Speakers for an untreated room with good transient response for mixing?

[iTzPrime]

Hello,

I recently moved and now am in a situation where I can't really treat the room. I have the Kali LP6 and for headphones i use Beyerdynamics 1990 Pro with headphone correction. The biggest issue I have with monitoring is in regards to the transient response of the music. I struggle to dial in the correct amount of compression/distortion due to that. The Kali LP6 sound very smeared. Pleasent for music listening, but not really great for mixing. I can mix once a week in a treated studio with Neumann KH 420. There is is super easy to dial them in correctly, but these are out of my budget for home use.

I am based in Austria and my budget would be around 800€ per monitor. What do you recommend to have the correct transient response? Thanks a lot.

Alternatively headphones are also an alternative, but I have yet to find a single headphone that has as an accurate transient response as monitors.

 

[Arindal]

I am based in Austria and my budget would be around 800€ per monitor. What do you recommend to have the correct transient response?

Give KSD C-5 Reference a try. Not sure if brand-new ones will fit into that budget (they used to), but from what I know, these are really the only affordable monitors with built-in DSP crossover for time alignment and on the other hand proper directivity for untreated rooms.

 

[staticV3]

Transient response is just frequency response x phase response.

Correct the phase response of a flat loudspeaker and you will have perfect transient response:

Source

This requires special DSP, either in your DAW or directly in the monitor.

A very nice, phase corrected monitor close to your budget is the Neumann KH 120 II.

The slightly more narrow directivity also benefits untreated rooms as reflections are kept in check.

 

[Arindal]

Transient response is just frequency response x phase response.

Correct the phase response of a flat loudspeaker and you will have perfect transient response

Unfortunately that is true to only a single position, if we are talking about 2-way loudspeakers with separated drivers.

My experience with Kali speakers is very limited, but several people complain rather about their resonance/decay issues (i.e. boomy, slow bass), not transient response in the sense of perfect step response. A convolution filter like you suggested would not help here.

A very nice, phase corrected monitor close to your budget is the Neumann KH 120 II.

As these have lobing issues due to the drivers being far apart from each other, plus a significant directivity step, I am afraid they might not be for everyone under nearfield conditions or in an untreated room.

 

[iTzPrime]

Unfortunately that is true to only a single position, if we are talking about 2-way loudspeakers with separated drivers.

My experience with Kali speakers is very limited, but several people complain rather about their resonance/decay issues (i.e. boomy, slow bass), not transient response in the sense of perfect step response. A convolution filter like you suggested would not help here.



As these have lobing issues due to the drivers being far apart from each other, plus a significant directivity step, I am afraid they might not be for everyone under nearfield conditions or in an untreated room.

Thanks, yes this is the issue with them that they sound so smeared. No convolution filter would make my Kali's good for the transient response

 

[levimax]

Neuman KH310? They mention best transient response in class as a feature.

 

[iTzPrime]

Neuman KH310? They mention best transient response in class as a feature.

Sadly they are more than twice the amount of money I can spend

 

[Matt_Holland]

As these have lobing issues due to the drivers being far apart from each other, plus a significant directivity step, I am afraid they might not be for everyone under nearfield conditions or in an untreated room.

Could you share the data regarding the side lobing and directivity step. I don’t see anything to worry about in Amir’s review

In fact the KH120 looks pretty much as perfect a nearfield monitor as you could wish for.

 

[iTzPrime]

Transient response is just frequency response x phase response.

Correct the phase response of a flat loudspeaker and you will have perfect transient response:
View attachment 502999
Source

This requires special DSP, either in your DAW or directly in the monitor.

A very nice, phase corrected monitor close to your budget is the Neumann KH 120 II.

The slightly more narrow directivity also benefits untreated rooms as reflections are kept in check.

So the KH 120 II have a super fast attack of the transients? Because No matter what EQ i would apply to the Kali for example it would not help the transient attack.

 

[Arindal]

Could you share the data regarding the side lobing and directivity step.

Sure. Lobing/Cancellation is visible in the transitional band around 1.8K which appears to be the crossover freq:

Admittingly this is a narrow band and the typical narrow listening window of a listener sitting, is not affected, but the typical desk reflection is significantly affected, and standing up is also not a good idea.

Directivity step is evident as the ´natural´ narrowing effect of the midwoofer between 700 and 1.5K, as significant as expected, but increase in D.I. is even getting steeper the neighboring band in which the tweeter kicks in. The latter is typical for overall energy radiated into the room is mostly cancelled out by lobing effects. The waveguide seems to be adjusted to the d.i. maximum at crossover point.

It is to be expected that the lowers mids of the reverb field in the room (below 700Hz) become very dominant in typical rooms, with the consecutive band being mildly attenuated. Even more importantly, the band 2.5-5K is significantly underrepresented (D.I. is +5-6dB up compared to fundamentals), which is, if in tonal balance, responsible for giving an impression of depth-of-field and the listening room reverb blending with the reverb on the recording. Same is true to the 5-8K band which is in common HRTF interpretations signaling our brain reverb coming from elevated angles.

So the KH 120 II have a super fast attack of the transients?

Do not see any evidence for that, but admittingly my listening experience with these models unter non-treated conditions is limited. The predecessors, which I used more often, I would rather see in the same ballpark as the Kali, as the bass was subjectively rather of slow decay, typical dominant vented system with broad/effective port resonance.

