Are studio monitors overrated?

[Rick63]

ricky over here gets it, my man

Wow, nobody's called me Ricky since about 1973 when I was 10!

 

[NTK]

What OP is doing is one of the main reasons of the audio's circle of confusion.

Audio's Circle of Confusion

Audio’s “Circle of Confusion” is a term coined by Floyd Toole [1] that describes the confusion that exists within the audio recording and r...

seanolive.blogspot.com

A snip from Dr Olive's blog post ...

 

[Tovarich007]

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.

99 % no, once again, you push too far your demonstration attempt (which I don't really understand to speak frankly).
I know some consumer systems with blurred treble, other bass shy, others with a larger soundstage than reality, and of couse others with a kind of U curve, but certainly not 99%.
It's not the systems used who are more to blame for this really terrible trend of bass boost and too shiny treble (and also with too much compression of course), it's the audio industry in general. "Normal natural sound" is not juicy and goosebumping enough to be attractive and sell well to people listening for short time pleasure without reference and concentration in a car, or before a TV, or in their garden or kitchen, or during a party where they want to get thrilled by the sound.
That's why a lot of (not all, happily) recently released remasters or remixes sound to my ears worse then the orignal, and not better as they are marketed to be.
We are all, more or less, brain washed by this sound fashion. Probably, if a good mix should match this type of sound, it must not be too difficult to have "good" results even if you use relatively cheap systems.
Just give the people what the industry has persuaded them what to like and what is good and it's OK.
But not for me.

 

[FireEmblem]

What OP is doing is one of the main reasons of the audio's circle of confusion.

No, that's a different argument. You confused what I said with the generic "if you mix on consumer gear you're most close to consumer gear" argument, but that argument usually doesn't come from a point of experience and makes false assumptions, such as that consumer gear would just be coloured evenly and reproducible. It's easy to counter this with the fact that one system might have a dip here and another doesn't have it, hence leading to "inaccuracy". My argument goes way beyond that and rather debates that alleged inaccuracy, how big and significant it is, if we really fall for it and if listeners will even be able to notice this as they don't have any reference to compare things.

I adressed this in my previous post: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-studio-monitors-overrated.67875/post-2461594

 

[FireEmblem]

99 % no, once again, you push too far your demonstration attempt (which I don't really understand to speak frankly).
I know some consumer systems with blurred treble, other bass shy, others with a larger soundstage than reality, and of couse others with a kind of U curve, but certainly not 99%.

Yeah but these things do just even out. None of that exists in a vacuum, but in relationship to other aspects of the track and all the tracks you've ever heard on that system.

If you're used to the blurred treble of that system, that's your normal. If someone pushes treble beyond usual values, it will actually sound too harsh, even on your blurry system, because it's simply something you're not used to and it will stick out to the other parts of the song. If someone cuts treble too much, it will sound weak. So you still know where the sweetspot lies.

Ratings like "too blurry" are just relative.

When I switch from my consumer speakers to the Adam Audio T7V (without sub), the T7V sound like some old cans in the first seconds. Bloated, boomy, weak.
But my ears acclimate within a few seconds and adjust to that sonic world. And suddenly I'm accurately able to perceive everything differently than in the first seconds, and the sun rises.

If I switch back to my consumers with sub, they will sound small and tight suddenly, and further away because of their smaller size. Everything feels like downsized. But give it 10 seconds and I'm back in that sonic world and again can feel and understand the full spectrum properly, and the sun rises again.

What people are observing here is just the feeling of walking through that door. But consumers don't do that when they listen to our music, they just stay in their common room. The logical fallacy comes into play when people start to believe that this is representative for the experience that other people must have listening on that system, too. Like one sustained moment of 3 minutes and 24 seconds of shook and "omg that doesn't sound right". But that's not the case.

For them, that's their reality, they don't know your reference and your system will probably sound totally off for them, compared to theirs.

So all that I care for is if things translate, and they do translate. Not in terms of whether or not there is 3% more brightness in the treble, you can't control that anyways, it will sound vastly different everywhere. But if there are things you couldn't hear in your place when you mixed the track that lead you to actual bad mixing decisions. I'm talking about things that are only present or not present in your place and nowhere else. That's actual mixing problems. Not some colouring of frequency response.

And here any halfway decent room with normal living furniture + consumer speakers with a better build and sound quality will do. Again, sure if you buy the $20 alibaba speakers, they'll cause a lot of problems. But even a consumer 2.1 system around $150 from a established and well known manufacturer leaves the threshold behind where such serious problems arise.

 

[Ropeburn]

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

I've been producing music for 10 years, released multiple bestseller soundsets for synths, used by big names in the industry and also worked for one of the biggest audio companies in the world as sound designer and composer. .... the quality of my work is appreciated by major industry players and their quality demands.

