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Avantone Pro MixCube Monitor Review

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 169 83.3%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 15 7.4%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 4 2.0%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 15 7.4%

  • Total voters
    203

bennybbbx

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All for the worst measuring speaker yet to be tested on ASR. WOW!

the question is wy there are many people or magazine that write in test or comments in the product that this speaker is great to hear stereo image, depth of field and reverb and delay and they tell it sound better as other speaker imn that case. so what do you think wy this happen ?. did you mean they hear not good ?
 

tomtoo

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the question is wy there are many people or magazine that write in test or comments in the product that this speaker is great to hear stereo image, depth of field and reverb and delay and they tell it sound better as other speaker imn that case. so what do you think wy this happen ?. did you mean they hear not good ?

If they say this speaker sounds good, they hear not good. Or have a very strange taste. If they say they use it as a tool for some tasks thats a different story.
 

markanini

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In specific stations, like detecting ITD, their bandlimited response helps. That alone would at least beg the question as to why, which is what the discussion seems to get at. No one claimed they were good all rounders though. There's no reason for anyone to get upset and claim someone has hearing damage.
 

Blumlein 88

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Why do some people say the same thing about highly distorting reduced bandwidth SET amps? Why do a fair number of pros believe in magic or musical mic preamps or ADCs when there is no evidence for it other than subjectively.?

@markanini
 

bennybbbx

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If they say this speaker sounds good, they hear not good. Or have a very strange taste. If they say they use it as a tool for some tasks thats a different story.

nobody write as far i read on thomann or other the comments that this speaker do the full range. if want low and loud bass sound you need a subwoofer add and i read no auratone user that denied it . if you can with speaker correction get enough high freq i did not know i think maybe it is possible because i know from myself boost with eq above 1 khz work much better as in lower freq because EQ phase problems did not hear.
 
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MaxwellsEq

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the question is wy there are many people or magazine that write in test or comments in the product that this speaker is great to hear stereo image, depth of field and reverb and delay and they tell it sound better as other speaker imn that case. so what do you think wy this happen ?. did you mean they hear not good ?
The people who use this as a tool to get to a mix as quickly as possible have good hearing.
 

tomtoo

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the question is wy there are many people or magazine that write in test or comments in the product that this speaker is great to hear stereo image, depth of field and reverb and delay and they tell it sound better as other speaker imn that case. so what do you think wy this happen ?. did you mean they hear not good ?
nobody write as far i read on thoman or other the comments that this speaker do the full range. if want low and loud bass sound you need a subwoofer add and i read no auratone user that denied it . if you can with speaker correction get enough high freq i did not know i think maybe it is possible because i know from myself boost with eq above 1 khz work much better as in lower freq because EQ phase problems did not hear.

See as a normal speaker its a cheap wide band chasis in a cheap case. Why not try a le petit? Some audiophiles like them. And even cheaper. Some audiophiles say this speakers have much more roomines and transients than even very expensive multiways. Is it like this? Maybe? Where does it come from if it is so? I dont know. But one is for sure i did never ever heard i wide band i could enjoy.
 

markanini

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Why do some people say the same thing about highly distorting reduced bandwidth SET amps? Why do a fair number of pros believe in magic or musical mic preamps or ADCs when there is no evidence for it other than subjectively.?

@markanini
These are speakers for mixing work, not amps for enjoyment. It can't be that hard to tell the difference.
 

badspeakerdesigner

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now you have to show lol

I should probably not put much more time into this one. I do have professional mix experience and have been at this for awhile so feel free to tear it apart, but I will admit my ears are not doing well. My left has a strange issue where it's just kinda vibrating on it's own. Any sort of low frequency content causes my ear drum to self resonate. Been to two ENT's, got head scans, and no one can tell me what it is :(

But man, the vocal takes are so bad. I thought I was just getting some buffer hitches at the start, but no that awful glitch is baked into the vocals lol. I went for a more dry forward pop vocal mix sort of thing. The organs are bad, in some parts they're not playing the right chord, ugh.

