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Best Speakers (Studio Monitors) to Hear Reverb

auraluxstudio

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Just curious to get opinions of what you all think are some of the best speakers / studio monitors to hear vocal reverbs and delays (FX) on...? I am sure I will get flamed for this, but IMHO Genelec's like the 8351B are some of the worst. They are VERY dry sounding. The best I have heard is probably ATC. Would love more opinions!
 

Bugal1998

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Just curious to get opinions of what you all think are some of the best speakers / studio monitors to hear vocal reverbs and delays (FX) on...? I am sure I will get flamed for this, but IMHO Genelec's like the 8351B are some of the worst. They are VERY dry sounding. The best I have heard is probably ATC. Would love more opinions!

I can't answer your question directly, but I would suggest to start by ensuring you have a very low ambiant noise floor in the room.

FWIW, I hear a lot more reverb in the JBL 305 mkii than any headphones I use. And then I hear a lot more reverb through the M2s than through the 305s.

I've heard people describe the M2 as dry sounding as well, but tracks that I've personally recorded and mixed that sound rather dry in headphones have plenty of reverb on the 305s and sound like they're drowning in reverb through the M2s.

I have no idea what ATC speakers cost.
 

YSC

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sorry I am kinda lost on what you are trying to do... so basically you want to have a lot of reverb (echo lingering) for particular period? wouldn't that a untreated room do better in this regard?
 
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auraluxstudio

auraluxstudio

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sorry I am kinda lost on what you are trying to do... so basically you want to have a lot of reverb (echo lingering) for particular period? wouldn't that a untreated room do better in this regard?
Maybe you missed the "Studio Monitors" part...? For mixing and mastering, you need to hear reverb tails, delays and other FX well.
 

YSC

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Maybe you missed the "Studio Monitors" part...? For mixing and mastering, you need to hear reverb tails, delays and other FX well.
I read that part, but got confused, a speaker without internal echo problem would likely reveal to you as much the actual reverb present in the recording scene as it is, thus hearing the reverb details, if it reverbs a lot internally wouldn't it makes you too light handed on mixing and creating a dry mix in other proper hifi setups or headphones???
 

dfuller

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This is a result of having your room under control. This stuff becomes far, far easier to hear when your RT60 is controlled. Generally 300ms is considered ideal.
 

dshreter

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This is a result of having your room under control. This stuff becomes far, far easier to hear when your RT60 is controlled. Generally 300ms is considered ideal.
+1 on this. The ability to hear reverb is much much more a factor of the room than the speaker. You need first reflections treated and decent bass trapping so that your own room is less reverberant or it becomes difficult to distinguish between the room and recorded reverb. All this should also lower the noise floor though not necessarily all that is required.

Narrow directivity speakers will throw less off-axis energy into the room as well, which can help. But I dont think ATC vs Genelec vs JBL vs Neumann is really the key to your question
 
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auraluxstudio

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My room is extremely well treated. Now back to the question... ;)
 

YSC

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My room is extremely well treated. Now back to the question... ;)
I think a lot of the answers above did answered your question, if you found genelec and neumann sounds dry and the vocals stopped without reverb, it likely means in the recording the reverb didn't exist, a speaker adding reverb into the mix when you try to mix based on that isn't a good idea for studio
 
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auraluxstudio

auraluxstudio

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I think a lot of the answers above did answered your question, if you found genelec and neumann sounds dry and the vocals stopped without reverb, it likely means in the recording the reverb didn't exist, a speaker adding reverb into the mix when you try to mix based on that isn't a good idea for studio
I think sadly the whole point of my question keeps getting missed. It's simple really. I was merely asking people's opinions on which speakers they felt represented the subtle details of reverb the best. I have had dozens of speakers over the years. All in a very well treated room, and there is a big difference in the presentation of reverbs, speaker to speaker.
 

dshreter

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I think sadly the whole point of my question keeps getting missed. It's simple really. I was merely asking people's opinions on which speakers they felt represented the subtle details of reverb the best. I have had dozens of speakers over the years. All in a very well treated room, and there is a big difference in the presentation of reverbs, speaker to speaker.
I don’t think there is something special about reverb from other sounds. It can fill the whole frequency spectrum, so a good speaker is also a good speaker for hearing reverb.

I’d be interested to hear more about your direct experiences because mine have tied back to what I relayed about noise floor and room, and not noticed much speaker dependency.
 
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auraluxstudio

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I don’t think there is something special about reverb from other sounds. It can fill the whole frequency spectrum, so a good speaker is also a good speaker for hearing reverb.

