I'll rip a bunch of material I've listened to millions of times on various systems over the years to train my ears to adjust

That's a brilliant idea, Beep. It's by far the single best way to improve the quality of your mixes. Better than buying expensive speakers, better than room treatment, better than ARC-type room EQ. Best of all, it costs nothing, requires no preparation, study or measurement, and it's pleasurable.

Just don't do it loud. Do it at the volume you expect to be mixing at. Now's the time to invest in an SPL meter if you don't already have one. They're cheap. Find a comfortable level and adjust each record's volume so that they're all in the same ballpark as you listen. Most mixers find that a moderate level is most conducive to accurate perception without ear fatigue, typically between 70 and 80dbSPL. 

strikinglyhandsome1


Adam suggest this

Question: How long does it take to burn-in my ADAM speakers?

Answer: Loudspeakers include movable parts. Therefore, they need a certain 'burn-in time' for a full excursion and adaption of these parts. After this burn-in time, the speakers reach their full acoustic potential.

To break-in your speakers, it is advisable to feed them with music signals of a broad frequency spectrum and different volumes for a certain period of time:

Up to one week for a 'normal' burn-in.Up to four weeks for a reliable long-term consistency.

However, no responsibility can be taken for the correctness of this information since it always depends on both frequency and sound pressure level of the speakers usage. Furthermore, the real time a speaker needs to burn in is, to some extend, always due to the specific speaker itself.

This sounds an awful lot like double talk to me. But if there can be a difference due to burning in then how can Adam guarantee there minimum specification for them? Wouldn't the specs vary due to the variation in the burn in process?

I think one would be better off burning in ones ears.

@ Freddie... Thanks for the thought but I'd be worried about blowing them. I'll just use them normally and if there is any burn in needed it'll happen over time. These are bound to be a huge step up from the way I used to mix... wait for... straight through my stereo. Heh... I know you are all cringing on that thought but I did what I had to do back in the old days. Got some decent results too but it took way longer and a lot more experimenting. I also had the luxury of multiple stereo systems and PAs in various peoples apartments, cars, bars, studios, etc... Don't have that anymore so I need a truer signal for reference.

@strikinglyhandsome... lol. I should probably check the cone fluid levels too.

@joel77... It's supposed bring out the full range of the speakers. A lot of people complain about weak bottom end and muddy highs until the speakers have gotten used for a while. This is supposedly even more necessary with headphones. I'm just going by what I've read and heard from other people many times so even if it is a myth it's a pretty common one. It might harken back to the days of paper cones.

@damon777... yeah yeah. You think I'm a dum dum and you might be right but I've been asking a lot of questions so I can just wrap my head around stuff to avoid any unexpected issues. Besides, most of the fellas here seem to like chatting about these things so why not? Once I get going I'll be tossing the things I've learned back into the knowledge pool instead of draining it all the time. I've only had the software for 2 weeks, yanno? ;-p

@bitflipper... good advice. I'll see what I can find in my price range and toss it on the wishlist (can't afford one now). I'd imagine one of those would help me with optimal placement as well. I can't do much in this room but when I get a new place I'll be dedicating a desk area specifically for mixing. Cheers.

Ahhh... another hour of icing and loosening up and I can start wailing on this stuff. Today is about optimizing the system and figuring out my output cabling. Then back into the tutorials.

That's what I like to hear. I really hunted around for the right solution in my price range and from all the reviews these beat out everything else. They should be pretty easy to find though. Even the box stores carry them like Future Shop and Best Buy. You might have been looking right when they were updating the model late last year/early this year. Originally I was looking at some on Amazon that were $200 for a PAIR. Stunning deal. Then I checked back a month or so later and they were gone and everyone seemed to be sold out. BURN! But I waited and sure enough they started getting restocked... but with the newer version. The new ones apparently have better bass response (one of the only complaints you would ever hear about them) and they look a little different... a little more modern. HOWEVER the price went back up to $150 EACH so that sucked. Also the first run apparently had a cooling issue and the speakers were overheating and shutting off with the safety feature. There was one specific review on amazon or sweetwater (I forget which) where the guy went into great detail about it and his dealings with Mackie in the aftermath. They said they were aware and had fixed the problem and sent him some new ones. Seems like now that the update/recall have run their course they are in stock in most places again and the reviews are even more glowing than ever. The moral of the story is if anyone is looking to snag these make sure you are a) getting the updated version and b) that you aren't getting the pre-recall ones with the overheating problem. Cheers.

