Any opinions on these studio monitors ?

I hate studio monitors. That is, the big boxy stereo thumpers that give no idea whatsoever of what the listeners will hear.

I listen to everything on radios! Mono radios at that. Why?

A mono radio will tell you if the stereo channels are in proper phase!

The stations that only hear stereo monitors will never know that a singer's voice is being canceled because of flipped phase in one channel, this has happened on many FM stations, and of course would also happen on an AM station that broadcast a mono mix.

I even do production and editing on an FM radio, so that I hear a radio-like playback the same way listeners will hear it.

Fine to ALSO have a stereo monitoring rig, but the mono signal is actually more important in radio.

It is a good idea to monitor the transmitted signal using an appropriate receiver so that problems with the transmitter can be detected.

One example is a station which lost the studio to transmitter link and this went undetected for many hours because the on air signal was not being monitored.

Neil

Hey guys,

            Yeah, the only reason I am getting these at this point for listening to the show when I am at the desk and not on the air. I have several radio's to monitor if the transmitters go down as well as a old school am/fm dial reciever system I can hook up at the station in another room as well, so no worries there. Also, not all monitors are created equal. Plus there are eq's on the back of each monitor to help with to much base. You can adjust these monitors to sound like traditional speakers when you are not recording live music. I went to Guitar Center today to test them out and they blow away anything you can get like at Best Buy. Here is a short video about them.

Groo

This is a can of worms, but NOTHING IN THE NATURAL WORLD IS BOX SHAPED.

Yet, the typical loudspeaker enclosure is box shaped.

And, true, rooms in houses are box shaped.

But the box shape does not resemble a natural environment.

So, what shape speaker enclosure would better serve the audio community?

Answer: a shape that is not easy to manufacture, store, box, deliver, or locate.

When I say "box" I mean either "cube" or "rectangular."

Really, explore all of the natural world. NOTHING is ever box shaped.

Slap to the face.

Hey Carl,

           You will feel better in the mornin bud. Tequila does that to me to good buddy, no worries 🙂 In the mean time, your post made me think of this song, so I thought I would share it with you 🙂

http://grooveshark.com/s/Little+Boxes/4zASxX?src ="5"

Enjoy!

Groo

"Little Boxes" is aprospos, but I think, minus the tequila, makes my point.

I must admit, I love Star Wars, but not so much of the obtuse Yoda poems. Your move 🙂

Groo

I like cardboard myself..

http://imageshack.com/i/n5xj1aj

The way I see it is this. My gurl and I live on a farm, and we feed eggs shells to our chickens. I know, its a little like those crazy hippie chicks that eat the placenta after a birth like its chorizo, but thats another conversation. What this does is make the egg shells harder, and its well known fact that can blast those egg shell speakers WAY past 11 man!

Groo The Wanderer

All Who Wander Are Not Lost

Those egg speakers are the kind of thing to look for!

Nobody ever made a square microphone.

Musical instruments aren't square.

Curved and angled shapes are the answer to great speaker design.

It's the enclosures we're talking about, the speakers themselves are round and conical, but they need that baffle to control the back waves from the front waves.

A tequilla bottle has a nice shape.

Bo Diddly plays a square guitar 🙂

Certain crystals come into the world box/cube shaped.

Certain people I know are quite square.

Iron Pyrite is definately born in cube shapes...

I have seen a lot of rock formations that are square...

but I do agree that sound, coming from a box, sounds weird.  I like a nice curve to the inside of my speaker boxes.

I use a couple of Fostex 6301B "Personal Monitors"  - balanced or 1/4 input, pretty flat sound, nice and heavy.

They're a little pricey but sometimes you can find deals on ebay.

Again, 40 years in commercial broadcast radio and nearly that long operating a music recording studio and small record company is where I draw my comments from -- this includes 40 years as chief engineer, morning show host and commercial producer -- all things I do every day in the "real world"

What are you monitoring and what is your mission?  If it's for you to enjoy the music played by your station by monitors that sound good to you get whatever you like the sound of.  Although this will be completely worthless when it comes to mixing and evaluating sound.

If you want to monitor your station turn on radio. You know the trasmitter is working, and you know how you sound on the air. If you're monitoring out of your console you'll have no idea if the trasmitter takes a dive while you sit there rocking out to the board mix. 

