Listening Speakers Thread.

[jkhuri44]

OK...

so, there's heaps of talk on here about monitors, and Hi fi and this and that...

but is everyone here listening to their music on?? outside the studio??

i'm 26 years old, and for nearly 15 of those years, i've had a massive pair of JBL TLX-16s...which even as i get better at listening...still sound amazing to my ears to the point i have trouble liking anything else...

what else is everyone cranking their vinyl/cds on and rocking out to?

[rob]

tannoy HPD-385s in Arden cabinets, Klipsch Heresy ( with my new Yamaha sub-woofer scored at a garage sale last week ), Tannoy monitor Golds 10", or Altec Lansing little computer speakers --- which on some days are my favorite
different days, different moods, different music, different speakers .... I think I'm seriously confused.

[stosostu]

Rob, are those Altec Lansing the VS4121? I have a set on the office computer and I'm always pleased with how good they sound.

[Chris H]

I have a pair of JBL's model L26 with a sansui AU555. On The same amp I have a pair of Mordant Short MS10. The JBL's are scooped in the mids and forward in the highs, the MS 10 are fuller in the mids so its not a bad combo to check mixes on.

[The Tasmanian]

I only have 3 sets of studio speakers to listen to
In the past whenever I have liked my stereo speakers too much - they end up in the control room.
I gave up putting great speakers in my lounge room years ago - I prefer speakers that are more ordinary to listen to - saves me a lot of moving shit around.
Also - gives me a good reference for the average joe blow's listening environment.
It does make a difference when more than 2/3rds of my house is a studio - I just turn up the studio monitors.

Funny thing - a few years ago, I went to visit a good mate of mine who has an incredible vinyl collection, great stereo, speakers etc.
We put on some music and straight away I heard the speakers were out of phase - so we rewired them.
He completely flipped out and had to go back and revisit 4 years of vinyl collection as every night/weekend he had been listening to every record out of phase.
He was so bummed as he got to love the "adventurous" mixing of all of these records. Solo's/parts missing, things leaping out of the mix etc
When he re-listened there were many albums he had grown to admire and much preferred the out of phase listening.
Records he thought were amazing creative revelations were never the same with the correct phase.
Now this guy is a great musician!
He was so bummed about all these "genius" albums.

[gigpiglet]

possibly stange... but i wired my building up with a JBL control system... so control 25's are my "listening" speakers. i have other options - but for the day to day thats what i have.

having said that - part of the reno that im doing means that i will have a lovely turntable (rega planet) in the control room, so i will be able to sit and listen to the vinyl collection in the control room which i have never done...

[Hookemeister]

I'll go with Rob on the Tannoys.

My favourite is Tannoy Golds driven by a pair of Quad II valve amps... sweet.

Active Tannoy 600's. Any point source speaker gets my vote, especially for near field monitoring.

Don't mind those BM6A's either.

[spandex man]

Ive had my ADAM A7's for about 2.5 years, i have a pair at home and there are also a pair at the studio. Ive been using Dynaudio AIR 6's and 15's a bit in the last year and a half too, not such a big fan though.

Ive been doing a band at a different room over the past month and had a chance to try NS10's for the first time. Started mixing on them last night and found them interesting to work on - seemed like whatever i did on the NS10's worked really well when i flipped over to the other monitors (BM5A's), but wasnt really the same the other way around. It will be interesting to hear what it all sounds like when i take it out into the real world...

[Hookemeister]

ADAM A7's.... Ribbon tweeters? Yeah they have a nice top end.

[otto ruiter]

In the loungeroom I have a pair of Altec 604-168X speakers I bought used in 1983, modified with 8 ohm HF diaphragms and a couple of other tweaks (I guess that makes them 604-8Ks now), biamped with homemade preamp/electronic crossover/eq & powered by NAD 4 x 100W. See avatar

On my PC I have an old pair of Genelecs.

Cheers, Otto

[mavdime]

Paradigm Monitor 9s with a Cambridge Audio 740A integrated amp.... plan on getting a Havana DAC to add to this soon

[Engininja]

Logitec Pure-Fi Anywhere 2 ipod dock.

Tivoli model 2.

[mylesgm]

TDL speakers with a 6bq5 SE amp handmade with vintage Klangfilm output TX's.

Realistic Auratone copies and atrocious class D amp.

Hand made Vifa MTM arrangement with a marantz power amp and a passive pre.

Every room sounds different and every one is an interesting check.

