Audio editing speakers
 

Hi there,

I'm looking to upgrade my basic PC speakers to something better for when I edit audio for my films. Please keep in mind that I am not a master audio editor so I'm not looking for anything too high end, just a decent set of stereo speakers that will give me a better interpretation of what the audio I'm editing actually DOES sound like. Up too $500 dollars is my price range.

I know next to nothing in the area of computer speakers so any good recommendations would be great. Or if there is a good standard set of speakers out there that most people are using please let me know. I usually buy from B&H in case anyone knows something they sell that is good.

Thanks!

Logitech make a great budget 2.1 kit...

http://tinyurl.com/2x9sc2

I got these for my father in law to watch movies and they rip.
Totally brings the movies to life, without breaking the bank.
Sounds clear & sharp + separate subby bass control.

Im going to get a set of these for exactly the purpose you describe!

Hi Paul,

In order to create a good mix you really want to use a studio monitor. They have a much flatter response (in audio terms they won't color the sound). Using speakers that are made for listening to music or watching movies will usually emphasize the base and highs. They're made to to make even so so sound tracks sound ok. A studio monitor will allow you to create a balance reliable mix.

I've used some very expensive monitors in the past with some pretty esoteric amps to do remixes. Lately I've been using a set of monitor headphones but I've found that they can become somewhat fatiguing. So I've started to do some research. For a budget price these Behringer's seem to be a pretty highly regarded monitor:

BEHRINGER: MS40

I'm considering these but can't find any where near me to demo them. Other reliable inexpensive monitors are made by M-Audio, Mackie and Alesis to name a few. For your $500 you can even get a pair of Samson monitors.

I probably will get a pair of the Behringer's just to try them since you can get a pair for around $129 including shipping. If I really don't like them I figure I can always unload them and not loose too much. One thing that intrigues me about the MS40 is that they include a D/A processor so I can take a TOSLINK out from my computer directly into the monitors. That should help to avoid any hum or noise from my computer sound card.

Garrett

For $500 you should be able to swing a pair of decent monitors, just be aware that better monitors are usually priced per monitor, not in pairs.

Look into KRK, Mackie, JBL, Yamaha, they've all got decent monitors under $250 each. A search over at gearslutz.com should give you a lot of reading to do. This thread: Did a 2nd low-end monitor listening test today... KRK Yamaha Mackie Tascam Alesis - Gearslutz.com seems to be a good place to start.

Hey Paul -

I'm in the same boat as you. I also did some research and posted in the "Editing on the Mac" forum about this too and got some input there as well.

Jordan's link to the monitor review was helpful. But as with everything else, it comes down to personal taste / preference...(as basically that's what all reviews for anything out there are. What sounds great to somebody else, may sound like garbage to you.)

If you can, visit some stores that carry the monitors that you are interested in and give them a listen. I went to the Guitar Center to listen to the various brands and it helps...at least for me....to know what one is after for sound mixing.

Much luck in your search for the perfect monitor setup too!!

One thing to consider is the amount of bass you expect in your mix. If you're mixing orchestral or jazz, go for mid range accuracy. Same for voice. If you're mixing rap or movie trailers, go for something with a strong bottom end.

KRK tends to offer good bottom end for a low price, but they aren't known for their clarity. Yamaha has a reputation for accuracy, but not much low end. I haven't shopped for some time, so don't take this as gospel.

Go to Guitar Center or wherever you can get a live demo, bring some CDs and have a listen. Don't choose the most sparkly or boomy big sounding speakers. Go for what sounds neutral and natural - possibly something that even sounds slightly dull, compared to what you expect from consumer speakers. Most importantly, they should sound natural to you.

You'll be demoing near field speakers, so get fairly close to them. The distance between them should be roughly the same distance as from them to your ears. You can toe them in slightly - point the right speaker at your left ear and vice versa. As long as you're not too far from them, you will hear the speakers, rather than the room.

You cal play with how far the speakers are from the wall. Try them in various positions. This can make a big difference in the bass response. Note your favorite position when you buy them, and try to set up your room similarly.

Bring some of your favorite music - stuff you know really well. Use real CDs, rather than MP3s. Bring something really clean, like old Steely Dan. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is a nice bass test. Bring something with spoken word - male and female. A big soundtrack, like Star Wars, would be good. But these are just suggestions. Most importantly, bring stuff that you know and want to emulate, but bring variety too.

And don't be shy to ask the people there what they honestly think. Take it with a grain of salt, since they're trying to sell speakers. But they might just be honest, have good ears, and point out things that you didn't notice at first.

Finally, it's good to buy from DVInfo sponsors, but it's also good to buy from local shops. If they spend time giving you a good demo, don't turn around and buy online just to save five bucks. That doesn't mean that you can't try to negotiate a lower price though...

Best of luck!

One other note: it's counterintuitive, but if you buy speakers with LOUD BASS, you will mix the bass lower and create mixes with weak bass. If you buy speakers with lots of sparkle, you will create mixes that have too little high end. Therefore, you want a flat, natural sound.

