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CD-R and Audio Hardware => Audio Hardware => Topic started by: Bartholomew MacGruber on 2012-04-27 16:52:51

Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Bartholomew MacGruber on 2012-04-27 16:52:51
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: mixminus1 on 2012-04-27 17:49:10
Define "worse".

For years, one of the studio standards for mixdown monitors were Yamaha NS-10Ms.  They weren't/aren't within a stone's throw of any definition of "neutral" or "uncolored", and finding consumer-oriented speakers that are objectively superior is a fairly simple task, especially these days, but nonetheless, I'd guess the majority (vast majority?) of hit records from the 80s and 90s were mixed through them.

A good mix engineer "learns" their speakers, whatever they may be, and how mixes done on those speakers will translate to the enormous variety of playback systems that their recording will be heard through...and that's the key: translation.  All speakers (and headphones, of course) sound different, so getting a well-balanced mix on a pair you know well is the best you can do, and then hopefully it holds together through other speakers, even if those speakers have very different frequency responses (and are in very different acoustic environments) than yours.

Note that this is really the key role that a good mastering engineer plays (or did, or should...): being able to hear if your mixes will translate well, and applying the necessary final adjustments to give them the best chance of doing so.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Ethan Winer on 2012-04-27 18:23:48
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?

In recent years I've become disturbed by the trend to market "pleasing sounding" speakers to pro mix engineers. These speakers have an intentional dip in the harshness range around 2 to 4 KHz - often 4 dB or even more - which makes music sound smoother and less fatiguing. So some engineers hear and buy these speakers, wrongly thinking they're "better" because they sound pleasing. This is a terrible trend IMO, because mixes made on such speakers will be overly harsh when played on better speakers. So in this sense the answer to your question is Yes.

--Ethan
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: RonaldDumsfeld on 2012-04-27 21:16:14
Quote
the trend to market "pleasing sounding" speakers to pro mix engineers.


not to start a row or anything mate but I don't recognise that as a trend myself.

Do you have any examples?
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Ethan Winer on 2012-04-28 17:02:06
Yes, plenty of examples. Some years back, a fellow named David French measured the response of ten popular monitor speakers. I've tried to reach him for permission to post his graphs on my own site because they are so incredibly telling. Without his permission I can't post the actual graphs, but I can tell you what they show. There's also Appendix 2 in the book Recording Studio Design by Philip Newell that shows the response of many popular studio speakers. But those graphs are so small it's difficult to see the detail.

Anyway, David measured ten speakers using a technique that's even better than an anechoic chamber. The problem with anechoic chambers is they are anechoic only down to 100 Hz, or maybe 80 Hz if it's a really good one. What David did was fly all ten speakers high up over the stage in a huge auditorium. By keeping the speakers 40 feet from all boundaries, a technique known as gating can be used to avoid the effects of all reflections down to a very low frequency. I've seen a photo of the test setup and it was valid. The graphs were made using the ETF software.

The speakers tested were Tannoy 800A, Genelec 1031A, Event Studio Precision 8, Dynaudio BM15A, Mackie HR824, Alesis M1 Active MkII, M&K S-150PK THX Ultra, Yamaha NS10, ADAM S2A, and Event TR8. In order:

--Ethan
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: honestguv on 2012-04-28 20:15:19
...SNIP...

Are you aware of data from other sources that support or contradict these measurements of a dip?
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2012-04-29 17:51:28
...SNIP...

Are you aware of data from other sources that support or contradict these measurements of a dip?


URL?
Cite?
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: tomtomthomson on 2012-04-30 03:22:41
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?

Hi, What might be relevant is an example to do with the famous smasheroo hit Smells Like Teen Spirit. I found that it 'translated' very well, and tended to sound terrific on/in the radio, tv, car, rock club, juke box, pa etc. but rather harsh and unengaging on a high quality monitoring system, and I do mean high quality - flat fequency response, plenty of dynamic headroom, and even equalised to the room. That being a purpose-built control room of a high caliber, in the example I'm thinking of. I couldn't decide if this would have been the production team's intention or just luck.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Bartholomew MacGruber on 2012-04-30 06:18:32
Define "worse".