I have my doubts that ´super fast attack of transients´ is the result of time-coherent crossover design. Loudspeakers which were described like that (and the description is rather subjective and not very precise), I found to have a more decisive correlation with their tight, fast-decaying bass and tonally balanced indirect sound/reflections.

 

[Matt_Holland]

Sure. Lobing/Cancellation is visible in the transitional band around 1.8K which appears to be the crossover freq:

View attachment 503041

Admittingly this is a narrow band and the typical narrow listening window of a listener sitting, is not affected, but the typical desk reflection is significantly affected, and standing up is also not a good idea.

View attachment 503043
Directivity step is evident as the ´natural´ narrowing effect of the midwoofer between 700 and 1.5K, as significant as expected, but increase in D.I. is even getting steeper the neighboring band in which the tweeter kicks in. The latter is typical for overall energy radiated into the room is mostly cancelled out by lobing effects. The waveguide seems to be adjusted to the d.i. maximum at crossover point.

It is to be expected that the lowers mids of the reverb field in the room (below 700Hz) become very dominant in typical rooms, with the consecutive band being mildly attenuated. Even more importantly, the band 2.5-5K is significantly underrepresented (D.I. is +5-6dB up compared to fundamentals), which is, if in tonal balance, responsible for giving an impression of depth-of-field and the listening room reverb blending with the reverb on the recording. Same is true to the 5-8K band which is in common HRTF interpretations signaling our brain reverb coming from elevated angles.

Thanks for the reply. So only a coaxial design would satisfy you presumably?

As so many excellent speakers are not coaxial, do you concede that you are being overly critical of the KH120?

 

[Arindal]

So only a coaxial design would satisfy you presumably?

It is the easiest and most obvious solution, but not the only one. The smaller the midrange driver, the lower the crossover frequency, the steeper the slopes, the closer the two drivers in question are to each other - the more likely it is to succeed in designing a crossover that would keep lobing issues controlled and away from the important windows. There are examples of loudspeakers, typically 3-way models with a tiny midrange cone and the tweeter nearby, which at least keep the directivity index constant over the transitional bands, even if some minor lobing dips show up.

As so many excellent speakers are not coaxial, do you concede that you are being overly critical of the KH120?

I do not think so. I am in general reserved when it comes to non-constant directivity speakers in untreated rooms, and I am in general pretty critical of 2-way concepts having their drivers far apart from each other in a nearfield environment (Have used units of similar geometry by ATC, K+H, Genelec, Mackie, JBL, KSD, Adam and many others for nearfield monitoring in the past, and they basically share similar issues with lobing and desk reflections/listening window). In this case maybe it sounded overly critical because the OP described a combination of both problematic conditions (untreated room and nearfield).

Not saying that such speakers are necessarily bad. Used for midfield monitoring without a mixing console in close proximity, in properly treated rooms with a static listening position, one might never notice the outcome of what I tried to explain, but get excellent results.

 

[iTzPrime]

It is the easiest and most obvious solution, but not the only one. The smaller the midrange driver, the lower the crossover frequency, the steeper the slopes, the closer the two drivers in question are to each other - the more likely it is to succeed in designing a crossover that would keep lobing issues controlled and away from the important windows. There are examples of loudspeakers, typically 3-way models with a tiny midrange cone and the tweeter nearby, which at least keep the directivity index constant over the transitional bands, even if some minor lobing dips show up.



I do not think so. I am in general reserved when it comes to non-constant directivity speakers in untreated rooms, and I am in general pretty critical of 2-way concepts having their drivers far apart from each other in a nearfield environment (Have used units of similar geometry by ATC, K+H, Genelec, Mackie, JBL, KSD, Adam and many others for nearfield monitoring in the past, and they basically share similar issues with lobing and desk reflections/listening window). In this case maybe it sounded overly critical because the OP described a combination of both problematic conditions (untreated room and nearfield).

Not saying that such speakers are necessarily bad. Used for midfield monitoring without a mixing console in close proximity, in properly treated rooms with a static listening position, one might never notice the outcome of what I tried to explain, but get excellent results.

What spaker do you think would perform the best in my unfortunate scenario?

 

[dfuller]

Vertical lobing is definitely of less importance than horizontal errors. The KH120 II is fine.

Realistically, I would just work on headphones if your room is that screwy.

 

[Philbo King]

Mixing in an untreated room = headphones.

 

[iTzPrime]

Mixing in an untreated room = headphones.

Which ones have a super fast transient response? I haven't found a single headphone yet that offers this compared to speakers.

 

[Flaesh]

to the transient response of the music

- it seems there's nothing supernatural or exceptional about it.
?..

 

[RexrothPigeon]

It seems to me that the elephant in the room is your room, and without some treatment, you're probably always going to have some of the unwanted effects you've described ("boomy" bass, "smearing," "resonance")

 

[iTzPrime]

View attachment 503144
- it seems there's nothing supernatural or exceptional about it.
?..

I found the Kali LP 6 having a pretty smeared transient response.

It seems to me that the elephant in the room is your room, and without some treatment, you're probably always going to have some of the unwanted effects you've described ("boomy" bass, "smearing," "resonance")

yes it is an issue, but I brought the Kali's into the studio and they still have the transient response problem sounding smeared. That is why I was asking.

 

[dfuller]

I found the Kali LP 6 having a pretty smeared transient response.

It's almost certainly your room more than anything else, the Kalis are fine in the transient response department.

- it seems there's nothing supernatural or exceptional about it.

You're right, there isn't. That's what a minimum phase 3 way does.