hmmm yes it isn’t so much that i want ‘accurate’ monitoring, i want enjoyability of sound experience.
so … maybe it’s somewhat akin to a balancing act really;
a series of agreeable compromises perhaps.
i don’t really know enough to be commenting on the subject.
one thing i do want is to be able to crank the speakers for five minutes and find out what is going on below with those big low wavelengths that immediately become so very apparent when plugging in to a big or even medium-size club sound system.
Any good studio monitor is intended as a tool for mixing and recording. The goal isn’t enjoyable sound, it’s accurate sound. If you want a really enjoyable playback system I’d recommend something from an “entry level” audiophile brand like SVS Sound, HSU Research or Axiom Audio.
It’s not that studio monitors aren’t enjoyable to listen to, it’s just not what they’re designed for.
Love the 305s, so good for the money. I like them more than the Adam A7Xs i was using before which cost 3x more. I use mine with a Subpac S2, great combo.
and yet, ever since the 1990’s when at Uni, the sound tech unit/s, were expounding this very precept.
and it did not rock with my experience. is it true? yes. the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Manual/Tome that was required reading/purchase said so and rightly so.
but does necessarily following it to the letter, seeking the ‘flattest’ and driest response response speakers often resulted in some accuracy for some situations but not others.
at the time, NS1 speakers were all the rage as the best monitor speakers … and yet some engineers would not go near them.
each speaker and each placement is going to involve compromises in true representation for one or more reasons.
and so although the flat response is very important to understand the requirement of, at the same time it is also important to get to know a set of speakers intimately in a variety of studio placements and conditions, some optimal and some not … and then also knowing what material sounds like on a stereo or a p.a. system in relation to what it was sounding like on those intimately understood speakers.
personally i thought the much-vaunted NS1’s quite brittle.
anyway just musing on the subject, riffing about remembrances lol.
i know the Genelec 8020’s quite intimately both immediately and referentially from over ten years’ use. but it’s just a question of dollars right now with a variety of investments potentially on the horizon.
actually right now the most important thing i could do is buy a good set of headphones for studio and live performance with. my super fave headphones have got to be the Sennheiser 570’s if i remember the number correctly. utterly gorgeous although cost over $300.
my current Shure in-ear phones actually did a trip through the Byron hinterland with the mini headphone connection hanging outside the passenger door so that it was (undetectably for 30 minutes) dragging along the tarmac during the drive. It was existentially like a record needle passing over a vinyl record picking up the sound signals as it did so. thus resulting in a rather pointy end on the headphone plug connection. still works after a fashion although not really.
this flat response thing i find to be fucking ridiculous.
nothing, and i mean nothing, will be flat. you move your head even slightly, your head related transfer functions at your pinna will alter the response arriving at your ear canal. your room isn’t anechoic? not a flat response.
sounds in rooms? not flat. approximating brown or pink noise at most.
commercial loudspeakers, headphones, iphones, and all the other things people will be using (probably not to listen to your track)…NOT FLAT
and yet ironically the precept’s very existence is somehow a valuable theoretical starting place for grokking the compromises that are made yet understood.
that said, the popularity of NS1 speakers in the 90’s was always a source of mystery to me.
they really were quite painful to listen to.
It’s often overlooked that studio monitors are designed to project sound mostly forward and they are to be placed aiming at your ears when you are sitting in the middle and back from them forming a triangle with you as a point. When the sound waves hit your ears at the same time and the gains have been set using a meter in the sitting position to be equal level at that point, and the room is properly treated, you then get a “sound stage” or rather very clear stereo field almost 3d that allows you to do things like imagine the position of members in a band with your eyes closed as if there was actually a band in front of you by mixing accordingly… They are designed with a very narrow focused sweet spot… But the sweet spot is epic if set up right…
Other speakers like PA’s or home stereo speakers are designed differently in a manner that sound is evenly spread throughout the room and has a much larger sweet spot…
