Home Studio monitor recommendations

nonesuch

I’m looking for home studio monitor recommendations within a budget of £200 or thereabouts.

At the moment I’m using some Mission HiFi speakers and Sennheiser headphones.

I’ve been recording and mixing some of my old band’s songs during lockdown, and when I sent one of the mixes to another band member, he said the bass was way too boomy and overpowering when he listened on his Yamaha monitors. (But slightly better on his hifi.) On my speakers (both Mission and Wharfedale, the bass wasn’t really too loud at all).

So this is something I’ve been wondering for a while - would it be worthwhile to invest in some monitors? My one possibly naive question is, why should you be listening to the mix using monitors, when you usually want to listen to the finished music on HiFi speakers?

For example if it sounded okay on the monitors, but not bassy enough on the HiFi, wouldn’t you still want to increase the bass.

Thanks

octatonic

£200 is going to be a challenge.

Probably the only thing I would recommend at that price point would be IK Multimedia iLoud's.

Around £340 will get you some Yamaha HS7's.
Or you could get KALI LP6's for about the same money.

Or buy a cheap subwoofer with your existing setup.

Wazmeister

Ive just had some IK clouds - incredible for the money, and Im really pleased with them

octatonic

FWIW, I have iLoud's as my 3rd set of monitors that sit on my Eurorack synth for pulling sounds without having to shift out of position.
I could mix on them- they have enough bass to hear, but not really feel.

I have returned a set of KALI's for being too noisy- they have a lot more bass though.

FarleyUK

I just grabbed a couple of used Yamaha HS5s from GuitarGuitar for about £210 - work perfectly for my setup and needs, and sound fantastic.

I think they might have another couple available as well - take a look.

nonesuch

FarleyUK said:

I just grabbed a couple of used Yamaha HS5s from GuitarGuitar for about £210 - work perfectly for my setup and needs, and sound fantastic.

I think they might have another couple available as well - take a look.

Yeah I've been wondering about those, instead of the HS7s.

They seem to be £129 for one, on the website.

nonesuch

Does anyone know anything about the PreSonus Eris E5 Active Monitors? Could these be good for the price?

FarleyUK

nonesuch said:

FarleyUK said:

I just grabbed a couple of used Yamaha HS5s from GuitarGuitar for about £210 - work perfectly for my setup and needs, and sound fantastic.

I think they might have another couple available as well - take a look.

Yeah I've been wondering about those, instead of the HS7s.

They seem to be £129 for one, on the website.

Looks like I bagged the last pair - but still, £129 each isn't too bad. Have you checked eBay etc.?

BRISTOL86

iLouds are bloody brilliant. 

Heartfeltdawn

nonesuch said:

Does anyone know anything about the PreSonus Eris E5 Active Monitors? Could these be good for the price?

I considered them but plumped for JBL LSR305 Mk 2. £200 for the pair from Andertons. Arrived this morning and they sound lovely before they've had any burning in time. 

Tex Mexico

nonesuch said:

I’m looking for home studio monitor recommendations within a budget of £200 or thereabouts.

At the moment I’m using some Mission HiFi speakers and Sennheiser headphones.

I’ve been recording and mixing some of my old band’s songs during lockdown, and when I sent one of the mixes to another band member, he said the bass was way too boomy and overpowering when he listened on his Yamaha monitors. (But slightly better on his hifi.) On my speakers (both Mission and Wharfedale, the bass wasn’t really too loud at all).

So this is something I’ve been wondering for a while - would it be worthwhile to invest in some monitors? My one possibly naive question is, why should you be listening to the mix using monitors, when you usually want to listen to the finished music on HiFi speakers?

For example if it sounded okay on the monitors, but not bassy enough on the HiFi, wouldn’t you still want to increase the bass.

Thanks

Several things:

For £200, you're going to be looking at used to get anything worth having. If that's a problem, then I suggest getting instead some good open-backed reference-grade headphones, for example AKG K712, which are around your budget and will offer far better range, transparency and detail than any powered monitor pair you could get for the money.

The idea of reference monitoring is to do so with speakers that have as flat and uncoloured a frequency response as possible. In high-quality reference monitors, it's not uncommon to see multiple amplifiers to limit distortion (e.g. mine have one each for the bass driver, midrange driver and tweeter), cone materials specially selected for their rigidity and response time, and enclosures designed to neutralise standing waves and other undesirable frequencies. All of these are intended to guarantee that the speakers shows you only what has been recorded, in as much detail as possible.

Hi-fi speakers (and amplifiers) however are generally quite coloured, i.e. they have a set EQ curve which represents audio in a "flattering" rather than "true" way, usually with hyped bass and high trebles and reduced midrange to create the impression of "loudness" without increasing the SPL. They will also employ other tricks such as added compression or limited-bandwidth distortion to sound artificially dynamic and exciting. These things all reduce the amount of information you can hear in your mix, which is further compounded by the fact that consumer-grade hi-fi components are usually built with a much higher profit-margin in mind, meaning the quality of some of the materials used is necessarily reduced, for example in the speaker enclosure. This can lead to unflattering resonances or phase cancellation or any number of other issues that directly impact sound quality.

