Kalle Rantaaho

JD1813


       I should toss in that like many of us, I simply can't run up a high powered amp due to the location of my house and the room my studio is in.  But out of necessity, I am getting away from so much mixing in the cans and trying to cross-check output using several different speakers - heck with the neighbors!  I have a very un-treated room to work in,  affecting both mic recording as well as               - John    

The high power active  loudspeakers do not mean you need to mix using high volume. The good volume for the basic work is around 85 dB, which means you hardly need to raise your voice to have a conversation.

Yes Indeed... I use the higher powered stuff I've been speaking of to listen at an average of 83dBSPL.

The power is there for the instantaneous reproduction of bass frequencies so that they remain accurate and clean. There is a secondary benefit as well,  you get to enjoy a perceived smoothness and gracefulness in the upper mid range.

It's useful to appreciate that this isn't an effect for your sound.. it is actually presenting every thing in your sound file more accurately.



best regards,
mike

A few points:

The Mackie HR824's which are the monitors that I use have a total of 250 watts of rms power built into each speaker which means a total of 500 watts for both cabinets. More than enough for most applications. Especially at around 85 db. I can get them pumping out over 105 dB SPL without the slightest sign of distress. Is that OK enough for you Mike? If you read the blurb on the Mackie site they do a lot to match the power amps to the drivers, active crossovers etc (IMO sound way better than passive crossovers working at high power) something that cannot be done with passive monitors and power amps.

I tend to agree with Danny that a lot of modern powered active monitors are excellent and have huge amounts of power. Perhaps Mike is thinking a little old fashioned and is not fully acquainted with a lot of current active speakers. I get to hear many. I am a Hi Fi enthusiast from way back and had 2000 watt power amps driving monitors so I know what that sounds like and it is good. But many modern day active speakers can rival that sound. That is what I am hearing anyway.

I know many cannot do this but putting the speakers away from the walls and on concrete stands make a huge difference. The bottom end has been transformed when I did this. Way less colouration and less distortion. Explain that one! Mids and highs sound different too as a result of the low end changing as much as it did. Like getting a new speaker! 

I also spend a lot of time mixing way down low in volume on a small mono speaker. This does not need a 2000 watt power amp to drive it. This will have more impact on your mixes than anything else in your studio. 

As I have always said listening to quality reference material in your environment takes the room and the speakers out of the equation big time. 

My car has an amazing system. It has complete control over the EQ but it is the bass end that I find the most useful especially in mastering situations. When I get the bass in my mastered sound the same as ref material bottom end in the car the clients go crazy over my mastering. So the car can be very useful. Do not rule it out.

Do NOT use the headphone outputs from anything to drive important and accurate monitor speakers. It is not wise. Reason. Most gear will shove the signal through some quite poor quality headphone driver circuit to just get the job done eg: driving phones. That headphone amp won't be great. You are limiting the final quality of your monitored sound to the quality of that silly little headphone amp. Use you main outputs from your interface to do that job through some sort of monitor controller if you don't have one. 

I have never figured out why people "can not" move their speakers away from the walls.

You either like listening to music or you like listening to the sound of your wall reflections with the bass all buggered up.

Choose one.

I went with the music a long time ago.

It seemed important to me.






Hi Jeff, the system I use is fully biamped with active cross overs etc...  As you noted, it utilizes all the latest tricks so it can squeak by with a tiny little 250 watts (0.1% THD into 2 ohms) on each woofer and 120 watts (0.1% THD into 4 ohms) on the tweeters.

I have the old big amps stored on the shelf because as you noted, you don't need such a big amp these days.

Yep, I'm all modern, hi tech and up to date.

The company has made this system for a while now, but they've been making world class speakers and systems for decades, so you will not find them putting out a new and improved model every few years just to make up for past short cuts. They took care of all that stuff a long time ago when they were inventing the technology.

My system is simply an industrial grade working man's sound tool.

