How is it determined that a monitor is good/accurate?
muzician21
If it's correct that any mic and any speaker colors sound, any
recorded sound you run though it is colored by the mic to begin with -
so how you do you tell that you're accurately reproducing sound that's
to some degree inaccurate to begin with?
Or if you're measuring reproduction of say an electronically generated
tone, how is it determined how accurately the tone is being
reproduced? With a mic? What about the test mic's inaccuracies?
Scott Dorsey
>
>If it's correct that any mic and any speaker colors sound, any
>recorded sound you run though it is colored by the mic to begin with -
>so how you do you tell that you're accurately reproducing sound that's
>to some degree inaccurate to begin with?
There ain't no monitors that are accurate or even good.
However, the best microphones are a lot better than the best monitors.
>Or if you're measuring reproduction of say an electronically generated
>tone, how is it determined how accurately the tone is being
>reproduced? With a mic? What about the test mic's inaccuracies?
Again, most of the monitor aberrations are way worse than the lab mike
abberations. Hell, play a sweep tone on the monitor and listen with a
finger stuck in one ear so you're only using the other ear to hear, and
you'll hear all KINDS of frequency-domain bizarreness even in a pretty
decent room.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Arny Krueger
news:acc48b04-9eb9-418f...@s15g2000yqs.googlegroups.com
> It seems like it would be a catch 22.
>
> If it's correct that any mic and any speaker colors
> sound, any recorded sound you run though it is colored by
> the mic to begin with - so how you do you tell that
> you're accurately reproducing sound that's to some degree
> inaccurate to begin with?
Accurate reproduction of sound - in what alternative universe does that
happen? ;-)
The current state of the art of reproduction of sound is that on a good day,
we can make recordings that cause a similar emotional reaction as the
original sonic event, sometimes.
The current state of the art of reproduction of sound is that on a good day,
we can make recordings that are good enough that we might be able to
identify which live sonic event of many was recorded on that particular
recording.
> Or if you're measuring reproduction of say an
> electronically generated tone, how is it determined how
> accurately the tone is being reproduced? With a mic?
As Scott and just about everybody else here will say - The are mics that are
a ton more accurate than the best speakers. But don't take that as a claim
that the mics are anything like perfectly accurate.
> What about the test mic's inaccuracies?
If you find a good text about acoustics, you might find a chapter about
testing mics.
I did a little searching around and found that if you search google books
for a book titled
"Sensor technology handbook" By Jon S. Wilson . Chapter 18 looks pretty
representative.
black...@aol.com
In my opinion, there are no accurate or (universally) good monitors.
Monitors are one of the great variables in sound reproduction. They
can never sound good to everybody; the best you can do is get a decent
set, and make them YOUR "good" monitors. I have done this with a few
sets in my career. By trail and error, I try the same recordings on
numerous sets of monitors. I LEARN how things SHOULD sound on my
monitors. I teach myself, for example, how do do a mix on MY monitors
that sounds good on most other monitors.
Just my opinion.
muzician21
> There ain't no monitors that are accurate or even good.
>
> However, the best microphones are a lot better than the best monitors.
How are either of the above determined, and if so, when pro studios
pay however many multiples of thousands for monitors, I assume there
must be a reason they do so?
Arny Krueger
> On Nov 7, 8:34 pm, klu...@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>> There ain't no monitors that are accurate or even good.
Compared to the best or even just good live sound, yes.
>> However, the best microphones are a lot better than the
>> best monitors.
Agreed.
> How are either of the above determined, and if so, when
> pro studios pay however many multiples of thousands for
> monitors, I assume there must be a reason they do so?
There are some basic requirements of a good studio monitor that simply cost
money:
(1) Extended range, especially in the bass
(2) Good dynamic range, perhaps in a larger-than-average and more
absorptive-than-average room
(3) Smooth frequency response
It is the rare professional monitor that sells in volumes comparable to a
popular home speaker, so development and tooling costs may be divided among
far fewer units.
I think that all things considered, studio monitors are generally more
pragmatically priced than high end home speakers.