For years, one of the studio standards for mixdown monitors were Yamaha NS-10Ms.  They weren't/aren't within a stone's throw of any definition of "neutral" or "uncolored", and finding consumer-oriented speakers that are objectively superior is a fairly simple task, especially these days, but nonetheless, I'd guess the majority (vast majority?) of hit records from the 80s and 90s were mixed through them.

A good mix engineer "learns" their speakers, whatever they may be, and how mixes done on those speakers will translate to the enormous variety of playback systems that their recording will be heard through...and that's the key: translation.  All speakers (and headphones, of course) sound different, so getting a well-balanced mix on a pair you know well is the best you can do, and then hopefully it holds together through other speakers, even if those speakers have very different frequency responses (and are in very different acoustic environments) than yours.

Note that this is really the key role that a good mastering engineer plays (or did, or should...): being able to hear if your mixes will translate well, and applying the necessary final adjustments to give them the best chance of doing so.



Well, that's the strange thing because audiophile speakers are often advertised as being accurate and "true to the sound that the artist intended" but if the studio monitors weren't accurate isn't this so-called "accuracy" really a form of distortion and inaccuracy?  And some of these speakers are quite expensive and even have new materiasl in them.  For example, supposedly the company Wilson-Benesch used a type of carbon fiber that was new for their drivers, so it seems quite ironic that all this time and effort is just making things sound worse in an objective sense because it's not the sound that the recording engineers heard.

And to make make matters worse, their might not be the one true sound that the people who made the recording actually wanted because the decisions were made by multiple people maybe - the artists, the recording engineer, the mastering engineer, the producers, maybe other people who worked for the record company.  I'm a drummer and one time we were recording some stuff and the engineer told me to change snare drums and I think what he wanted sounded worse but I didn't want to waste time arguing with him so I just went along with it.

It seems the best situation would be to listen at home on the monitors that were used during the mastering phase of the recording because that was when the final decision was made.  So if someone used Yamaha NS-10Ms in the studio, they would be the best choice for listening at home.  And I think they started out as a home speaker but were later changed for studio use.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Bartholomew MacGruber on 2012-04-30 06:22:20
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?

In recent years I've become disturbed by the trend to market "pleasing sounding" speakers to pro mix engineers. These speakers have an intentional dip in the harshness range around 2 to 4 KHz - often 4 dB or even more - which makes music sound smoother and less fatiguing. So some engineers hear and buy these speakers, wrongly thinking they're "better" because they sound pleasing. This is a terrible trend IMO, because mixes made on such speakers will be overly harsh when played on better speakers. So in this sense the answer to your question is Yes.

--Ethan


I think the opposite has also happened.  Some recording engineers have used "bad" sounding monitors because they thought if the recording sounded good on bad monitors it would sound good on anything.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Typhoon859 on 2012-04-30 08:18:52
I think the opposite has also happened.  Some recording engineers have used "bad" sounding monitors because they thought if the recording sounded good on bad monitors it would sound good on anything.


That makes absolutely no sense XD. There have been some foolish trends in the past but I really doubt there was ever thought like that!...
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Bartholomew MacGruber on 2012-04-30 08:44:50
OK, I can't remember all the places that I read that, so maybe there's not much to it.  Here's something from this page:

Quote
"The old cliché is that if it sounds good on NS10s then it'll sound good on anything. I think it's precisely because they sound so bad that they are used so widely."


http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/arti.../yamahans10.htm (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/articles/yamahans10.htm)

I also seem to remember stuff about recording engineers listening in their car because they figured if it sounded good in their car it would sound good anywhere.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2012-04-30 14:25:03
I think the opposite has also happened.  Some recording engineers have used "bad" sounding monitors because they thought if the recording sounded good on bad monitors it would sound good on anything.


