Behringer TRUTH B2031A monitors. My personal opinion!

I have a pair of those Behringers purchased in 2001. When you refer to the huge boost from 400-600Hz, what was your source? Just curious. I'm sure it didn't come from Behringer. I mixed a lot on those and you are right about them not working well in a small room. My main complaint about them is this feeling that the mids have been sucked out of them. Since I bought a pair of Tannoy midfields, my Behringers have been in a small edit room. I periodically will check a mix on them.

Sonic ........

Good observation.........

I immediately noticed the low mid bump with the 2031A's. Gotta admit its pretty musical.

When listening to the 2030A(smaller pair) to my ears they seemed a bit flatter, and the enviromental voice switching seemed fairly effective. They were however not nearly as you would say...........fun.....but seemed fairly suitable for small room nearfield monitoring.

At $259.00 US.... I haven't located anything I could audition that sounded better.

I may hear them differently than some as I've worked with primarily the EVENT 20/20 BA's for the past 6 plus years and they are known to be a bit on the mid rangy side.

I personally have never gotten up with the KRK's, but my buddy loves 'em.

Hi Themidiroom and Beagle,

The ''tests'' were done with my own ears. The sources are unimportant as these speakers were tested with music that I am very familiar with. If your familiar with a certain cd, for example, regardless of the music, and have heard it on different systems, you shouldn't all of a sudden hear a ''boom'' or other increases/decreases unless one of the components in your chain was doing that. In this case, it was the Behringers.
However, I do owe it to you guys to let you know what my sources were. The Behringers were tested on two of my systems with a Jazz cd by Myriam Alter called ''If''.
System one:
Atoll CD100MK3 cd player
Yamaha AW16G console/mixer

System Two:
Sony CD-RW33 cd player
Behringer UB502 mixer

My regular ''home system'' consists of the Atoll CD100MK3 cd player, a Bryston preamp BP5, a Bryston Power amp 3B, and Totem 1 speakers.

The speakers were mounted on Samson stands with the tweeters at ear level and at least three feet from all walls. They were angled towards my ears, forming a perfect equilateral triangle.

As mentioned erlier, one of the reasons why speaker tests are so subjective is because we all hear things differently. Maybe my ears are more sensitive to sounds in those frequencies?

Hope this helps guys. Regardless, your feedback is always appreciated!

i've got a pair of these and i've not noticed the boost in the 400-600hz range. what i have noticed is that they tend to hide frequencies that consumer stereos enhance so cross-checking is very critical. they hide low-end mud (300-500hz), clang (around 800hz or so) and harshness in the 1-3k range. the detail gets better as the frequencies get higher. low-end detail is just not there. to be fair though, i don't have them set up very well - no foam stands and they are about two inches from a wall.

for a first pair of monitors they are alright - they definitely brought my mixing up a notch - but now i know i could benefit from some non-budget ones. i think they could be a decent cross-reference pair for a good set of monitors in a properly set up room but the more i mix with them and check on my stereo or in my headphones the more i realize why they are so cheap.

for the money i can't argue with them though.

the fact of the matter remains that any mid/low price nearfield setup is going to be a compromise in one way or another. the best you can do is set them up correctly, treat the mix area as best you can, and LEARN HOW THEY SOUND ( most important! )

The magic word here is ''compromise''. Thanks for your words of wisdom Clydewinder!

...I know what you mean...luckily my girlfriend is an audio nut as well...

Sonic, thanks for revealing your sources. I guess Behringer needs to stop sending out those frequency response graphs (Do they still do that?) I guess we can debate the impact of having a boost in that frequency range. I guess I had grown used to their sound and thought they were great monitors until I got something better.

Yes, thank you very much for the explanation, sonic. I have no problem with "doing it by ear" as long as nothing else is claimed or implied by the test! And I agree with this statement completely:

As mentioned erlier, one of the reasons why speaker tests are so subjective is because we all hear things differently.

So let's talk about your KRK's or Tannoys, what makes them the best for the money in your opinion?

Hi Beagle,

I'll be more than happy to share with you my humble experiences and opinions regarding the KRK's and the Tannoys especially when you've spilled so much CPU on the Gigastudio for me!