All meant in a lighthearted vein Beep..really!..Just me amusing myself if no one else, admirable that you dont bite though lol.

Toobad I missed this thread. I have had dealings with a number of speaker manufacturers like Weber, Eminence and WGS. They all tell you the same thing about speakers.

They are electro-mechanical devices and when new it's important to loosen them up. I don't mean in an agressive way at all. You simply play music through them at moderate levels for the first day or so. THis gets the cones moving and loosens the surrounds and spiders. Much like a person that's been sitting still for a long time. When they get up to walk they're stiff and need to loosen up.

You want to play the full range of music that they were designed for. The use of tone generators is a wast of time because the amplitude is too static and won't fully exercise the mechanical bits. The worst thing you can do is slam them with full power right out of the box. Nothing has stretched or settled and you then have the highest probability of doing damage.

Burn in is a bad term to use with speakers.

Hey Beepster as for an SPL meter. You can get a modest one for 30 to 50 bucks. Just for home studio use is good enough to help you monitor at consistent levels.

The most revealing thing ever  Is finding the sweet spot where listening fatigue is reduced.


I know when my meters are set at 70db (A weighted) SPL I can pretty much listen all day.

It's an important consideration because once you start modifying a sound you don't want your ears lying to you because they've become tired and start attenuating crucial frequencies.

Hey guys. Just thought I'd update this now that I've taken the speakers out for a test run. I have mostly great things to say about them but two crucial and somewhat alarming points as well. I'll start with the bad stuff because I'd like some thoughts on what's happening.

Overheating: So I didn't notice this until I went to power them down after about four hours of what I would deem pretty light duty work. Just playing some ripped CDs at pretty low volume (these things are LOUD). I was only really able to get them up to MAYBE a quarter turn on the monitors volume knobs and had Media Player's volume about a third of the way up. Anymore and I would have been shaking the house down.

So like I said after about four hours I decided to pack it in for the day and the back of the monitors were HOT. Not quite fry an egg type hot but asphalt in the summer type hot. I know there is bound to be some heat as with any power amp but this seemed really excessive. It's the type of heat I'd expect of an old PA power amp after a metal gig or something. As I mentioned upthread there are scattered reports on the net about the first production run of these particular Mackies overheating and one review that details a user who's monitors tripped the safety feature due to overheating at low volume levels. He claims to have gotten confirmation from Mackie there was indeed an overheating issue with that run and they replaced the monitors.

These do seem to have what to me would indicate a first run revision number. I'm going to contact Mackie and see what's up but I'd like to know how hot powered monitors like these tend to run at. Maybe they're supposed to get that hot... but it just doesn't seem right to me and it makes me a little paranoid something is gonna fry out when I least expect it.

The second issue is I wanted to try to get the monitors volume knobs to the middle position (the knob kind of clicks into place when set to 12 o'clock) so I could be sure I was getting an even stereo mix. Like I said though they are SUPER loud. So I turned the volume within Media Player to 0 and turned up the monitors to 12 o'clock. This produced some serious line noise and it was very even line noise either. It was kind of sporadic and random as opposed to just a flat even hum. Obviously this could be a number of things and I probably should have done some process of elimination at that point but apparently I wasn't thinking straight. I just turned them back down to continue what I was doing which worked fine. Still a little concerning though. I was using the line outs on the Layla so perhaps that was causing the issue. It's been a real pain in the new system so I'm not gonna wig out too much about that until I can check things with the new i/o box. I should also point out I was consistently checking the Layla's internal mixer and nothing was redlining or anything. It was a pretty standard looking signal level. Mostly in the green with a few spikes into the yellow and not coming close to the red.

So yeah... that's the bad stuff. As I said I'll be getting a hold of Mackie to see what's up. If I DID get a set from the faulty product run... well I guess I have to return them. Such a pain but whatever. I'm still in the process of doing my hardware setup/testing so I guess these things are to be expected. Just sucks it has to be the heaviest darned things in the whole pile of stuff. I really hope I don't get dinged for shipping. :-/

So now the good stuff...