Now mind you, all these years I've been working with a pair of Superlux HD681 headphones and a Logitech Z533 speaker system.

Congratulations - you are among the 0.01% of professionals who can do their job on a such low-cost equipment.
Other 99.99% of professionals (among whom are names with much higher accolades than yours) mix on "overrated" studio monitors - not because they are afraid or ashamed to use Logitech or Superlux, but because they know what they need to do the job right.
Sorry - you are in a miniscule minority that think the studio monitors are overrated.

 

[FireEmblem]

Other 99.99% of professionals (among whom are names with much higher accolades than yours)

Holkenborg did the soundtracks for many blockbuster movies like Justice League, Battle Angel Alita, 300 or Mad Max. Scheps mixed albums for Metallica, Michael Jackson and so on. And these two aren't the only ones, just the two I mentioned here because their work is part of the top 1% and should be enough to spark some interesting thoughts.

but because they know what they need to do the job right.

just because you can doesn't mean you have to. Expensive gear is simply much more fun to use and sounds better, this alone is a reason that's a thousand times more likely than your assumption that these people couldn't do their job right and would be help- and clueless if it wasn't for their gear.

 

[kemmler3D]

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.

It does matter in various ways, I think you're oversimplifying the situation and ignoring a lot of psychoacoustics. The brain deals with direct and indirect sound differently, and we have to consider masking to decide (quantitatively) how much frequency response deviation is acceptable from a monitor used for mixing.

I think masking is the real reason why speakers with uneven FR can't *actually* be just as good as flat monitors, because at some point it becomes literally impossible to hear certain things in the mix if you have too much wiggle in your FR. This may not happen a lot in practice, but it's one aspect of hearing and sound reproduction you can't get around. If this were not so, MP3 wouldn't work.

And to @EngineerNate's point, it does matter if the flaws originate in your speakers or room, if only because the sound only gets worse once it leaves the speaker. Better to start with a clean signal, (arguably) especially if your room is bad.

 

[Tovarich007]

If the room is bad and you can(t correct or caliibrate it properly, even with a good signal from the speaker, the result will not be good.
A good large speaker able to play loud and low may degrade even more the resulting sound by exciting more room modes than a small speaker not playing loud and low (assuming this second one is not bad).

 

[Salt]

View attachment 495343
View attachment 495344

So we're done, case closed.

 

[FireEmblem]

It does matter in various ways, I think you're oversimplifying the situation and ignoring a lot of psychoacoustics. The brain deals with direct and indirect sound differently, and we have to consider masking to decide (quantitatively) how much frequency response deviation is acceptable from a monitor used for mixing.

I think masking is the real reason why speakers with uneven FR can't *actually* be just as good as flat monitors, because at some point it becomes literally impossible to hear certain things in the mix if you have too much wiggle in your FR. This may not happen a lot in practice, but it's one aspect of hearing and sound reproduction you can't get around. If this were not so, MP3 wouldn't work.

Sure, but my point is that even with a $150 2.1 system today you won't have this in noticable amounts, which would cloud your mixing decisions. Like I said, there's nothing ever in my tracks/mixes or patches I design for synthesizers that I wasn't able to hear on my speakers, that suddenly stuck out on studio monitors.

Also, keep in mind that headphones as a second listening device has to be considered too. If someone asks "do I need studio monitors for decent mixing?" and I'd response "no you don't", then this also comes with the opportunity to just get a pair of $30 HD681 and being able to check back on these too. But again, I've never found anything in these that I couldn't spot on my system except of course bass extension that goes below what my sub can deliver.

This may not happen a lot in practice, but it's one aspect of hearing and sound reproduction you can't get around.

Yes, that would've been my next point. It's maybe there in measurements and in graphs, but in practice this problem is just non-existent (for me).

Mind you I also wrote earlier, that of course this could sound different in a smaller, emptier room, with maybe even a really bad pair of speakers. I'm not saying you can mix everywhere on everything. I emphasised multiple times that a not-terrible middle sized room, filled with a good amount of living furniture / curtains / bed already does the biggest chunk of lifting the mixing environment to a level where whatever signals reflect back to you should be no issue.

And to @EngineerNate's point, it does matter if the flaws originate in your speakers or room, if only because the sound only gets worse once it leaves the speaker. Better to start with a clean signal, (arguably) especially if your room is bad.

Yes, but again the signal that comes out of these speaker isn't bad. Today you can expect decent quality for around 150 credits, by major companies with experience in the audio field.

A good large speaker able to play loud and low may degrade even more the resulting sound by exciting more room modes than a small speaker not playing loud and low (assuming this second one is not bad).