Bass is a bit unique. Many speakers bump up the mid bass (around 100 Hz), and have weak or non-existent low bass (50 Hz and below). This type of cheap bass helps keep cost and size down, but can really screw up your mix.

If you can't hear a 40 Hz signal, you won't know if it exists or if it's blasting away three times as loud as it should be. Play your mix on a larger system, and you might be surprised.

Again, for jazz and classical, you're unlikely to get any surprises around 40 Hz. Mixing electronic rap, you could get crazy loud stuff at 25 Hz and below. With Hollywood trailer explosions, you can also get huge low frequencies. Get too small a monitor, and you're working blind, so be careful down there!

A good practice is to use a subsonic filter to get rid of the really low stuff when mixing the big stuff on nearfields.

I was recommended to buy Genelecs by a sound recordist who I really respect. They've been great.

Genelecs make some very good monitors as does ADAM but I think they generally run a little more than the $500/pr budget.

Richard which model do you have?

KRK's are good for the price range and I"ve used JBL monitors before add do like them but I've never used their lower costs ones so I can't attest to those.

Garrett

You're getting some very good advice here but I'll toss in one more soft recommendation:

I mix for TV (mostly commercials and documentary so very little deep bass activity - I know, I captured the audio) on a set of Edirol MA-15D made by Roland. For a $200-250 budget pair of stereo monitors they are quite articulate with reasonable frequency balance (excepting, of course deep bass).

My next edit bay will likely have some spendier mid fields but I'll be retaining these for nearfield/small speaker monitoring.

Yep, I'll second that Edirol MA-15D recommendation for anyone on a TIGHT budget. Very pleased with mine (no noticeable hiss either when connected by the optical digital link on my 2009 Mac Pro) and I've added a Kenwood sub-woofer (about £80 in the UK) which helps a lot. Sure, these won't 'cut ice' with the 'serious audio Pros' but for the kind of video/audio work I do (mostly corporate video) they are certainly just great/really amazing value, and very versatile too. They were about £100 or so in the UK a few months ago.

There are some great brands/models listed in this thread that'll easily beat them (if you have the budget) and one day I'll move up to one of them but for now this set-up is just fine!

Also, here is the co-current Mac thread on monitors (mentioned earlier in this thread by Andrew).

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/non-line...s-mac-pro.html

EDIT: And here is the specific thread I had going a while back about the MA-15Ds

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/all-thin...-monitors.html

One more vote for the Edirol MA-15D

Vasco

Or if you REALLY want to go low budget, these work too: Edirol / Roland | MA-7A 3" 7W Active Micro Monitors | MA-7A

Just to muddy the waters, I have the Blue Sky EXO 2.1 and absolutely love them:

Blue Sky

Award winning, great reviews, external hub with xlr inputs, etc. $350 at B&H:

Blue Sky International | EXO - 2.1 Stereo Desktop | EXO | B&H

A composer friend of mine with golden ears has an older pair of Blue Sky 2.1s and loves them. I haven't heard them myself, but can pass on a very strong recommendation from a solid source.

I've got the 8030as. They would be over the $500 budget so I probably shouldn't have recommended them. They go for about £400 each in the UK. I think they were nearer £300 when I bought mine, which might have put them nearer the target $500 for two. So often pounds = dollars when buying kit etc
HOWEVER it's not like you are buying a camera or computer that will be out of date in three years time. Decent speakers will last you a lifetime and still do the job.
As Garrett says, I understand it you don't want speakers that are designed for music. You want a neutral sound. I understand that the Genelecs have some colouration but it's beyond my powers of discrimination.
I love them. You hear everything. Well worth the money.

ps I did a course in sound recording with this guy:
http://www.chriswatson.net/
He didn't say buy the Genelecs and nothing else ie I'm sure there are other speakers that are just as good. But he suggested Genelecs and I took his advice. You could do a lot worse.

Paul:

You need to look at how you are going to connect and use the monitor system you are planning on buying. Most people tend to use the stereo mini plug rather than a digital connection. The stereo mini plug uses the on-board DAC which is usually from the motherboards built-in audio. Not good. Or do you have a good sound card ($100 to $200) to use for the DAC?

I believe in using a good sound card for DAC rather than one of the monitor speaker systems with a built-in DAC. That gives you a lot more flexibility for expansion in the future and allows you to run your studio monitor headphones directly off the computers sound card.

I think your first purchases should be:
1. A high end sound card ($100+)
2. Sony 7506 headphones for critical work & reality checks on the monitor system ($100)
3. One of the higher rated 2.1 speaker systems for a starter. Although a high end monitor system would certainly sound far more accurate and cleaner, I doubt your workspace (like most peoples) is acoustically correct in the first place, and an emphasized sounding system is probably more what an end user would hear your audio on rater than a monitor system. Use the headphones for monitoring and the 2.1 system for one variation of real life.

Also, lot of people in your situation buy a 2.1 system like the Logitech Z-2300 (a massively boomy system) and replace the satellites with a high end bookshelf speaker like the BA 150 with very good results (a fairly balanced system) reported at a manageable cost.