Mike Rivers
> How are either of the above determined, and if so, when pro studios
> pay however many multiples of thousands for monitors, I assume there
> must be a reason they do so?
They buy monitors based on what they need to hear in order to make
recordings that others can enjoy. While you'll hear some engineers and
producers talk about walking between the studio and the control room and
hearing exactly the same thing, they're really exaggerating. And when it
comes to mixing a multitrack project that's been overdubbed and fixed
so that all the tracks are "perfect" it's rare than you can solo any
track and
hear exactly what it sounded like in the studio.
The two most important things about good control room monitors are that
they don't hide things that will come back to haunt you later, and that they
don't make you tired when you listen for a long time.
Scott Dorsey
The first one you can easily determine with your ears. Listen to the
playback of the vocal with your eyes closed. Does it sound like a real
human being is in front of you, or does it sound like a speaker?
The second one is a book in itself, and that book is "Microphones"
published by Bruel and Kjaer. There are actual primary standards for
microphone frequency response on-axis... and once you have a mike
calibrated on-axis, you can measure the response off-axis.
You can also record an impulse and then calculate the frequency response
mathematically from the impulse response.
So now once you have a calibrated measurement microphone, you can accurately
measure the response of rooms and speakers relative to the microphone... and
even the best speakers are pretty sad both in terms of frequency response
and distortion.
hank alrich
Some speakers give me a sense of the _reality_ of the sources coming
through them. Some do not. Mind you, I most often deal with what I'll
call "natural" sounds - acoustic instruments, human voices, sounds that
are generated without electrical amplification.
Some years ago at an AES convention on the floor of the large exhibit
room at Moscone Center in SF I heard Laura Nyro via various Klein &
Hummel monitors. Even in that horrible acoustical environment full of
ambient noise and distraction I felt I could perceive her lips moving in
front of the mic she had sung into. It was as if those speakers offered
a transparent time travel window to where she was singing and playing an
acoustic guitar.
A similar experience could be had in another, better treated room where
ATC's were on demo.
To me, those are good speakers, in the extreme. (I am obviously less
extreme about this than is Scott. <g.)
This past week working as an artist in Cedar Creek Recording in Austin
TX we mostly monitored over a pair of Genelecs with which I am
unfamiliar. I gradually got used to them though even after three days
I'm not confident in my judgements about what I hear through them. Fred
Remmert, the studio owner, certainly is. Sometimes he would switch to a
pair of 6' tall Dunleavys driven by Brystons, and over those I felt I
could tell what was going on in detail. If it sounded good going into
them, it sounded good. If it didn't, it was painfully obvious. The
Gennies aren't completely dishonest, to me, but they do have some
euphonic coloration that makes things sound a little better than they
do. (Sometimes that's probably a relief for the engineer.)
At home I've been working with a pair of Genelec 8040A's. I got used to
them quickly and the first mixes I did with them for clients came out
quite well. Played back at Terra Nova mastering over a pair of Duntechs
the mixes held up well, with the big speakers in a very well treated
room bringing me slightly more detail. In September I made some changes
to my control room, and the rough mixes I've put together so far aren't
quite as good. I have some adjustments to make to get the 200 to 400 Hz
octave in balance. That said, those are not terribly expensive speakers,
and I know that when I have things set-up properly I can get reasonably
accurate mixes that will translate very well over other systems.
Keep in mind that as one moves toward an unobtainable audio perfection,
the closer one gets to 100% the greater the cost of each additional
percentile of improvement. It gets to the point where tiny improvements
cost loads of money. If had I had loads of money I'd buy K&H's or ATC's
in a heartbeat.
--
ha
shut up and play your guitar
Scott Dorsey
>
>Keep in mind that as one moves toward an unobtainable audio perfection,
>the closer one gets to 100% the greater the cost of each additional
>percentile of improvement. It gets to the point where tiny improvements
>cost loads of money. If had I had loads of money I'd buy K&H's or ATC's
>in a heartbeat.
But by the same token, the best speakers today are _far_ better than the
best speakers of the eighties were.