[Gian]

I am using a push pull 15Watts per side EL84/6BQ5 tube amp I built into some sony hi fi speakers with a tweeter, a 10" and a passive cone. It sounds very loud and my amp is only ever turned up to a quarter.

In my other room I have a 100W per side digitech solid state amp driving Adam ATS-5 speakers with two woofers. They are large floor standing speakers which drive the bass very easily and smoothly (not that I am into lots of bass, just that they do it effortlessly).

[Drumstruck]

A pair of Fostex (Plessey) custom monitors are my favourites - full range, very flat and clear.

A pair of JBL LX2004s as rears which are a bit middly. Cerwin vega 12" sub and centre - both good.

Would like a pair of NS-10s for real world reference....

Away from the studio the t.v. just uses its' inbuilt speakers - same with the car.

[mylesgm]

I'm sure that the 'real world' doesnt care but how is it that you can go and buy a $3000 flatscreen tv that has all the bells and whistle and the audio is coming out of a collection of the shittiest 1" speakers money can buy? Man I hate TV...

[stosostu]

Myles, TV audio doesn't warrant anything better, in eoither quality or contant. Mind you, neither does the vision.

[mylesgm]

This is precisely what I'm talking about. The central point of entertainment in most peoples homes is the TV and yet in nearly 70 years of that medium the audio quality has not really jumped ahead. Oh yeah we have more channels but it is essentially the same quality but in that same timeframe video has jumped in leaps and bounds. The public doesn't really care and the delivery is always done to the lowest common denominator.

My Dad tells a funny story: He used to be a tourguide as a way to pay himself though university. One day after a particularly laconic comment one of his party asked " why are you tour guides all so cynical?" "Ma'am, we work with the public". As a general rule, I have no time for the 'public' probably why I've never had a top 10.

[Drumstruck]

I'm sure that the 'real world' doesnt care but how is it that you can go and buy a $3000 flatscreen tv that has all the bells and whistle and the audio is coming out of a collection of the shittiest 1" speakers money can buy? Man I hate TV...

Yeah, it'll never catch on in the real world

[obutcher]

At home I've got some Adam A7's that I listen to my music collection and do some mixing through as well. They're nice speakers though when mixing things can get kinda bright very easy thanks to the smooth top end.

At work we've got NS10's, Yamaha MSP7's and some large Tannoys. I don't find any of them perfectly comfortable to solely work with and find myself constantly switching between them to check different aspects of my mixes.

[graemeh]

I've got Tannoy 12" Golds in the lounge for "serious" listening ie all my vinyl when i want to chill out with a smoke and relive my wild youth
a pair of Rotel Hi Fi speakers in the living room for general use and for putting the TV through for a concert or similar, and a really average pair of AWA twin cone crapola speakers in the kitchen which I always use as a reference for a 'worst case scenario' to make sure the important bits like vocals still cut through all the background crap of kids yelling etc....

[Alastair Reynolds]

As Rob said early on in the thread, different moods, different music will dictate what speaker/amp setup is used.
Sometimes it's nice to hear something as it would have been heard when it was recorded or mixed, e.g. early Beatles recording through Otto's Altec 604s will sound a lot closer to how they heard it and be in context as such. Later Abbey Road recordings may sound more "Authentic" on a Tannoy / Lockwood setup so Rob's HPD 385 Ardens would probably hit the mark. JBLs for that 70s "West coast" sound ,Something Horn Loaded for stuff out of Nashville mixed on Westlake Horns. Then drive them off an amp of the era. A really tight Mosfet amp with high damping on a mid 60s speaker is going to sound flat as the mechanical characteristics of the speaker were probably designed to run with a transformer coupled valve amp or early capactively coupled germanium bipolar amp . More modern speakers driven off a tightly controlled amp may sound pretty ordinary on an old amp, and "flap around" with heavy bass without the mechanical damping of a tight spider / surround.
It is all very subjective and the room will of course affect the sound.
It's a bit like "what guitar sounds good on what amp and with a Celestion Blue Bulldog or a JBL K120 or a Jensen Alnico" Different music needs different setups

