With room response, there's no requirement to guess. You can measure the performance at the listening position and know what the response is. Just get a measument mic and a simple, non-colored pre-amp (both inexpensive) and something like Ethan's stepped low frequency sweep SONAR project, and you can easily measure the response.

If you are in a fairly small, rectangular room, even if you have it fairly well treated, it can have significant deviations. If it's not treated, they can be huge. If you don't get the listening position into one of the least worst case places in the room (where the fewest nulls and cancellations at your room's resonances are at), then it'll be even worse.

I'm rearranging my room now, but in the previous configuration, even with a lot of trappage, I had a wicked cancellation centered around 67Hz. It wasn't very wide, but it was deep, and of course that is not an uncommon frequency for the low end of a kick drum, for instance. So I could have a kick drum just pounding like crazy and not hear it, and that frequency is low enough that sanity checking on headphones might not help either.  And, since it's a cancellation, something like ARC cannot do anything about it.

I think that my new arrangement will be naturally better in and of itself, then add the trappage back, but I won't know till I measure. I also moved a couple pretty big bookshelves in there and put them directly behind the listening position, with the books shelved pretty randomly wrt to depth/thickness, to help get some diffusion as well. I'll never be able to find the book I'm looking for, but it should make for a pretty good diffusor.

Drew: Totally with you, Glad you understood where I was coming from..lol!

Dean, can't that 67 Hz cancellation be cured with an eq? Are you using anything at all to eq your monitors? If not, I believe ARC would help that issue. In my room, I heard nothing below 100 and was missing 500 Hz a bit as well which in turn, made me mix bass heavy and mid heavy all the time. ARC fixed that instantly for me even when I did corrections without my sub on. As a matter of fact, I don't even need my sub it helped me so much. The only thing I need the sub for is my NS-10's. But on everything else, the correction with no sub sounds exactly like the one I did WITH the sub. I just had to do corrections with and without the sub. It's exactly the same when I toggle them and turn off the sub at the same time. The NS-10's failed miserably though. ARC can't help them even a little bit. As a matter of fact, it made them sound worse for some reason. But add in the sub and do the correction, and they sound as good as anything else I own.

So maybe ARC is just eqing my monitors as the best case scenario and my rooms are in decent shape to where I'm not having any other issues? That's the only thing I can think of.

-Danny

"Dean, can't that 67 Hz cancellation be cured with an eq?"

LOL

mike_mccue


"Dean, can't that 67 Hz cancellation be cured with an eq?"

LOL

Did I say something funny? Now do you guys see why I go off on this guy? I simply asked a question because I'm curious and am hoping to learn a little something here that I admit to knowing nothing about.
 
*shakes head* and you guys stick up for him...I just don't get it. Just like the other abortion of a thread...I wasn't even talking to him, yet again I get egged on. Keep pushing me Mike...just keep doing what you're doing to me..

Was Mike Senior talking about expensive speakers like this:
http://www.nolaspeakers.com/reviews/tas/EditorsChoice2007.html

Speakers like this perhaps which cost way less but still enough:
http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/404aerial/#

or the Hoffman Iron Law whatever it is:
http://www.salksound.com/wp/?p=56

I guess low effeciency speakers and low response because of that is in, using more amp power to make up the difference. And here I thought if the excursion travel length of the speaker was really long, those small speakers could literally blow your head off. (well just a little humor at the end here.)

My Adam A7X mons are some of the best sounding junk that I've ever owned!

Mike Senior's book is full of useful and interesting tips and ideas. 

My take on the port issue is that according to SOS there appears to be something about some iconic monitors like NS10s and auratones that, though they have no bass response to speak of, give the mix engineer a picture of the mid range that is not available otherwise.

SOS has done a number of articles with history and investigations to support the notion that ported designs colour the low end by adding time domain problems around the resonant frequency of the port. A waterfall diagram of the monitor response can indicate problems of this kind.

The original article on the NS10 is worth a read and can be seen here:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/articles/yamahans10.htm

I have used the sock in the port trick - Alesis M1 mkII are unusable without a sock in each of the twin ports, preferably two :)   

My current monitors are venerable Event 20/20s with front facing ports (and no socks)  

I think I'll stick with my KRK's and my melange of speakers...and throw in a hardware EQ in the bargain.... 

If you are serious about speakers without ports than you can try building a pair of "5.6" cabinets:



(44T x 18.75W x 14.75D inches or 1118 x 476 x 375 mm)

Each cabinet has one of these in it:



And nothing else.

info at: http://www.fostexspeakers.com/fostex.html

I look forward to building a pair someday. Single point speakers fascinate me.


best regards,
mike

From reading a little further in Mike senior's book, I think his position is: Ported - North of $2000 for monitors and room treatment; check mix on various systems including headphones (recommends spending about $450-$500 for good ones), crummy computer speakers or boomboxes, auratone or avantone mix cubes (even just one in mono would be fine) to check the midrange and to see how the bass holds up here; room averaging, which means listening to the bass response in differing areas of the room, taking notes perhaps and if the bass is too loud in some places and too weak in others you may be close to the right amount, but if it is never too weak anywhere then you might want to cut it back a little; and also a spectrum analyzer.