How far should near field monitors be placed away from you ?

I dont think it's distance, I think you have some problems with your room that you need to address with treatment of some sort (absorption, dispersion)

You may have a number of issues at play here.  First question:  which Event monitors are you using, and what is the woofer size and frequency response?  It is possible that you may need to add a subwoofer to your system to get that added oomph at the bottom of the spectrum.  Secondly, you may be working in an environment that needs room treatment.  I'm no expert in room acoustics, but this seems to be a major cause of out-of-balance mixes.  One way to get a handle on this is to play some reference mixes through your system and listen to the response you are getting - pick some CDs that are similar to the sound you are trying to achieve, and see how they sound through your speakers.  By getting to know your speakers, you can often compensate for deficiencies in the speaker and/or room, but that can only take you so far, and then you need to take more drastic measures.

You monitors should form a triangle w/ your head at the point.  6 foot spread between speakers mean your head should be 6 feet away situated midway between them.  Ideally.  If you are too close you end up having a "hole" in the middle that your mind fills in.  Farther away and you get more of the room rather than direct sound (which is the point of near field speakers).

To truely propagate bass waves you need a big room - take a look at  hammond organ drawbars or a mini-moog which mimics the convention.  32' means a 32 foot pipe producing the sound, ergo a 32 foot room for the wave to fully form.  Again, ideally, and most speakers aren't going to replicate such a low note (or growl).

Your problem could be room, speakers, experience,- and probably some of all three.  An untreated room will sound unbalanced - a lot of high-frequency bouncing around and bass waves rebounding upon themselves and causes peaks and nulls.  If you've ever moved into a new place  or painted an empty room you can hear the reverb and flutter echos, which mess up your montioring.  You notice it mostly in the highs, but it does the same for bass.  There are plenty of threads about room treatment here and elsewhere.

Speakers - get to know them and how they sound.  Listen to different styles of music on them.  Studio monitors shouldn't flatter the sound - they should be flat as widely as possible.  At the studio I frequent they use big genlecs.  They are brutal.  Flabby bass will sound flabby, not rounded off and low freq noise will be heard (and felt) instead rolled off.  And highs will shriek and scratch your eardrums.  They used to have yamas but moved to med adams for the near field.  They are smaller in the bottom and the ribbon tweeter flattens the highs.  If a song sounds good on both of them, it will translate well.  at home I use old yamas and have gotten to know them - stuff I do seems to translate well and if something sounds scratchy on the beryllium tweeters it is too much and the 8 inch woofers let me catch most low noise/misshapes.

Which brings me to experience.  Buy the best speakers you can afford and stick w/ them for a while so you get to know them.  Put some furniture (bed/futon/couch) in the control room to suck up the bass as well as highs if you can't properly treat it.  Book shelves (w/ spaced books, not your wife's nick-nacks) also work well dispersing the sound it doesn't soak up.  Then buy a stack of CDs and burn your mixes.  Test them in the living room w/ bookshelf speakers, headphones and in the car.  Listen carefully to see how the mix performs in different enviorments/systems and use that for feedback.  And roll off the bottom of tracks if you don't have a big system to listen on.  Bottom noise will suck up headroom and you'll never know it using smaller speakers.

It takes an investment of time to learn your system and, as importantly, train your ears.  But the above steps can speed it all up, esp. if you are young and haven't lost your hearing through age.  Start young, and realize most of the mastering engineers are older and have worse hearing than you, but they know "what" to listen for.

Ok thanks for the replies guys !

I'm using the TR8's : http://www.zzounds.com/item--EVETR8

they sound good if I step back across the room, then they all most have to much bass !

I can really modify the room the room I have my setup in, so I can't treat it or use any bass traps. So what other options does that leave me as far as finding a "sweet spot" to balance our between no bass (2ft from them) and to much bass (across the room...8ft) ?

The whole point of small near field monitors is that you sit close enough that you don't need a treated room. Amazing how many people don't seem to get that. 
You Events are not really a true near filed monitor, although they are relatively compact, they are more akin to a 'mid size' studio monitor and as you have already experienced they can belt out some bass which you wont hear up close. They really do need a treated room. It's a shame they are not manufactured any more. I once owned the similar 20/20's at one time and they were awesome speakers. 


If you really can't treat this room I would recommend that you get a set of 5" something or others (e.g. KRK's) and a sub woofer that you could switch on and off to keep a check on the bass while you are mixing down.
 
    

I thought the post was a joke. They are called "NEAR" field monitors.
I guess it is a serious dicussion.

Beagle

guitardog247


I thought the post was a joke. They are called "NEAR" field monitors.
I guess it is a serious dicussion.

yeah, but they're not called "2 meter monitors" so the OP wants to know the definition of "near"

Exactly..What is the definition of near-field when it comes to monitors ?

Ok so when I bought my Events, the company and the music store I bought them at, said near-field. So in my opinion, "near" means close.

Where do they say six foot or 2 meter monitors ?

...Or is this info that someone should should not ask, caused it assumed EVERYONE should know ?..Or is this another Sonar Forums ****ism, I'm a super producer but still have time to post on here kinda thing ?

Actually it's 3 to 6 ft.

This is from Sweetwater tech. advice:
 
From David Stewart, Sweetwater's Service and Technical Support Manager -
 
Common question: "How close should I position my "near field" monitors?"
 