or maybe I should "get my hand off it it" before it's too late
So here goes.
General Listening:- B&W 802 matrix with Talk Electronics Hurricane amp
Chamber Music -- String or Woodwind ensemble Quad ESL57 Electrostatic with Quad II /22 Amps or Rogers LS3/5A on the Quads--nice for spoken word too.(Been Listening to the Quads a lot lately)
For Mono stuff, Altec 601-8D or Tannoy DMT-10 driven by Mono Quad II/ QCII Pre-power amps or sometimes just one of the ESL57 (Mono on a single point -source driver is pretty neat)
Sometimes old JBL 4320s on a Fisher X100C Valve power Amp -- good for 60s Pop/rock
Orchestral-- Revox Agora Active 3 way on Revox Preamp and bitstream CDplayer--Very flat,clean
Studio Work JBL 4412 or Tannoy DMT 8 Active in mid field.
and a nice set of Auratones from the 70s for good measure.
Party Time.... Tannoy Super-dual SBX10.3 with 12.3 Subs on an array of trusty old Phase Linear, QSC and Bryston poweramps.
Some stuff sounds great on one set of speakers and crap on another and vice versa.
Had a couple of sets of Klipsch over the years. A pair of La Scalas and later Belle Klipsch. But they were so damned big and you had to get a good 30 feet from them to really get the image and bottom end. Good Horn loaded speakers do sound pretty amazing, be they Klipsch or Tannoy GRF or a similar corner Horns.

my 3c worth today....

What's your take on it Rick ?

[otto ruiter]

Of course all speakers made up to now are out of date. Here's the future... http://www.audiopixels.com.au/index.cfm/technology/

[Alastair Reynolds]

Does this mean we'll see your 604s on Ebay shortly

[chribble]

[quote="spandex man"]Ive had my ADAM A7's for about 2.5 years, i have a pair at home and there are also a pair at the studio. Ive been using Dynaudio AIR 6's and 15's a bit in the last year and a half too, not such a big fan though.

Ive been doing a band at a different room over the past month and had a chance to try NS10's for the first time. Started mixing on them last night and found them interesting to work on - seemed like whatever i did on the NS10's worked really well when i flipped over to the other monitors (BM5A's), but wasnt really the same the other way around. It will be interesting to hear what it all sounds like when i take it out into the real world...[/quote]


Let me know how this goes, this is the same set up I use and I'm using a cheap amp with my ns10s.
What i've noticed is that percieved loudness of tracks is much easier to detect on ns10s

End of the day I should probably use a real mastering engineer rather than slamming everything through my own chain.
(which i will do in future)

[jkhuri44]

End of the day I should probably use a real mastering engineer rather than slamming everything through my own chain.
(which i will do in future)

i hear there's this guy that started an audio forum in Sydney...

[chribble]

End of the day I should probably use a real mastering engineer rather than slamming everything through my own chain.
(which i will do in future)

i hear there's this guy that started an audio forum in Sydney...

haha i know ofcourse i am also looking to get my bands songs remixed first and there are mix engineers on here toooo

*bbcodefix

[rick]

Whats my take on listening speakers ...?

I wish i knew
buts its really about cars for me to listen with -
has been since i could drive

my 64 futura had two sets of pmc studio speakers custom shoehorned into it and about 35million watt amps running them
I like that a lot - I sold it
the local PMC importer took photos of it to send to PMC the week it left
i dont think they could quite believe what i had done to their perfectly good perfectly expensive studio monitors !

as my wife likes to joke the kids pulled the wires out of the stereo in the lounge room before they could walk and one of them is at school now and the lounge room stereo still doesnt work !

my current car (ba2 v8 fairlane ) has the most expensive ridiculous 10 speaker d.s.p. run stereo system ford Australia have yet to put in a car
I met the ford big wig in charge of it at a dinner once
he said so tell me.. oh you're a sound guy what about the stereo system — we spent 2 million dollars developing it
I said with out blinking
"would you like me to write you a full report so you can get your money back ! "

my wifes spider is on its 2nd system since we got it - italian cars dont want stereos to sound any good it seems
its weird the factory one was shit sounding , the new one is less smelly
i have to do something about it again

my wifes forester only ever plays music to soothe her or our three foot high friends in the back seats
i cannot comment on that system in public in case i have to replace it as well


so its cars really - i turn the speakers off in every computer in the house because they talk to me at night in alien sounds when i am trying to sleep

i have dreams about my listening system for the new place — but i have been through it before it doesnt work right or even exist fully and you cannot lift it
so i will wait until another time to bore you all with the details

i am no help on the issue of speakers

[jkhuri44]

^ with you on that rick

also listen most in my car, which isnt really much at all...since when im at home, i like to write music!

stock honda system sucks bad!

i've been contemplating getting a fully sick hoon sub system, but...i cant seem to justify a money pit like that, altho...... subs...mmm...sub....

[DwaneHollands]

haha. classic Rick, about the ford guy. How did he react. lol. What you gotta follow up with next time is, "for 1.5 million I'll design a better system. It'll weigh an extra 100kg, but trust me it'll be worth it"