That makes absolutely no sense XD. There have been some foolish trends in the past but I really doubt there was ever thought like that!...


Whether you think it makes sense or not, its real. Recording, mixing and mastering engineers have been intentionally reviewing their work on substandard equipment for decades.

What you may not realize is that really good systems often sound great even with badly-mixed and badly-mastered recordings.

Play the same recordings on a POS playback system, and often not so good.

The goal for a mainstream recording is to satisfy the most possible customers, not make a few pointy-headed audiophiles happy.

In practice, one can generally get recordings to sound as good as possible in a large variety of contexts. Often a little tweaking will help playback on cheap systems a lot, and not hurt the good systems at all or very much.

One thing that helps is that even the cheap stuff today sounds pretty good and can handle reasonable dynamic range and bandwidth that was unheard of 40 years ago. Most of the limitations that are put in are not for equipment, but for specific listening environments like background music in a noisy office or to get a stand out sound on a top-40 station when played over $20 computer speakers or the speakers on a laptop.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2012-04-30 14:29:38
OK, I can't remember all the places that I read that, so maybe there's not much to it.  Here's something from this page:

Quote
"The old cliché is that if it sounds good on NS10s then it'll sound good on anything. I think it's precisely because they sound so bad that they are used so widely."


http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/arti.../yamahans10.htm (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/articles/yamahans10.htm)

All very true and not exceptional. NS10s are lengendary for the purpose.

Quote
I also seem to remember stuff about recording engineers listening in their car because they figured if it sounded good in their car it would sound good anywhere.

You have to be careful about using car systems for this purpose, as some of them are measurably and subjectively on a plane with some good studio monitors, and far better than many home systems. Especially true if the car isn't moving at freeway speeds. IOW, they are too good to be examples of a limited system.

I would say that the worst sound I commonly hear is on laptop computer speakers. Portable digital players with mid-priced earphones are way too good for this purpose.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: markanini on 2012-04-30 15:01:32
Without his permission I can't post the actual graphs, but I can tell you what they show.

Found some of the graphs on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20060317203254/...hoic/index.html (http://web.archive.org/web/20060317203254/http://dmfrench2.iweb.bsu.edu/quasi_anechoic/index.html)

FWIW I own the Alesis M1 Active Mk2 and the 5db peak measured in the low-bass range more closely reflects what I hear compared to other graphs I've seen of the same model.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: DVDdoug on 2012-04-30 18:52:29
...And to make matters worse, their might not be the one true sound that the people who made the recording actually wanted because the decisions were made by multiple people maybe - the artists, the recording engineer, the mastering engineer, the producers, maybe other people who worked for the record company...
  With big-label releases, the mixing engineer & mastering engineer will have different set-ups and the song will have been listened-to by many different people on many different systems.  In the end, I would assume management gets the sound they want, or at least a sound that is acceptable to them.

Quote
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?
It seems to be a common problem with amateurs.    You don't have to read many Recording Magazine Reader's Tapes Reviews (http://www.recordingmag.com/tapereviews.html) before monitors (or lack of monitors) are cited as a potential contributor to less-than-perfect mix.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: AudioKitten on 2012-05-01 16:25:10
Maybe this is mostly a problem with amateur masters? All of the mastering studios that I've seen have at least two sets of monitors.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Bartholomew MacGruber on 2012-05-02 04:52:12
I don't know if it's ever been done before, but it would be interesting to see if they've ever tried to use perfectly accurate studio monitors and then just have various applications that can mimic the performance of cheaper speakers to try to get the best overall performance as possible on a variety of speakers.  I imagine a lot of that could be done with just EQ, I don't know about all the different forms of distortion and other inaccuracies.