Our general rule of thumb: If they are smaller speakers, put them out about arm's length away from you, with about that same distance between them (about one meter). They should be pointed in towards your head. Envision an equilateral triangle with one of the points being the tip of your nose. The monitors should also point towards the tip of your nose so the on-axis sound kind of crosses right in front of your face. Your results may vary and personal preference should always take precedent over these rules, but this is a good starting point; from here adjust to your taste.
This method generally works well with small two way (or dual concentric) near fields. If you have larger monitors or three way monitors the space between the drivers on the cabinet may dictate that they be placed a little further away. If you sit too close to monitors with multiple drivers or monitors that have a large distance between woofer and tweeter you will experience phase distortion anomalies.
 

 
 
 
And this from Musician's Friend:
 
Near-Field Monitor Placement
 
Near-field studio monitors are small speakers that minimize the effects of your room on the sound source. Clear, accurate, and balanced monitors will obviously deliver a more precise sound than your old hi-fi speakers, and accuracy makes a huge difference in tweaking your mix.
The position of the monitors is very important. First, you should be close to the sound: about 2 to 5 feet from the monitors is cool. Mount the monitors at ear level, positioned so that your head points to right between the two. If the monitors are mounted 4 feet apart, you should be 4 feet away from them, so the monitors and your head form a nice imaginary triangle. Angle the monitors so the tweeters are aimed at your ears. This placement should provide more accurate monitoring.

There are a number of factors to take into consideration. The two main factors are the physical dimensions of the speakers and the dimensions of the room, with the latter being far more important.

Conventional wisdom is that small woofers can be closer, but large woofers should be further away, and that's how it's normally done.

5" and 6" speakers are usually placed about 2.5' to 4' away, 8" speakers between 3' and 6' away, and 10" placed 6' to 8' away. Large, full-range speakers, which typically have 12" or 15" woofers, are usually soffit-mounted 10 to 12 feet away. These examples are based only on what I've seen in studios, and not on any scientific principle that I know of.

In practice, there is really no problem setting 8" speakers 3' away or 6" speakers 4' away. Arguments about "letting the bass develop" are bogus in the context of a control room. You don't actually want the bass to "develop". That's a concept for PA systems, live sound and churches, not for control room monitoring. The whole idea of nearfields is to try and reduce the interaction between the speakers and the room.

What you do want is for the outputs of the woofer and tweeter to blend nicely, with minimal phase cancellation. That's an acoustical process, and it does need some air to do it in. But you only need a listening distance that's at least 3 times the distance between the woofer and tweeter. Take a ruler and figure out what that comes to - on my speakers, that's about 18". Double that to 3' as a safe, conservative rule-of-thumb and phase alignment will not be a concern.

Far more important is where the speakers sit in the room. You want them as far from any walls as you can get them, you want them to be laterally equidistant from the nearest walls, and you want to avoid siting them in the dead center of the room or have your mix chair in the dead center of the room. Getting them out away from the wall behind them is very important, especially if your speakers are rear-ported.

Ideally, you want the nearest boundary (walls, floor or ceiling) to be at least 3 times further away from the speaker than your ears are. If pulling the speakers closer to your ears is the only way to get them away from the walls, go ahead and do that.

The OP's problem is that he's not hearing the bass accurately in the studio, and is correct in assuming that speaker placement may help. In the absence of serious acoustical treatments, the best strategy is probably to move the monitors closer (while still keeping them in an equilateral triangle).

Of course, this won't prevent the room from screwing with the sound. Only heavy bass trapping is going to help with that.

As for the lightness in the highs, that could be because the room is particularly bright and reflective, or it could mean a speaker adjustment is needed.

I'd take some measurements first, running white noise through the speakers into an omnidirectional microphone. I'd want to verify that my speakers are reasonably flat above 4KHz. If not, there is probably an adjustment on the speaker to turn the tweeter up.

But if the problem isn't with the speaker, the room is the likely culprit. Some absorption should clear that up, especially absorbers to the left and right of the speakers, and a ceiling cloud above, midway between speakers and mix position.

Thanks for explaining that Bit. I knew there was ryhme and reason to the 3 to 6 ft spacing. Of couse there are parameters, and you just don't say "6 feet for every setup". 

I bought them a long while back and I've got a few good mixes from them off the bat, but I noticed in songs that had alot of bass drums or lots of bass lines, remixing was almost certain...A few times..lol

So what are the "best" near-fields for a untreated room? I'm looking back now and now I think I'm seeing that 8 inch near-fields might not have been a good idea. I think when I got the Events, they ran about $650, given that was a long time ago, but you need a couple thousand dollar room for $650 speakers ?

That's a good point mike and what I was trying to get at is, in my experience with the Event's, they need to be working at quite high SPL's to sound their best, and then , if the room is not good, it's your neighbors three doors down that is actually hearing your bass!

I was wondering why the OP can't at least do some basic treatment to his room and if anyone knows how he could do some treatments that could easily be removed if he is, for example, in a rented dwelling.

Sorry to ressurect an old thread but bit's info is some of the most well explained I've found on this subject and I'm in the middle of treating my room. My question is on the distance between speakers vs their distance to the ear. Or, breaking the equallateral triangle.

Basically my desk is 4' wide, and my Yamaha HS80m's sit on stands, with the cones about 5' apart, and they can't really be moved closer together. The HS80m's also recommend a distance of 5' from the wall, which seems in all practical terms impossible.

My listening position is more like 3' from the monitors. Even if I were to sit 5' back, I'd be nowhere near my mixing desk.

Bitflipper you already dispelled a popular myth I was wondering about, regarding letting the bass develop. Thanks a ton. If you or anyone could comment on if sitting 3' from the monitors while the monitors are about 5' from each other, it'd be much appreciated. What issues could that be creating?

You can also pull the desk out from the wall about 1-2 feet and either move in the speakers closer or that should put you in the current sweet spot. Most acoustic books recommend your head be about 1/3rd back in the room. This from the wall you are facing.