The tough thing with monitor speakers is you have to take into account what your listener is listening on.  That's why I say if it's for your own enjoyment in the studio, fine.  But don't think it will have anyhing to do with how it sounds to the listener (and this holds true in a recording studio as well in radio).  If you get expensive super flat response studio monitors, you'll have no idea what your sound will be like on a portable radio, stock car radio, home table radio, ear buds, expensive headphones, etc.  One thing I learned is, don't mix by sound on expensive monitors in the studio.  All the talk about flat response, sub woofers, round, square, acoustics, etc mean nothing on your end of the chain. YOU cannot determine what your listeners are using to hear you and you can't judge how they will set their tone controls or equalizers in the cars or computers, etc.  You need to know it's there, it's not overmodulated, it's in phase, the full spectrum of sound is there, and is sent out relatively flat.  You can't judge this with your ears or with any sort of monitor speakers.

In a recording studio good monitors are necessary because they need to hear that everything is there. And the band needs to hear a good sounding playback.  That will have very little to do with what the consumer finally hears in their home. 

The one thing that screws up most people is bass. Today's young folks seem to think they need a ton of it, which of course ruins the rest of the mix and turns the music into mush, but I digress.  The problem with bass is, there can be a lot of it in the mix that you can't hear. I've seen a lot of guys mix a recording session using amazing high quality monitors and even subwoofers, with top end mixers where you can clearly see on the meter that the bass channel has plenty of signal there, only to take the rough mix home and on the way shove the CD into the car player and discover that there's NO bass in the mix.  But you HEARD it on your fancy speakers and you SAW it on the VU meter on the bass channel.  Trouble is, those fancy speakers gave you bass response way down below where the typical home stereo, car stereo, ear buds, table radio fall off.  And your VU meter showed you levels of bass that are below the range of human hearing!  So, it's there alright, you just can't hear it!  When mixing bass you need to roll off everything below about 25hz.  That's a bunch of audio level you can see on a meter and hear some of on high end speakers, but it won't be there in a typical home setup.  When you run audio into a transmitter like this, again, you're sending in a bunch of bass that you can't hear, but your electronics can, so you wind up with most of your modeulation being taken up in bass you can't hear, which then makes a mess out of the rest of your signal. So you think you're ot getting enough audio out, so you crank it up, which overmodulates and makes things sound crappy, when it's being caused by too much bass in the mix that you can't even hear.  So, you want to put through basically flat audio with as much of the sound spectrum there that you can do (yes, even on AM) and let the listener tweak the sound how he likes it on the other end. That's why radios have tone controls and people buy equalizers.

Again, I fear shopping in musicians catalogs skews what is really needed in the minds of many when it comes to radio.  Don't get me wrong, these catalogs carry a ton of stuff we can actually use -- mixers, mics, even speakers, etc. but don't go crazy thinking a radio station is a music recording studio and don't try to color your sound with excessive bass that's going to muddle your signal.  Listen to some big Fm stations in your area and set all your tone and equalizer controls to "0".  You'll see they have a lot more than bass in there!  And you should never EVER have a subwoofer in a recording studio or radio station.  You don't need to be filling your audio chain with a ton of low end bass to muddy up your signal.  If you just want to LISTEN to the music with a sub, that's fine if that's your thing but don't try to put that level of bass into your signal, and remember that most people aren't using a subwoofer so all that bass you're trying to pump out there is just sending out signal, using up bandwidth, that most of the audience won't hear.

In my music recording studio I have many different speakers that I can switch through, so after I think I've got a mix right, I can listen through everything from cheap Radio Shack speakers through some JBL's, and some vintage (1968) high end Scott speakers, to a portable radio to some ear buds.  I even test through a pair of Beats headphones (the most horrible ungodly awful no range mushy pieces of crap ever foisted upon the ears of the music listening public) and a set of Sennheisers and Sony pro headphones, before I decide the mix is close.  Because you should be able to tell there's bass on ALL these devices.  It may be different on every device just because they all have different responses, but it should at least BE there.  BTW, scientific test results will back up my review of BEATS headphones.  If all you want to hear is mushy bass they're fine. I've read a dozen reviews where the reviewers talk about lack of definition, mushy sound, no mids, then at the end go on to recommend them as nifty headphones with some drawbacks. Compare them A/B with some Sony Pros (which actually cost less) and be amazed at what the world REALLY sounds like. 

Anyway, in your radio station you do NOT need fancy studio monitors. You need to monitor off the air, and you need something typical to what someone in the real workd might be using.  Me? I turn on a radio.

Might I recommend that those interested visit the Broadcast Supply web site and get on their mailing list. I believe it's BSWUSA.com.  MOST of the commercial broadcast gear I need comes from there.  You'll notice things generally cost more than the musicians catalogs, but it's tough broadcast gear. It's meant for the purpose.

Tim in Bovey

Iron Range Country Radio

Agreed Tim.