For years and years and years I’ve had the Yamaha monitors (8 I think) during that time I’ve come to understand that they have terrible bass translation. Way too weak and when id play a song anywhere else it wouldn’t be mixed properly because I wasn’t accounting for the bass. I’m looking for new monitors now and my question is does anyone have any recommendations for monitors with accurate bass translation? Also with accurate frequency translation no matter where in the spectrum.

I googled and I got back the rockit 8’s but when you look further into that. They have enhanced bass. I don’t want enhanced. I want accurate. Thank you so much for your advice that I anxiously anticipate.

 

As far as i know, they go down to 45 Hz pretty straight ... so it is good enough.
I bet it is your ROOM.

Simple to test :
-loop a sweep sine bass test (at low level) :

-now walk in your room, you will probably realise you can ear and feel the bass at some spots ... and not at some others.

Congrats !
You know now your room s*cks ! (like all non treated rooms)

Come back here when you done the test

 

Yes, the first eight listed loudspeakers here: https://www.spinorama.org/?quality=high&page=1&power=active&sort=score

 

For speakers with the most accurate bass response possible, you'd need to look at the rarer and rarer sealed enclosures. Most speakers have ports or passive radiators which, although often lead to greater bass extension, lead to more distortion and an audible delay of the low frequencies compared to the rest. These sealed speakers are quite rare to find. Barefoot, Unity are all sealed, and some ATC ones and the Neumann KH310 are all of those I can think off. However, I would recommend none of them due to other reasons. Luckily, you can more easily find sealed subwoofers, and combine them with speakers that are good in the mid-range and high-end.

In my personal home studio, I use APS speakers, which use a dampened bass port. In short, you still get the delay of the low-end, but with less resonance and a bit less distortion. So it's not as a good as sealed, but it's a good compromise, and sufficient for me.

However, although good speakers than can go deep cleanly are important for accurate bass reproduction, good room correction/DSP is even more important in my opinion. And I'm not talking about bass traps or room acoustics. As an acoustician, I can tell you that no matter how much acoustic treatment you have in your room, you will need DSP if you want a clean response down to 20Hz (unless if you're in a multi-million dollar anechoic room, if the room is the size of Walmart, or if you're not in a room at all). And with the power of DSP, you can also put your speakers right against a wall, or in the corners, giving you a huge SPL boost without distortion, and with a tighter sound/less decay. But you need DSP to tame that boost to the right levels.

So with that in mind, here are my recommendations for the most ideal speaker setup for bass reproduction :

1. Good room correction/DSP. When using stereo speakers, the correction has to be based on the two channels summed in the low frequencies, meaning that the same filters need to be used on both speakers for the low-end. This is a common flaw in software like Sonarworks, as they create a correction that is based on an individual channel, independent of the other. This assumes that both speakers, if they are flat, will add up to a flat response. This is almost never the case, and that's a problem because bass is mostly mono. The best room correction is always manual, check how to do it properly with REW.
2. With a stereo system, speakers with enough range and headroom to go down to 20Hz cleanly. We don't care about flatness as we use room correction. Generally speaking, if you can find speakers with less than 1% of THD, it will sound completely clean. It's quite difficult to achieve, so most people will aim at 3% in the low-end. Ideally, they should be sealed, as this gives the best time response. Placing them in corners is best.
3. If you can do it, subwoofers are ideal. The ideal setup is a horizontal line facing you, ideally right against the front wall. Usually, the more subs the better. This isn't about giving you stupid amount of bass levels, it's about giving you the cleanest bass possible. Creating a full line of them will greatly reduce room modes, meaning a tighter sound. 3 of them, one below each speaker, and one in the middle, already yields excellent results that 2.0 systems can pretty much never achieve.
4. If you achieved all of that, you can think about acoustic treatment. For bass, nothing beats active treatment. You can buy plug and play solutions (PSI AVAA for example) or do it yourself with secondary subwoofers and the appropriate convolution filter. It's quite challenging to do however. For passive treatment, look for VPR bass traps, these are the best.