Make it easy on yourself, and keep this in mind:

99.9% of your audience will be listening to your work on cheap PC speakers, or whatever feeble sounds their TV speakers can reproduce.

I produce content for websites and DVD distribution....mostly live music shows. I am also generally the sound man at the shows that I film. So I know a little bit about sound reinforcement and reproduction. I mix ALL my audio on my PC in Adobe Premiere Pro or Soundbooth using a $120.00 pair of Altec Lansing VS4121 speakers with a separate powered sub. Studio quality monitors are great if your audience will be listening back on high-end equipment (like a 5.1 or bigger Dolby Surround Sound system), but the majority of MY audience isn't. So, I mix the audio to sound good on the equipment that the audience is most likely to be using.

And, I've had nothing but compliments...in Nashville, TN....a town full of wanna-be sound engineers. And I'm producing content for musicians to use for their own promotional purposes, and have never had a complaint!

I am not trying to flame any of the other comments here....just keep your audience, and their equipment, in mind.

Cans are good for evaluating takes and some editing but they are NOT good for mixing. Phones introduce their own frequency distortions and mask other problems and cannot be calibrated for levels. Properly calibrated monitor speakers are a necessity for the final production mix.

Further to Steve's comment: in an environment where one EXPECTS the mix to be heard on speakers (instead of headphone, which music oftimes is), it's imperative to AT LEAST quality test on speakers to see if the interaction of the waveforms as they leave the drivers and mix and mingle with each other before hitting the listeners ears cause any bizarre and disastrous phase related issues.

Having a nice pair of headphones is great as a sanity check and for midnight work, but, as others have pointed out, they have limitations. The main two problems that I've had in the past are 1) you can't tell if a channel is inverted (you hear the cancellation with speakers, but not with headphones, and 2) you will mix details way too low. With closed headphones especially, you hear tiny details right next to your ear in a silent environment. Play the same thing on speakers, and the details are much quieter. Play it on you living room TV or car stereo and you;ll never, ever hear them.

But as Jeff wrote, good headphones make for a great sanity check, if you can't afford true reference monitors and an acoustically tuned room - especially when you are first learning the sound of your studio. You might mix something that sounds great on your system, but sounds horrid on you cans. If so, there is a problem with your mix. It should sound good on both. You can also try the mix through your TV. It won't sound great, but shouldn't sound bad.

I have and recommend Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones for studio work over Sony 7506s. The 7506s have too much high end. This is great for cutting through the ambient sound when tracking or recording dialog in the field, but not good for checking a mix. The Senns are much more neutral, IMHO.

Wow, so many great responses - thanks everyone for all the good info! I've read though all the responses and narrowed it down to the 'Behringer MS40' and 'Edirol MA15D'. For what I'm doing I think either of these will do the job great. B&H is currently out of stock on the
Edirol MA15D so it looks like I'll be getting the MS40 (thanks Garrett for mentioning them). I just started editing my new film so I need the speakers asap.

All the user reviews for the MS40 are 5 star ratings with nothing but good things to say about them so that's a positive sign. Plus they have Optical In which is what I'll be using.

Thanks again everyone!

I'm assuming you can't audition the speakers anywhere?

Just last week I was reading about how "great a Beringer calibration matched my SM58 in stereo mic'ing a piano" on an online review. There's no accounting for taste.

Yeah, auditioning is good. If nothing else, once you've purchased the speakers, you'll know how the other speakers felt in comparison, and why you chose the ones you did. You'll never have to wonder if the ones you skipped were way better.

Yeah, I always love to try before buying whenever possible. Unfortunately I live on an Island with no big cities near me and the stores around here have nothing you want, lol. That's why I usually have to order online a lot.

Thanks for all the input people! You guys rock.

I'll give a shout out for the Yamaha HS50M's.

Yamaha | HS50M 5" Two-Way Bi-Amplified Nearfield | HS50M

They seem to do the job well, IMHO.

Hey Vito -

I too am interested in the EXO's....but was wondering, did you get a chance to compare them (in person) to the MediaDesk and ProDesk versions?

For those that AREN'T aware, Vancouver Island is massive and quite possibly the closest thing we have to non-tropical heaven here on Earth.

But yeah, it's a ferry ride (and a spendy one at that) into Vancouver City to get to any of the wonderful shops that you COULD ear test speakers.

Unfortunately, no. I couldn't find anyone in Montreal that carried any of the Blue Sky monitors. I took a chance after researching.

Couldn't be happier.

I notice the Edirol MA15's have a "Sub Out" socket at the rear for hooking up a subwoofer.

Can you do that with the Behringer MS20 or MS40 kits?

There's a Long & McQuade in Victoria, they should have at least 4 or 5 decent brands of monitors set up in store to try out, all the lower mainland locations seem to have a wall of monitors set up.

There are also a couple Tom Lee locations on the island that should have at least something set up you could try.

Ding ding ding.. best bang for the buck.. Blue Sky systems are amazing for the cost.