BTW, Mackie did a darn good job of copying that very system and applying some budgetary constraints to get their package down to a lower price point.

Mackie knew what to copy... they copied the good stuff.

I agree that Mackie did an incredible job.

The more powerful amps I enjoy just make it even tighter and cleaner.






I'm kinda interested in a pair of these at the moment...



http://www.equatoraudio.c...udio_Monitor_p/q10.htm

Equator Q10s ... what do you think? 1950's co-axial technology meets the latest amp technology.

I'm on the fence... but I really like the concept of single point imaging.

I like running my Auratones on a mid size Hafler.... sure it;'s rated 20x the max of the Auratones... but they sure sound good when I listen and I am always amazed out how the single point provides such a clear image left to right. I really like hearing the clear imaging. Listening to Auratones reminds me that multi dirver systems come with an ugly compromise.

I'm thinking the Q's might have the imaging magic that the Auratones have with the added benefit of full range response.

My hesitation in buying them is I don't want to get stuck with an hi tech amplifier that was made 7500 miles from where I work that suddenly needs service and turns out to be made out of big, fancy, latest greatest, IC chips that can only be RnR'd at a distributor rather than repaired by a factory trained tech.

Who knows how long "they" will be making said fancy, latest, greatest chip?

It seems more practical, to me, to enjoy an amp that is easily serviced by the folks that actually made it and so I enjoy having amps that were made in a domestic factory... but I also like the idea that most of my gear can also be serviced locally too.

Honestly, I've long been fascinated with co-axials so I might just go for it.
 




Oh BTW Jeff, remember that subwoofer I showed you that goes down to 1Hz? Had you noticed that it was designed and manufactured by one of my neighbors?



I can't afford his stuff... http://www.eminent-tech.com/main.html  I just offer it as an example that hi-fi enthusiasm is alive and well.

Another one of my neighbors designed and produces an air bearing LP turn table for hi-fi enthusiasts. I'm not sure if that's old fashioned or hyper tech. I do know it's pretty darn cool... and I don't even play records anymore.




Anyways, I guess all this babbling is a reaction to the notion put forth that I may be unaware of what's up these days.

Heck... I get around. :-)




all the very best
mike



edited spelling

Hi Jeff,
 I went over to the Mackie website and saw something in the description that reminded me of that thing that Mackie does... that I'm not fond of.

 Here it is in a nut shell:

 "... we know how to make good-sounding amps. Using surface mount components"

 from: http://www.mackie.com/pro...amped_Amps_Detail.html

 I've got a few Mackie boards... the surface mount component construction made them incredibly feature packed yet incredibly affordable... and the surface mount technology has made them a service night mare. So, my older mackie boards have things that simply don't work anymore because it's cheaper to get a fresh board than pay someone to work with surface mount repair.


 I probably shouldn't have gone over and read up about the Mackie amp construction.  :-)


 best regards,
mike

Hi Mike. I am also a bit of a single point source speaker fan and the Equator speakers look very good. The whole spectrum must sound good on them, that would be my main concern. I would still rather have a two way speaker that sounds better than a co axial speaker system that does not sound quite as good. But if a coaxial speaker can sound great then there is no reason not to consider it for sure.

Glad to see you are up to date with current speaker technology Mike. BTW I only use one single Auratone type speaker not two. I know two is good for imaging but I find mixing through a single mono speaker also has its challenges and there are a host of things it reveals that two speakers don't.  I do have a rather powerful amp driving it but only because it is the only spare power amp I have lying around. It is a Yamaha power amp rated at a whopping 400 W per channel so yes it is clean. But I have had the mono speaker on much smaller power amps and it still performs the way it is meant to. It is more about the critical balance that that small speaker performs.