Yeah, the Logitech ones I use are small, I think 2,5". But they have powerful sound with the subwoofer. Being able to dial in the amount of volume for the subwoofer helps a lot with controlling room modes.

The T7V create strong modes in my room. Not in my sweetspot where I sit, but definitely for my neighbours who would think I'm riding horses up here. With the Adam T5V + T10S sub things were much easier, I can dial the sub down to an amount where it creates no modes here and melts seamlessly with the music into the background, delivering clear and wonderful low end.

 

[kemmler3D]

Today you can expect decent quality for around 150 credits, by major companies with experience in the audio field.

Having worked in consumer audio, selling stuff in that price range competing with logitech and other familiar names... lol sure maybe. Occasionally a good or at least pleasing design is very cost optimized. Often a cheap speaker is just a cheap speaker, with compromises made that didn't even need to be made.

Like I said, there's nothing ever in my tracks/mixes or patches I design for synthesizer that I wasn't able to hear on my speakers, that suddenly stands out on studio monitors.

I think your content and working style has something to do with it. A single synth patch typically reveals its character with no problem on any speaker, in large part because the content tends to be entirely or mostly harmonic. So THD and even IMD won't tend to mask anything perceptibly, nor is there anything else happening you'd worry about being masked, it's just the one patch.

If you were mixing orchestral recordings where you need to keep subtleties of room reverb and dozens of instruments in balance with none getting lost, I'd wager you'd view the situation a bit differently.

 

[FireEmblem]

I think your content and working style has something to do with it. A single synth patch typically reveals its character with no problem on any speaker, in large part because the content tends to be entirely or mostly harmonic. So THD and even IMD won't tend to mask anything perceptibly, nor is there anything else happening you'd worry about being masked.

If you were mixing orchestral recordings where you need to keep subtleties of room reverb and dozens of instruments in balance with none getting lost, I'd wager you'd view the situation a bit differently.

I'm actually doing orchestral music, epic hybrid too, so the very complex soundtrackish stuff with dozens of tracks playing simulatenously, with different reverb group tracks for different depths (close, mid, far).

And synthesizer patches can become very complex if you design them with multiple layers and many things going on in the same time. You're right about most patches though, but I just wanted to add that.

 

[Flaesh]

~100w sub

You don't like 100-watt subwoofers? Why?

 

[kemmler3D]

You don't like 100-watt subwoofers? Why?

Nothing wrong with a 100w sub per se, but if it also happens to be a small one, it's probably not putting out much of anything below 45hz. I'm a 20hz or GTFO kind of guy.

And synthesizer patches can become very complex if you design them with multiple layers and many things going on in the same time.

Totally, my point was more around the fact that a single patch tends to be fully harmonic in nature, so however complex the sound, everything typically tracks the fundamental, and so if certain harmonics are masked it doesn't change the psychoacoustic perception of the sound very much. Two harmonically unrelated sounds where one gets masked would be A) more noticeable moving between flat and non-flat speakers, and B) more problematic. That might happen in like 1% of synth patches.

I'm actually doing orchestral music, epic hybrid too, so the very complex soundtrackish stuff with dozens of tracks playing simulatenously, with different reverb group tracks for different depths (close, mid, far).

Well, I said recordings specifically because it's a lot easier to get a good mix out of a ROMpler or something (I assume that's what you mean?) vs. recordings of actual orchestras.

 

[Flaesh]

Nothing wrong with a 100w sub per se, but if it also happens to be a small one

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-quasi-plain-wave-radiation.24396/post-925418 for example. ~200 litres each

 

[pablolie]

I think we all know that the premises around "the best sound is true to (insert latitude about linearity or ideal target curves here)" is flawed, because establishing the perfect, ideal performance to recording to mastering to consumer media is very elusive.
We know many recordings are produced with the idea in mind that consumers used flawed equipment. For Motown it was AM radio, now it's people like loudness and compression So it actually doesn't matter much which speakers or headphones are used in production, since the goal clearly is very seldom sonic perfection.

 

[EERecordist]

ASR is the source for measurements of speakers. Have you read all the contributions on studio monitors?

Search results for query: studio monitors

www.audiosciencereview.com

In my experience it comes down to finding errors and translation for your release customer.

I would suggest you make friends with as many professional mix and mastering engineer/producers in your region and learn from them. Understand your room. Best with your career.

 

[Flaesh]

I think we all know

I think that thinking is a sin.
I believe that inexpensive home hi-fi can reproduce signals in the 20-18000 Hz range up to 105 dB or more at the listening position acceptably, without terrible amplitude and timing anomalies.
I often\usually don't understand what and why the sound engineer equalized and mastered there. We just listen to the records we [subjectively] like more often.