They have digital room correction for home systems, so it would be interesting to see if they could create something similar for studios to simulate "bad" rooms and make the recording less vulnerable to sounding bad in certain rooms.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: _if on 2012-05-02 07:12:44
If you took a set of any of the good monitors (read: not the Yamahas  ) Ethan mentioned and used EQ to compensate for their bumps or dips and make a flat response, do you think they'd all sound roughly identical then? Could I just buy a decent set of monitors, measure the response, and EQ myself the rest of the way to the big bucks sound?
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: stephan_g on 2012-05-02 09:36:54
If you took a set of any of the good monitors (read: not the Yamahas  ) Ethan mentioned and used EQ to compensate for their bumps or dips and make a flat response, do you think they'd all sound roughly identical then?

In a well-damped room and for exactly one listening position, it should be doable. (An EQ has too few degrees of freedom to control aff-axis response.) Even then, you may still run into level handling issues at higher volumes, which is another factor that tends to separate the men from the boys, so to speak.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Bartholomew MacGruber on 2012-05-02 09:37:20
If you took a set of any of the good monitors (read: not the Yamahas  ) Ethan mentioned and used EQ to compensate for their bumps or dips and make a flat response, do you think they'd all sound roughly identical then? Could I just buy a decent set of monitors, measure the response, and EQ myself the rest of the way to the big bucks sound?



I think you can do a lot with EQ like that, but I don't know how much.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: icstm on 2012-05-02 13:19:22
is that type of EQ adjustment was audacity type systems try to do for you?
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: RonaldDumsfeld on 2012-05-02 15:24:42
Thanks to Ethan for going to the trouble to post the stats for popular monitors. very interesting.

So it seems that studio monitors in general have a tendency to have a small dip at just those frequencies that the human ear is most sensitive too. A bit like the old 'loudness control' we used to have on hi-fi amplifiers. I'm surprised to learn this. It is contrary to my own (untutored) expectations. Hi Fi buffs tend to dismiss genuine monitors for home listening because they sound 'fatiguing'  and sharp. Also lacking bass.

So it would be interesting to have similar stats for popular brands of hi-fi speakers. The view here seems to be that they would have a flatter response curve but I'm not at all sure they would. I'd expect (with no real evidence I must admit) hi fi brands to have an even deeper mid/high dip and a slight boost at either end.

To turn the OP's question on it's head I have plenty of examples of monitors sounding worse than hi-fi. Going from 8Ts speakers Mourdant Short Pageant 2, lumpy bass, smooth mids, 9Ts speakers TDL RTL 3, shrill tops, smooth lows) to 0Ts monitors,  ADAM AX. I initially found the change challenging. Many old recordings I had previously found perfectly acceptable (e.g. old less than pristine vinyl, live tape recordings etc) became painful to listen too, thin and fuzzy.

p.s. I'm aware I've expressed some opinions here not supported by facts as per HA TOS. I'm hoping the nature of the discussion allows this but if not then please feel free to delete this post and accept an apolgy.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: honestguv on 2012-05-02 16:33:46
So it seems that studio monitors in general have a tendency to have a small dip at just those frequencies that the human ear is most sensitive too. A bit like the old 'loudness control' we used to have on hi-fi amplifiers. I'm surprised to learn this. It is contrary to my own (untutored) expectations.

Yes it is interesting but I would suggest a bit of caution about drawing general conclusions from a particular set of measurements without their supporting discussion. It is straightforward for the major monitor manufacturers to make speakers with reasonably flat on axis responses and most of them both claim that they do and produce on axis measurements in support of the claim.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: RonaldDumsfeld on 2012-05-02 18:16:56
To be fair Ethan did quote the test methodology. Speakers 'flown' in a huge auditorium.