Even if these monitors aren't working completely as they should they are AMAZING! I've never heard sound like this before in my life except perhaps in some of the big studios I've recorded in. In those scenarios though I was too busy tracking or working with the engineers trying to get mix levels right on my own stuff to really get a chance to appreciate the monitors. It's not like I was going to waste valuable studio time listening to my favorite tunes yanno? ;-)

The first thing that becomes instantly apparent is how LOUD these tiny little speakers are. Even at less than a quarter of their own input volume and WMPs volume set to less than half I was shaking the walls. It's actually almost a problem because I thought I'd be able to get these turned up a little more before getting to "call the cops" sound levels. I'll have to make sure to create monitor busses on all my projects so I can adjust the volume properly without messing with the levels on the monitors (which is a nuisance and makes it hard to get an even stereo signal) or turning down the Master buss. But it's better to have TOO much juice than not enough I guess.

The second things they are EXTREMELY directional. Just moving them a half an inch either way or moving myself around the room created massive differences in what I was hearing. Definitely going to have to play around a bit to get my "sweet" spots worked out. It was pretty neat just messing around with that for a while.

So I loaded the computer with a bunch of tunes I've listened to obsessively over the years of varying production styles.

A put some 311 in because they have a lot of really tight and low bottom end, super fat and rich guitar tones, hip hop style scritchety scratching, poppy snares, bright and intricate hi hat work, lotsa good stuff for a test. It's also just pretty uplifting music IMO. Well all of that came through stunningly. It was like I was listening to it for the first time. I was really interested in the bass response because these monitors seem to get some complaints about not enough bass but after this test that is just nonsense. It was all right there and well defined without any booming. I think many people have succumbed to modern DJ type stuff and expect that bust out the windows booming bottom end but that's not what reference monitors are for. Those who want that type of thing should stick to the Dr. Dre line of stuff which has been intentionally tweaked to force those bottom frequencies... not use professional reference monitors or headphones.

Next up was some live Nirvana. Muddy Banks to be specific. Extremely noisy album with some great production values. Again that turned out well but the high end certainly started causing ear fatigue very quickly. But it was all bright and clear so that test worked out pretty well too.

Next I wanted to check out some stuff with SUPER high production values and wacky stereo effects. So in went some Foo Fighters. Not my favorite band in the world but after the first album Dave really went crazy with production tricks so it seemed like a good test. Specifically I checked out the tracks Low, Everlong and My Hero. Low in specific uses some CRAZY phasing and panning effects which just came out in ridiculous detail with the monitors. It was dizzying. So definitely a good test that worked out well. Also those tracks really have a lot of bottom end and heavy tom work (My Hero specifically for the toms) and that all was reproduced amazingly.

Next I wanted to push their sonic boundaries beyond what any normal person would. As young man I was very into the angry industrial music stuff and one guy that just takes it to the extreme is JG Thurwell. He is one crazy crazy dude and his lyrics can be pretty abrasive but the compositions are NUTS. He also seems to try his best make the music sonically unnerving to the point it is almost exhausting to listen to it after short periods. So there were three tracks of his from his Sony release Gash that I particularly wnated to pump through the speakers. Slung which is an eleven minute industrial jazz song that incorporates tons of brass, old Gene Kruppa style drums and explodes into pounding choruses. Again it was reproduced amazingly. The brass was all tight and clear, the pounding parts ripped through my brain and the quiet parts were all very present. Next was a song called Downfall which is essentially a wall of chaotic noise loosely built on a couple simple guitar riffs. It's like a freight train being ground up in an enormous blender. It nearly knocked me off my chair just as it is intended to. So another great outcome. Finally I checked out a track called Verklemmt which is kind of mix between hokey synth noise, rock roll and new wave style progressions. Lots of freaky panning and noise effects, phase shifting, wahs, just tons of stuff. Again sounded awesome. So they passed the Thurwell test with flying colors (my ears were definitely getting tired at this point though).

So the last test I did before shutting it all down was some cello music. One man, one cello playing through the Back Suites. Sadly I think the original CD burn had some deterioration so it was a little crackly... at least I hope it was the CD but IIRC I had notice that before on my stereo. Now however it was very apparent. However the rest of the signals were coming through very nicely. When the cellist took a breath it was like he was right beside me breathing in my ear. Sadly though it wasn't as great as I hope but again I'll blame that on a crappy CD and not the monitors.

So there's my report for anyone who was interested. In between me typing up sections of this post I contacted my retailer and told him about the overheating. He's going contact Mackie directly himself and figure out what's up. He said they most certainly should not be getting that hot so I'll have an answer soon. I'm glad I went through this store instead of dinking around elsewhere. It costs a little more but they're really taking care of me. Excuse any brainfarts or typos as I'm not double checking this entire rant. lol... Peace.