Your friend says that your mixes are too bass-heavy when listened to on reference-grade speakers, which means that the hi-fi speakers you used to mix were for one of the above reasons either suppressing or not reproducing the excess frequencies your friend was hearing. However you can't account for it because the hi-fi speakers won't allow you to correctly isolate and manage those frequencies, since you can't even hear them.

I also started mixing on a very good hi-fi. My mixes were always either too bassy or not bassy enough or had some other issue that was more or less glaring when I listened on any other system. After a while it became clear that no matter how carefully I compared the mixes on other systems, my speakers were just not up to the job. My first set of monitors cost one-fifth of what the hi-fi cost, and yet the mixes I made on them were orders of magnitude better.

Musicwolf

nonesuch said:

 
I’ve been recording and mixing some of my old band’s songs during lockdown, and when I sent one of the mixes to another band member, he said the bass was way too boomy and overpowering when he listened on his Yamaha monitors. (But slightly better on his hifi.) On my speakers (both Mission and Wharfedale, the bass wasn’t really too loud at all).

In addition to the good advice that has already been given, what you are describing may also been down to the acoustics of the room where you are doing your mixing.  In small rooms especially you will be hearing sound coming straight from the monitors to your ears combined with sound bouncing off one or more surfaces (wall, ceiling, desk etc).  Due to the different path lengths these reflected waves will arrive with different phase to the direct wave (and this will depend upon the frequency).  Some of these waves combine constructively (increasing the volume) some destructively (reducing the volume).  Moving your head just a short distance will change this.

The absolute worst situation is where the three room dimensions are roughly equal and where the listener’s head is in the dead centre of the room.  Unfortunately this describes a lot of bedroom studios.  Under these circumstances you are likely to loose a lot of the bass in what you hear leading you to boost the level in the mix.

Getting mixes to ‘translate’ from one system / room to another is real challenge.  You can treat the room acoustically (DIY broadband absorbers), but this will only get you so far in the lower frequencies.  You can listen to your mixes on different systems and in different rooms (checking in the car is also good) and you can invest in some decent, opened backed, headphones such as the AKG’s already mentioned.

Even good monitors will not help you if the room is bad.

octatonic

Musicwolf said:

Even good monitors will not help you if the room is bad.

You are right but you can mitigate elements of the room with something like Sonarworks or Trinnov.
It doesn't fix everything of course but it can help rooms that are less than ideal.
If someone is in rented accommodation or doesn't have the budget for a lot of bass trapping then it can be a cheap way to help.

Tex Mexico

Musicwolf said:

nonesuch said:

 
I’ve been recording and mixing some of my old band’s songs during lockdown, and when I sent one of the mixes to another band member, he said the bass was way too boomy and overpowering when he listened on his Yamaha monitors. (But slightly better on his hifi.) On my speakers (both Mission and Wharfedale, the bass wasn’t really too loud at all).

In addition to the good advice that has already been given, what you are describing may also been down to the acoustics of the room where you are doing your mixing.  In small rooms especially you will be hearing sound coming straight from the monitors to your ears combined with sound bouncing off one or more surfaces (wall, ceiling, desk etc).  Due to the different path lengths these reflected waves will arrive with different phase to the direct wave (and this will depend upon the frequency).  Some of these waves combine constructively (increasing the volume) some destructively (reducing the volume).  Moving your head just a short distance will change this.

The absolute worst situation is where the three room dimensions are roughly equal and where the listener’s head is in the dead centre of the room.  Unfortunately this describes a lot of bedroom studios.  Under these circumstances you are likely to loose a lot of the bass in what you hear leading you to boost the level in the mix.

Getting mixes to ‘translate’ from one system / room to another is real challenge.  You can treat the room acoustically (DIY broadband absorbers), but this will only get you so far in the lower frequencies.  You can listen to your mixes on different systems and in different rooms (checking in the car is also good) and you can invest in some decent, opened backed, headphones such as the AKG’s already mentioned.

Even good monitors will not help you if the room is bad.

This is absolutely correct, which is another reason to consider reference-grade headphones over monitors.

For example, my home studio room is acoustically untreated. It's not a bad space per se, but because I also track in it I've deliberately left it more "live"-sounding in ways that would be technically inappropriate for a professional studio. For this reason I check my mixes using a selection of headphones as well as the usual car stereo / laptop speakers / hi-fi / mobile phone references. I have a pair of the abovementioned AKGs and find them excellent for troubleshooting issues caused by the resonances inherent to the room, and I have also in the past used them for main mixing when monitors weren't available. Sennheiser HD600s are also a very well-regarded option for this.

nonesuch

Thanks for all the advice here, certainly lots to think about. Maybe look at better headphones as well...

Generally my recordings are starting to sound fairly good, but there are definitely ongoing issues with the low end!

FarleyUK

I’ve got to say... these HS5s are incredible. Been blasting some tunes from them and hearing things I never noticed before. 

Certainly recommend them if you can get them second hand!