That sub woofer looks fantastic Mike. I love it. I wonder how it handles really tight punchy Steely Dan kick drums though! Probably great. You may have also read about a friend of mine who built an entire room in the shape of an exponential horn and you sat right inside it. The bass driver was an 18" speaker in a concrete enclosure 6 feet under the ground and piped the sound up into the mouth of the horn! That was big! Talk about low end. He used electrostatic speakers on the side of the room firing onto glass set at 45 degree angles that was facing us also. So you looked right through the main speakers.  He was using class A Williamson valve power amps driving the speakers. I and four other people back in the 70's built Williamson class A amps and they sounded amazing. They are all running today! I don't have mine now. Just out of interest the only transistor power amp that approached that sound was the Carver that Danny mentioned. I still have a Carver power amp that works great and sounds quite spectacular. 

The reason I don't use it is that active monitors today just sound so excellent and it is totally unnecessary. Today more than ever before there is such a range of great sounding active monitors around compared to the 70's when accurate and great speakers were hard to find and very very expensive.

Some advice for the OP. Get yourself some really great reference material and go into the shops and check out the active monitors. (note: Do not let them use their ref material and also if you can try and listen to your own ref material on some great expensive control room monitors if you can first. I bought my Mackies after spending a week in Sony studios in Sydney doing a jazz album on $70,000 monitors! After getting back home I used my actual mix of this album to audition active speakers. I found the Mackies were the closest thing to those monitors in Sydney. Hard to believe isn't it. Of course they are not as good but it is interesting they sounded very similar)

You are going to be spending a lot of time in front of them so pick wisely. Although they all sound great they also all sound a bit different so it is wise to get speakers that are going to serve you well in what you want to do.

Good point Mike about surface mount technology but I suppose everything is that way probably these days. I have hammered my speakers every day since 1998 and never had a problem so I am just going with that. That has been my experience anyway with these speakers.

mike_mccue


I have never figured out why people "can not" move their speakers away from the walls.


all the very best
mike

There are lots, lots of good reasons for many (most?) hobbyists.
For example: they don't have a dedicated studio room. If I move my loudspeakers (that means the table as well) two feet from the wall, I block the door. The table is in the only thinkable place in the room.
 
I'd say, if we talk about an average room that is also used for "normal living", not being able to position the loudspeakers properly ( far enough from walls) is more like a rule than an exception.

Hi Jeff,

Yes, I recall you telling me of that. It is fascinating. I have seen articles about that sort of design over the years... perhaps it was the very horn you were sitting in?

I love it when speaker enthusiasts make great use of acoustics. I am personally interested in the idea that sound is a form of temporal sculpture and when people start working with acoustics I get excited.

I have a pair of Klipsch La Scalas that make music sound like music using tiny little amps. If your lucky you'll have some sweet second order distortion in the amp to color the playback. Of course that has nothing to do with monitors, mixing, or listening for mix issues... it's simply about enjoying sound and acoustics. They're fun to listen too.
 


I wish I'd built a Williamson... my dad tried to teach me, but at the time I was too young and plenty dumb and I told him all the new stuff was solid state and I didn't want a home made amp.

I wish I had that to do all over again. :-) Live and learn.

I still have a printing of the original white papers describing the Williamson amp.

Maybe someday!!!


all the best,
mike




added "Hi Jeff" to maintain context of message.

The Williamson is a great amp but there are some real issues now though. (BTW we had all these issues in the late 70's so how hard is it going to be today!)The output transformer is unusual and not available off the shelf from what I know. We had to get a transformer manufacturer to wound them for us! But they would only make 10 not 2 so I had to convince 4 others to do it. I was successful. 

The power transformer is a bit of a weird one too. The plate voltage is 500 Volts! with several amps behind it. You need a special power transformer to get those sort of secondary voltages. Some of us used valve rectifiers but I think I might have used a solid state rectifier. Try getting a rectifier to handle 500 volts at several amps. Not easy. Also the filter capacitors had to handle 500V DC. Also not easy. We had to import 630 V caps from Phillips in Holland. The guys that did use the valve rectifier also had to get a pretty hefty inductor choke made as well for the power supply. All not easy.

