Hi there! This is my first post so, first of all, i want to introduce me to this fantastic place, i'm an university student and i love to produce on my bedroom when i have free time, even if i have like 5 minutes lol. So i wish to buy some good monitors, because i want to learn about mix and mastering, and i want to ear my sounds better, but reading around i saw that is useless to have like 1000$ monitors if u don't have a good acoustic treatment on your room. This is my problem, on the pics below u can see how my room is arranged, and i can't move anything



d1 and d2 are my doors, the second one is always closed, as you can see i have my pc on the left side of the room, on my desk, and the position of my future monitors is indicated with the green square and if is helpful i have a 4-meter high roof. What can i do to obtain the best from that situations? I can buy panels and everything, and i would like to spend up to a maximum of 600-700 for monitors (considering that i'm at the begin, if u say that for me a 300 one are good, i will follow your suggestion). I also think that i need a decent audio card, because i have the bad one that i bought with my pc years ago, to let monitors give the best right? I'm sorry but i'm a novice and i need suggestions from someone who have experience like you :D Thanks for your patience and attention, regards

 

If you must keep room arrangement like that and you do not have other choice,save the money,get great headphones and ToneBoosters Isone plugin.if you really want some speakers,get JBL LSR305,that is cheap and great entry level box that is good as twice as expensive offerings and will serve you well until you can fully enjoy in adequate room with something bigger and more expensive.my sincere advice,learn your stuff inside out,it is frustrating in the beginning,but after that,you could mix on your trusty boombox for example in some crowded alley if you really know that boombox,it is all in knowing what you have,so do not blow all your money on speakers that can not shine in that circumstances or you can fix all problems with that room arrangement with acoustics, or rearrange that room or dedicate room especially for this and than do decent acoustics and placement or if you can not, than what I said earlier,get maximum from what you got,it is all in ears and knowing what you have,do not believe people sitting in studios and talking about how mixing on headphones is wrong,they maybe do not known how to mix on them to get desired result,their loss,you can make decent stuff and by that decent,I mean stuff that is accepted by today standard and consumers,not everyone is big time producer and mixer or have clients to satisfy,wants to be like that,tons of people listen on worst stuff than yours and what is point in making music sounding good for audiophiles,when your average listener is not getting his,I heard music made on stuff you can not listen to music like a decent human being,and music sounding great content wise,production wise,it is good,some people would pin point on few things,but few things here and there,whole thing sound amazing if you compare on which speakers it is made and conditions,there are so many people doing good music in barely decent conditions and results are amazing if you take all in account and there are people doing barely decent music in amazing conditions.

 

hey man welcome !

my first advice : dont spend too much money on anything, you will regret it. get a midi keyboard. get an AKG k44 headphones. it seems you just started the whole thing so, yeah buy a decent pair of headphones and monitor speakers like the krk rp5 g3(pair) and you are good to go. they sound killer, totally flat, so you'll know when to boost or cut the eq's in your daw.

important : trust your ears ! if it sounds good it's good. learn about eq, compression, saturation, limiting, lowpass/highpass filtering, aux/busses, mics, and you will be flying in no time.

probably room treatment is important, i never had any yet, people say my mixes/masters sound very good. i think its more important if you are into hifi type audio like a film or something. for rock/blues/edm/electro whateva a pair of monitors and headphones are more than enough. later when u get more advanced, probably you'll buy more mikes, bigger interface, control surface.

imho the best plugins in 2014 are : ik t-racks cs, ozone6, bias desktop amp modeller, satin tape emu, addictive drums2, xfer serum, spire, waves.
daws : ableton,studio one,reaper,bitwig.

good luck mate !