I learned to mix on Altec 604s which never sounded _anything_ like the
original signal. I play back stuff that I mixed years ago and I hear
all kinds of things that I never noticed then.
William Sommerwerck
> better than the best speakers of the eighties were.
That's debatable. (It would be truer of inexpensive-to-moderately priced
speakers.) Nevertheless, recordings have reached the point where, when
played through really good speakers, they sound a great deal like "the real
thing".
Ultimately (and unfortunately), the question of whether sound reproduction
is literally accurate is a subjective evaluation.
Don Pearce
Just the other day I was travelling with a friend on the London
Underground. we were on our way up the first of two escalators into
one of London's busiest rail terminals when we could just barely hear
some brass band music drifting down from the concourse above. We were
both in instant agreement that it was a live band playing, and not a
recording. Of course we were right. They simply never sound the same,
even with really good reproduction.
d
hank alrich
> hank alrich <walk...@nv.net> wrote:
> >
> >Keep in mind that as one moves toward an unobtainable audio perfection,
> >the closer one gets to 100% the greater the cost of each additional
> >percentile of improvement. It gets to the point where tiny improvements
> >cost loads of money. If had I had loads of money I'd buy K&H's or ATC's
> >in a heartbeat.
>
> But by the same token, the best speakers today are _far_ better than the
> best speakers of the eighties were.
Right you are, and the progress is damn near astounding. Accuracy now,
in spite of the slop, is several orders of magnitude advanced over the
old daze.
> I learned to mix on Altec 604s which never sounded _anything_ like the
> original signal. I play back stuff that I mixed years ago and I hear
> all kinds of things that I never noticed then.
> --scott
Yep, but still, once you were personally calibrated to the playback
system you were able to deliver mixes that translated well even if there
was stuff in there of which you had no idea. <g>
One of the things I appreciated about the Genelec 8040A's is that when I
got to Jerry Tubb's place there were no huge surprises, not even on the
bottom.
nebulax
> hank alrich <walki...@nv.net> wrote:
>
> >Keep in mind that as one moves toward an unobtainable audio perfection,
> >the closer one gets to 100% the greater the cost of each additional
> >percentile of improvement. It gets to the point where tiny improvements
> >cost loads of money. If had I had loads of money I'd buy K&H's or ATC's
> >in a heartbeat.
>
> But by the same token, the best speakers today are _far_ better than the
> best speakers of the eighties were.
I agree, which also makes me wonder why people are still using
NS-10's.
-Neb
Scott Dorsey
>> But by the same token, the best speakers today are _far_
>> better than the best speakers of the eighties were.
>
>That's debatable. (It would be truer of inexpensive-to-moderately priced
>speakers.) Nevertheless, recordings have reached the point where, when
>played through really good speakers, they sound a great deal like "the real
>thing".
I don't think it's true of inexpensive to moderately priced speakers at
all, really. While the technology has improved, that market has also been
flooded with cheap crap designed for high profit margins too.
>Ultimately (and unfortunately), the question of whether sound reproduction
>is literally accurate is a subjective evaluation.
That's pretty much true. But we have plenty of measurements that can at
least make a good first cut at tossing out the worst of them.
Richard Webb
> Some speakers give me a sense of the _reality_ of the sources coming
> through them. Some do not. Mind you, I most often deal with what
> I'll call "natural" sounds - acoustic instruments, human voices,
> sounds that are generated without electrical amplification.
Which are often the most difficult to get right in any
monitoring environment imho. What you put in rarely seems
to equal what you get back out.
<snippage>
> This past week working as an artist in Cedar Creek Recording in
> Austin TX we mostly monitored over a pair of Genelecs with which I
> am unfamiliar. I gradually got used to them though even after three
> days I'm not confident in my judgements about what I hear through
> them. Fred Remmert, the studio owner, certainly is. Sometimes he
> would switch to a pair of 6' tall Dunleavys driven by Brystons, and
> over those I felt I could tell what was going on in detail. If it
> sounded good going into them, it sounded good. If it didn't, it was
> painfully obvious. The Gennies aren't completely dishonest, to me,
> but they do have some euphonic coloration that makes things sound a
> little better than they do. (Sometimes that's probably a relief for
> the engineer.)