Then there are the KT66 valves in the output stage. I worked in Foreign Affairs at the time in the area of coding our messages into secret codes that other countries could not understand. The gear then used KT66's would you believe and we had a storeroom full of them. We also had an expensive valve tester so I could get matched pairs out of the stock. We were going over to transistors at the time in our coding technology so the valves were starting to become redundant. I managed to smuggle 10 matched pairs of valves out of there without being detected. I had the highest security clearance at the time so we did not have to show out briefcases to the security guys on the way out!. Just as well.

And you want to do all this for just a 40 or 50 watt per channel amp that could could you warm on a cold day! It did look good though. We had all our chassis made especially, punched and chrome plated. It did look pretty serious in the end.

But the sound, well OMG comes to mind! But later we found the Carver to be very close in its detail and incredible top end. I think the Carver guy designed all the Crown stuff originally and that was very good too. A class A valve amp is like driving down the highway with the engine at 7000 rpm and using the clutch to control your speed! When you want something to happen just so super fast the valve amp is already running at full power ready to act on it quickly!

I did have Quad electrostatics for a while there but crossed over to a sub and that was driven from a powerful solid state amp. The low damping factor of the transistor amps had a much better low end response especially when you want the woofer to stop moving!

Sorry to be going off topic but Mike and I enjoy talking about Hi Fi. But you know there is some merit in all this. Firstly I had what you could probably call the ultimate system but when the Carver power amp came out in the early 80's it was the first transistor amp to even come close to the Williamson. Every transistor amp previously was simply destroyed by it! We did some very controlled A/B tests back then. I even designed a built a special switcher that could switch input and outputs to and from two power amps. Not easy considering the valve amp could not have an open circuit!

But the Carver came along and replaced the Williamson (all 600 watts of it too!) and then later modern day active monitors came along and matched the sound I was hearing previously from tens of thousands of dollars worth of speakers and amps. It can and has been done.

The one thing I did keep from that era was my turntable. A special Hi Fi Technics direct drive with expensive arm and Shure V15 type III pickup which now requires $500 to replace the stylus with the real thing! I also have a very expensive RIAA preamp to die for too. Put those things together and you really have something that still sounds amazing. Dark Side of the Moon still sounds jaw dropping on this setup.

JD1813
Is there "room measurement software" that's readily available to test a room?   I'm researching this issue right now as well as the common remedies for the problems.    Again, my sincere thanks to all, for a very informative and eye-opening thread!                   ~ John

 
The simplest scheme is to just get a SONAR project that has a track in it that provides a bass frequency sweep from 40Hz up to around 300Hz. Ethan Winer has one of those out there if you want to search for it. You set up a mic (a clean, non-colored type one, preferably a measurement mic and there are relatively inexpensive ones available) at the point where your head will be when mixing. You play the frequency sweep and record it. The deviations you see in the recorded version indicate where you have peaks and dips. I.e. the source track is completely flat in volume. The one you record will not be. Where it's low that's where you have cancellations and where it's high that's where you have peaks. It can be quite depressing in an untreated room. You can easily have 20 or more dB differences between your worst dips and peaks.
 
As much as possible you want to position your desk so that your head is in a least worst case point in the room to start with. That will start you off to being with much better of. Typically it's about 3/8ths of the length of the room (front to back) back from the wall in front of you, and just a bit off center left to right. But that's only true for a rectilinear room, so you can start there and experiment using the measurement scheme above.
 
You can find simple room mode calculators which will give you a good idea of which axis the problems you see are coming from. They are typically first from the flat surfaces above, below, to the left/right, and back front of you, those being able to deliver the most energy back to the listening position. Then wall/ceiling corners in front/behind, left right.
 

On room measurement software, this one is GREAT and FREE! The waterfall plots are really interesting too as it lets you see not only where your peaks and troughs are, but what your resonance time is like at certain frequencies. Allows you to alter absorption amount and type in your room to get closer to a uniform reverb response.

http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/