 

Good monitoring is essential first. Then comes placement of the monitors and where you sit. When these both are not right, treating the room won't make any sense.
I would recommend to go for room treatment when you make money from your music.
For the current situation, sitting inside of your monitors could lower your perception of the room reflections, on low volume that is. witch means a more accurate mix.
When it is possible to get out of that corner you'll make a step upwards towards a better sounding room. but headphones would be the right way to go for now.
Use them when you're being fooled by your room. Don't EQ your room reflections ;) can be very frustrating..

 

Don't know the monitors that have been suggested but if there near fields its all good as that's what you need. Do some research about measuring your room's response from your mixing position, you may not get it dead right but you will get it nearer to a flat response with a bit of eq especially if your near walls, eq-ing will never be the total answer to this but can help with extreme troughs and peaks, use that eq setting as last point of the whole chain before it hits the amp and turn it off before you print your finished file. learn to use meters and analysers, very useful if you can't 100% trust what your ears are hearing but these are things to work on as you go on your audio making journey and lastly make sure your tweeters are positioned at ear level.

 

Best Advice ever ! I have the KRK Rockit 5's 1rst gen lol they are the best ever for small rooms !

 

I send people here for advice on room treatment. Even if you do not buy their products, there is information and tools here to help you learn. http://www.auralex.com/ and my personal advice based on experience is, if you are getting monitor speakers and headphones, try to get ones that sound similar, so what you hear in the headphones will be close to what you hear in the speakers. I trust my AT headphones, because experience tells me that unless there are phase problems, what I hear in the phones is pretty close to what I am going to hear through my KRK speakers.-Peace.... edit post script: 4 meter high ceilings make great drum rooms, but usually don't help when trying to mix. lol My ceilings are over 3 meters. I have panels with Auralex foam tiles attached that I move around to cut down on ambience bouncing back to my listening chair.

 

Welcome Giovact! Tough room, but yes, headphones and inexpensive monitors or speakers for now seem to be the way to go. Once you know your listening source, be it headphones, monitors or boom-box, it will make your mixes sound good most of the places people listen. Take your mix and listen to it at a friend's house on their stereo, in a car, with ear-buds, etc. (also in mono to find phase cancellations that can render your mix unlistenable) and see if they sound right to you in all these places. Maybe most important is to use a reference track to see if you can make the mix sound similar on whatever you are listening to. Let it be music that you know really well and try to emulate the way the mix sounds as both practice and tool to help your mixes sound really great.

 

Thank you everyone, really very nice people here So i already have a pair of headphones, AKG k518 that are a little better than the k44 that you have suggested to me, so if you say that this is the best way for me i will start mixing trought them But i onestly want to buy monitors, so as u said i saw the JBL LSR305 and the KRK rp5 g3, amd i think that i will buy one of them, they have similar price and features. I will try to follow all your suggestion, i have too much to learn :D and at last is not important at the moment to buy a decent audio card?

 

Hey Algae, my M50's and KRK V6 Series 2 to my ears don't sound similar to me, which models are you using?

 

The 5inch monitors will lack bass, you should demo some at your local store. I have some yamahas hs7s in a smallish room, they sound great and will give you a noticeable difference in the low end over the jbl and krk 5s.

 

He is in the corner of the room,more low end is not his biggest problem right now.

Giovact,now I saw your response,well,if you feel like you can benefit from monitors or new interface,go for it,nothing is stopping you right now to reach for good results,but if you feel you can do better,do it,about room,you can not fix much unless you give positioning another go,so use what you have better and best you can,many people think just because they got expensive equipment or tools results will arrive,yeah right,some things can not compensate for others,no matter what,so be smart about in what you invest and what are you trying to gain with that,you will see many times it is just waste of money.

 

shike, i don't want to spend money for nothing, so if u say that it's useless to buy monitors i will not buy them, i'm in your hands

 

He is considering buying 5inch monitors, I'm advising against this by going for something a little bigger, still suitable for a small room and in the same price bracket.

 

Buy monitors, I wouldn't trust anyone's opinion if they told you otherwise for producing.