Agreed. USed to do some work at a well equipped room in
western ILlinois, biggest weakness was his Alesis monitors.
I couldn't get anything to translate to the rest of the
world on them, but the studio's owner could. HE was
accustomed to them.
But, sit me down in my own control room in front of the
ubiquitous Yamahas many of us love to hate and I could get
it done. When I"d take them to another room with a pair of
same Yamahas or some soffit mounted Yureis I felt that waht
I was putting it was what was coming out.
THere comes a point where you can't throw any money at
speaker perfection, then it's training your ears to
interpret what you are hearing. THis is why I have the
ubiquitous Yamahas in the remote truck as well as a pair of
JBL 4411's.
Regards,
Richard
--
| Remove .my.foot for email
| via Waldo's Place USA Fidonet<->Internet Gateway Site
| Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own.
Laurence Payne
>Just the other day I was travelling with a friend on the London
>Underground. we were on our way up the first of two escalators into
>one of London's busiest rail terminals when we could just barely hear
>some brass band music drifting down from the concourse above. We were
>both in instant agreement that it was a live band playing, and not a
>recording. Of course we were right. They simply never sound the same,
>even with really good reproduction.
You were lucky. More typically you'd have turned a corner on the
Underground to find an over-amplified busker.
If this was Waterloo on a Sunday it could have been my friend Frank's
wind group (not technically a brass band, but near enough:-)
Laurence Payne
wrote:
>Right you are, and the progress is damn near astounding. Accuracy now,
>in spite of the slop, is several orders of magnitude advanced over the
>old daze.
And just as accurate speakers came along, that incredibly realistic
vinyl went away! Bummer!
William Sommerwerck
> all, really. While the technology has improved, that market has also
> been flooded with cheap crap designed for high profit margins too.
I have several pairs of KLH Audio (now unfortunately out of business) 911B
speakers. They cost $15 a pair when Best Buy had them on sale a few years
ago. (The pricing was a mistake -- it should have been $30 a pair -- but it
still would have been a great deal at the higher price.)
Their main problem is a bit of boxiness, which can be reduced (though not
totally eliminated) by stuffing them with FiberFill. I use two of them on my
Pioneer plasma (rather than the speakers Pioneer supplied), and I can't
believe how good they are. They have to compete with Apogee Divas, and they
don't sound bad next to speakers that (at list price) retailed for 100x as
much.
Due to the magic of Chinese Communist slave labor, it is possible to buy
cheap, good speakers.
I also have a pair of discontinued Mission bookshelf speakers in my bedroom,
purchased for about $150. These are sonically much superior to anything that
sold for that much 40 years.
Richard Webb
>> >Keep in mind that as one moves toward an unobtainable audio perfection,
>> >the closer one gets to 100% the greater the cost of each additional
>>> >percentile of improvement. It gets to the point where tiny improvements
>> >cost loads of money. If had I had loads of money I'd buy K&H's or ATC's
>> >in a heartbeat.
>> But by the same token, the best speakers today are _far_ better than the
>> best speakers of the eighties were. =A0
> I agree, which also makes me wonder why people are still using
> NS-10's.
Because they're accustomed to them, their ears are
calibrated to them. Used 'em for years, and got used to
them because many studios had them. Which is why I've a
pair in my remote truck.
I've the JBL monitors I mentioned earlier mounted, and will
eventually think about something else, but then I"ll have to recalibrate my ears <g>.
William Sommerwerck
> realistic vinyl went away! Bummer!
Get the SACD of Helmut Rilling conducting the Britten "War Requiem", and let
me know what you think about "realism".
The new Blu-ray of "North by Northwest" has the soundtrack in stereo, and
the sound is magnificent. The best analog recordings of the late 50s and
early 60s hit exactly the right balance between accuracy and euphony.
muzician21
> > How are either of the above determined, and if so, when pro studios
> > pay however many multiples of thousands for monitors, I assume there
> > must be a reason they do so?
