I am mixing atm 100% on headphones (DT1990pros with SoundID EQ) and want to get some near-field active monitors to just periodically check the mix at medium volume as I live in Barcelona with thin apartment walls and undoubtedly terrible bouncy room acoustics.
Any recommendations for monitor pair under 500e which can be placed on foam on my desk 4-5 inchs away from a wall? Thomann recommended KRK Rokit 5s …
Right now I find my mixes come out a bit underwhelming and muddy and would be good to use these monitors to check for issues and have a counterpoint to my headphones.
Ultimately I am mixing for best performance on apple airpod pros on Youtube.
monitors are great but sometimes I record at night and can’t turn them on but anxious to wrap up the recording so before you get monitors try 2 things, turn off the soundid and use a reference plugin, soundid sounds great but I find that having a reference track works better and you don’t necessarily need to turn on the monitors to see if you’re far off the mark, I use the Metric AB all the time since I got it and it’s one of the best plugins I’ve had, I also have the soundid but using the Metric AB leads to way more translatable sound, I’ve loaded some reference tracks once and at the final moments before rendering turn on the plugin to see whether I’m fitting the spectrum/other metrics (which are laid out beautifully) and if I don’t I can quickly A/B my thing vs the reference to see if it sounds horrible or it’s ok even if some of the analyzers don’t match.
on sale this plugin goes for something like $30 I think and honestly even with monitors I still load it up and A/B my thing vs a reference.
in my zero treatment room I can’t rely on my monitors really, so I just use them for “feel” and tracking when I can, otherwise I trust the reference plugin and headphones way more.
and btw my final step is same as yours, check on the airpods, if it sounds ok it’s fine with me.
btw it’s $40 rn but it goes lower for sure, I think I got it for $30
it’s not a replacement for monitors but this vs soundid definitely wins for me
Hey there! Ah that is a surprising recommendation but makes 100% sense. I actually nabbed MeticAB on sale but am yet to use it. I do have a selection of ref tracks now as WAV ready to go. I will try that first - I have been listening more to tonal balance of commercial tracks on my airpods and the bass is there but just to pad out the bottom of the track. No wonder mine are muddy thanks!
I bought some albums on bandcamp for the wavs, at first I thought I’d record the mp3 from bandcamp but after buying the album I’ve found that there is a difference between mp3 and wav versions, the loudness is waaay different, I guess everyone normalizes the compressed audio and there’s also a difference in the spectrum, it’s not that drastic but it’s there, so just buy some albums on bandcamp and load up the files, you’re comparing uncompressed audio so it makes sense to use uncompressed reference material.
this plugins is great because you can setup cue points and loops on 16 slots and you can layout the metrics one on top of the other in various ways, I have this saved as a preset so all it takes is to load up the plugin and all of the reference tracks/cue points/loops are saved and I can just reference portions of the track to whatever I consider a good one.
you can also do other things like focus on bass, mid, highs or stereo image and compare them individually, this is really a quick way to see if your thing holds up against a good track and personally I find this way more reliable then soundid.
you don’t have to make everything 1:1 just to be in the ballpark, after spending couple of months of constant use I can rely on that thing that if it’s ok there then it will be ok on other devices too.
I would (do) have both sonarworks and metric ab. Just put the plugin before the sonarworks plugin on the master and monitor and compare both through the calibration.
yeah that would work I guess, after starting using the reference thing I never felt like I need soundid because once I have a reference that I love I already get the “this is good” part so doesn’t matter the headphones/monitors I can directly compare the sound as is without adding the latency of the soundid, but yeah if you’re used to it then why not, you can combine for sure
thanks!