500 euro for some aktive monitors to spend.

[risome]

Don't over capitalise your speakers.
What i mean by that is ,don't spend too much on speakers if you aren't going to treat the environment they will be in.Poorly set up expensive speakers in an untreated room won't often sound better than cheaper ones.I would recommend Dynaudio or Neumann and subs are a waist of money in a bedroom set up,spend that money on some good speaker stands.
Good luck

[tehlord]

Why are you insistent on getting a sub for mixing classical/score in an untreated room?

Out of your words I extract the information that a sub isn't needet for classic scoring.
So I safe the money and just get the jbl 305.
I think this is a good choise.

Irrespective of the genre, a sub is only useful in a room that properly set up for a sub. If the room isn't, then you will never know if what you're hearing is accurate and you'll actually make things worse (potentially) by using one.

The best sweet spot for you would be a 6.5" speaker, like the HS7s or Focal Alpha 65s. That and a good pair of headphones (highly recommended really).

[classic]

The room will have some treatment that is for sure.
I will set up some dampening walls to make jugdement of the sound easyer
to avoide standing waves and things like that.

[classic]

The JBL's arrived today.
I fell in love in the first seconds
They sound really fantastic

[Bubbamusic]

I'm leaning toward the JBL 308's. I am running on a thirty year old pair of JBL's (8" woofer 2" tweet) since they were new. They were originally reproducing what came out of a TEAC 3340s. I still have it, but it is retired. A stud set out to pasture.

[chk071]

Just ordered the 305's too. I only heard praise about them, and every test i read praised them too. Thrilled to hear them, when they arrive. They were pretty cheap too.

[wickfut]

Don't over capitalise your speakers.
What i mean by that is ,don't spend too much on speakers if you aren't going to treat the environment they will be in.Poorly set up expensive speakers in an untreated room won't often sound better than cheaper ones.I would recommend Dynaudio or Neumann and subs are a waist of money in a bedroom set up,spend that money on some good speaker stands.
Good luck

myth.

I used to be a high-end hifi nut swapping out lots of gear so I've owned shed-loads of speakers from tiny standmounts to 6ft tall electrostatcs. I've also had my rooms well treated with lots of acoustic panels and had the room completely bare.

Good speakers sound good, but placement is important to get the best out of them, average or bad speakers will always sound average or bad no matter how good your room is or how well they're placed. Spend the money on the best you can afford and then sort the room out later. It's much better than half arsing it now and then upgrading once you realise you've made a mistake by cheeping out.

Do you really think that in an untreated room that the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between say a £500 pair of KRKs and a £10000 pair of ATC?

[PurpleSunray]

Do you really think that in an untreated room that the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between say a £500 pair of KRKs and a £10000 pair of ATC?

You can.. everyone can.
The difference between 500€ KRK Rokit and 2000€ Focal CMS (on an untreated room) is like day and night..

Can't give you much advice on the topic tou.
Can't recommend the KRK. I love my CMS, but Focal is at the upper end on price-range.. above ur budget (idk if would buy Focal Alpha, there seem to be better options at that price range).

[chk071]

Don't over capitalise your speakers.
What i mean by that is ,don't spend too much on speakers if you aren't going to treat the environment they will be in.Poorly set up expensive speakers in an untreated room won't often sound better than cheaper ones.I would recommend Dynaudio or Neumann and subs are a waist of money in a bedroom set up,spend that money on some good speaker stands.
Good luck

myth.

I used to be a high-end hifi nut swapping out lots of gear so I've owned shed-loads of speakers from tiny standmounts to 6ft tall electrostatcs. I've also had my rooms well treated with lots of acoustic panels and had the room completely bare.

Good speakers sound good, but placement is important to get the best out of them, average or bad speakers will always sound average or bad no matter how good your room is or how well they're placed. Spend the money on the best you can afford and then sort the room out later. It's much better than half arsing it now and then upgrading once you realise you've made a mistake by cheeping out.

Do you really think that in an untreated room that the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between say a £500 pair of KRKs and a £10000 pair of ATC?

I guess some people spent a fortune on room treatment, to get the last 1%. Maybe i would do, if was a professional, making a life with what i do. There is one thing though, which made a huge difference for me, and that's moving my PC out of a corner, where there was so much reflections from the side walls, and the back. Now everything sounds totally 3D, and not like in a small bathroom anymore. I don't know much about these things, but, if i had to guess, i would say that the place where you set up your speakers is much more relevant than avoiding every single spot which could potentially reflect.