That is neither representative of actual use in a studio space, a domestic setting or traditional test chamber. I still find it interesting although it would be better to test vs traditional hi-fi grade equipment in a similar environment.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Kees de Visser on 2012-05-02 22:38:42
I would suggest a bit of caution about drawing general conclusions from a particular set of measurements without their supporting discussion. It is straightforward for the major monitor manufacturers to make speakers with reasonably flat on axis responses and most of them both claim that they do and produce on axis measurements in support of the claim.
I second that. If these measurements are valid, and at the same time different from those made in anechoic chambers, it would be interesting to find out why.
Ethan wrote:
Quote
The problem with anechoic chambers is they are anechoic only down to 100 Hz, or maybe 80 Hz if it's a really good one.
This might explain different results under 100 Hz, but not why the rather huge dips are not found in traditional measurements.
It would be nice if Ethan could give some more info about the test.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: RobWansbeck on 2012-05-05 22:45:14
The dips could be the result of phase cancellation due to microphone placement.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2012-05-08 13:32:23
I don't know if it's ever been done before, but it would be interesting to see if they've ever tried to use perfectly accurate studio monitors and then just have various applications that can mimic the performance of cheaper speakers to try to get the best overall performance as possible on a variety of speakers.


First problem - finding perfectly accurate studio monitors. Hens teeth!

Second problem - finding reliable eq packages that would make them sound like other real world bad speakers.



Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: ktf on 2012-05-08 16:03:35
Second problem - finding reliable eq packages that would make them sound like other real world bad speakers.


I don't think thats very hard: measure the impulse response of the speakers (probably in a room that fits the kind of equipment) and use convolution to emulate the speaker. You could try to counter your non-perfect monitor problem by deconvolution as well. Probably the result won't be perfect (as deconvolution certainly wont give perfect results), but thats not the objective. If it emulates well, which of course has to be tested, the problem is solved. In the mastering stage, the time delay of convolution/deconvoltion won't be a problem too.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2012-05-09 14:24:50
Second problem - finding reliable eq packages that would make them sound like other real world bad speakers.


I don't think thats very hard: measure the impulse response of the speakers (probably in a room that fits the kind of equipment) and use convolution to emulate the speaker.


I guess you don't know that the world is full of people who took an introductory DSP class or something like it and hit on the same idea.

The more motivated went into the lab and actually tried it. Reality struck! The few that actually stuck with it for a number of years, were smart enough to overcome the practical problems, got funding so they could still eat while fooling around for years with no commercial results, and were lucky; produced products and built a company around them. Say, Audessy.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: ktf on 2012-05-09 14:38:14
... produced products and built a company around them. Say, Audessy.


I wasn't talking about fighting acoustics, (that's what Audyssey seems to do) which is of course pretty much impossible. "Adding" coloration and slew to a much better system is something different entirely.

Why would anyone have tried to make a set sound worse actually, besides from this application? Convolution (for reverb, for instance) is already used, why wouldn't it work for speakers?
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: krabapple on 2012-05-09 16:38:36
Isn't most studio monitoring on these speakers (NS10s etc) done in the near field -- thus , mostly on-axis sound -- and wouldn't that affect how the recording sounds in 'normal' home listening  -- which is by no means guaranteed to be nearfield?

(My understanding is that studios often have a nearfield pair, mounted on or near the console, and a pair of floorstanders farther away, so maybe this isn't an issue, though the accuracy of the speakers and the acoustics of the room still are.)
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: markanini on 2012-05-10 15:18:09
Yeah, the equilateral triangle, each side 3-6 feet, is usually observed in studios only. Another thing is most people aren't concern with keeping a minimum distance of 25cm to the back wall and corners, resulting in a bass boost.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Thasp on 2012-05-12 05:51:55
So it seems that studio monitors in general have a tendency to have a small dip at just those frequencies that the human ear is most sensitive too. A bit like the old 'loudness control' we used to have on hi-fi amplifiers. I'm surprised to learn this. It is contrary to my own (untutored) expectations.

Yes it is interesting but I would suggest a bit of caution about drawing general conclusions from a particular set of measurements without their supporting discussion. It is straightforward for the major monitor manufacturers to make speakers with reasonably flat on axis responses and most of them both claim that they do and produce on axis measurements in support of the claim.