If I had $400.00 to spend on ''powered'' monitors I would get the KRK RP5. It's an ''honest'' speaker with a very classy built. The finish is exceptional and it even comes with rubber absorbtion pads to put between each speaker and its respective stand base. Some people may find their sound a little bland or boring, but it is precisely for these reasons that I liked them(for mixing, of course). There's not much bass output due to their 5-inch cones, but at least there are no boosts to impress you with. What you do get, however, is a tuneful bass where you can clearly hear the notes as opposed to a cardboard-ish constant ''boom''. What I didn't like was their resolution. As Clydewinder said earlier, the compromise here seems to be just that. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't as ''open'' as with some other speakers - including the Behringers. Again, at least they didn't boost the highs as some other manufacturers would. The RP8's have more bass and have a generally brighter character, but they are in the same price range as the Tannoy Reveal 5a's, I think.
These Tannoys are also built with a lot of class. There's a lot of precision and resolution here. The imaging is almost as good as with my Totem 1's(my livingroom system). Listening to these is like removing a curtain on a bright summer day. They do sound ''lightweight'' like the KRK RP5's due to the 5-inch midrange cone, but what is there is flat and beautiful(I'm takling about frequency response here)! The highs have a shimmering and extended quality about them. The only drawback I have is that it only accepts an XLR input which means that you'll probably have to get yet another pair of cables. These speakers, as I said before, image very well, so it's important to do them justice by placing them properly.
If I'm not mistaken, I believe that the KRK RP5's are around $400/pair and the Tannoy Reveal 5a's around $700/pair. Like I said earlier, if I didn't have a $700 budget, I would have been happy with the KRK's. I've also auditioned a pair of Samsons, but they sounded nearly identical to the KRK's at $100.00 more.

Hope this helps! I think you're going to have lots of fun shopping around for speakers - it's such a personal thing!

ORIGINAL: Sonic the Hedgehog

Hi Themidiroom!

Maybe the Berries do sound good in your space? Maybe you have a dip caused by your room that negates the boost(according to me) in the speakers? This scenario is possible you know.

I see your point. Other than a peak at 140Hz, my room is relatively flat. I know the Behringers aren't flat. I managed to mentally compensate and do some decent mixes on them. I would alternate between the Behringers and my trusty NS10s. Generally, mixes that sounded good on both monitors were guaranteed to translate. I think they lack in the upper midrange. They are fairly precise, but I found them to be more balanced when turning the HF level to -2.
I have a pair of the small Samson monitors. They were a cool, cheap monitor. A producer friend of mine has the KRK RP5s. I don't know if I trust them to mix on. Granted, I haven't heard them in my room, but it seems as if they tried to compensate for 5" woofer's inability to produce the lower frequencies.
Beagle, are you in the market for monitors? If so, what kind of price range do you have? My only experiece with the smaller Tannoys were a pair of System800s and the old PBM6.5s. The System 800s blew me away. I have since been sold on Tannoy dual concentric monitors.

i guess i see how raw output measurement is important but no one mixes or listens to music in an anechoic chamber.

i care more about detail and resolution than a perfectly flat response. the ns10's everybody uses (well i don't have any...) certainly don't have a flat response but they bring out the detail in the most critical range for pop music. i think detail is more important and the only way to measure that is with your ears.

i suppose though that if there's a way to measure detail an anechoic chamber would be the best place. =)

I agree with your point Jack. Specs are good to give us a general idea, but we shoudn't foresake a gift that we all have in common: intuition.

Hi Xackley,

nice hearing from you. As for your request, as you know, I don't have these speakers anymore. This post was originally done for Beagle and Zungle who were considering these speakers. It would be very irresponsible on my part to pretend that I know exactly where this hump(s) was. I do know that it was around 400-600. You would be in a better position to know than me! What you can do though, is to play a piece or two on different systems and see if you can pinpoint the exact frequency(ies). That was how I found out as I noticed, on one of my favourite pieces, that certain notes of the piano and the clarinet were suddenly jumping out at me and hiding other parts of the music. It was interesting at first, but quickly became annoying and bothersome. Again, the stated frequencies may change due to your room being different from mine. Maybe you'll find something - if at all - at 800Hz. But concentrate on the 400-600 and go from there. A safe bet in this circumstance would be to use a graphic eq at start at -3db and go from there.
Let me know what you came up with!

Hi JamzOr,

Yes! Let us know what you think in the context of your own space and what new findings you may come up with!

I would rent a real time analyzer/white noise generator and get a real peak at whats going on.