bobkatz wrote on Fri, 14 January 2005 18:15 |
It sounds like you have a very good room from the dimensions. As for the Genelecs sounding "bassier" than the rest, I don't know how to relate. Once we positioned the 8050's here at the right distance from the walls, around here the bottom end was accurate down to the rolloff of the 8050 and not exagerrated. Is it possible that the Adams are lacking in bottom end and that was the perfect match for a resonance in your room?
As for the "making everything sound beautiful" but not accurate argument. I must admit it was Genelecs I was referring to when I discussed loudspeakers of that "ilk" in my book. But I found the 8050's to be FAR LESS in that vein than any previous Genelecs that I have heard.
I'd like to do a similar shootout Adams versus Genelecs here, however, in the end, this is a mastering room, not a mixing room. My goals as a mixing engineer are well known, to have the most accurate, uncolored loudspeaker possible, yes, one which has some of the attributes you are describing, which reveals what is there. And it seems that are some of the goals you are using as well in your criteria for a mixing speaker.
However, my devil's advocate response about your comment that the Adams revealed a particular character of a snare drum that none of the other monitors did is this: What if the Adams are adding a coloration of their own that is making the speaker produce (or exagerrate) something that is really not on the recording? To help settle that I would suggest you listen to the most natural classical and jazz recordings around and see which of the loudspeakers you are comparing sounds most natural. When you listen to pop recordings, they themselves often have been hyped in one frequency range or another and you can get off-base.
All these are possbilities I bring up. I certainly agree that the 8050's are not the world's most "natural" speakers. But is the (possibly exagerrated?) high end of the Adams the right response to that? And then there is the question of which speaker is most suitable for mixing, and since I'm not working in the trenches, only time will tell. I would like to have been a fly on the wall in your room, as I am also a very experienced listener and know a few tricks about placement and associated electronics that help to get the most balanced sound from a loudspeaker.
Like Mike Chaffee who just reported here, I like to be at a session to make sure that the speaker that I know, in the testing, is placed as optimally as possible to expose its attributes and not bring out its weaknesses. That should be true for the Adams and Mackies as well. The more you know a speaker....
Regardless, it sounds like you've done a very fine job and I would welcome hearing about more tests done to the rigorous degree that you have done. It will also be interesting to hear the concensus from the marketplace as the months and years go on and more people get to try and use the various new competitors for "best mixing speaker."
BK
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Hi Bob
Thank you for taking the time to type such valuable and informative points.
I absolutely agree with almost all points, except about the snare ring being a possible resonance from the Adams.
Being an active musician every single week [also, I am multi-instrumentalist], I am very familiar with the snare sound I mentioned.
Let me try to describe that snare sound a little more in detail.
About 30 years ago when I was jamming and learning and developing musically along with other musicians, this particular drummer, which was one of my better friends, was getting this snare sound I that could not,[guitar is my main instrument]... at least consistently.
What he did was, hit the snare half in the skin, half in the rim, exactly and consistently. You have probably tried this before, and as you might already know, the average non-drummer will hit and miss: sometimes more rim, sometimes more skin.
The sound you get when you hit the snare and rim this way, is a metallic ring together with the skin, plus the actual "snare" [under the drum]. that is the sound I was referring to.
You could probably find this sound in a Korg Triton Studio, or any similar keyboard or sound-module.
This has nothing to do with some resonance introduced by this particular Adam model. The Adams are bright, yes, but not resonant.
Also, if it was the Adams, it does not explain why we can also hear it in the Senheiser HD600 headphones. As you probably know, these are one of the best possible set of headphones today.
[feel free to correct me]
Another point is, if it was resonance coming from the Adams, It would show in the same frequency band, in simular instruments and vocals - not the case.
I find the Adams bright [you can adjust it right in the front panel], but definitely not resonant - actually they are very neutral, just as a monitoring mixing-mastering speaker should be.
One more listenning session:
Tonight, after finishing my live performance in a local Restaurant, I went to my friend's studio [with the Adam S2.5A] , and we listened again to all kinds of material - Jazz, Rock, Classic, Portuguese Fado [very unusual and different sounding small 12 string guitars], commercial CDs as well as our own productions.
We were listening and focusing on vocals levels in commercial CDs, and our own productions done with other monitors [JBLs, YSM1s, Mackies and a few others]. After several careful interesting observations, one was that we found very easy to hear how much louder some vocals were, compared to similar material, sometimes within the same album.
From my 4 year old experience with Mackies, and his several years old experience with JBLs, we can tell you we would not catch this level difference on those monitors, and definitely not as easy as with the Adams.
I am not in anyway saying that the Adams are the best thing around, because I did not hear many other good monitors in the market.
I am simply stating that our [all studio owners] opinion in this 3 pairs, is the Adams being the better choice, with no way possible for room artifacts or any other interference being the culprit for some distortion in our conclusion [including the Genelecs 8050A extra bass].
I read in one of your posts about "no speaker needing a compressor built-in for this kind of work"; well according to the Genelec 8050A manual, THERE IS a compressor in the output.
I am not sure at what level it fully kicks in, but I can guarantee you they say it is a compressor, and not a limiter.
Most if not all kicks and bass felt compressed to us in the Genelecs. For the type of the monitor we need, which is for a professional recording studio,this is not good to work with, only good to just enjoy colored compressed music. The louder we play the material, the more noticeable the compression becomes.
I don't mean to offend Genelec lovers, but I find it difficult to try to mix or master music that sounds already compressed, before I compress it myself. We never a heard any bass artifacts, or any kind of compression out of the Adams [up to around 95 dB].
O.T. I absolutely love your book, and it never seizes to amaze me the amount of work you put into it. I wish you could sign my copy. Would there be any possible visit to Toronto? if yes, would you let me know?
Best regards
John Ferreira