But with all of that said, I really like my sort-of-affordable APS pair. By placing them in the corners, I achieved an F3 of 20Hz following the Harman Target, which has a bass boost (so basically I can achieve F0=20Hz in a flat target). There is a bit of delay and distortion in the low-end, but to me, it's part of a good real-world translation. Even IMAX sound systems have this. In the real world, it's only in outdoor concerts and festivals that you could experience a true, clean and accurate bass reproduction. This, and headphones/IEMs, but it's a different feeling kind of bass.

 

Last edited: Jul 22, 2025 at 10:51 PM

look into a subpac or similar type thing. They make these things you can mount to your chair that shake it.

The cool thing about that is you actually feel the bass outside of hearing it. its awesome for production! Mixing might be a little different

 

I have never had problems with my JBL 4411's. have had em for going on 30+ years. every room they have been placed in they have been checked for room/speaker interface issues and any anomalous behaviors were dealt with easily. there isn't a loud speaker made that will not have issues with the room they are placed in. this is why we have spectrum analyzers.

 

Last edited: Jul 23, 2025 at 3:26 AM

ADAM Audio A7V - 2x 599 € ----> www.adam-audio.com/de/a-serie/a7v

Adding the matching Yamaha HS8S subwoofer precisely calibrated can help for genres that
need sub-bass, but only if your room and placement are treated and measured. 525 €

 

In a crappy room i had, there was a massive -18dB hole around 60 Hz ... so NO, changing speakers or adding subwoofer will NEVER fix this kind of things

 

I had a room like that about 20 years ago, - 18dB like yourself, only my null was at 100 Hz. Even though I had compensatory equalisation it was absolutely terrible, nothing could be trusted. I had to constantly check mixes via headphones and in outside locations. Unbelievably, there was multiple commercial releases mixed and mastered in that room. Despite satisfied clients, I couldn't listen to any of those recordings now as I can hear the rooms influence in them.

 

Square rooms are actually the *worst* - ideally you want different dimensions along each wall, and this is why you'll see many control rooms have angles all over the place - to break up the standing waves. But most of us are stuck with the room dimensions we have, so have to work with what we have accordingly.

Any respectable monitors will be plenty accurate enough - but that's meaningless if you're in a bad, untreated room with significant problems. Tl;DR; It's almost certainly a room problem, not a speaker problem, unless your room has been properly treated.

 

Square rooms are actually THE worst shape, unless they're so large that they exceed the propagation wavelengths that result in problematic standing waves. The main problem with square spaces is the even build up of particular frequencies due to the reflections being multiples of one another.

Eg. if a room had parallel walls that were 5 metres apart, that would create a standing wave at 68.6 Hz, which would be multiplied by each additional reflection. The more surfaces that correspond to that measurement, the bigger the increase in the standing wave. The very worst scenario being a 5 metre cube. Not only would there be a problem at 68.6 Hz but also at every harmonic interval (including half wavelengths), so 34.3 Hz, 173.20 Hz, 259.8 Hz, 346.40 Hz, etc.

Of course it's actually much, much more complex than that example, as reflections don't behave themselves in a simple two-dimensional manner. Every possible distance between two surfaces is another reflection angle which compounds the result. As those various angles also repeat throughout due to symmetry, all those frequencies, plus their harmonics, result in many more problematic standing waves, that then all interact with one another to produce an uncontrollable mess.

In theory, the ultimate dimensions for a room is based on the golden ratio, or phi, which is: 1(H) x 1.6(W) x 2.56(L). This creates an even response throughout the frequency range with no discernible standing waves.

 

Last edited: Jul 23, 2025 at 4:52 PM

Lol, that's some synchronicity going on right there. We should jam.

 

Kinda, it's best to keep the room rectangular, at least initially, because it's easier to know what you're dealing with and how to solve whatever problem that might arise, which may include changing the geometry of the room in a controlled manner. Rectangular rooms are not the best in theory, but they are better understood than anything else which is way better for planning and problem solving.

 

The best simple way (and free) to solve MOST of monitoring acoustic troubles is ... moving your mixing position and monitors.
Even if it is not that "simple", because you move source ... you move dead spots too

But a lot of ppl with "big enough" room can just put one monitor on a chair, put their head in front at their usual mixing distance. And check different positions first before moving their desk.

