Need advice on studio monitor upgrade

[thecontrolcentre]

I’d suggest stretching your budget a bit and going with Genelec 8020s. They’re excellent near-fields that are designed for a smaller room like yours (and mine), have incredible detail, and are built to withstand a nuclear warhead.

Also,they can be tweaked for the room (via dip-awitches) or if you decide to add a sub. Genelec stuff is built to last too. I've been using the same 1029A/1091A system for 25 years.

[ghettosynth]

I tried a sub with smaller speakers and came to the conclusion that if your room has bass problems to begin with, then you're now just adding a third problem to the mix. I find it very difficult to get a good placement. I think that the best advice in this thread is to use the length of the room and look at the focal 6.5s.

[stoopicus]

Smaller than 7" will work regardless of orientation in that room. My space is smaller, has terrible acoustics (flat glass panels behind me, window to my right, all right angles, etc) and my JBL 305P's sound great in the standard triangle focus (ear level, about 4 feet apart and two in front of me, both pointed at my head).

[cnt]

Fix your acoustics first. For under 300 euro you can do it yourself as long as you hire a acoustic professional to make measures and a plan on what to do. You do not need expensive materials. Or you can learn to calculate everything yourself, which is harder than I thought.. so hired a professional studio builder, took him 1 hour to measure and come up with a detailed sketch on what to do. The sweet spot is small due to my room was a pretty small square before doing back and "no-corner walls", but its right where I have my keyboard and screen...

The hard thing is to get hold of a real professional, not some stupid self proclaimed audiophile......

If you have a really small room, skip the subs, its physically impossible to fix the sub bass acoustics in most "tiny room" situations..
My 2 cents.

[cnt]

Sonarworks can NOT fix acousticly bad rooms. It can only do eq curves. When sound reflects on walls you cant remove any waves entering your ears.......

If music is important for you there is no reason not to fix the room. I spent 15 years without real treatment... and you can do awesome songs! But its more or less impossible to do professional mixes...you have to really know your rooms "errors" and think of them while mixing.
Hiring a pro and building a real studio room was the best thing and cost effective thing I ever did.
Stick with very small nearfield monitors if you cant fix the room..

[cnt]

Btw, small Genelecs are the best for small untreated rooms in my experience.

[ghettosynth]

Stick with very small nearfield monitors if you cant fix the room..

I don't really buy this. Why small speakers? Well, it's because they don't produce the low frequencies that will activate the room so yay, you don't activate the room. Also, you don't hear low frequencies. If you put speakers in the room that can activate the room then your low frequencies will not be accurate, but you will be able to hear them.

A sub is not a cure for this. In fact, it's just more problems. You still won't hear things accurately, a sub will activate the room, but you also will have a substandard speaker for monitoring. The only advantage that the sub brings is that you can hear the lows while jamming and you can turn the sub off for mixing.

So yes, fix your room if that is important, however, if you're asking about cheap monitors, I'm not sure that this is of primary concern. Further, if your mixing EDM then there's more to it than mixdown where things need to be accurate. If you want to turn it up and jam then you need speakers that can handle that. You aren't going to get thump out of 8020s. I feel like this is Genelec bias trying to find a solution that fits in the OPs budget. OP is used to cheap monitors in an untreated room. Almost any pair of $1000 monitors with better bass performance than an 8020 is going to solve the expressed problems.

I'd take my reference tracks down to my local music emporium and find speakers that thump and have midrange clarity that you're looking for. If you want Genelecs because they have a reputation for translation, then stretch your budget to get something suitable. The SAM 8341s look great at only $6k per pair.

[stoopicus]

Yeah, I mean I'll say it again, my room with some worst cases for acoustics works great with my 5" JBL 305PII's. And they have almost identical freq response curves to a Yamaha HS7.

[chk071]

I tried a sub with smaller speakers and came to the conclusion that if your room has bass problems to begin with, then you're now just adding a third problem to the mix. I find it very difficult to get a good placement.

It's really difficult, and, it can be a difference day/night, even with small positional changes.

It makes things a little easier though if you don't have much choice where you position your speakers...

[chk071]

Yeah, I mean I'll say it again, my room with some worst cases for acoustics works great with my 5" JBL 305PII's.

I have one of the preceding models, the JBL LSR305's. I wasn't that keen on the sound at first, but, they sorta grew on me. The biggest issue I have is that they tend to be a bit boomey, when you get near 50 or 60 Hz. Probably a problem with the room, and the position pretty close to the wall. But, not much of a choice here...

[_leras]

I actually really like even my inexpensive Beyerdynamic DT990Pros for this, except for the far highs. But they are outstanding to check mixes against my JBLs.

I think both have a 'sparkly' bump somewhere 8k ish... Fine, perhaps even nice, for listening and creating. I just keep it in mind that there's more air in the sound, and treat them like a different pair of headphones.

I've found really great translation after using EQ correction curves when mixing. The headphones have such great dynamics and the bass is just right for translation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/co ... _20122022/

[Lazarus451]

I have Genelec 8030C's that cost 1030€ a pair. I would not go under 8030's because the lack of bass. I've had KRK 8" rokits, Yamaha HS80's, IK Multimedia MTM's. And the Genelecs are the ones that I wont upgrade unless it's to better Genelecs. The low bass is the only thing that I miss from some of my previous monitors. But those also come with the boomy problems.

[Benedict]

I've found really great translation after using EQ correction curves when mixing.

I would love to hear some before-afters from people who say this - not you personally as such so this is not a personal attack.
It is one thing to feel the difference and be excited but another to really suddenly be able to deliver better work: mixes that balance better, dance nicer - the feeling thing, not oscilloscope tests.

Do people with better "rooms" (wall padding, speaker eq, can corrections etc) really suddenly deliver better work? Is there anywhere that shows normal people and their A-Bs?

[cnt]

Stick with very small nearfield monitors if you cant fix the room..

I don't really buy this. Why small speakers? Well, it's because they don't produce the low frequencies that will activate the room so yay, you don't activate the room. Also, you don't hear low frequencies. If you put speakers in the room that can activate the room then your low frequencies will not be accurate, but you will be able to hear them.

Because you don't NEED speakers that can play at high volume. You should not even play at high volume in a bad treated room. Small monitors does not equal to bad monitors.
You can have huge monitors but you HAVE to play at lower volume anyways. And they should be near-field monitors. You can hear all frequencies, even down to 20 Hz, but installing speakers doing down to 20 Hz would only damage the listening and would also disturb neighbours more...
Why would you want to hear something that is being compromised and wrong? Do you want to hear reflections and standing waves or do you want to hear as clean as possible?
Sure you can adapt your hearing by using reference tracks but... good luck doing that (I tried this for years in my early "studio" rooms).

Listening position will be limited any way you do it, but it is easier to use/place smaller monitors than big ones in a small untreated room. Get the best small monitors you can find (Genelecs are great).

[cryophonik]

OP hasn't replied to a single suggestion since the day he posted this weeks ago.