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Most common studio monitor for mixing and mastering?

dfuller

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Meyer HD-1
Oh, those are killer. Only used them once or twice but I recall them comparing favorably with much larger ATCs etc.
 
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RobL

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As a mastering engineer for over 20 years and a recording engineer for nearly 40 years, I can tell you that today there is no standard. The market has been flooded with "pro-studio monitors" ranging in price from $2000 to way beyond 50K. In the mastering world, there are three schools of thought. Build custom monitors (Bernie Grundman) Use Hi-Fi speakers (Bob Ludwig) or off-the-shelf monitors by companies like Genelec, Dynaudio, or PMC. What they all have in common is they have rooms that are purpose build for mastering and are, in many cases, voiced with some form of EQ to produce a relatively flat response. Any engineer will tell that no matter what you use you need to learn the monitor's shortcomings and strengths before you can expect to do professional-level work. That can take years.

Thanks for the reply, appreciate the insight. Do you check your mixes for “translation”? What do you use as a playback speaker to check?
 

dfuller

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Thanks for the reply, appreciate the insight. Do you check your mixes for “translation”? What do you use as a playback speaker to check?
I certainly don't have the experience John does - I've only been at this for about a decade - but I definitely do the lion's share of my mixing on one set of full-range speakers. I can turn off the woofer on my 3-ways so I get a "no bass response" reference too, but I'm not changing speakers.
 
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RobL

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I certainly don't have the experience John does - I've only been at this for about a decade - but I definitely do the lion's share of my mixing on one set of full-range speakers. I can turn off the woofer on my 3-ways so I get a "no bass response" reference too, but I'm not changing speakers.

Guess I’ve been watching too many youtube videos...guys talking about running out to their car to check their mixes :)

I forget how many talented folks are on this site, thanks guys for the input.
 

T.J. McKenna

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It seems to be somewhat fashionable to deride the NS-10M on this site. I find it tiresome. When you've designed a speaker that has sold untold millions and is used all over the world for 40 years, I might listen to you.

The speaker was produced for many decades for a reason. It was consistent, reliable, relatively inexpensive and enabled like for like comparisons to be made in various locations around the world. It also does a lot right.

Nobody ever claimed it was a world beater, least of all Yamaha. They, after all, produced the reference NS-1000M for over 35 years too.

The NS-10 was never recommended in Pro Audio circles on the basis of accurate sound: in fact, the selling-point was "if it sounds good on the NS-10 it'll sound good on anything".
 

tuga

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At home, I almost never touch the HF shelving. But the bass shelving I do change occasionally sometimes due to source material variances. Some songs just sound better with more added bass -- and the suspicion is they were mixed/mastered in small speakers with no sub(s) -- probably an NS10.

Have you tried inverting the polarity of those particular recordings on your file player or DAC?
 

T.J. McKenna

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NS-10s were used for supposed compatibility with home speakers; Auratones for car speakers; all bases covered! Except audiophile setups, which is why audiophiles aren't generally too pleased with run of the mill commercial recordings.

Interestingly, my Barefoots come with four voice settings: Flat - for accurate: OldScl - which "emulates the frequency, phase, and transient response, along with the dynamic compression for the NS-10 paired with a 3B type amplifier"; Cube - which "emulates the frequency, phase, and transient response, along with the dynamic compression and distortion signature for the Auratone 5C paired with a 3B type amplifier"; and Hi-Fi - which emulates a generic audiophile speaker with " a sweeter more forgiving sonic character".

Barefoot's aim is to include every facet of the recording process in a single monitor - tracking, mixing, and mastering - so that "you can box up your secondary reference monitors for good".
 

T.J. McKenna

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Yes, but only on average.

Some will be mixed with too much treble, some with too much bass, some with too little bass, too much mids, too little mids. Because most studio monitors aim for a flat response, and because of the "wisdom of the crowd", a flat speaker will on average give you the sound that is closest to what the mix/master engineer heard.

A separate and somewhat related benefit is that of preference. Toole's experiments show that the vast majority of people simply prefer neutral speakers under blind test conditions. These preferences were very consistent and over a variety of content from different studios.

Toole's experiments were done mostly with Harman employees and it's possible that the conclusions of these experiments reflected the sonic preconceptions of this group more than it did the wider public. The JBL "Century" was the most popular single speaker from the age of hi-fi, when everyone had a "system", and that was deliberately far from accurate, with a frequency response designed to mimic the venerable Altec 604 rather than a BBC type monitor. And I think Toole's advocacy of flat monitors is based less on the alleged preferences of the public than the random deviations from neutrality of most consumer playback mechanisms. Because they were random a neutral monitor worked as a kind of average of all these deviations.
 
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