You don't need specialised hardware to do that, a simple sweep sine from 20 to 120 Hz at mid volume will reveal most caveats easily.
Check my video (up) and note the frequency holes displayed in the video. Move the speaker and check again.

It will not work in an "horrible room", but will solve a lot of problems in most "usual" rectangular rooms.
The first thing is mixing position, before any treatment. And only after that, you can "chase the bass" ... and you may discover your monitors are enough

No bass trap on earth can solve a -18dB hole alone. Even if you put 10 000 euros in acoustic treatment.
At the end, your room will shrink ... and secondary problems will get worse than prime ones

 

many monitors do, but vast majority of rooms (even professional studios) do NOT have accurate bass translation,
you can get a dedicated subwoofer (that will help both leverage load from monitors and allow for better placement),
you can get 3-way coaxial monitors (that will leverage lower frequencies without compromising spatial imaging),
I got pair of Kali Audio IN-8 with WS-12 sub that work best in my specific room (upgraded from Presonus Eris E8)

 

Doesn't matter what speaker you have if you haven't treated your studio room acoustically.
Listening position is key. You probably will not be able to have the whole room treated to make the listening position very large (like a pro studio). But you don't need to. You only need the listening position to be exactly where your desk+keyboard+equipment are. You obviously cannot walk around in such room and have flat response.

Anyways, don't waste money on new speakers before your room is treated, it's the best tip I got ever after years of buying new speakers and never got great and flat bass response. I did that for many years until I had a chance to actually listen to a fully treated room - with different speakers tested. Treatment IS more important than the speaker, I wish I knew that when I started...

Bass is the most "difficult" area, meaning you will need to change a lot to the room to fix bass frequencies, depending on the rooms dimensions and the walls' materials. The lower the bass the larger the wavelengths - the larger space the wool treatment will take.
You will probably need to change the room dimensions by adding mineral or fiberglass wool. Don't build a square room!!
In a small squareish room you need to set up large "bass traps" in the corners - you need to calculate how this can be done for your room dimensions. There's actually cheap wool in all construction stores that has the perfect properties for audio treatment, so it isn't expensive to do this.
There are freeware apps and measure mics to buy, to make the design. But the learning curve is steep. I was in luck so I could hire that guy for an hour to make a design and simple drawings that I used to build after.

If you cant hire a professional to do the design and measurements, start with measuring what problems you have with bass, which nodes are the issue. Then try do the calculations on how thick the extra "wall" and/or corner traps should be.

You can also try to make helmholtzer resonantors, but those are very hard to make correctly. Those can be fine-tuned more exactly than making use of wool though...

 

That's because we don't know what we do. If you spend 10000 euros, you are being screwed by someone feeding you with bad advice.

You can fix bass treatment for a couple of hundred euros. Cost me a couple of hundreds in material (mineral wool, cheap and has the perfect properties for audio treatment + self-built wooden consoles + thin fabric).
I was extremely lucky to find a legend in the field. Someone who designs speaker monitors and helps professional studios since the 1970's. He only helps people through contacts, not publicly. An acoustic researcher who wrote lots of scientific papers on speaker design and acoustics.

He told me the solution for rectangle/square midsize/small studio rooms often are quite easy if you only need one dedicated listening position. And never expensive if the "looks" of the treatment aren't important. For me I don't care about the looks.

Of course, the hard part is to know exactly what to do. That takes a lot of knowledge and training. I could not do it properly, so he let me hire him (never had more luck...) to do the design drawings after he measured the untreated room. The whole job took him 1 hour + traveling. Charged me €300 per hour, but he refused to get paid for the traveling.

The solution for my studio room was quite wild, but easy to set up... and very cheap. No need to hire constructors. It doesn't look ugly, but it doesn't look like a professional studio either. But the treatment worked perfectly and I have never been in a non-pro studio with this good sound. 100% happy.

 

Last edited: Jul 24, 2025 at 1:39 PM

If you can find one, a Subpac is by far the best choice, it allows you to sidestep the reflections/room acoustics problem for the low-end entirely, I've had one since 2018, and I can't image working without one anymore.