Studio monitors - streaming music

duotone

Taken me almost 9months, but have got enough cash that I don't feel guilty spending & have decided to go for the Yamaha HS7.

Out of interest do you connect to your monitors by XLR or TRS cables?

Cheers!

wave100

Personally I use XLRs but as long as the TRS ins and outs are balanced, it shouldn't make any difference.

Rocker

,Heartfeltdawn said:

Hopefully as much sympathy as I have for anyone who reads your words here. 

Crikey! You really ought to listen to music for eight hours and then comment. Sound/mixing guys must be very well paid or numbered among the toughest of the tough..

octatonic

Rocker said:

As I understand and have heard this myself, monitors are voiced to allow the recording engineer hear every note and mistake on a recording.

Not exactly.

Studio monitors are designed so they are as acoustically flat as possible.
Flatness is a bit of a myth, really- but they are flatter than hifi speakers which often have have a bit of a 'smile' curve to them, in that they hype the top and bottom end.

What you are trying to do when mixing is have a mix that translates between rooms and to different speakers.
For that reason a lot of studios use multiple sets of monitors.

The industry standard for many years were the NS10's from Yamaha, which are basically an average sounding set of speakers.
They were adopted by studio engineers because having a standard meant you could move between studios and have some degree of control because you learned the speakers.
They are still used in many studios even today- they aren't flat and they also don't allow the engineer to hear every note and mistake.

Now the fashion is to have a 2-3 sets of monitors and to check mixes on different systems as you go.
Often people have some near fields- something like a Dynaudio BM6a or Adam A7's, plus a bigger set of 3 or 4 way monitors- which could be on stands or mounted into the walls (called soffits).

The third set is often called a 'grot box' with limited frequency response, so you can check translation to small systems and iPhone speakers/earphones. Auratone or Avantone make this sort of thing and they look like this:



Really the most important thing is to learn your room and learn your speakers.
I still do most of my mixing on a set of Dynudio BM6a's with a sub.
I've had them for 17 years and I know them better than anything else.
I do reference check on different systems- but if you know a particular set of speakers then you can work much faster than you otherwise would.

duotone

wave100 said:

Personally I use XLRs but as long as the TRS ins and outs are balanced, it shouldn't make any difference.

Cheers @wave100 ;!  got a bundle with balanced jack to XLR cables on the way tomorrow.  Will let you know how it goes.

octatonic

duotone said:

wave100 said:

Personally I use XLRs but as long as the TRS ins and outs are balanced, it shouldn't make any difference.

Cheers @wave100 ;!  got a bundle with balanced jack to XLR cables on the way tomorrow.  Will let you know how it goes.

There should be no difference between XLR and TRS in this instance.
In pro studios the reason why XLR is preferred is in microphone patch bays- because when you have +48v phantom power running and use a TRS connection you can arc the phantom power and damage some types of microphones.

duotone

Thanks @octatonic I'm looking forward to running them in over the weekend with some albums & trying out Helix Native, to see what all the fuss is about 

octatonic

duotone said:

Thanks @octatonic I'm looking forward to running them in over the weekend with some albums & trying out Helix Native, to see what all the fuss is about 

No worries.
The other reason why XLR's are preferred in studios is they can be daisy chained- so two 12ft cables can become a 24ft cable.
TRS is perfectly fine though.

Stuckfast

@octatonic -- there is a good reason why NS10s, Auratones etc took off rather than some other loudspeaker. It's because they are unported and, in the case of Auratones, have no crossover. This means that although their performance in the frequency domain might be not great, their time-domain performance is very good. There's excellent transient response and no appreciable bass overhang like you get with typical ported monitors.

FWIW I love mixing on NS10s!

Cirrus

Stuckfast said:

@octatonic -- there is a good reason why NS10s, Auratones etc took off rather than some other loudspeaker. It's because they are unported and, in the case of Auratones, have no crossover. This means that although their performance in the frequency domain might be not great, their time-domain performance is very good. There's excellent transient response and no appreciable bass overhang like you get with typical ported monitors.

FWIW I love mixing on NS10s!

Wisdom. The times I've used them, I've found it much easier to set compressor attack/ release times.