COVER STORY: Sound Choices

Mar 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Rusty Cutchin

           
 

The control room at Bass Hit is a tad more fine-tuned than my home studio. The 15' 5 15' room features powered Genelec 1031As and Yamaha NS-10Ms powered by a Bryston 4B amplifier (300W per channel into 8Ω). The room is acoustically tuned for those speakers with various RPG diffusers and bass traps and is accurate. The speakers and listening position form a 6.5-foot equilateral triangle. The monitors are positioned about three feet from the front wall, which minimizes bass build-up, and about 12 feet from the rear wall, minimizing unwanted reflections. Carpet extends halfway from the front wall to the listening position, providing additional dampening.

We frequently referred to our own powered monitors, the Mackie HR824 ($1,699 per pair) and the Genelec 1031A ($4,100 per pair) during our evaluations. However, we made no judgments about the budget monitors based on direct comparison with the Mackie and Genelec units. We used the more expensive monitors to set a standard by which we could compare the lower priced monitors with each other. We came away impressed with what manufacturers have been able to achieve for a fraction of the cost of industry-standard reference monitors.

Getting With The Program

For initial listening in my home studio, I selected a wide range of recordings representing several different musical styles as well as finished and unfinished projects of my own. I listened to some CDs that have proven to be reliable guideposts for judging monitors over the years, and I checked out current hits. Although in theory accurate frequency response doesn't change, in practice changing musical tastes have meant that today's budget-priced close-field monitors have to reproduce more bass and more volume while remaining accurate. (For an excellent tutorial on close-field monitor design, see Brian Knave's article “Good References” from the June 2001 issue of EM, available online at www.emusician.com.)

For comparison I chose a reliable group of classic and state-of-the-art recordings by artists including Earth, Wind, and Fire; Jane's Addiction; Norah Jones; Alan Jackson; and Usher. Each CD featured tracks by the best engineers in the business with instrumentation that helped me evaluate different aspects of a monitor's sound quality, power handling, stereo imaging, dispersion characteristics, and other technical criteria. In my studio I positioned each pair of monitors as close to the HR824s as possible, being careful to maintain the distance between monitors and listening position and to avoid creating hum or other artifacts caused by power amps and magnets operating close to each other. I frequently cut AC power to one set of monitors while I was listening to another to avoid any sort of electrical interference.

At Bass Hit, Darlington and I also A/B'ed each pair of monitors using commercially recorded CDs. Darlington selected D'Angelo's “Brown Sugar,” a contemporary R&B track with a strong, clear low end and prominent vocals. The Berlin Philharmonic's recording of Ravel's “Bolero” on Deutsche Grammophon served as an example of a pristine recording of acoustic instruments in a detailed, naturally reverberant environment. Sade's “Your Love Is King” provided a well-recorded and beautifully mixed live band.

We also listened to recordings of individual instruments that Darlington had made for various projects. Among them were a stereo track of nylon string guitar, various close-miked hand percussion tracks, and a brass quintet. As a whole, the audio samples covered a wide frequency range and spanned the dynamic spectrum from piano to fortissimo.

Finally, Darlington pulled up a recent project he engineered by the rock power trio of Carl Burnett (Life Before MIDI) that featured Branford Marsalis on sax. The tracks had been challenging to record because of high volume levels in the studio and difficult to mix because of the amount of competing midrange information. Tweaking the EQs and balances on different monitors told us a lot about their usefulness in a real-world application.

After all was played and heard, we agreed on a monitor we would choose if we wanted to add a pair from this group to augment our existing systems. The Event Tuned Reference 8XL came the closest to our personal preferences while representing a significant value. We differed on our second choice. Darlington preferred the Fostex PM-2 while I leaned toward the Alesis ProLinear 720. With experience learning their unique characteristics and perhaps some room adjustments, neither of us would be apprehensive about mixing with them.

In your situation any of the six monitors we checked out might make economic sense and represent a vast improvement over your current setup. Check out the following evaluations, head to the audio dealer with your favorite CDs, and let your ears decide.