 

Blumlein 88

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These are speakers for mixing work, not amps for enjoyment. It can't be that hard to tell the difference.
No, but the same principal is in play. And pros who work, some big name ones, believe in magic preamps for their mikes. There is no basis for it in most cases. There was the infamous test in SoS a decade or so back. Recorded music with bunch of mic pres. Everything from an Art (bottom of the barrel) to units pushing $10k. Then let people choose by sound alone. Choices were fairly evenly split, but the one chosen most was the cheap Art, and the 2nd most expensive was chosen 2nd most. Plenty of craw fishing once the identities were released. There have been other ideas like that in the pro world that you just cannot kill even though they aren't true.

So for instance the SoS review of these speakers Mr. Senior sounds like he read the company brochure and the myths around what these are copies of. Is it true and he hears it, is he influenced by the hype? There are pros who don't use something like this, many use this or something like it. They cannot all be paragons of precise tools to quickly zero in on a mix. There is nothing special here that I can see that is rational. Beyond people who use them for a quick sanity check. I'm not even sure that is a good idea, but just because it is a common practice isn't enough to convince me it makes sense. I'm not in the business and people will point to hugely popular albums made with this approach. Does not by itself convince me, but maybe it does most other people.
 

Sancus

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Bottom line: there's a discrepancy between preference and usefulness and some overlap. If this were not so, Amir would've not said, "I can't recommend this for any purpose." It's because he's not a mix engineer. Some of the best mixers, like the guy in Noisia (sorry, not to up on them) has both the 'subjective best' speaker in the ATC 110 and the 'worst' in the mixcube. Barefoot and Focal, as you mention, also recognize value in this "rubbish". So, let's have an open exchange of ideas and quantify what makes these useful. So far we have suspicions but no tangible data. I get that there is precedent and inertia (not to mention proprietary research like Barefoot MEME and IK Multimedia modelling DSP) - it's not news. Let's just consider that - maybe - 'translation/professional usefulness/secondary reference' is different from 'preference' (it obviously is or else nobody would pooh pooh this speaker's sound and say "yuck" and "bad") and can be quantified not just dismiss it out of hand. Or, go ahead but that will just be you ringing the Marine Bell.

The idea that there is some "usefulness for translation" variable just seems too simplistic to me. Even the preference score, which has a narrowly defined objective(determine which speakers are preferred by music listeners when you are listening, at moderate volume, primarily to reflections, and in a typical domestic room), is only a general sorting tool, NOT an unimpeachable objective score that tells you which speaker is better.

What seems to be happening is that you and other mixers that use these tools are doing it to accentuate certain instruments, FR, or other attributes so that you can rebalance them without all the other "noise" that is not relevant to that task. Makes perfect sense to me.

The real question is why would you want to use different speakers for that? If you figure out exactly what's going on it should be trivial to emulate it with DSP and in fact the DSP should be able to do an even better job because only the changes you absolutely want will be in there. Which is not something you can control with an unmodified MixCube.

Maybe the DSP solutions for this on the market now are not good enough, but the only way to fix that would be to do a series of research studies on audio engineers themselves. I doubt asking for anecdotes is going to help at all with deriving a general theory of translation. Because like it or not, there is a still a lot of subjective delusion among audio engineers, and in order to get good data you will need to filter that out. Whether by blind testing or some other method.
 

markanini

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No, but the same principal is in play. And pros who work, some big name ones, believe in magic preamps for their mikes. There is no basis for it in most cases. There was the infamous test in SoS a decade or so back. Recorded music with bunch of mic pres. Everything from an Art (bottom of the barrel) to units pushing $10k. Then let people choose by sound alone. Choices were fairly evenly split, but the one chosen most was the cheap Art, and the 2nd most expensive was chosen 2nd most. Plenty of craw fishing once the identities were released. There have been other ideas like that in the pro world that you just cannot kill even though they aren't true.