>
> Some speakers give me a sense of the _reality_ of the sources coming
> through them. Some do not. Mind you, I most often deal with what I'll
> call "natural" sounds - acoustic instruments, human voices, sounds that
> are generated without electrical amplification.
Isn't what the speakers are reproducing in many cases not what things
sound like to your ears as a spectator but what they sound like to the
mic - generally a few inches away? I.e. I imagine if you were at the
same vantage point to Faith Hill as her mic, she'd sound very
different.
Arny Krueger
message news:hd6n8s$ihv$1...@news.eternal-september.org
>> But by the same token, the best speakers today are _far_
>> better than the best speakers of the eighties were.
> That's debatable.
*Everything* is debatable... ;-) ...especially on RAP.
Where the debate is easy to settle is in the realm of bass extension and
dynamic range. The last 25 years have done marvels in that area. Also:
crossover design.
> (It would be truer of inexpensive-to-moderately priced speakers.)
Well, more true there.
> Nevertheless,
> recordings have reached the point where, when played
> through really good speakers, they sound a great deal
> like "the real thing".
That's a formal debate that was started at the last AES by a paper by
Linkwitz.
> Ultimately (and unfortunately), the question of whether
> sound reproduction is literally accurate is a subjective evaluation.
Not entirely. That's another area where there has been a lot of progress -
measuring speakers and correlating what we measure with what we hear. Not
that its a solved problem, but it is an area where great progress has been
made.
Scott Dorsey
>
>Isn't what the speakers are reproducing in many cases not what things
>sound like to your ears as a spectator but what they sound like to the
>mic - generally a few inches away? I.e. I imagine if you were at the
>same vantage point to Faith Hill as her mic, she'd sound very
>different.
Yup. What people expect with pop music vocals isn't an accurate sound
at all. People want a much larger than life vocal effect.
But there's a hell of a lot more to the music world than just pop and
close-miked stuff.
Don Pearce
No, it was the Sally Army - Early Christmas begging I guess.
d
Les Cargill
My standard is , and probably will always be the Columbia soundtracks
of the great musicals, best exemplified by "The Sound of Music".
--
Les Cargill
Scott Dorsey
>
>My standard is , and probably will always be the Columbia soundtracks
>of the great musicals, best exemplified by "The Sound of Music".
See, I find that stuff aggressively overmiked. It might sound kind of
cool, but it doesn't sound anything like what the orchestra does from
the audience. Everything is right up in your face.
William Sommerwerck
B9. I'm also getting around (finally!) to listening to the MTT cycle of
Mahler symphonies.
Last night I listened to the first half of the 3rd, one of my favorites.
This is an exceptional recording, by any standard. It sounds reasonably
close to hearing a performance in a concert hall.
It's not perfect -- but I don't have to close my eyes to imagine I'm there.
We haven't reached perfection, but I never really expected to live long
enough to see this level of quality.
Arkansan Raider
And *look* very different, too. YOWZA!
I wouldn't mind being her mic.
<g>
---Jeff
david correia
<acc48b04-9eb9-418f...@s15g2000yqs.googlegroups.com>,
muzician21 <muzic...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> so how you do you tell that you're accurately reproducing sound that's
> to some degree inaccurate to begin with?
In the world of commercial recording studios, accurate is a misnomer.
You literally wanna get a drum sound that sounds "better" than the drum
sound in the recording room. You want a vocal that sounds great in your
mix. Not great by itself but sucky in the mix. That is the context - the
final product, the mix.
And you want to be sure that your mix will sound right on what the
client plays them back on.
The way you know your monitor system works is by using it. By trial and
error you'll determine for yourself that your monitors "work". So will
your clients ;>
One of the essential skills of being an engineer is learning how to
listen to, how to make sonic decisions listening to your monitors. And
being right.
Best of luck on your journey to get to that promised land. ;>
David Correia
www.Celebrationsound.com