 

Buy them,that is the only way to learn and know,but do not expect more than they can deliver in that situation,that is all I was aiming at,they will not solve everything,but they will come handy,it is your decision kind friend,my sincere advice is do not spend fortune on them,go with ones you like in the price range of JBL ones.

smartlad,he will have issues because of his position and more low end is just more of it,he is better of relying on cans for lows and using monitors quiet as he can for rest,everything I write is aimed on his situation,so he can get best out of it,sincerely do not see getting bigger boxes to be wise,if you do,please expand on it more if you want and keep in mind his corner setup.

 

I think your making too much of his corner setup. Im using hs7s in a "corner setup" and it really isn't an issue. After a while who knows he may move things about and change his position, but he can't change his monitors. I just feel from experience and from others I know if he chooses 5inch monitors he will later regret not getting bigger and will have to shell out more cash to upgrade. Hs7s are only 6 1/2 inch in size so its not a massive step up but will offer that bit extra more for only a few quid in price.

 

i mix without monitors. my mixes improved since i'm using toneboosters isone. u put it on the master and mix through it until it sounds best, then you remove it, voila.

 

Allow me to dispel some myths being reinforced here and provide some real acoustics advice:

Firstly, I'm afraid that your positioning couldn't be any worse, even the finest near field monitors will not give you accurate reproduction in that situation. There is NO compensation for optimum positioning, for many reasons that are far too complex to describe here in detail, including magical supposed equalisation techniques and off the shelf acoustic tiles. In the positions that you describe your left speaker will exhibit a 12db boost (particularly in the lower frequencies) as it is in a corner (or two wall situation); the right hand speaker will exhibit a 6db boost as it is also up against a wall. Already you can see that you now have a left weighted amplitude problem, that is before we begin to understand the complexities of the reflections and inherent phase interactions which would completely skew the perceived frequency response of the speakers. Also you have the reflections coming from your desk (another surface) to contend with if you sit the speakers directly on the desk.

What to do? You say that you cannot move anything? Why is that? Are your bed and desk nailed to the floor? By my calculations you probably have plenty enough room to change the layout of your room for the better; such that it would improve response massively and provide a situation where a minimal purchase of acoustics products would also provide further enhancement. If you are not prepared to step up to rethinking your room layout then headphones will inevitably prove a better solution than the purchase of monitors. Ok, buy some speakers by all means, if not for simply using to listen to music casually whilst lying on your bed getting smashed but don't expect to get any kind of accurate picture.

So tell me, why is THIS LAYOUT not possible?


The one thing you have going for you is your room dimensions, they aren't far off the ideal ratios, if a little small. With this layout you can allow enough room around the desk to get comfortablybehind and give access to the balcony (also being away from the surface will reduce proximity effect). I am assuming that the balcony has outward opening doors of course and that you already have a curtain rail in position. The addition of heavy duty curtains would absorb some of the high frequency reflections that would be present from the glass. Corner bass traps would improve the modes and a small amount of diffusion provided by low cost tiles at the sides would also help with reflections and reverb control. A simple "cloud" absorber could be constructed for above your listening position and either another tile or two or a bookshelf will also act as diffusion at the rear. Sitting your speakers on stacks of bricks or similar heavy material to bring them in line with your ears and a couple of speaker absorption pads will help reduce reflections from the desk and decouple direct sound transmission.

This IS the solution and would most likely provide you with quite a good sounding room, otherwise don't bother wasting your money on speakers, get yourself some high end headphones and mix on those, you'll get better results.

Best of luck...

 

ATH-M50 phones and KRK Rokit 10/3 mid-field size 3 way speakers. I have the mid/tweet assemblies turned 90 degrees, and speakers are on their sides on nice stands. When I switch back and forth between the phones and the monitors, I usually hear a pretty similar mix. I know the KRK's are not everybody's cup of tea, but they work for me. I do wish the Rokits had more power like the VXT series. Could use just a little more in my large room.