Try any of those speakers and compare them to something of quality intended for the home environment like Thiel or Vandersteen and you'll hear for yourself. Now it is all about making something cheap that will impress people at Guitarcenter who are newcomers to recording. There is a very thin line between professional recording and "professional out of my basement" recording nowadays. It makes sense to engineer products to people who WANT a monitor that will hide the flaws in their amateur recording. The midrange is the hardest part to get right - so monitors that are easygoing in the midrange will make more amateur mixes & recordings sound tolerable.

Another purpose for those dips - to manufacture monitors that are "client pleasers" - Genelec 1031a are historic studio CLIENT speakers. Very few people actually mix on them, and very few engineers actually play finished products for the label execs on the NS10s. Every tool has its purpose. Do you want to play your finished product to the people paying for it through speakers that reveal every flaw, or speakers that will hide every flaw? Avatar had the big brother version of the Tannoy 800A... they were used once in over a decade, on some Foxy Brown session. That was it!! The 1031 and Urei 813 were only ever used to deafen the record label execs walking on the session to "see how things were going", then back to the NS10s or the engineer's monitors of choice for the real work.

Just because a company claims they are making an accurate product and markets it as a "studio" or "professional" product does not mean it is so! Often, the most accurate reproduction equipment is NOT made for the professional world, and the more a company spends time ADVERTISING how flat their product is, the less time they spend in the lab making it so!

Let's talk about so called flat results! Often those results of measurements are SMOOTHED to make a very BUMPY frequency response look flat. The degree of smoothing depends on the manufacturer and who is doing the measurements. A 5 dB null at 1 Khz and a 5 dB peak at 2 KHz can easily be made to look flat through smoothing and averaging out the measurement.

Lastly, room EQ and DSP is awful poison. Most studios with Big Red Lansing 604e speakers found them going unused. They were always afflicted with intense room EQ. Nearfields gained popularity as it allowed freelance engineers to get around the awful room tuning used on the control room's main speakers.

I forget if this were in the 60s, 70s, or 80s. Somewhere along the line, people found out that our brain can actually hear the room and subtract it from the equation. Even though we HEAR the room, our brain subtracts it from what we are actually trying to process. By trying to EQ out the room, you are compensating for something your brain is already compensating for. This becomes aurally very confusing, and is only useful for the lowest of frequencies where our brain has trouble telling the room from the original sound anyway. If you have true life measurements of a speaker - say, you measure them outside in a field and get a set of results, and attempt to EQ out the peaks, this can work. Measuring speakers in a room and EQing them to be flat in that room however, this will result in a nightmare.

I understand people being skeptical of one person's claims. On HA, I am not sure of Ethan's reputation. In the professional recording community(and basement recording community as well!), Ethan is well renowned as an expert in his craft whose findings are more often than not based on proper experiments and real science, not untested hypothesis.

P.S.

On measuring NS10s. If someone can find me a set they are measuring where the left and the right measure even within 20% of each other, I'll trade you my 3A signatures for the pair. Really! Good luck. I recall Rich Costey using NS10s four years ago in bewilderment of why the left side of his mix sounded so F'd up. The tweeter measured 10 dB different than the other. We swap out the NS10, same problem. I spent 2 hours going through 30+ drivers and crossovers to find a set that measured within even 3 dB of each other so the session could continue.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: lanayapiper on 2012-10-12 13:13:27
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?


I guess there's none. The only possibility for this issue is when the device is totally not in good condition. Let's see what others have to say.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2012-10-15 14:50:40
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?


I guess there's none. The only possibility for this issue is when the device is totally not in good condition. Let's see what others have to say.


Really, its an unaswerable question, or at least one that shouldn't be answered by any sensible person.

Since there is no absolute standard for "sounding better", the question is in dire danger of falling into a mass of dueling personal opinions.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: seditious3 on 2012-10-22 17:53:53
Quote
I also seem to remember stuff about recording engineers listening in their car because they figured if it sounded good in their car it would sound good anywhere.



