrated for home audio listening!

 

[Jiraya369]

Perhaps your



?

yikes man

 

[Purité Audio]

Dissent, ‘the holding or expression of opinions at variance with those commonly or officially held.’
Which of Jiraya’s opinions are at variance with those commonly held?
Keith

 

[Jiraya369]

NO, studio monitors are not overrated. If anything, they're underrated for home audio listening!

ricky over here gets it, my man

 

[FireEmblem]

There are some common arguments here that (with respect) doesn't really hold true (or at least only partially), both from yourself and from Tom Holkenberg.

Let's me try to paraphrase:

You have the argument: "Consumers will have flawed speakers, so me as a producer should have flawed speakers too"

And then you have the argument "Consumers will have a flawed room, so me as a producer should have a flawed room too".


The problem in both instances is that your speakers won't have the same flaws as any given consumer, and your room won't have the same flaws as any given consumer.

No no, that's not what I said.

I didn't say just have whatever flaws. I referenced two highly common things that are present in 99% of consumer systems: a treble and bass boost, and a more narrow soundstage.

Even if you create your mix on a $5000 pair of pro speakers, if you aim to release for a huge audience, you have to check back on a narrow consumer system and see if the way you panned up your instruments works there too. If you've been too generous with spacing because you had a 60% bigger stage in your studio monitors, you'll have do adjust the stereo imaging so that it sounds as wide as you wanted on a smaller stage.

And the same is true for the EQ curve. If your studio monitors convince you that there's plenty of room to boost bass and treble, because it's ruler-flat around those regions, you'll make your audience's ears bleed and the lowend rumble. So of course you have to take into account the common boost that's present almost everywhere.

So it doesn't matter from which side I'm approaching this. I can either start at monitors and have to bump things up or I can start at consumers and reduce things. More realistically, because you'll be used to either system, you'll just naturally start placing the things in their proper ranges, because you simply know where that is.

How can you accidentally add "too little bass" because your consumer system boosted the bass and you thought there's enough of it? You'll still bring it up until it has a pleasant amount, in the fashion that you're used it on that system based of the thousands of songs you've heard. You'd immediately notice if your track feels weak in the low end. Because underpowering your bass, even with your boost, means that your track will still fall short in that region compared to everything else on that system.

The only scenario where this could happen is if someone buys a new pair of monitors and then starts right away mixing on it without ever listening to music on it. And in that case it doesn't matter if it's a studio or consumer monitor. The same person would boost bass and treble on the studio monitors as well beyond correct values, because they'd try to make up for the lack of it, without ever listening to music on that pair.

So it's not really convenient to sell this as studio monitors holding any advantage here.

 

[Ropeburn]

Not gonna lie, my dream system is big arse monitors with matching subwoofers. Unfortunately, prohibitively costy for my income situation.