[Kaine]

I used to be a high-end hifi nut swapping out lots of gear so I've owned shed-loads of speakers from tiny standmounts to 6ft tall electrostatcs. I've also had my rooms well treated with lots of acoustic panels and had the room completely bare.

Good speakers sound good, but placement is important to get the best out of them, average or bad speakers will always sound average or bad no matter how good your room is or how well they're placed. Spend the money on the best you can afford and then sort the room out later. It's much better than half arsing it now and then upgrading once you realise you've made a mistake by cheeping out.

Do you really think that in an untreated room that the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between say a £500 pair of KRKs and a £10000 pair of ATC?

For a listening room, you almost want it to be bright and reflective. It helps add ambiance to it and keeps it lively with a large Soundstage.

For a mixing room, sod that. I want clean and clinical.

You can stick any two sets of speakers in a room and generally hear a difference be it the £500 or £5000 pair as you say, completely agree with that.

If you've got a large space to work with, you may get off with something passable if the delay from the back of the room isn't colliding with the sound source at the front of the room, but even then if you turn it up your just causing more mud. I'm running in a 4 X 6 room (and I'm sure most people on here don't have much more room than that) and I had to treat the living daylights out of it to make it remotely usable for mixing. The early reflections were smearing the sound, the echo was killer and the bass build up in the corners threw the balance off completely.

After treatment it sounds dull and lifeless for listening when I'm not working in there, so that's the trade off, but at least it's fairly flat and usable when I am. I can always move to the lounge and blast it out instead, when I want to listen to stuff instead and a change of environment helps anyway.

I do agree with a lot of what your saying, don't cheap out on speakers you'll only end up upgrading a few years down the line as you realise where they are lacking, but that's all part of the learning process. You're also completely right with positioning, it's key with setting up speakers as miss-aligned phase relationships can ruin your working enviroment, but it'll only get you so far if you need it to be a reference space for mixing, treatment is crucial for taming those early reflections. If you manage to nail the mid-distance reflections too and clean up some of the upper bass harmonics, all the better!

[thecontrolcentre]

Buy some Genelecs. You wont regret it. I've had mine (with a sub) for almost 20 years. They still sound great, and my mixes translate well on other systems.

[chk071]

Just ordered the 305's too. I only heard praise about them, and every test i read praised them too. Thrilled to hear them, when they arrive. They were pretty cheap too.

I have the 305's now for a couple of days, and i like them. The highs are not as shrill as on my M-Audio monitors, they have more bass (even though a tiny bit boom-y), and the tone is generally a bit more hi-fi, and not as fart dry (and almost a bit flat and boring) as on the M-Audio's, i like that more. A little bit of a downside is that they are quite noisy, even when you plug out the audio cables. I guess i'm a bit sensitive in that regard, in a test i read that it's only audible in sound-insulated room (even though that is hard to believe when you actually hear it...). I can live with it though, and it's surely not a reason to send it back. Still i think that that's a thing which could be better.

Frankly haven't tried to really turn up the volume yet though, that will follow the next days. Happy with the purchase, definitely.

[metamorphosis]

I got some money set asside over the year and I am in desperate need of some monitors.
What would you spend your money for to have the best including a subwoofer.

Need it for studiowork.

Fhanks for your help

You can gets some excellent speakers for this price. Not including subwoofer. I wouldn't even bother with a subwoofer. If you need one, your monitors weren't great.

I got the JBL lsr-305's and have been very happy with them as a secondary monitor set.
Goto reproduction without being flattering to the material. $149 per speaker from sweetwaters.

[nIGhT-SoN]

Like a year ago I was in the same situation and I bought Tannoy Reveal 502. I also needed cables and stand for this amount of money. I really like them, although they have a small problem, they have hiss, it's not that obvious when you stay at more than 1-1.5m away, but it's there. If music is playing even at low level I can't even notice the hiss. That's the only problem. In rest I love their sound, it's well rounded, bass it's tight, controlled, doesn't feel muddy, and for mids and highs they are well known to be one of the best in this price range.

Before buying them I was looking at KRK, me doing mostly electronic music/pop, but I've heard so many complains about their bass being muddy and exaggerated and then I've looked at JBL and Tannoy. I didn't liked JBL because they were back ported and it makes placement harder and I've heard Tannoy Reveal Red, they were passive, and I fell in love with them how they sounded.