That was Motown:

http://books.google.com/books?id=0tz5Ypiju...ers&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=0tz5YpijuksC&pg=PA677&lpg=PA677&dq=motown+mix+car+speakers&source=bl&ots=KY35a3ZJzN&sig=adcak8yV_qMMt4iZ36gTEm_5uKI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6XiFUM_cAozC0AGZo4CwAw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=motown%20mix%20car%20speakers&f=false)

http://www.tangible-technology.com/media/media_1.html (http://www.tangible-technology.com/media/media_1.html)
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: tnargs on 2012-10-23 01:36:44
....What David did was fly all ten speakers high up over the stage in a huge auditorium. .... I've seen a photo of the test setup and it was valid. ...

A local manufacturer of (pro stage/cineam and home) loudspeakers uses the same technique. Works well.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: tnargs on 2012-10-23 01:56:34
    The Tannoy ...a broad 3dB dip centered around 4 KHz.
    The Genelec ...a broad 4 dB dip centered around 4 KHz.
    The Event ...a broad 4 dB dip between 4 and 6 KHz.
    The Dynaudio ...a narrow 9 dB dip at 3.5 KHz ....
    The Mackie ...a broad 2 dB dip between 1.6 and 4 KHz.
    The Alesis ...
    The M&K ...narrow dips of 3 and 4 dB at 3 KHz and 6 KHz ...
    The NS10 ...a narrow 4 dB boost at 1.6 KHz ...
    The Adam ...a broad 6 dB scoop centered at 4 KHz...
    The Event ...a 9 dB narrow dip at 4 KHz...[/li]
[/quote]
Let's say, based on the above, 000's of recordings are out there with some emphasis in the 2k-5kHz region, because the monitors had a dip there.

And let's say a lot of home playback loudspeakers don't share this trait.

This is the very region that Linkwitz says is emphasised by close mic'ing techniques, and needs a bit of restraint in mixing or playback of many recordings. Based on the above, we might be getting the opposite.

This might be one systemic contributor to that 'in your face, CD sound' that many attribute to poor old CD.   

My sincere hope is that studios don't use these monitors for final mastering (which is best done in a simulated home listening room with full range speakers at normal distance); I hope the use of these monitors is primarily for getting the details right and forensically peeking into the mix for little glitches and for dialling in correct panning and echo etc. In which case something of a boost in the region in question, like the NS10, would be the best servant. IMHO 
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: tnargs on 2012-10-23 02:10:52
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?

In recent years I've become disturbed by the trend to market "pleasing sounding" speakers to pro mix engineers. ...

It's potentially worse than you think, Ethan. Imagine someone actively marketing to mixing studios a clone of the Auratone 5C with the commendation "full-range reference studio monitors let you hear what your mixes will sound like on real-world systems such as car stereos, computers, televisions, iPod stations and other bass-challenged systems"? 

Too late to stop, it's already happening (http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/C5A.aspx)!
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2012-10-23 20:28:28
Has there ever been a documented case of a recording sounding worse on quality home speakers because the studio monitors used to make the recording where of lower quality?

In recent years I've become disturbed by the trend to market "pleasing sounding" speakers to pro mix engineers. ...

It's potentially worse than you think, Ethan. Imagine someone actively marketing to mixing studios a clone of the Auratone 5C with the commendation "full-range reference studio monitors let you hear what your mixes will sound like on real-world systems such as car stereos, computers, televisions, iPod stations and other bass-challenged systems"? 

Too late to stop, it's already happening (http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/C5A.aspx)!


Usually, monitoring on  real world playback systems was reserved for post mix - usually mastering.

The historical name of the game is make the recording sound great on accurate speakers, and acceptable on crappy ones.
Title: studio monitors and quality of home speakers
Post by: markanini on 2012-10-23 20:45:38
What are Doug Sax and Rob Ludwig using?