Booming Back at You

Jul 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jason Blum

THE SOUND GOING TO YOUR EARS MEANS EVERYTHING TO YOUR MIXES. STRIVE FOR PROPER MONITORING FOR YOUR MUSIC TO REACH ITS POTENTIAL

If your mixes sound thin or you can't figure out why your tunes pump at home but sound like mud in the club, chances are you need to take a look at your monitor setup. Don't feel bad. A lot of us started out using old hand-me-down home-stereo monitors as we got our studios off the ground, and sometimes it takes a while before that “a-ha!” moment hits and rubs our noses in one of the harsh facts of studio life: Professional mixing requires professional monitors. Even experienced producers using quality gear have trouble with monitoring for entirely different reasons — from poor room acoustics to substandard D/A conversion. So wheel those tower speakers back into the living room, and we'll examine the core issues in studio monitoring.

WHAT IT IS, BRO

If you're relatively new to music production, you might be wondering what exactly monitoring is — and how it could really be all that different from listening to tunes from the living room couch. If dad's old amp is good enough for listening, why not for mixing? Those are good questions that we've probably all asked ourselves at some point.

Monitoring, simply put, is the single most important thing in your studio. That statement may spark heated debate, but I stand by it for one big reason: You can't mix what you can't hear. If your monitors don't give you a truthful and accurate representation of what's really going on in your music, the mixes coming out of your studio are going to sound radically different in other environments, and generally not in a good way. Once your music is out to the public, it has to stand on its own and translate properly across all systems, from cheap computer speakers to massive club systems pushing hundreds of thousands of watts. Balancing a mix to translate properly across such a wide range of systems presents a staggering challenge.

The trick to getting it right is smart mixing. But again, without proper monitors, it's nearly impossible to make smart mix decisions because your ears simply aren't hearing the whole story. It's like trying to assemble a car engine from a manual that's missing critical pages. It may look like an engine when you're finished, and it may even run, but it won't kick out all the horsepower it could because key elements are missing.

NOT LOUD IS ALLOWED: SPEAKERS

Good monitoring is built on three core essentials: great speakers, quality conversion and a good room. Speakers — the voice of your studio — are where monitoring begins. They don't need to be loud; they don't need to be big; and, in fact, given the size of most project studios, it's usually best if they're neither. What they really do need to be is brutally honest. Selecting such a pair of monitors is an intensely personal process, and ultimately it's up to your ears to decide what sounds best for you, but there are a few basic guidelines that can help narrow down the shopping list to a few likely candidates.

Few of us are working in large commercial recording studios, so give up any dreams you may have of cramming a pair of huge mounted speakers with arrays of 12-inch woofers into your spare room. They might look impressive and sound massive, but for everyday mixing tasks, it's the smaller near-field monitors that get the job done. Most near-fields are two-way systems featuring a single tweeter and woofer, with some models sporting an extra woofer. They tend to be bookshelf size, so they can fit comfortably on a desktop.

Make sure the pair you get is the right size for your room. There's no magic formula for sizing speakers, but think of them like a TV — if they feel large and imposing in your studio, they're probably too big. It's easy to assume that bigger is better and head straight for the most speaker your wallet can handle, but consider how far you'll be sitting from the monitors before buying into a behemoth setup. Optimal positioning for studio monitors is an equilateral triangle between your head and the speakers, so take that into account and size accordingly for where you'll be sitting.

Naturally, larger speakers tend to reach farther down into the low end as big woofers move more air, but pay close attention to the sensation of tightness in bass with these larger drivers. Bigger drivers tend to produce more earth-shaking low end but occasionally do so at the expense of punchiness in the higher bass registers. Pay attention to frequency response plots, too. A good pair of medium-size near-field speakers should stay relatively flat up to and beyond 20 kHz. Don't worry too much about bass response — while some near-field speakers do produce satisfying low end, it's generally something that's best handled by a subwoofer, particularly if you're producing bass-heavy music that's destined for club play.

YOU'RE GOING TO HOLLYWOOD: AUDITIONING

Any music shop worth its salt should have an enclosed listening room or at least a dedicated area set aside for auditioning monitors. Don't even think of buying a pair of monitors until you've heard at least five different sets. It's important to take a CD that you're familiar with, preferably a burned disc full of a wide variety of music in different styles and genres with which you're intimately familiar. Try the disc on every pair of speakers you can.

When auditioning monitors in a retail environment, all of the speakers are usually irregularly spaced against one wall. Monitoring is as much about the room you're in as the speakers, so keep in mind that they'll sound somewhat different once you get them out of the shop. Try to reposition yourself while auditioning each set so your head forms and equilateral triangle with the speakers. No matter what it takes, make sure your ears are even with the tweeters. Even better, if you're on good terms with the dealer, arrange to take a couple of your favorite pairs home. There's really no substitute for hearing how each pair will sound in your particular space.

Listen as long as it takes to get a solid perception about the monitor's characteristics. Getting a feel for this unique personality is key in selecting the perfect pair of speakers. Listen closely to the treble frequencies. Is the stereo field wide with good imaging? Do you feel enveloped by the sound? Can you pinpoint individual instruments “hanging in space,” so to speak, between the speakers? Do vocals sound like they're placed solidly in the center of the stereo field? Listen closely to long reverb tails and try to pick out details within the reverb itself as it decays. A good pair of monitors will accurately reproduce this level of detail to such an extent that it seems as if the music is under a microscope. If treble sounds harsh or fatiguing in any way, then move on. Remember that you'll be using these speakers for hours on end, day after day, perhaps year after year. Listening should be a pleasure, not a chore.

Midrange frequencies encompass most of the actual music, so accurate reproduction in this area is key. Think of mids as the meat, and treble and bass as salt and pepper. Listen for midrange that's full, developed and cohesive, gluing the bass and treble regions together. Vocals in particular live in the mids, so if you work with voices, spend a lot of time listening for any peaks or valleys in this area. Monitors that boost mids unnaturally can leave you mixing holes into your music, producing that “smiley-face EQ” effect that's prevalent in radio and on cheap home stereos. A lack of midrange can trick you into boosting things unnaturally, resulting in a brash and clangorous mix that's unpleasant and fatiguing.

Bass is by far the most difficult thing to gauge accurately. Low-end reproduction depends highly on the room you're in, so what you hear at the dealer may be quite different at home. The lowest of low frequencies are the hardest to judge, so focus instead on the upper-bass registers. Is the bass tight, punchy and focused, or is it loose and boomy? Boominess sometimes sounds good on dance music, giving you that loud, big club feeling, but it's deceptive and can often fool you into over- or under-compensating in a mix. Too much bass — especially in a club — can rapidly overpower the rest of a song and kill the experience. It's better to forgo earth-shaking low end in favor of tight focus in the upper-bass registers.

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