So for instance the SoS review of these speakers Mr. Senior sounds like he read the company brochure and the myths around what these are copies of. Is it true and he hears it, is he influenced by the hype? There are pros who don't use something like this, many use this or something like it. They cannot all be paragons of precise tools to quickly zero in on a mix. There is nothing special here that I can see that is rational. Beyond people who use them for a quick sanity check. I'm not even sure that is a good idea, but just because it is a common practice isn't enough to convince me it makes sense. I'm not in the business and people will point to hugely popular albums made with this approach. Does not by itself convince me, but maybe it does most other people.
Assuming all of that was accurate, I could probably still sleep sound. But there a few inaccuracies and conflations and besides that what sounds like some grandiose bias of others motives and of how things should be that I frankly wonder who would even want to engage.

Why stop at producers though? Most artists have irrational beliefs about gear too. And in other areas of life they probably have irrational beliefs about health, finance and relationships too. Are you going to be all right knowing this?
 

bennybbbx

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See as a normal speaker its a cheap wide band chasis in a cheap case. Why not try a le petit? Some audiophiles like them. And even cheaper. Some audiophiles say this speakers have much more roomines and transients than even very expensive multiways. Is it like this? Maybe? Where does it come from if it is so? I dont know. But one is for sure i did never ever heard i wide band i could en
.

I think you mean speaker. in headphones are used mostly widebands. 1 system 1 problem 2 systems 2 problems. maybe you try multisystem headphones if you hear a diffrence in clarity and soundstage . for use in nearfield on a desktop or on a mixer bridge in low distance a single speaker have really advantages in theory too. more direct sound less room sound. because of the beaming there happen less reflections on desktop or Mixer Meter Bridge. that the avantone have this limit frequency range in bass is not so worse when use subwoofer below 70 hz. because on desktop the upper bass 80-120 hz is boost and boom alot. reduce this bass with EQ give large phase shifts and transient problems. you can also avoid a HP filter before the avantone when use a sub. this avoid this much phase shift of the HP filter

there should really a new avantone with a more linear FR and upto 20 khz
 
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dasdoing

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I do have professional mix experience and have been at this for awhile so feel free to tear it apart,

one can hear that, it sounds very professional. diferent aprouch than mine, but I will try to learn from it. thanks for posting

that awful glitch is baked into the vocals lol.

lol. It's terrible. I tried to RX it out, or make it better, but no chance. Now I found one guy on Youtube who solved it. I couldn't find out how, so I asked him. He simply copied that part from the second verse. great solution lol

The organs are bad

As you heard in my aprouch, I actually liked the organs. I later found out that Edga is actually a bass player. So I am sure she would prefer your aprouch

I should probably not put much more time into this one.

yea, better forget that thing lol
I know how that stuff is getting on our nerves

thanks once again for showing
bye
 

fineMen

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The idea that there is some "usefulness for translation" variable just seems too simplistic to me. Even the preference score, which has a narrowly defined objective(determine which speakers are preferred by music listeners when you are listening, at moderate volume, primarily to reflections, and in a typical domestic room), is only a general sorting tool, NOT an unimpeachable objective score that tells you which speaker is better.
This went pretty far into discussing what so called pros do. Is there any good speaker if the microphone is *not* limited by the pre-amp, but by the sheer fact that is doesn't resemble an ear?! Let alone the brain and mindful imagination of a human listening.

The whole business is about pushing forward ideas expressed in sound. For me it seems obvious that true worthwhile ideas are robust and survive the studio's grinder. Alas, the only record I know to being killed by studio technology is Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car". She was pulled out of her intimate enviroment to become a show piece for sterile digital superiority. Hifi kitsch to the max. No wonder that exactly this record is held to be, according to Toole, the most revealing when it comes to speaker assessment. What is 'objective' anyway?