I’d be interested to hear more about your direct experiences because mine have tied back to what I relayed about noise floor and room, and not noticed much speaker dependency.
Quite simply my experience is that some speakers sound much ‘drier’ than others. That’s the best way I can describe it. ATC really reveals reverbs. Genelec seems to mask them more or be more ‘dry’.
 

YSC

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I think sadly the whole point of my question keeps getting missed. It's simple really. I was merely asking people's opinions on which speakers they felt represented the subtle details of reverb the best. I have had dozens of speakers over the years. All in a very well treated room, and there is a big difference in the presentation of reverbs, speaker to speaker.
I think you didn't really read into the comments or it's understanding difference causing this...

you put any speaker in any treated room (unless you are in anechoic chamber costing multi million dollars) you will have room reflection of some sort, and any sound you hear is a combination of the direct sound+speaker internal echo+room reflection. In which the room usually still plays a major role in the reverb (echo) part of it.

Now the problem to your question is, what you actually WANTED, neutral, true to recording or some exaggerated, enhanced spectrum of whatever frequency range you are after, obviously if you muted the highs and lows and boosted the vocal spectrum you will hear a lot more in the mix, this you can simply try EQ the ATC mid boost into Genelec/Neumann you get and see if you get the same boost in reverb detail. but in that way you also mix in a coloured condition, which means if you mix the music to ear pleasing level in your home studio, it will sound meh in a neutral setup, worse still in a smiley face tuning where a lot of HT or consumer systems or B&W.

What you don't want is a speaker which always have internal reverbing and add that to all content playing through, just like salt in a meal, add a bit it taste good, add too much and it kills off the enjoyment of good food
 

YSC

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Quite simply my experience is that some speakers sound much ‘drier’ than others. That’s the best way I can describe it. ATC really reveals reverbs. Genelec seems to mask them more or be more ‘dry’.
that's because ATC boosted the mids by 5-6db and forms a plateau in the FR! it's like if you come to ATC from any boombox consumer setup with a huge mid-bass boost you will find all studio monitors sounded so muted in bass. try and EQ a neutral speaker from 500hz to 5khz with a boost of 4-5db like here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/atc-scm19-bookshelf-speaker-review.14519/

you might ended up the same feeling. But after all IMHO this is not a good idea to do this when you are using them to produce a mix, it's better to enjoy music with all added flavor you like but not in home studio. using EQ for temporary boost in certain details to make sure it won't crap out in coloured speakers on the fly with some EQ presets where you can adopt in a flick of a switch is nice but not emplacing a default colouration into all content you are producing.

Same as photo editing, when viewing you might want to boost saturation or other things, but when producing/editing you better have a calibrated monitor, just after editing flick back to some consumer presets and see if it's overdone
 

Duke

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For mixing and mastering, you need to hear reverb tails, delays and other FX well.

Reverberation tails are among the lowest-level signals so they are among the most sensitive to the effective noise floor in the room.

In-room reflections whose spectral content is degraded relative to the first-arrival sound may no longer be recognized by the ear as "signal", and in effect become "noise".

The spectral content of reflections can be degraded in two ways: First, they can start out as off-axis energy whose spectral content is somewhat dissimilar from that of the direct sound. Second, encounters with room surfaces can alter their spectral content, usually by removing or reducing short-wavelength (high frequency) energy, such that what remains has insufficient overtone energy for it to be correctly identified by the ear/brain system as "signal" (in this case a reflection), so it effectively becomes "noise".

So imo what should work well is a speaker whose off-axis energy has a spectral balance which tracks that of its direct sound exceptionally well, combined with room acoustics which result in fairly uniform decay times across the spectrum.

Assuming those criteria are met, I would expect a good wide-pattern speaker to be more revealing of reverberation tails than a good narrow-pattern speaker, largely because the wide-pattern speaker is putting more energy into the in-room reflections - which are the carriers for the reverberation tails - which therefore will take a bit longer to decay into inaudibility.

I would expect the JBL M2 and Dutch & Dutch 8c to do a good job in this area.

Edit: @YSC posted that the ATC's have elevated mids, and suggested boosting the 500 Hz to 5 kHz region to improve the audibility of reverberation. This makes sense to me, as this is the region of the overtones which the ear/brain system looks at to correctly identify reflections as such. (Actually I'd probably modify that slightly and suggest boosting 700 Hz to 7 kHz, this based on the writings of psychoacoustician David Griesinger.)
 
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