thetrystero
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- Joined
- Dec 23, 2020
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I need help choosing a pair of speakers for mixed use on the desktop PC. It will replace a pair of bose companion iis from may years back. The majority of my use case is split evenly between:
- lot's of spoken word for language learning (the bose is rather muddied and makes it hard to pick out and copy proper pronunciation)
- practicing guitar through a modeler round tripping through a focusrite 2i2 gen 4. (guitar -> 2i2 -> neural amp modeler running in reaper -> 2i2 -> speakers)
It should be
- fairly compact
- preferably powered to save space
- enough low-end to negate the need for a sub. (Floor space is not an issue but I have the impression that it's hard to get them matched and that results in some amount of disconnect in sound. Is that true?)
For reference, I do use the DBR62s in my living room and bedroom for far-field listening which I absolutely love.
I see "monitors" tend to get recommended quite a bit for casual near field listening. So I went in to a store specializing in monitors for a demo. I tried the 8020d and 8030c. My comments apply to both simultaneously unless otherwise stated. No subwoofers. They were properly placed at ear level and I sat on a chair following the floor markings. The space was rather large, there was damping material in front but the behind me was an open office with walls very far away.
Starting off with George Benson and Cory Wong I was initially blown away by the definition in the different layers. Compared to my DBR62 living room setup, I could immediately pick out all the different parts in the mix. But when I moved on to Debussy's piano only music, I found it lacking. Couldn't quite put a finger on it but it sounded hollow perhaps for wanting more of the low end to reproduce the reverberations of the wood in the piano. Moving on to Tchaikovsky's sugar plum fairy, i found the highs/ mids particularly piercing and harsh. about a minute through with the constant celesta carrying the main melody, I found my ears couldn't manage the fatigue anymore. I finished off with a bit of Julian Lage where I really appreciated being able to hear the distinctive crunch of the subtle distortion I'm not usually able to pick out with the elacs.
Then we moved on to the guitar amp modeling. We wired up a telecaster through the interface and NAM, first through the 8020 then the 8030. Sitting at ear level, I again found the highs/mids quite hard to handle. I had to roll the treble/mids off by quite a bit in NAM to find a sweet spot. Standing up with my ears above the speakers and facing the opposite direction with the speakers behind me, improved things by quite a bit. Now I could say they were definitely better (closer to real amp) than through the DT770 (which is what i am using as a stopgap for guitar practice until the speakers come). With the 8030, I boosted the mids/ highs back up otherwise it sounded muddied with the low mid/high settings coming from the 8020.
Overall, I did find, especially with the 8030C, and perhaps with a little EQ adapted to each specific use case these can be quite usable for my use case. However I do not as of yet have any other speakers to compare them to.
I do wonder, how suitable are monitors for these sorts of applications in general? In theory at least, monitors seem antithetical to listening. Mixing and mastering require these separation of layers and distinct clarity, whereas as listeners we want these different parts to meld together to form a coherent whole, and definitely not to have to deal with these harsh tweeters. Would not EQing work against the way they were designed and hence make compromises that I have as yet not detected in my short testing?
What other speakers do you think I should try out for my use case?
- lot's of spoken word for language learning (the bose is rather muddied and makes it hard to pick out and copy proper pronunciation)
- practicing guitar through a modeler round tripping through a focusrite 2i2 gen 4. (guitar -> 2i2 -> neural amp modeler running in reaper -> 2i2 -> speakers)
It should be
- fairly compact
- preferably powered to save space
- enough low-end to negate the need for a sub. (Floor space is not an issue but I have the impression that it's hard to get them matched and that results in some amount of disconnect in sound. Is that true?)
For reference, I do use the DBR62s in my living room and bedroom for far-field listening which I absolutely love.
I see "monitors" tend to get recommended quite a bit for casual near field listening. So I went in to a store specializing in monitors for a demo. I tried the 8020d and 8030c. My comments apply to both simultaneously unless otherwise stated. No subwoofers. They were properly placed at ear level and I sat on a chair following the floor markings. The space was rather large, there was damping material in front but the behind me was an open office with walls very far away.
Starting off with George Benson and Cory Wong I was initially blown away by the definition in the different layers. Compared to my DBR62 living room setup, I could immediately pick out all the different parts in the mix. But when I moved on to Debussy's piano only music, I found it lacking. Couldn't quite put a finger on it but it sounded hollow perhaps for wanting more of the low end to reproduce the reverberations of the wood in the piano. Moving on to Tchaikovsky's sugar plum fairy, i found the highs/ mids particularly piercing and harsh. about a minute through with the constant celesta carrying the main melody, I found my ears couldn't manage the fatigue anymore. I finished off with a bit of Julian Lage where I really appreciated being able to hear the distinctive crunch of the subtle distortion I'm not usually able to pick out with the elacs.
Then we moved on to the guitar amp modeling. We wired up a telecaster through the interface and NAM, first through the 8020 then the 8030. Sitting at ear level, I again found the highs/mids quite hard to handle. I had to roll the treble/mids off by quite a bit in NAM to find a sweet spot. Standing up with my ears above the speakers and facing the opposite direction with the speakers behind me, improved things by quite a bit. Now I could say they were definitely better (closer to real amp) than through the DT770 (which is what i am using as a stopgap for guitar practice until the speakers come). With the 8030, I boosted the mids/ highs back up otherwise it sounded muddied with the low mid/high settings coming from the 8020.
Overall, I did find, especially with the 8030C, and perhaps with a little EQ adapted to each specific use case these can be quite usable for my use case. However I do not as of yet have any other speakers to compare them to.
I do wonder, how suitable are monitors for these sorts of applications in general? In theory at least, monitors seem antithetical to listening. Mixing and mastering require these separation of layers and distinct clarity, whereas as listeners we want these different parts to meld together to form a coherent whole, and definitely not to have to deal with these harsh tweeters. Would not EQing work against the way they were designed and hence make compromises that I have as yet not detected in my short testing?
What other speakers do you think I should try out for my use case?