I personally like dry, direct records. Compare Pink Floyd's "Sourcerful Of Secrets" colorful soundfield against the terrifying void of "Fast Car". With sound engineers today it is like with product designers. Once they think they're artists it runs down-hill.
 

badspeakerdesigner

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one can hear that, it sounds very professional. diferent aprouch than mine, but I will try to learn from it. thanks for posting



lol. It's terrible. I tried to RX it out, or make it better, but no chance. Now I found one guy on Youtube who solved it. I couldn't find out how, so I asked him. He simply copied that part from the second verse. great solution lol



As you heard in my aprouch, I actually liked the organs. I later found out that Edga is actually a bass player. So I am sure she would prefer your aprouch


Thanks for the kind words, I'm a little surprised but I've also always felt making good music and mixes is more about experience and taste than anything. So perhaps my tastes were just good today and helped me overcome my current ear issues.

That guy on youtube you mention sounds like a genius. I would have just spent endless hours trying to splice and stretch things and missed the obvious easy solution. So easy to get in our own way sometimes.

I do like the basslines :)

FWIW, I did this on some C-notes and I did attempt to emulate what the auratones do. I tried a few things, applied some EQ to sort of mimic their response, used some little single driver BMR boxes I have that I actually built for this purpose but never use. I honestly didn't find this sort of mix checking to be useful at all, if anything it made me focus on things that weren't really problems at all. I think it's far more important to pay attention to the big picture and didn't find much value in narrowing my perspective sonically. The little c-notes sure are something special. When things warm up I plan on putting together some 15" bass modules to go below them :) Should make for a very cheap but absolutely killer monitoring setup.
 

Geert

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Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car". <cut>. No wonder that exactly this record is held to be, according to Toole, the most revealing when it comes to speaker assessment.
Which is not true of course.
 
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dasdoing

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Thanks for the kind words, I'm a little surprised but I've also always felt making good music and mixes is more about experience and taste than anything. So perhaps my tastes were just good today and helped me overcome my current ear issues.

That guy on youtube you mention sounds like a genius. I would have just spent endless hours trying to splice and stretch things and missed the obvious easy solution. So easy to get in our own way sometimes.

I do like the basslines :)

FWIW, I did this on some C-notes and I did attempt to emulate what the auratones do. I tried a few things, applied some EQ to sort of mimic their response, used some little single driver BMR boxes I have that I actually built for this purpose but never use. I honestly didn't find this sort of mix checking to be useful at all, if anything it made me focus on things that weren't really problems at all. I think it's far more important to pay attention to the big picture and didn't find much value in narrowing my perspective sonically. The little c-notes sure are something special. When things warm up I plan on putting together some 15" bass modules to go below them :) Should make for a very cheap but absolutely killer monitoring setup.

I 'd like to PM you tomorrow if you allow.
we are a little offtopic here, although not totaly
 

Groom

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Because you have to leave your studio to do so. As a producer and engineer, I can say that these speakers (and others like it, commonly referred to as grot boxes) are extremely useful. They really help you focus in your mix, on the mid range, and help balance all those mid range and mono elements in a mix (kicks, snares and vocals).

Ideally, they're not meant to be used in stereo (although many people use them that way), but in a mono, single-speaker setting. That helps in picking up stereo cancellation issues in a *poor* mix.

Lastly, the single-driver removes crossovers and the issues caused by poor crossover designs, in general. They're really invaluable tools, and when you learn to mix in them, it can speed up your mixing process and results considerably, and time is money, especially when you're doing this professionally.

So, I get that many of you hear don't see the point of these, or can't appreciate their value, but you're not the target consumer for these.

Audio engineers and producers who have these grot boxes (there are others) consider them as very strong tools in their arsenal.

Again; no one wants to be running back and forth to the car, or messing with dingles and Bluetooth speakers when they're dialing in a mix; it's counterintuitive. Also, BT speakers are more hi-fi and are pushed to try to sound as pleasing as possible, under terrible budgets and terrible designs; these are the antithesis to that. Love 'em.
Looking forward to the discussion when Amir is testing a fuzzbox, some day... :cool:
 

fineMen

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Which is not true of course.
The "Fast Car" is said to be the most revealing in the set of records that were used to evaluate a subjective preferences for the set of speakers tested as to derive general rules on how to assess speakers performance which led to the CEA2034 standard. ... the deepl translator understands this sentence ;)

(Please excuse my rant about studio engineers, I actually feel that some of them overdo today.)
 
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