Car speakers as main studio monitors?

[Text_Edifice]

Hi all,

I am living in Laos for 12 months working with a record label over here doing a range of music biz related stuff. At present the in-house studio uses be!@#$%^& truths and these would be considered high end for the market. Anything name brand is ridiculously expensive for the local market (1USD = 9600 kip) so while it is possible to source some fairly good ATC monitors from Thailand the price is completely unrealistic. One producer does all his mixing / tracking on a set of boom box speakers (gets a pretty good sound too).

Anyway - long story short I want to try and obtain or build some decent monitors that will allow the engineers the opportunity to hear a bit more detail. First problem is they're not available and second problem is the label don't have access to mounds of cash. What I do have access to is a bunch of car audio places and some really good cabinet makers...

So, any suggestions on some car speakers that might be tenable as studio monitors?

[rick]

check out the range from focal or scan speak , vifa or peerless

[Text_Edifice]

Thanks Rick,

any suggestions on model numbers to build a set of bookshelves (mid / bass + tweeter) or wall mounts (3-way design)? Any thoughts on crossovers?

[Chris H]

I mate of mine did this a few years back and used those power amp modules from Jcar in the boxes so they were active. He used some Vifa drivers and a crossover designed by a local engineer. I would go two way as the aspect of design that causes most problems is the crossover. The boxes were built using the Theil Small perameters and sounded great. I never heard them against my usual monitors but he did good recordings using them.
He busks regularly and sells plenty of CD's and is a real example of "the power to the people" that accessible DAW recording gives.This is OT but he has also builds some amazing sounding acoustic guitars. Andrew Pendelbry purchased one, solid rosewood neck, fret board, back and sides, and solid spruce top. He wanted to test wether making the guitar out of the same timber ( exept for the top) would be a possible advantage. It sounded exceptionally gob smackingly good.

[Henry]

Unlikely to find Vifas but JBL make car speakers, I bought some about 2 years ago. What you really need though is good tweeters and set the crossover to say 1500, that will give you plenty more info if the driver is a tad dodgy. Sorta like NS10 design.

[Text_Edifice]

Thanks Henry - did a search today and no-one's heard of any of the suggested speakers unfortunately. Back to the drawing board.

[Linear]

In my opinion, I'd just stick to the bear ringer truths.

Seriously, they're not the best speakers in the world but neither are NS10's, and plenty of people use them (including me although I just got a pair of focal twin6's)

More important is learning your monitors. Knowing how the decisions you make in the studio relate to the outside world.

I can almost guarantee that the sound you will get from DIY boxes/car speakers will sound worse than that from a set of truths.

Whilst I don't use any bear ringer gear, I'm surprised that so many people are so quick to slag it off (IP issues aside). while the sound of most of their stuff isn't great, it isn't terrible and it probably uses identical components/manufacturers/assemblers as 'more respected' companies making their kit in China.

I reckon you'd be doing them a bigger favour by putting your effort into building better front end, or a couple of DIY compressors maybe.

just a thought.

Chris

[Text_Edifice]

yeah good point - behringers are working fine at present and are totally passable for 80% of the stuff the label's doing.

Front end (and room treatment) would probably make a bigger difference.

Having said that if I could find a set of scan speak etc. speakers I think it would be possible to build something different / complimentary to the Truths and possibly a little more accurate for less than be!@#$%^& gear is going for locally.

DIY compressors / preamps are definitely on the list of projects for the year.

[Henry]

The Truths are really bad. If you can get those little Yamaha MP5's I think, they are brilliant little monitors and dirt cheap too.

[Andrew]

Speakers are in general the poorest part of a system. DIY can save lots and end up with a good set as long as you read a bit and get a decent understanding of speaker building.

Hhhmmm I was going say a bit more about building but I have to go out now.

Those brand name car speakers can be sourced in aus for cheaper than studio monitor speakers that are on par in terms of sound quality or better (but thats a very subjective matter). Have a read of the latest audio technoligy mag or just google a bit more.

[rick]

my current audio tech article does not suggest you seek out car speakers to make cheap studio monitors for your studio.... err anything but that actually
it does infer however if you want to, you can make your car sound amazing and better speaker parts then the ones in most in most studio monitors are now available really cheaply for the car market

so in theory depending on how good you are at it you can make your car sound way better then most studios for less money then the fancy preamp your planning on buying next.

hey how do those focals sound chris ...? do you think you will still have them in three years ...?

for those that dont know focal make the current audiophile hyped " worlds best speaker " and its about $160,000

focal also make a stack of car speakers using the same tech stuff in the parts

btw

i heard a pair of brand new "barefoot" studio speakers at work today ($ 10k) and they sounded pretty good
they were the first set of studio speakers that i have seen that use the new hard metal cone car subwoofer cone technology and as i am saying there are now so many new speaker parts out there its only a matter of time before the rest of the the studio speaker builders follow.

meanwhile go get your car stereo sorted and have a sing along on the way to work :)
its much more fun then worrying about your studio speakers

[Text_Edifice]

Hi Rick,

sorry actually haven't read the current issue of AT as I am not in Aus...

The reason I was asking about car speakers is that it is impossible to get monitors or good quality hi-fi equipment locally in Laos.

The closest thing I could think of was car stereo equipment because locally that's where the most money is spent on audio gear.

After a bit more investigation it seems there aren't the components locally to build anything approaching usable monitors.

But they do build some pretty killer car stereo's.

[Linear]

Hi,

The Focals sound killer. I sure hope I'm still using them in three years - I've been using the NS10's for about 12 years now so I hope to get at least that from the newies.

I also looked at some ADAM's (which are german), but my girlfriend (who is french and doesn't really like germans) forced me buy the Focals (which are also french).

Flicking between the two was a real lesson for me - I knew it was time after mixing the last record, I felt like I was guessing to a degree with vocal placement and reverb. The Focals definitely fixed that, and not the slightest bit fatiguing either, unlike the 10's which gave me a headache after a few hours.

I haven't read the latest AT but it's interesting that you talk of car speakers. I now take almost every mix I do into my car - granted there are 14 speakers and 4 subs but I've really started to learn where bottom end should sit from doing that.

Cheers

Chris

[Andrew]

Yep sorry guys, I was using the ref to the AT mag as a suggestion for suppliers only. Still I would rather listen to some car audio speakers than some studio monitors imho.